One of my favorite things besides candy is coffee, so I couldn’t believe my luck when I received a huge, beautifully packaged box of Starbucks Chocolate to review! Yes, folks, Starbucks Coffee Company is now in the chocolate business. Starbucks has partnered with Hershey’s, whose subsidiary Artisan Confections Company, itself comprised of Joseph Schmidt Confections, Scharffen Berger, and Dagoba Chocolate, manufactures the Starbucks Chocolate. Did you get all that? Basically, Starbucks Chocolate is being made by people who know their chocolate.

I have to confess that while I was wowed by the attractive packaging, I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the chocolate. Starbucks coffee is not quite full-bodied or flavorful enough for my taste, so I figured the chocolate would be geared toward a similar palate. I am happy to say that I was wrong. Starbucks chocolate, with just a few exceptions, is rich, full flavored, and thoroughly enjoyable.

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Nestle’s Coffee Crisp is a bar that has a very dedicated fan base. When I first heard of it, it was though an online petition that was demanding it’s distribution back in the United States. I found it recently on the shelf at a convenience store I happened to be in, and I couldn’t help but wonder what all the hype was about.

It is described as a coffee center surrounded by light wafers and covered in milk chocolate. Sounds harmless enough, right? Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready quite for what I was about to taste.

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Good lord this candy bar is good. Seriously. I think of all the Limited Edition candy I have tried, this is by far the best. The wrapper says “Coffee Caramel & Chocolate Cookie Covered in Milk Chocolate” and the coffee flavor is just right - not too strong and not too weak. The chocolate cookie goes perfectly with the coffee flavor and the milk chocolate. Looking on the ingredient list, I see “espresso ground coffee” as the last ingredient, so it looks like it gets its coffee taste honestly.

Just to make sure I wasn’t the only one who thought this Twix Java was good, I shared and gave one stick to my wife. She agreed it’s great. It’s definitely good enough to earn our coveted CandyAddict.com Awesomely Addictive Candy Award. It’s that good.

According to the press CD I got from Mars, “TWIX® Java will be available in retail stores nationwide in December 2007.” Most candies actually hit stores before their scheduled release date, so if you are hankering for some Twix Java goodness, I’d start looking for it in stores right about… NOW. No word on how long the limited edition will last, so get it while you can.

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Crackheads. Chocolate-covered espresso beans are not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name, but that’s what these are. Some of the beans are covered in dark chocolate and some are covered in white chocolate. They’re made by a small startup candy company called Osmanium out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and this is their first and only product.

I’ve had a number of other brands of chocolate-covered espresso/coffee beans, so how do these compare? Quite well, actually. The dark chocolate doesn’t seem to have the bitterness that some dark chocolate has and is pretty good on its own (discovered by sucking the chocolate off of a bean). While not a huge fan of white chocolate in general, the white chocolate paired with the espresso bean was surprisingly good. Putting the white chocolate in the same box as the dark chocolate was a brilliant idea and really sets it apart from other chocolate-covered coffee beans. A 1.3oz box runs about $2.

• CrackheadsCandy.com

Buy Crackheads online:

• at Stupid.com
• at ThinkGeek.com
• at CrackheadsCandy.com

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What’s not to love about a Hershey’s Kiss? It’s such a perfect little morsel of chocolatey goodness. I’d have to say the only problem I have with them is having enough patience to methodically unwrap each of the little guys when I am just anxious to shove a whole handful into my mouth. Well, I guess I’m burning half a calorie unwrapping, right?

Hershey’s has been coming out with a lot of limited edition flavors of Kisses lately like the Candy Addict favorite Cherry Cordial Kisses, Special Dark Strawberry Kisses, and even Candy Cane Kisses. Recently, I was lucky enough to find Hershey’s Special Dark Coffee Kisses. I love coffee, and I love coffee-flavored chocolate, so I had high hopes for these nuggets!

I think my hopes were a little too high. These Kisses aren’t bad, but they aren’t all that great, either. I’ve had the same bag for several weeks now, which is telling–if I really liked them, they would have been gone in a couple of days! The coffee flavor is sort of a sweet, syrupy coffee flavor, reminiscent of an artificial coffee flavoring. The coffee flavor, coupled with the dark chocolate, leaves a slight, somewhat sickly sweet aftertaste. I think I’ll stick with the regular Kisses and maybe try the peanut butter ones and, yes, I really need to try the Cherry Cordial Kisses to be a true Candy Addict, don’t I?

• Hershey’s Kisses

Buy Hershey’s Kisses online:

• at Candy Direct
• at Amazon.com

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Personally, I’ve always found Kit Kat bars to be rather creamy already, so when I saw the Extra Creamy Limited Edition bar, I was intrigued. Next to it in the store was a Limited Edition Coffee Kit Kat so, of course, I had to try both!

Extra Creamy: The extra creamy Kit Kat really didn’t taste any different to me. It just seemed to melt faster. Perhaps that’s what extra creamy means. I guess M&Ms will never come out with a limited edition extra creamy brand of M&Ms or that would ruin their whole “melts in your mouth, not in your hands” motto. . . but I digress. It was definitely a good Kit Kat, but I don’t think the candy world should shed any tears when this limited edition bar goes out of season. It doesn’t taste different enough from the regular bar to warrant even picking it up. Now the Coffee Kit Kat, that’s an entirely different story. . .

Coffee: I, for one, am not a fan of coffee. I do, however, enjoy the smell of coffee, but that’s as far as it goes. Because of this, I had my fiance, who really likes coffee, give me his opinion of the coffee Kit Kat. First of all, the moment he opened the package, it was like we were in the coffee aisle at the grocery store. It was seriously pungent. We were both hopeful that this would be an excellent addition to the Kit Kat bar family. I had no idea that this would only end in tears. He tasted the bar, he was less than pleased. He insisted I try it, even though I already dislike coffee. It’s like that SNL skit where one person tastes bad milk and offers it to everyone else at the table saying, “this is terrible, you have to try it”. So I tried it. I would say it tasted like coffee. . . grinds. Seriously, it was like chewing up coffee grinds.

Maybe it was the crunchiness of the wafer inside that made me think that, but it was the worst chocolate candy bar either of us had ever tasted. Neither of us could even swallow it. We left the Coffee Kit Kat carcass on the coffee table while we began to watch a movie and a few minutes into it, I had to go throw the candy in the trash can because the mere smell of it made me feel ill. Lesson learned, just because it smells good, doesn’t mean it tastes good.

To sum up, Extra Creamy Kit Kat - just as good as the original, it just melts faster. Coffee Kit Kat - spawn of Satan, stay away.

Hershey’s Kit Kat site

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