It’s not often I find a candy maker in my neck of the woods. North Carolina isn’t exactly exactly the candy-making capital of the world. One of my wife’s co-workers found out about Candy Addict and convinced his friend, who has a business making chocolate truffles, to get a batch to me to review. This friend runs Azurelise.

The story of Azurelise is an interesting one and well worth a read at the Azurelise website. Basically, a tenured associate professor in Philosophy abandons teaching and decides to make chocolates (there’s more to it than that, but that’s the basics). What I have before me now are Azurelise chocolate truffles, made by this former Philosopy professor.

The truffles aren’t your ordinary fancy, embellished truffles. These look, in fact… ordinary. They are approximately 1.25″ x 1.25″ x 0.5″ - they have no fancy flowers on them or swirly-q or anything else. Just a simple plaid pattern and the word AZURELISE diagonally across them. I received five dark chocolate truffles and four milk chocolate truffles.

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As part of my job I have to travel to Florida several times a year. For someone who hates sun, sand, and heat, it isn’t exactly a dream come true. One of the few things that make the trips bearable are my mandatory excursions to Fresh Market and their gourmet candy section. On my last trip, I picked up a bag of Albanese Gummi Bunnies, intending to review them when I got back home to New York. They didn’t make it home; in fact, they didn’t even make it to the airport. They were that good.

So, to make up for it, I bought some Albanese Beeps on Amazon. They have served to reinforce my belief that Albanese makes some of the best gummies I’ve ever had.

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Occasionally when I’m skulking around the candy section of a convenience store, a particular package will catch my eye. Often, what draws me is the flash of a brightly colored wrapper. Sometimes, it is because the candy is brand new to the familiar landscape of the aisle (like my newest obsession - the Indiana Jones’ Mint Chocolate Crisp M&Ms). But occasionally, I attribute my attraction to what can only be referred to as The Profound Gravitational Pull of Candy. This is how I discovered the Rip Roll.

Here’s the thing about The Profound Gravitational Pull of Candy. It doesn’t always mean true love. Am I pledging myself eternally to the Rip Roll? Certainly not. Do I understand why whatever higher power (or sugar craving) created and marketed this candy? Absolutely.

Rip Rolls come individually wrapped and are available in four flavors: strawberry, green apple, watermelon and blue raspberry. When I pulled off the exterior wrapper of my first Rip Roll, which was strawberry flavored, I was greeted with a single Rip Roll resting in a small plastic tray. I assume the purpose of this piece of plastic is to uphold the shape and integrity of the roll. It works. I placed the Rip Roll in the palm of my hand and I felt as though I had been presented with the most exquisite piece of candy on the planet. It looked magical. Were I five years old and opening this candy, you would be hard-pressed to convince me that it wasn’t invented by a unicorn, dragon, or Rapunzel. The pink whorl positively sparkles with sugar coating and this sugar is not just on the outside of the roll. Instead, it meticulously covers every inch of the advertised “forty inches of fun.”

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Any way you break it (ha!), Passover is a Candy Addict’s worst nightmare. A vast majority of candy these days is simply not kosher for Passover, largely because it is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Most Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews do not allow the consumption of corn or legumes during the holiday, so corn syrup sweetened stuff is a no-go zone. Most Sephardic (North African/Middle Eastern/Spanish) Jews do allow legumes and corn, but even those who don’t mind the corn syrup have to bid adieu to their favorite classic treats - anything with crisp wafers (see ya, Kit Kat), malt (buh-bye Whoppers), crispy rice bits (No Crunch bar for you!)

Traditional Passover candies tend to be those that will not offend anyone in either the legumes or no-legumes camp. They’re mainly a collection of Joyva Ring Jells, those hideous pink jelly rings covered in dark mockolate or those completely horrible cherries floating in cough syrup coated with mockolate. Not all kosher candy is bad, it’s just that Passover candy in particular is mostly a disaster. Over these eight days, my sugar highs tend to be the result of a few too many (handfuls of) home made meringues.
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How do you find your bliss? Hershey’s hopes we’ll all find it in their Bliss Chocolates, and they’re banking on three flavors to satiate our palates. I recently sampled all three - Milk Chocolate, Milk Chocolate Meltaway, and Dark Chocolate. I found that only one of the candies left me feeling blissful.

Each variety comes as individually wrapped foil squares in flavor-specific bags. They all have a nice, chocolaty smell, and the color choices for the foil are appealing. I can imagine a cute display of Bliss squares in a candy dish. Cute or not, I’m most interested in taste.

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They’re finally here! The long awaited Mint Crisp M&Ms that we heard were coming out in time for the new Indiana Jones movie are finally on shelves. And not a moment too soon! Between my eagerness to see Indy in his new geriatric adventure glory and tasting the new M&Ms adventure that Mars has planned for us, I could hardly contain my excitement when I found these in the store. It was like finding Indy’s candy holy grail in a way.

The M&Ms are not the only new candy with the Indiana Jones tie-in. There’s also the Snickers Adventure Bar that I reviewed back in January. The plain Milk Chocolate, Peanut and the new Mint Crisp M&Ms are outfitted in new themed packages and they are quite attractive I admit (more so than the Shrek and the Pirates of the Caribbean ones M&Ms). Of course the Mint Crisp ones are a special limited edition flavor tied to the movie like the White Chocolate Pirate Pearls were.

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Superman. Superglue. Supersize. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. When you throw the word “super” onto the front end of an otherwise unassuming word you’re really setting a high standard for whatever follows. It goes without saying that had better be an exceptional male, unparalleled adhesive, mammoth girth, and phenomenal califragilisticexpiali – well, you get my drift. So, understandably, I had some pretty high expectations for the descriptively named Emily’s Super Sour No Belly Sugar Free Jelly Beans.

Now, I’m not an insanely crazy sour fanatic. I’m more of a middle-of-the-road sour fan. I like red and orange Sour Patch Kids, for example, but not really green, and definitely not yellow. So when my sour-dusted shipment of No Belly Jelly Beans arrived directly from Can You Imagine That! Confections/The Sandy Candy Factory I was fearful that these self-proclaimed Super Sours might even be too much for my tender palate. I was mightily surprised then, when I opened the bag and was not greeted by an overwhelming sour aroma. Not even a hint of that citric Sour Patch scent that induces uncontrollable face-puckering and Pavlovian salivating.

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Gum has been many things to me during the course of my life. Satisfying my sweet tooth was the main goal of chewing gum when I was younger. In my teen years and beyond, gum started taking on a more practical function of freshening breath. I still wanted something tasty, but I gravitated more towards sugarless gum… preferably spearmint. As gum also continued to evolve, more and more brands were offering smaller pieces of sugarless gum packed with a ton of flavor in order to freshen your breath as much as possible.

The problem is that sometimes these ultra-flavored gums can be a little too strong. Biting into a piece of minty gum should not accompany a breathtaking burn for the first few moments you are chewing until the salacious shock subsides. A happy medium can be achieved and this is where Orbit White Bubblemint comes in.

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There are several ways people approach eating candy. One of the main two is nostalgia for a specific candy and the other is the adventure some candies offer; some people just like enjoying their tried-and-true treat from their childhood and others love to try the newest and craziest candy for the experience. As a true Candy Addict, I fall into both categories. That’s why I was especially excited to find a small box of lollipops from Lollyphile waiting for me on my porch when I arrived home from work a few days ago.

Why all the excitement about a bunch of lollipops, you ask? Well, these aren’t just any lollipops. These come in flavors you won’t find anywhere else: Absinthe and Maple-Bacon. By now you’ve either started to drool on your keyboard (hey, happens to me all the time) or you’ve scrunched up your nose in skeptical repulsion. When I first saw the two flavors, I did both.

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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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