In case you haven’t guessed, I’m head-over-heels in love with confectionaries. It all started with my unusually large sweet-tooth, paired with an adventurous palate, and a need to document it all.
If you ever have any suggestions, ideas (or both!) I’m always open to them. You can reach me at: sera (at) thecandyenthusiast.com
NOTE: Please, please, please do not take any of the photos on this site. I spent a lot of time and energy taking the photos myself and I wish for them to remain original to the blog. Thank you.
My goal as The Candy Enthusiast is to try everything once so you don’t have to. I think that’s pretty sweet, don’t you?
I was at the Fancy Food Show this past Sunday to see what’s the latest and greatest in the world of gourmet food. Even though I was there for all the chocolate and candy, you bet I was able to see and taste other things too. When I was there I met up withTina the Wandering Eater and along with TCE editor Chris, we walked the floor to bring you what’s tasty and noteworthy.
The Tea Room is, I’m guessing, a new chocolate company that’s making tea infusions in chocolate bars. Each bar has a full cup of tea in it! They have a chamomile white chocolate, which is something I’ve been waiting to see for years now. I tried their whole line and their chai and mint bars were impressive too. I can’t wait to get my hands on these for an official review.
Ritter Sport is releasing their Waffle Bar here in the US. It’s awesome and I was so excited to see it and finally try it.
Taza has a new yerba mate tablet that was really quite nice. It has a nice herbal taste to it that balanced the very fruity qualities of their chocolate.
Guittard has a new line of baking chips. I can’t wait to find them and use them for cookies.
Chimes is a company I’ve only discovered in the past few months. They make ginger chews that are very lovely. I’ve been a big fan of their peanut butter ones, but this year they’ve added and orange and mango flavor to the line. They’re both stellar.
Bissinger’s has some new gummi bears. One is guava and the other grapefruit, both of which I am just smitten with. They also made a pumpkin chocolate bar, which is a marriage of my two favorite foodie things in the whole world. Eee, exciting! I also tried their Olive Oil Truffle and their Porchini Mushroom Truffle, both of which are amazing.
Chuao Chocolatier has a new panko salt bar which was really stellar.
Berkshire Bark, which is something I admit I’ve sort of neglected in stores, has a white chocolate lemon ginger bar in their line and I was very impressed with it.
Of course Amano has some new bars which are great, two new milks and a new 70%, all of which I’ll review soon. Askinosie has a new 52% Dark Milk which was great from the sample I tried.
I saw some familiar favorites too. Koeze was there with their cream nut’s, which are very nice and I’ve reviewed here before. I first found
those when I met you at DiBruno’s. I also love Figamajigs. Figs+chocolate=love for me. Ezca was also there with a bunch of new bars, some of which were milk bars using goat’s milk. All were very tasty.
I also saw a few other things like Bonnat’s oldest plantation chocolate bar, some paprika marzipan and lots of bacon in various forms from brittle to chocolate bars to mayonnaise.
I wish I had more than just Sunday to spend at the show, as there were plenty of companies on my “must visit” list that I didn’t make it to. Ah, next year, right?
To sum up Meiji Marble in a concise way is to call them the Japanese M&Ms. They’re little chocolate pastilles covered with a colorful candy shell. I usually see them sold in single tubes, which I think is a nice packaging idea. I’ve also seen them sold in little boxes, often in different flavors. Marble has a cute little set of mascots, as do most Japanese candies, and a little cartoon pup is what I spot most. I wonder if he has a name.
Popping open the tube the Marble pieces pour out with a nice full sound. All the colors are matte and desaturated. The come in pink, yellow, powder blue, olive green orange and red. Individually they are pretty, but together the feel like a poorly chosen rainbow, as the colors feel mismatched.
The chocolate is sweet and milky, but the overall sense I get is of fake hot cocoa. There’s not depth to the flavor, and all I get is a tease of chocolate wanna-be tastes, then a big throat burn from the sweetness.
The flavors of the Marbles are inconsistent. Some of them taste bland, others of chocolate, and some taste oddly of coffee. The textures were all over the charts too. Many felt greasy while others were perfectly smooth and rich feeling on my tongue. This certainly made for an interesting eating experience, I never quite knew what I was going to get.
These are no replacement for M&Ms, especially since Marble end up being more expensive because of the import costs. Still, if I can find them in the rarer flavors, such a the fruit varieties, I’ll fork over for them. But if we’re talking the regular chocolate kind, I’ll keep to the better and more domestic choice.
Wow, can you believe it’s already been a year? I sure can’t!
I want to thank all my readers, whether they’ve stopped by just for a glance to those who regularly check back everyday. This blog is all for you.
I’ve been thinking for some time and I am going to change things around here a little bit. I’m going to start posting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from now on. I need to start making room for other things in my life, and it’s gotten to a point that even though I love writing here on TCE, I feel a need to cut back a little to make room for new shifts in priorities off the internet.
As always I’m open to your suggestions, comments, and stories. You can email me at sera(at)thecandyenthusiast.com
Thank you again. Here’s to another successful year full of sweet things!
Nips are a candy I always see around, but never ate unless I was surrounded by adults. They read as a “grandma” candy to me, something I’d find in a candy bowl when I was surrounded by the elderly. The only other place I ever had them was in 4th grade English class, where my teacher would give them out as prizes for answering questions correctly. In fact, I still think of her whenever I see them, and I find myself wondering how she’s doing and if she’s remember me. Such memories!
I decided to give these a try since I haven’t had them in years. I wanted to refresh my memory and my taste buds. Tracking them down proved a bit of a challenge, partly because not every store carries them, but also they seem to be stocked on the top most shelf in the candy aisles. This proves troublesome for someone as short as I.
Nips are a simple and modest candy. They’re round, about the size of a quarter, and are very solid to the touch. I almost though them to be a hard candy, but then I remembered that they have an intense caramel taste. So essentially, they’re a wad of dense caramel with added flavors. Some, like the Dulce De Leche flavor in this review, have a filled center. Others, like the Butter Rum, have the flavors worked into the caramel.
Butter Rum: It’s been a long time since I had anything butter rum flavored. These are sweet, creamy, and very rummy. As in I get this burn in the back of my throat that I can only contribute to alcohol. It’s very nice, even though it’s not my thing. I’m reminded of the butter rum Lifesavers and of the fake extract you find in the supermarket. It’s artificial, yet very flavorful and pleasant.
Dulce De Leche: These have a light yellow colored dreamy center surrounded by the caramel. The flavor is immediately creamy with nice caramel and toasty flavors. I’m reminded of butterscotch a bit, but this has a slight yogurt tang and much creamier. Simple and tasty.
I really like these, and was really pleased with how long they lased in my mouth. I was able to suck on one for a good fifteen minutes, which is impressive for me as I prefer to chew my candy. The drops are fun to eat too as they move around in your mouth with your tongue like a little hockey puck. It’s very entertaining. I’m pleased to say these lived p to my memories and I’ll be picking up a few more boxed since I felt like a kid being able to enjoy them again.
I was surprised to see these delightful tubes of licorice on Cybele’s Flickr photostream a few months ago. Mainly because I have very specific ideas in my heard about what sort of candy you find at a Harry & David store. Her photos of their Black Licorice Stix proved me to be quite mistaken in my line of thinking.
When I think of Harry & David stores, specifically in regard to candy, images of pretzels covered in sub-par chocolate and round balls of colored mockolate with dried fruit interiors come to mind. Things that are far better to look at than to eat. I was excited by the idea of being able to try some new kinds of licorice from them, so I bought some when I had the opportunity.
These are tubes of black licorice with a creme filling to give the most succinct description possible. The sticks are thin, maybe a 1/4 inch diameter across and are soft and pliable in hand. I can easily tie them into knots and other shapes, and the possibilities would be endless if they were longer.
The filling is very sweet and has a great vanilla flavor to it. It tastes like a good frosting, and feels like one too once it hits your tongue: smooth and a little grainy. The licorice is nice and balanced in flavor; not too strong and not too mild. It carries strong notes of licorice and molasses and lends itself well with the strong sweetness of the creme center.
It’s so easy to eat these. I find myself not paying attention and then noticing that I’ve devoured a good third of the bag without realizing it. Yeah, they’re that good. The only thing keeping me from buying more is not having a Harry & David store nearby. Maybe that’s a good thing, though.
Let me come clean right now and say I’ve never been a fan of Twizzlers. I’ve always found them bland and rubbery and won’t eat them even under extreme candy duress. I’d imagine a red rubber spatula to be tastier than Twizzlers, so they’re a candy I simply will not go near. At least the standard strawberry ones, as I haven’t had the other kinds and therefore will be sure to torture myself with tasting them at some point.
Normally I explain how I found and why I bought a specific candy to review. Here I won’t do either as I can’t recall where I purchased these or why. I just found them sitting in my candy stash, and figured I’d photograph and eat them since there were there. Simple as that.
This little packet of Twizzler Sourz hold little colored Twizzler nubbins that are sanded with a sour sugar so they’re tart and zesty. The package is a nice single serve size, I had it as a dessert with my lunch.
Green/Apple: Tastes very strongly of fake apple. Yet, it also comes across as a little authentic because there’s lots of notes of apple juice in here. A perplexing flavor paradox.
Blue: Blue Raspberry: Juicy, perfumey, floral and fake. The floral flavors in there are very strange, but I till find myself enjoying it. Which is odd, since I’m not big on the blue raspberry flavor in general.
Red: Strawberry/Cherry: Both flavors are a red color, so how do I tell them apart? Oh, I don’t unless I eat them? I see. That’s annoying. The cherry one is medicinal and bitter, but very juicy. The strawberry ones tastes lighter and sweeter, and more “red”.
All the colors have a nice tartness to them. The texture is soft so it’s has a nice chew to it, not as sticky as regular Twizzlers are. I’d give regular Twizzler’s an Inedible rating, so I feel these little buggers are a step above. I didn’t enjoy eating them really, but I didn’t spit them out right away and they were fun to take photos of.
Did I just type what I thought I did? Teeth gummis? Now how odd is that? I know gummis come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. I’ve seen everything from fruits, drops, fish, animals and even brains. But teeth? I really wonder who these try to appeal to; children and perhaps maybe a dentist or two? I don’t quite understand this shape for a candy. Especially since I don’t think these are ordinary teeth. On no, because look at the image on the package. These teeth obviously sit on the counter next to your toothbrush and toothpaste. I can’t bring myself to call these dentures, but it’s clear that’s what they’re intended these to be. Chewing grandpa’s chompers does not sound delicious to me. *shudder*
I acquired these as a part of a candy trade from Bulgaria. Which makes the teeth shape feel even stranger to me, as it feels like perhaps there’s a bit of culture I’m missing here to make sense out of all of it. No matter, as long as it tastes good, I’ll eat it.
They smell very bright of strawberry jam with a hint of bubblegum. Each gummi has six teeth and they’re really creepy. The texture is very springy and chewy and therefore it’s hard to sever a pieces with my teeth. The gummis also take a good amount of time to dissolve in my mouth, which is an ideal gummi texture in my mind. The flavor is lightly sweet and nondescript. If I had to pin it on something, I’d say it’s strawberry as I get “red” flavors from it.
Now, I am missing one thing. After eating a few I noticed the package said that these are “jelly filled with fruit flavor”. Jelly? There’s jelly in here? I didn’t detect any texture difference in my mouth, so I did what any curious individual would do and bit one in half to see the cross section. Nope, I see no jelly. I bit another section of the gummi in half, wondering if I missed this magical jelly reservoir, but no, there’s no jelly there either. Interesting.
As odd as these were, I did enjoy them. The flavor was nice, even though it wasn’t remarkable, and I feel a little misled by the package with it’s jelly filled claim. Still, I enjoy these more than the standard gummi bear out there, so I can’t say that these aren’t something you should give a try if given the chance. Maybe you can share them with your dentist on your next visit.
I love discovering chocolate I’ve never seen before, so I was very excited to notice these strangely shaped bars in an almost hidden box in the shelf of a grocery store I rarely visit. Sounds like a perfect setup for finding a mysterious chocolate, doesn’t it? It’s a company from Toronto called Theobroma Chocolat (In case you didn’t know the scientific name of chocolate is theobroma cacao, so you can see where they got their name from) and they produce a high-quality organic chocolate. There were four varieties at the store for my to choose from: plain 72% dark, 60% pineapple, 60% banana and 60% coconut. I stood for a good five minutes weighing my options, and finally decided on two: the 72% and the pineapple.
The bars are long and thin and remind me of sticks. Which is a funny thought to me, sticks of chocolate. The 35g bar is long, thin, tall, and trapezoidal in shape. It’s reminiscent of a Toblerone, but these are more squat and there’s no point at the top. Each bar is nicely separated into six sections. The snap is hard with a very clean break. I do see an air bubble or two, but it’s nothing terribly noteworthy.
72% Dark: The chocolate smells acidic with notes of green coffee, juniper berries, red berries, pepper and cedar. The flavor is immediately dry, and I taste coffee, cocoa, cedar and earth. Then sweeter notes of cream appear before the chocolate turns extremely dry again with very acidic and tannic notes akin to citrus, red berries, cherries and raspberries. This chocolate tastes very wild, untamed and earthy. You get a real sense of the terrain in it, and I like that.
60% Pineapple: This bar smells the same as the 72%. Very tannic, tart, green coffee, cedar, and earth. On the bottom of the bar you can see the bumps from the pineapple chunks, and I see them in the break when I take my first bite. The pineapple are little freeze dried pieces and you taste them right away. They’re sweet, punchy, and full of fruity flavors like passion fruit, peach and apple with that twang of pine. The chocolate itself doesn’t taste different from the plain 72%. It’s dry, and tart with berry and coffee flavors. The texture is a little different as the freeze dried pieces add a subtle crunch amongst the smooth, thick chocolate.
I liked the flavor of this chocolate and I also really like the format. For some reason this elongated bar takes longer for me to eat, which means I’m eating it slower and enjoying it more. Which is important to me when I find good chocolate, as sometimes it’s all too tempting to just gobble it up all at once.
This box of Look! chocolates from Japan are another treat that my sister was so kind to send me while she was away on study abroad. I’ve seen Look! a few times before, as a few Asian Markets near me sometimes carry it. I find the name amusing since it comes across as a piece of amusing Engrish, so I can’t help but chuckle whenever I see it. It’s never really interested me enough to buy it, but I do recall admiring their packaging design, as the illustrations of the desserts on the front are always gorgeous. This particular Look! box is the fruit tea collection, with four varieties of chocolates. I do admit it looks tasty.
The Look! chocolates come in a flat box, and it’s deceiving as it looks like it could be a solid bar inside. Instead there’s a cute tray that you pull out to find twelve chocolates, with three of each flavor. The mylar wrapper on top is a flavor code, letting you know exactly how the flavors are arranged so there’s no surprised once you pop them into your mouth.
Oh! I do want to mention that the chocolate are arranged so cleverly! Each are set in rows to spell “Look” as the chocolates have molded letter on top of them. You only notice this once you remove all the packaging. So cute! All the L’s are one flavor, each of the O’s are another, as is the K. You get the idea. I did my best not to get the O’s mixed up, but that’s when I noticed that the O’s are also different from one another too. One has double rings. Again, such thought behind this.
Apple Tea: It smells very fruity and herbal, like tea leaves. A strong ceylon comes to mind. The flavor is fruity and slightly tannic from the tea. There’s a well of fruit jelly at the top and it delivers a very intense flavor punch on the tongue. It’s sweet, tart, and crisp like a red delicious apple. The chocolate adds a sweetness like sugar and milk added to tea.
Orange Tea: This one smells like ceylon tea, just like the apple flavor. I’m immediately get a nice orange flavor that’s fresh and jammy on my first bite. It’s very intense,sweet, tart and juicy. The orange overrides the flavor of the tea and it’s nice effect combined with the chocolate.
Peach Tea: Devoid of aroma. The flavor is delicate and like a fresh peach jam. Again, more fruity than tea, but you do get a nice planty flavor under the juicy, perfumey flavors of the peach.
Raspberry Tea: This smells fruity of nondescript berries. The flavor is so intense of a juicy, fresh raspberry jam. It’s impressive. The flavor has many shades of the real raspberries: sweet, tart, hints of seeds (yet there are none!) and notes of blackberry. The tea flavor is present, but not overpowering.
I enjoyed these. They’re a nice blend of tea and fruit flavors with chocolate, and a unique treat when a standard chocolate bar isn’t going to satisfy your craving for something a little different.
Amedei is one of those chocolate companies I’ve always heard about, but wasn’t able to get my hands on for a very long time. Even though candy and chocolate tasting is a very subjective and personal thing, many chocolate sommeliers consider Amedei’s chocolate to be some of the best of the best. It wasn’t until I was at the Food Emporium at the Trump Palace in New York (it sounds so much glitzier than it actually is) that I finally found Amedei bars that I could buy in the flesh. I am aware I can buy them online, and since that day I have, but I wanted to handle each bar and make my selection in person that very first time.
After much pursuing in the store, I made my selection of their most basic of chocolates: the Toscano Dark Chocolate 70% and the Milk Chocolate 23% bars. I had researched much into the Amedei’s line of chocolate bars, and I wanted to start off with something simple before I moved into their infamous Chuao or Porcelana bars.
A little history and information on Amedei first before I dive into tasting notes. They’re a company located in Tuscany, Italy, born out of the passion to make quality premium chocolate. Three chldren of a confectioner founded Amedei, lovingly named after their grandmother. Since the founding of the company, each sibling has taken great lengths to make sure they produce the higest qulity chocolate possible. You can read their store in more detail here.
Toscano Brown 32% (dark milk): I love the cerulean blue packaging. Just thought I’d throw that out there. This bar is referred to as “dark milk” because it has a higher cocoa percentage than most standard milk chocolates. The chocolate bar looks like milk chocolate still, with a light brown color with creamy undertones and a subtle sheen. It smells sweet with a subtle after note of cheddar cheese. It has a hard break despite the dairy content (is that even a factor?) and feels heavy in my hand. The flavor? Wow. Just wow. It’s very chocolatey and very sweet with lots of flavors swirling around. I gets notes of cream, vanilla, caramel, honey...and it all mixes together to give is a hint of hazelnuts. The perfect milk chocolate bar. The mouth feel is very smooth and silky and has a medium “mouth-time”. My only suggestion is that I wish it’d last longer on my tongue, since the flavors are so magnificent. My new favorite milk chocolate (well, one of a select few now), by far.
Toscano Black: Bitter Chocolate Extra 70%: This chocolate’s color is medium-deep with more purple undertones with a slightly dull appearance and a glossy finish. The aroma is terribly fruity and smells strongly of raisins and vanilla, slightly floral (like raspberries?) and is very “purple”. The flavor immediately mirrors the aroma with a fruity flavor, with raisins and dates jumping forth. Those notes fade to reveal more fruity flavors, this time of red berries and cherries and they counteract the raisin/date sweetness with a slight tartness. The finish ends on a sweeter note like the beginning of the flavor, with notes of cream and raisins again. The mouth feel is rich and quite thick, but it nice and smooth and very satisfying. I really, really liked this chocolate. On the list of favorites just like the milk chocolate.
What can I say other than the Amedei chocolate has met all my expectations and lived up to all the praise I’ve heard. This is amazing chocolate, and I cannot wait to get my hands on more of this stuff. If you consider yourself a chocolate lover of any kind, you need to give Amedei a try.
It was a cold rainy day in November and my sister emailed me requesting I get on Skype to chat with her right away. She was in Japan at the time, and I was curious as to why she wanted to talk to me to urgently. This was an unusual request from her. Once I was on and talking to her, I found her excited and wanting to gush to me about a new chocolate she found while on break from classes that day. She started raving about the flavor and texture, and I wouldn’t have gotten the name if I hadn’t stopped her and requested it. “Oh!” she gasped, “It’s called Galbo. Ever heard of it?” I admitted I haven’t, and she promised to send me some in the candy care package she was working on for me. I thanked her and found myself excited to try this Galbo that got my sister so hot and bothered.
The day the package arrived I found this small package of Galbo mini in it. There was a small note in the box explaining she couldn’t find any of the normal sized kinda for mt to try, so this one would have to do. I didn’t care either way, but I set it aside to be the first to try out of all the treats she sent.
The pieces are indeed little, and they remind me of thicker versions of those wooden paddle spoons you get with cafeteria ice cream cups. They also look like fat, flat pinky fingers. It depends on how you look at them I guess. The outside chocolate coating is very shiny, glossy and smooth.
I took a bite to find a very smooth texture. At least until I started to chew, because it then turned crunchy right there in my mouth. Odd. The flavor is sweet and creamy and it reminds me of ice cream. The taste is more of cocoa than chocolate. I’m assuming it’s more like de-fatted chocolate, which is then pumped full of those “yummy” hydrogenated oils. It like eating a dairy fat enhanced hot cocoa. Blech.
Back in middle school I watched a lot of CBC since I was fond of several shows they had in their after school lineup. Out of all the things I recall out of those long afternoons watching Canadian TV, the Riesen Chocolate Chew commercials and jingle are the most vivid. They showed..oh heck, why don’t I just link the video:
I had no idea what a Riesen was, and it was years before I even encountered one in the stores. But, for some reason that silly commercial stuck with me, so when I finally did encounter the Riesen Chocolate chew, I had to try them. I wanted to know what the fuss was all about!
The package describes them as “Chewy Chocolate Caramel covered in Rich European Chocolate”. I turned the package over to look at the ingredients, as the words “Chocolate Chew” rang in my mind from the commercials. I was relieved to find that these are real chocolate, not mockolate like I was suspecting.
The chews are plump little rectangles, almost an inch long and a half inch tall. They smell of rich chocolate right away and l sense my saliva kicking in.
The bite is thick, even more so than with fudge, so you know right away that this is a dense caramel and will be a good jaw workout. The flavor is chocolatey and sweet. The caramel and the chocolate coating taste about the same, with the caramel having more nuances of sugar and milk and therefore not tasting as “intense” as the chocolate coating. This is more about texture, and you get the cool, smooth chocolate shell that gives slightly when you bite in. Then comes the terribly dense chewy caramel, which is a good 2-3 minute chew (of course taking into account how aggressive you are). It’s very satisfying without being too tiring. The flavor is good, but a little too light for me to choose it to satisfy a chocolate craving. I think this’d be a good choice for those who are sensitive to stronger flavors and sweetness and suffer from throat burn a lot.
I enjoyed these, and I certainly plan to add them to my regular candy rotation.
I was surprised by these chocolates, as I had never encountered them on my own. I was handed this sampling by my boyfriend, who is ever so thoughtfully on the look out for new things to try. He found these Barton’s Chocotini Squares in his local Giant, and it amazes me how just a few miles away he finds candy that I don’t ever see in my neck of the woods. It makes me wish I understood candy distribution better.
I find the idea of a Chocotini interesting. On one hand, if I was given a martini that’s chocolate flavored, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested. But, put the martini inside a chocolate bar, and now we’re talking business! I’ve had a few of the bottles that have liquors inside them, like the infamous Anton Berg filled bottles that are given away as gifts at most holiday parties. I had mixed opinions on them, to be perfectly honest. What interested me about these Chocotini squares is that they didn’t seem to be straight up liqueurs inside. Instead, they’re most like girly fruit flavored mixed drinks. I can totally get behind that.
Mojito: Heavenly dark Chocolate infused with essence of Mint: The chocolate is nice dark color and smells of an Andes mint with a fresh mint/peppermint aroma. The square breaks easily and shows a lightly green fluffy center. The mint is very punchy with nice fresh notes and a clean mouth feel, complimented nicely with the dark chocolate which has nice notes of red berries, cream and coffee. There’s a bit of a “burn” to this in the end and aftertaste, which is nice effect.
Black Raspberry: Heavenly dark chocolate 60 percent Cacao infused with essence of Raspberry: Lighter in color than the Mojito and smells faintly of raspberry with notes of flowers and perfume. The break is harder and the center is grainy feeling. The flavor is lacking, as I get a sweetness from the chocolate and this bitter artificial berry flavor that isn’t strong, yet does nothing to hide the bland chocolate.
Pomegranate: Luscious milk chocolate infused with essence of pomegranate: A nice creamy brown color and smells sweet with a hint of cherry. The center is purple and creamy looking. The flavor is terribly sweet, with the milk chocolate and the filling both making for a real explosion in the mouth. The center’s taste is fruity of blackberries and cherries. None of it is tart, and I do associate tartness with pomegranates. The effect of the texture, which is terribly creamy and smooth, and the light flavors reminds me of black cherry ice cream.
Strawberry Lemonade: Luscious Milk Chocolate infused with essence of Strawberry and Lemon: Smells tartly of lemon and I’m reminded of those dry lemonade mixes that you buy in plastic tubs. The center is creamy like all the others and is a jarring bright carton pink color. The flavor is first the creamy milk chocolate, followed by a red berry and strawberries taste that’s married to the tart, bitter, metallic lemonade flavor which makes your throat burn. It’s very zesty and acidic, and it does mimic lemonade well, just as a combination with chocolate I’m not sure I’m a fan.
These were a fun experiment of flavors, but I’m not totally sold on them. I got no real buzz from any alcohol, and the pieces didn’t have any ingredients list so I can’t officially say if there’s any in these or not. Regardless, they were pleasant, but nothing I’d specifically return to. Maybe if I drank more martinis I’d appreciate them, but I’m not that kind of gal.
Milky is one of the few Japanese candies I remember discovering when I was in Japan. Most of my Japanese candy experiences come from visits to Asian markets here in the States, so it’s novel for me to find one on native soil. I remember stopping into a Family Mart, which is a popular chain convenience store there, and found a bag of strawberry flavored Milky. I was there in January, so I didn’t realize that I was experiencing the annual explosion of strawberry flavored candy exclusive to that time of year. My friend and I decided those looked the most delicious out of everything we saw in the aisle and promptly bought them to snack on later that day.
Needless to say, we were floored by the intensely creamy, flavorful and chewy caramels known as Milky. We kept buying more whenever we came across them, and even stashed a few bags in our suitcases when it was time to return home. I only ever saw the standard vanilla and chocolate Milky for a few years after my return, and it’s only in recent months I’ve seen the fruit flavored limited editions in stores here. I was so happy when I saw the pineapple one in my local Asian market, and snatched the bag so fast I’m sure it broke the sound barrier (ok, I exaggerate, but it was fast!).
Another fun fact to note is that the six year old girl on the bags, Peko-chan, is the mascot for the Fujiya company that makes Milky, since 1950. That’s a pretty old!
So what makes up these little balls of delicious addiction? Milky are simple little creamy caramels, as they’re made ingredients are condensed milk and pineapple juice. So appealing!
There’s about 40 caramels in this bag, which is a nice amount. The caramels are the the size of hazelnuts, wrapped in wax paper with images of pineapple and Peko-chan on it. The candy itself is hard, but has a little give to it when you squeeze it. It’s a creamy yellow color. The chew is thick and creamy, like a nice soft caramel. The flavor is very authentically pineapple with wonderful sweet notes and a hint of that apple tartness. It’s creamy from the milk base, so it tastes like a refreshing pineapple milkshake.
I love these candies as much as the first day I tried them. They’re simple, sweet, and satisfying. I hope I can continue to find them more easily, as they’re something I really like having in my stash on a regular basis.
Hi, I'm Sera. Welcome to my candy blog. Eat with your eyes.
CONTACT: sera(at)thecandyenthusiast.com
NOTE: Please, please, please do not take any of the photos on this site. I spent a lot of time and energy taking the photos myself and I wish for them to remain original to the blog. Thank you.
