Hello, Dove chocolate. Where have you been all my life? Apparently Dove first hit the streets with the Dovebar ice cream treat in the 1950s. Since then Dove offerings have trickled onto supermarket shelves, and now there are cookies, chocolates, and ice cream (and speaking of Dove ice cream, you should really try it if you haven’t. The pints have a top layer of chocolate, so you break through the chocolate barrier to get to the ice cream. I cannot emphasize enough how incredible this is).

But, I digress. The matter at hand is some new chocolate from Dove, namely three flavors of the Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate line. The flavors are Roasted Hazelnut, Blueberry Almond, and Peanut Toffee Crunch. Each 3.53-ounce box holds three individually wrapped bars, which psychologically might be a good thing, since you can avoid feeling guilty if you eat just one of the wrapped packages.

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Chewy Sprees can do no wrong in my book, but I am a little suspicious of this new Mix’d Berry flavor. None of the flavors are identified on the package, so who knows what could be, you know, mix’d (yeah, the cutesy spelling kind of gets me). The package says, “It’s a kick in the mouth!” What does that mean? Are they going to be sour? Overpowering? What? I guess there is only one way to find out.

I open up the package, and I must say the colors are stunning. Bright and cheerful, these little candies are calling out to me, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from shoving them all into my mouth. There are four flavors in the Mix’d Berry Chewy Spree package: purple, pink, red, and turquoise. Wikipedia claims that the turquoise (okay, so they call it aqua) is blueberry. I am still confused as to whether Mix’d Berry means there is more than one berry flavor per color (you know, like cranberry-raspberry flavor) or if it just means there are four berry flavors in a package. I am not confident I will be able to determine this by tasting them, but I’ll give it a try!

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Whilst on a run-of-the-mill Target trip today, I came across an exciting assortment of Endangered Species Chocolates: dark chocolate with delicious, antioxidant packed flavors and a generous spirit (10% of their net profits are donated to “support species, habitat and humanity”). What’s not to like, right? Plus, they were all natural, ethically traded, on sale, and had pictures of cute animals all over the packaging. How could I not grab every variety available and be inspired in a third grade, let’s-describe-ourselves-using-words-that-begin-with-each-letter-in-our-name kind of way? (Hey, chocolate does that to me sometimes.)

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My friends and family were good to me this Christmas and, naturally, many of the exciting gifts I received were candy. Of all the various treats I was given, I was most intrigued by a tin from Peet’s. I’d never heard of Peet’s before, and was ready for some good eatin’ from the looks of the high-quality packaging. All four varieties in the one-pound tin looked and sounded tasty: Toffee Almond Crunch; Chocolate-Covered Cherries; Chocolate-Covered Blueberries; and Chocolate-Covered Cranberries. My only dilemma was deciding which candy to try first.

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As a hardcore Candy Addict, I consumed a good deal of candy during my childhood. My mother even packed full-size candy bars in my sack lunches! Mysteriously, Mike and Ike candies were absent from my candy-eating repertoire. I wasn’t exactly sure why, since I did like candies in the jellybean category. Well, I recently had the honor of reviewing five selections of Mike and Ike candies, and I think I know why.

The five kinds of Mike and Ike candies included Original Fruits, Berry Blast, Tropical Typhoon, Tangy Twister, and Lemonade Blends (which is due to be released nationwide in the summer of 2008). We’ll start with the bad then work up to the good, okay?

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One thing that makes the long winter months a little more bearable is knowing that Pocky will release new flavors in its “Mousse” line. This year is no different, as they offer the standard chocolate, white, and green tea flavors with the newcomers being “bitter” chocolate and berry. Inside each box you’ll find 3 packets of 4 sticks each. The mousse coating is thick and “whipped” (according to the box) yet I find it’s not very mousse-like in texture at all. I think part of the reason is they’re trying to go for a larger coating-to-biscuit ratio with this series, smaller than Decorer, yet larger than the “regular” Pocky. The biscuit stick breaks easily, so you have to be careful eating it unless you don’t mind using two hands.

White: The texture is very smooth and a bit greasy. I’m not getting a white chocolate flavor at all, but more of sweetness with a dairy-like tang to it. The sweetness makes it tasty nevertheless. The box claims it’s made with German cream cheese and French milk, so that would explain the dairy taste. The biscuit is crunchy and has a subtle cracker-like flavor. Compared to the coating, it comes across a maybe a teeny bit salty. It provides a good contrast to the taste and texture of the “mousse” coating. Overall, this flavor is only so-so.

Berry: The color is a lovely medium pink/lavender color and has a light, very berry flavor. It’s a mix of raspberry and blueberry mostly. It reminds me of a light, refreshing sherbet. The coating is creamy and again, a little greasy in texture. The berry flavor really brings out a vanilla flavor in the biscuit stick. I really love this flavor, so fresh and sweet! Definitely pick this one up.

I find myself unable to refrain from immediately chewing the biscuit in the “Mousse” flavors, which results in bits getting stuck in your teeth. My favorite was to eat this kind of Pocky is to lick the coating away and then munch the stick. MMmmm, yummy!

• Pocky Website
• Pocky Mousse Commercial on YouTube

Buy Pocky online:

• at Jbox
• at Asian Food Grocer
• at Amazon.com

More candy articles about: candy, sweets, Pocky, mousse, Japan, Japanese, berry, chocolate

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A long while back, I reviewed some wonderful chocolate covered blueberries from Chocolate Moon. Unfortunately, the company went out of business. Recently I received an email from Ms. Chocolate who said she now makes chocolate covered blueberries as good or better than the Chocolate Moon blueberries.

So, she sent me some and also sent me some chocolate covered apricots and cherries and also cocoa almonds and toffee almonds. The fruits are all dried before being coated in chocolate and a coating of colored, fruity, chocolaty candy. In a word, all the candy was fantastic. Let’s look at each individually:

• Chocolate Covered Blueberries: These are wonderful. They are truly delicious. The ratio of chocolate to blueberry is just perfect. I could easily eat a whole bag of these in one sitting. For comparison, I tried out some Harry and David chocolate covered blueberries and they were nothing compared to Ms. Chocolate’s.
• Chocolate Covered Apricots: Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever had an apricot before I tried these so I have nothing to compare them to, but these are good. Of all the things from ms. Chocolate, these were probably my least favorite, even though are actually pretty good.
• Chocolate Covered Cherries: The cherry flavor is actually really subtle. I am used to the overly sweet and fake cherry flavor (such as in the Cherry Kisses). These were really good and quite large. I liked these a whole lot more than I thought I would.
• Cocoa Almonds: These are whole almonds coated in dark chocolate (though very milky dark chocolate I would say), then dusted in cocoa powder. These too were excellent. They reminded me of very almondy Hershey’s ar with almonds.
• Toffee Almonds: These are whole almonds dipped in milk chocolate, rich butter toffee, and lightly dusted with powdered sugar. I love toffee and these were crazy-good - absolutely fantastic.

As I was writing this review and tasting the candies again, my wife commented that she thought these were the best candies we have tried since starting Candy Addict. I think I agree.

• Ms. Chocolate website

More candy articles about: candy, sweets, chocolate, fruit, toffee, almond, almonds, cocoa, blueberries, apricots, cherries

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When I arrived home from work a few days ago, I had a giant box waiting for me on the table. It turned out to contain a Dale & Thomas Popcorn sampler. I unpacked the carton, (which included an ice pack to protect the popcorn) and pulled out the inner package wondering what exactly they had sent me. The sampler contained six different varieties of their popcorn and is actually their “Combo Number 1″ (not to be confused with Mambo #5). While we are, in fact, Candy Addict and not Popcorn Addict, it should be noted that these were so far removed from regular popcorn that I would indeed classify them in the candy category.

The flavors they sent me could be broken up into 2 categories: berry-flavored and a variety that they called DrizzleCorn. The berry-flavored ones are coated in a thick berry-flavored candy syrup, while the DrizzleCorn are swirled with their respective “drizzles”.

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Sun-Drenched Strawberry: The flavored variety of their popcorn is not that different from Caramel coated popcorn, except that they are colored a very deep red, which can be startling at first, if you’re expecting run of the mill popcorn. The kernels aren’t “kind of red” or “light red” they’re very red. The flavor on these, and the other “syrup” flavors is quiet strong. Out of the three, I’d say that Strawberry was my favorite, not overpoweringly strong, but fairly sweet.

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(Mix and Match Malt balls)

I’ll have to admit, I had never heard of Madelaine Chocolate Novelties, Inc. before they contacted me and offered to send me some samples to review. It turns out they are quite the chocolate powerhouse with currently 449 products online, so you are sure to find something made with chocolate to satisfy your desires. Despite the term “Novelties”, these people are serious about their chocolates. What follows is a rundown and brief review of each item I received for review.

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UPDATE (7/23/2006): it looks like this company has gone out of business. The website is gone and I can’t find it anywhere online. So sad.

While out shopping recently, my wife picked up a two 10-ounce bags of chocolates made by a company called Chocolate Moon. One bag was the chocolate-covered espresso beans called Ciccolata Espresso and the other was their chocolate-covered blueberries called Blue Devil Berries.

We decided to try the blueberries first. Now I absolutely LOVE chocolate covered raisins, so I was wondering if these would be similar. I’m not a big fan of fruit in general, but I do like the taste of blueberries (blueberry pancakes, blueberry compote, etc.), but I don’t like to eat a big honking, squishy, juicy blueberries by themselves.

I tasted a ‘Blue Devil Berry” with a bit of trepidation, hoping there wasn’t a big juicy blueberry inside. It turns out the blueberry inside the candy is dried just like like a raisin. Are they called blueberaisins? Bluebaisins? Rasinerries? Idunno.

So how was it? FABULOUS. AWESOME. INCREDIBLE. By far the best new candy I have had in ages. The chocolate/blueberry flavor ratio was prefect. I cannot say enough good things about this stuff!

The website describes them thusly:

Real dried blueberries panned in Guittard milk chocolate, blueberry puree and a naturally flavored confectionary glaze.

I asked my wife how much she paid for it and she refused to tell me on the grounds that I wouldn’t be happy with how much she spent on them. Uh-oh. That meant she spent a lot. How much did these things cost? I looked on the package and found the website: http://chocolatemoon.com - there the bags of candies are 3 for $30 which is $10 each! OUCH! Granted, they are REALLY good, but are they $10 good? Maybe. I think they would make a great gift for someone that loves chocolate and/or blueberries, but given the price, they are definitely not for casual munching (or for kids). Look for a review of the Ciccolata Espresso candy soon (once the sticker-shock wears off).

Chocolate Moon website

candy chocolate blueberry blueberries review food fruit

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