The way I see it, there are two ways to make a Reese’s special edition candy, and they hinge on the two main elements of a peanut butter cup: the peanut butter, and the cup. You can take that distinctively dry, salty, crumbly peanut butter and use it in a non-cup format, with results like the Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar, and even non-candy items like Reese’s Puffs Cereal and Reese’s Cookies. Or you can take the cup format and mess with it: change the size (Reese’s Big Cup), the shape (Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs), the chocolate coating (Reese’s White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups), and/or the filling (Reese’s Elvis Cups).

Since there are so many ways to alter the Reese’s formula and still be able to get away with putting a Reese’s logo on it, it’s no surprise that Hershey has been milking this cash cow for all it’s worth - Reese’s has had more special edition flavors and other spin-offs than almost any other candy (except maybe Kit Kat). Keeping that in mind, today’s candy was probably inevitable: the Reese Hazelnut Crème cup. (They’ve decided to keep the accent on “crème,” perhaps hoping to evoke, say, crème brulee rather than marshmallow creme or numerous other “We can’t legally call it ‘cream’ because there’s no dairy in it” products.)

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One of the most exciting new candies that I came across at the All Candy Expo was the new Reese’s Select Cluster, a bite-sized piece of sweet, peanut buttery goodness consisting of Reese’s peanut butter, caramel, peanuts, and pecans, all held together by a creamy layer of smooth milk chocolate. It was as if all of the candy stars aligned to make the perfect sweet for me - all of my favorite ingredients, held together by my favorite peanut butter in the whole world! Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to try one.

The first thing I noticed about the clusters was that the dominating flavor is the familiar (and delicious) taste of Reese’s peanut butter. A generous dollop makes up the base of the cluster, which is exactly how it should be, for Reese’s instantly recognizable peanut butter, with its gritty and rich consistency, is the reason why people buy Reese’s products in the first place. I have to hand it to Reese’s - though they continue to spin off new and interesting Reese’s treats, they never forget or downplay the importance of Reese’s peanut butter as their star player.

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Hershey’s has some great candy hitting stores during the rest of 2008. We’ve already reviewed some of them and thanks to Hershey and the All Candy Expo, we have samples of many of these so look for reviews of these soon. Here is some quick info on the upcoming candy from Hershey.

• Hershey’s Bliss™ – Hershey’s Bliss individually wrapped chocolates feature a smooth, creamy texture for an indulgent personal chocolate experience. Hershey’s Bliss is now available in Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and Milk Chocolate with a Meltaway Center. Hershey’s Bliss chocolate will welcome Raspberry with Meltaway Center to its line in December 2008.
  Candy Addict’s review of Hershey’s Bliss
• Starbucks Chocolate™ – When coffee dreams, it dreams of chocolate.™ Distinctive, artistic and handcrafted, Starbucks Chocolate combines the highest quality chocolate with Starbucks® coffee, tea and coffeehouse flavors. Product offerings include: truffles, tasting squares, signature bars, and chocolate-covered coffee beans. Now available where groceries are sold.
  Candy Addict’s review of Starbucks Chocolate
• Twizzlers® Pull-n-Peel® Cinnamon Fire Candy – New hot cinnamon flavored Twizzlers offer consumers a bigger, bolder licorice flavor. Now available.
  Candy Addict’s review of Twizzlers® Pull-n-Peel® Cinnamon Fire Candy
• Reese’s® Select Clusters – Reese’s Select Clusters wrap pecans, peanuts, peanut butter and caramel in milk chocolate. Individually wrapped, Reese’s Select Clusters will be available in August 2008.
• Hershey®’s All Natural Extra Dark Chocolate with Pomegranate and Infused with Raspberry Flavor Assortment – Hershey’s Extra Dark delivers velvety smooth, rich dark chocolate from a select blend of cacao beans for just the right balance of taste, aroma and sweetness. The line will add two new flavors including Pomegranate tasting squares in June 2008 and a Raspberry-infused flavor assortment in December 2008.
• Cacao Reserve by Hershey’s® Truffle Crunch – The latest addition to the Cacao Reserve by Hershey’s chocolate line, Truffle Crunch delivers a three-layer tasting experience that begins with an intense outer layer of rich chocolate surrounding a silky center of creamy chocolate and delicate cacao bits from the heart of the cacao bean. It’s a deliciously unexpected flavor adventure in 35 percent Milk Chocolate and 65 percent Dark Chocolate. Available August 2008.
• Jolly Rancher® Doubles – A new twist on Jolly Ranchers, Jolly Rancher Doubles combines two bold Jolly Rancher flavors. Combinations include: Cherry-Orange, Grape-Apple and Blue Raspberry-Watermelon. Now available.
• Good ‘N Fiery™ Candy – A new twist on an old favorite. The Good ‘N Plenty® and Good ‘N Fruity® family will welcome a new member with a hot cinnamon flavor – Good ‘N Fiery. Available December 2008.
• Hershey®’s S’mores Snacksters® – The Hershey’s Snacksters line expands with the addition of Hershey’s S’mores Snacksters – a delicious combination of graham cracker cereal squares, mini marshmallows and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate chips housed in 100 calorie packages. Available June 2008.
• Ice Breakers BURN™ Mints – A new mint variety will join the Ice Breakers wellness line delivering a combination of flavors and ingredients designed to enhance the mind, body and spirit. The Peach-Mango flavored Ice Breakers BURN Mints provide a unique, tasty way to add the B complex vitamins of Thiamin, Niacin, B5 and B6 to the day. Available June 2008.
• Ice Breakers® Chewy Sours – New Ice Breakers Chewy Sours deliver an intense sour flavor and exhilarating mouth experience. The soft, chewy fruit-crystal center is wrapped in a crunchy candy shell. Sugar-free Ice Breakers Chewy Sours will be available in two flavors: Strawberry and Pomegranate Lemonade. Available June 2008.
• Ice Breakers® Ice Cubes® White Chewing Gum – The power of whitening gum will bring an extra blast to the cool cube shape of Ice Breakers Ice Cubes Chewing Gum. Frosted with a proprietary process, the sugar-free gum is an extra-cold, refreshing alternative to stick and shell gums. The cool cube shape, reflective of an ice cube, reinforces its refreshing, ultra-cold and now teeth-whitening benefits. Ice Breakers Ice Cubes White Chewing Gum will be available in Wintergreen Splash and Mango Kiwi Cooler flavors. Available December 2008.
• Breath Savers® Strong Mint Menthol and Energy Mint Caffeine – The popular and powerful Breath Savers Mints adds two new varieties. Breath Savers Strong Mint Menthol takes breath freshening to a new level while Breath Savers Strong Energy Mint Caffeine offers a “boast of energy” with a touch of caffeine. Available December 2008.

Reading through this list of upcoming candy from Hershey makes my mouth water!

• Hershey’s coverage at Candy Addict
• Review of Hershey’s Bliss
• Review of Starbucks Chocolate
• Review of Fire Twizzlers
• Hershey’s website

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Thanks to a brilliant merging of the minds at Hershey’s and The Styles Check Company, you can now broadcast your love of confections to any and everyone with whom you dare to share your wealth. Your landlord? Check. The phone company? Check. Your impossible-to-shop-for nephew whose birthday is just around the corner? Check! Forget online bill pay – writing checks is back and better than ever! (And you’ll be doubly excited to drop those babies in the mail when you see the matching address labels.)

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Our good friends at Hershey’s are at it again - taking two favorite and much loved products and rolling them into one. In this case it’s the lovely malted balls of Whoppers and the peanut butter filling of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Original Whoppers are a small, crunchy malted milk ball covered with a thin layer of chocolate. These Reese’s versions are exactly the same thing, but the chocolate layer is replaced with peanut butter.

This product is another case of something with a lot of potential which just misses the mark. I busted this cute milk-carton inspired packaging open, threw a few of these in my mouth, chomped down and thought, “Oh.” That’s it. No declarations of my undying love for these, no desire to just pour the rest of them right down my throat (as convenient as the packaging would make that!).

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After reading the Awesomely Addictive raves about Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg, I was ecstatic to find Reese’s Peanut Butter White Egg and Reese’s Peanut Butter Fudge Egg at Walgreen’s for fifty cents each. I generally love all Reese’s candy, and couldn’t wait to get home and try the eggs. I wasn’t sure what to expect - would the peanut butter be mixed with different flavors, or would the coatings just be different from the usual milk chocolate?

I randomly chose to open the White Egg first, and took note of the flat-back egg shape similar to the Almond Joy and Mounds Eggs. The White Egg was solidly encased in an off-white substance that looked and felt a little oily. My excitement dwindled, and I cautiously bit into the candy.

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Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are amazing, there’s no question about it. Who doesn’t have happy childhood memories of indulging in rich, peanutty treats at Halloween, birthday parties, or pressed into Christmas cookies? Yet most would say that Reese’s doesn’t reach its apogee of peanut-butter-goodliness but once a year; hold onto yourselves, Candy Addicts, for Reese’s Egg season is upon us.

That’s right. When the rest of the world watches for blossoming flowers and baby ducks, true Candy Addicts know Spring has arrived when the supermarkets stock a certain type of egg. An egg that promises sheer joy and decadence, all for under a dollar.

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Since frying candy is so popular these days, I decided to strike out on my own and fry a Reese’s Cup. It was my birthday weekend, and a fish-fry with friends provided the perfect opportunity to batter and cook candy. Despite working without a recipe (I didn’t feel like putting in the effort) and never having fried candy before, I was confident. How could someone possibly mess up fried candy? Talk about famous last words.

Any of the bad choices of the many I made that day could have spelled disaster on their own, but in combination, produced the nastiest concoction I’ve ever cooked.

My mistakes, somewhat in order: battering the Reese’s Cup with cornmeal, flour, and Zatarain’s Seasoned Fish-Fri; using a shish-ka-bob-sized skewer; plopping the battered candy in canola oil that had already fried 37 fish; and, finally, tasting the stinking mess.

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Armed with an Xacto knife, drinking straws and a protractor, Daniel and friend Jonathan set out to solve one of life’s greatest mysteries: why the smallest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are tastier than their bigger counterparts.

The two found that the larger the Reese’s cup, the more “unflavorable” it was. As Daniel says on his blog, “I won’t lie, this paradox troubled Jonathan and I for many a year.”

As a result, they stocked up on Reese’s cups of all sizes and approached the conundrum from a scientific perspective, launching “The Great Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Size/Taste Differential Experiment.” After a taste test, dissection, core sample and data gathering, they discovered the secret to miniature Reese’s cups’ superiority. Think you know what it is? Head on over to Daniel’s blog to see if you’re right. You might want to stock up on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups while you’re at it, so you can do a little taste testing yourself. All in the name of science, of course.

• The Great Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Size/Taste Differential Experiment

More candy articles about: reese’s, reeses, peanut butter, chocolate, experiment, science

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It’s a sad day when a friend and I sit down to excitedly rip into a new candy, only to take a bite and realize we share the look of disappointment. I like most Reese’s products, so I was pumped about trying their Whipps bar. I’m still sad about the disappearance of the limited edition Elvis Reese’s Cups, and was hoping that Whipps would help me along in the grieving process. I should have stuck with fond memories of the Elvis Cups and looked elsewhere for comfort.

The basic premise of Whipps is that it’s a lower-fat-than-average candy bar combining the usually unbeatable flavors of chocolate and peanut butter. I’m not sure how the candy inventors at Reese’s could get something so wrong, but they did.

The chocolate coating on the 1.9 oz Whipps bar is too thin and almost tasteless, and the nougat is akin to the fluffy filling in a 3 Musketeers bar, but grainy and peanut butter-flavored. The only tasty part of the Whipps is the thin ring of Reese’s peanut butter between the chocolate and nougat, which hardly makes the bar worth buying.

After finishing the Whipps, I felt unsatisfied and craved a Reese’s Cup (maybe that’s a great marketing ploy!). What’s the point of eating a candy bar with “40% less fat” if it doesn’t taste good? If I want something sweet with less fat than most candy bars, I’ll eat an apple - not a Whipps bar, which, lower fat or not, packs a hefty 230 calories.

• Reese’s Whipps at Hersheys.com

Buy Whipps online:

• at CandyDirect.com

More candy articles about: Reese’s, chocolate, peanut butter, nougat, less fat

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