Before biting into this candy, I did a little background checking on it. Palmer Candy Company, the mastermind behind the Twin Bing, has been around for over 130 years and the Twin Bing was concocted in 1973. They must be doing something right.

When I tear it open the cute package, the strong, delicious smell of peanut butter wafts out. Pulling out the twins, it’s two mounds that connect to form one “bar.” I’m not gonna lie… it looks a little gross. Growing up, my mom made cookies with oatmeal, peanut butter, and cocoa powder officially called “No Bake Cookies” — lovingly nicknamed “Cow Piles.”

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Have you ever wondered what a Snickers-Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup mash-up would taste like? I imagine that’s what Mars Inc. was going for when the company released Snickers Peanut Butter Squared, a concoction “filled with peanut butter, peanuts, caramel and nougat and covered in milk chocolate,” as the label explains.

As a fan of both Reese’s and Snickers (though Reese’s cups get the slight edge — I promise Hershey’s didn’t pay me to say that), I anticipated this addition of peanut butter to Snickers bars would be divine. So perhaps my expectations were a little too high; when I bit into the Snickers peanut butter square, I wasn’t blown away. That’s not to say it isn’t tasty — it definitely is. It just tasted like a regular Snickers bar to me but with a little more peanut flavoring. Basically, if you like Snickers, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like this.

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I have always been a bake-it-from scratch kind of girl. Until I had three kids, and then I had to get lax on my from-scratch snobbiness and face reality. With three little whirlwinds in the household, scratch-baking just isn’t gonna happen. I don’t want to cheat my kids of the joy of cookie baking (one of my fondest childhood memories), so I picked up a few Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie mixes to make with them. There are dozens of ways to hack the mix and make just about any kind of cookie imaginable. Of course, I had to combine my love of candy with the mix to see what happened.

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It’s not often that I get to review a local candy but I got an email recently from a chocolate company that just happens to be local to me – Red Light Chocolates. After a couple of emails, I was in possession of a beautiful box of their artisanal chocolates to try.

Red light Chocolates use the finest, freshest ingredients they can find. All of their flavorings are natural – pure fruit purees, organic mint leaves, and Madagascar vanilla beans to name a few. All of their artisanal chocolates are handmade in small batches. They don’t use preservatives, so they encourage you to enjoy the chocolates within two weeks of receiving them. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it?

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I love a good gift as much as the next person. However, I really prefer functional gifts. Not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but how many basket-fulls of perfumed lotion can one person stand?! Well, Ooh La La Candy is the answer to gift giving. A sweet sentiment (pun intended) AND a tasty treat makes for a good gift. How can you go wrong with popular candy mixed with some good design/packaging?

Given my predilection for useful gifts, it is needless to say that I was looking forward to seeing if Ooh La La Candy could meet my gift-giving needs. I quickly noticed the dual purpose of the “cupcakes”. Gift + sustenance! The cupcakes are crafted from candy which means one of my favorite things is being made from one of my other favorite things! The Sweet Stripes cupcake consists of black and white Sixlets (who doesn’t like Sixlets??) and is topped with a giant pink gumball. (Be forewarned, the anticipation will surely build because the packaging of the little cupcake is a bear to get into! They are securely attached to their individual, plastic cubes.) The other cupcake I tried was a PB&J Cupcake made with, yep, you guessed it, peanut butter chips and grape jellybeans. In lieu of a gumball topping the cupcake, this one had a peanut butter cup adornment.

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