The Final Cherry

I know, I know - enough with the cherry already! But once I started seeing cherry, it was everywhere!! This is the last cherry posting for a long, long time, I promise!!

I first saw these at Candy Expo. The package says they are made with real cherry juice and are high in antioxidant vitamin C. (Um....yeah, just remember the first ingredient is sugar.) Gimbal's (http://www.gimbalscandy.com/) is another one of those smaller American candy companies - yay! The company was founded in 1898 and is based in San Francisco. They make jelly beans, these cherry things and other gummy, chewy candies.


Here's what's in the bag:


There are nine different cherry flavors in here!

But there are more of some than others (you know I like it when there's an even mix. Or at least close. I mean look at those hot pink ones! There are only two.) And some of these are hard to tell WHAT flavor they are - this division is my best guess.

The hot pink is cherry cola. Not bad - more subtle than I expected. But a not so great cola aftertaste. Now I'm glad that there are only two.

The maroon ones are black cherry - and these were really good. They are right in the middle of sweet and tart. Delicious!!!

The big group of bright red ones at the top middle are Bing cherry and wild cherry. The Bing ones are really red - these are sweeter than the black cherry and I didn't like them as much. They remind me of cherry lollipops. The wild cherry ones are a little less sweet and I like them better than the Bings, but not as much as the black cherry. (It was pretty hard to tell these apart as you see by my giant blob.)

The small group of five to the right of the Bing cherries are kiwi cherry (they have some green blobs on them). These didn't work for me at all - yuck. Nature didn't put these two together and neither should man.

The dark ones right below those are chocolate cherry - yay chocolate!! Whoa! These were good!!! I wish there were more of them! They are heavy on the chocolate and light on the cherry and they were really, really good!! Wow! I am astonished.

Right below the chocolate cherry is cherry daiquiri. These were good, but nothing extraordinary. Better than Bing - less sweet, but not as good as black cherry and chocolate.

In the bottom left corner, is cherry vanilla, a little too sweet for me. They are not bad, but again, not extraordinary. I pulled one some that seemed whiter than the others thinking they were a separate flavor, but I was wrong. (I'm starting to hope I never taste anything cherry again.)

And finally, those four pink ones with the red blobs are cherry cheesecake. These were good - better than cherry vanilla, but not something I would want to eat a ton of.

Bottom line - if you love cherry - check these out. I liked the chocolate and the black cherry the best. But for the rest of us - too much cherry!! I may be off cherry forever after all of this - what in God's name was I thinking??

I think this is something that should not be:

I really like the Three Musketeers Bar. I don't eat them that often, but there are times when nothing else will do. What I like about them is all that fluffy chocolateness and their giantness. They seem like so much chocolate for so few calories. This, however, is straight from Hell:

That pink is not from this world.

They are coated in dark chocolate rather than the usual milk, but that can't save them from this heinous over-powering cherry center. Get thee back, Satan!!!

I've been wanting to try some of Bissinger's chocolates. I saw these and had to continue the cherry roll:

Oooh - look how nice and fancy that packaging looks!

They are in both dark and milk chocolate:

They look good, but I have to say, I was disappointed. See the filling below? It's crystallized - like a layer of semi-crunchy sugar. I found the liquidy center of the Perugina Cherry better and the dark chocolate richer. Perugina is my top choice still.

Although I do appreciate the handmade quality of Bissinger's. Perugina's are clearly machine made. But in the end - taste rules!!!

Not cherry, but raspberry - there are Trader Joe's Chocolate Raspberry Sticks. I love most of what Trader Joe's makes, but these are kind of weird.

The dark chocolate is delicious, but it's coating a jellied raspberry stick. Not my favorite thing. I mean really, does anyone ever think, "I wish I had a jellied raspberry stick right now?" But here's the weird thing, if you leave these around, you will be compelled to eat them. What the hell? I don't even know what to say about that phenomenon. You'll have to try one for yourself.

These have a strange and mysterious power. They too must be the work of the Devil.

While not cherry, these were a great Valentine's Day goodie that I got on massive sale. And what a great idea they are! Chocolate covered fortune cookies! And they have lovey-dovey Valentine's Day messages in them. This one is kind of lame - "You are loved for your belief in the goodness of mankind." Okay - whatever. (And I thought Martha Stewart's Dove messages were pitiful.) I do love the cute Chinese take out box package:

The milk chocolate is delicious and who doesn't like fortune cookies? Emily's (http://www.emilyschocolates.com/) makes a lot of yummy looking goodies. I plan to try some more!!


These are very good and are the most creative offering I saw this Valentine's Day. Yay Emily's!

No more cherry - I swear. I'm going right now to chop down a cherry tree.