The Peanut Festival Continues - Peanut Bars

As I promised - the peanut roll continues!!!

I went through my extensive candy stash and found another couple chocolate covered peanut brittles.  The first one is Jer's Toffee Break - peanut brittle bites covered in dark chocolate:

There's a little bloom here - see the white "dust?"  These must have gotten hot somewhere in my travels and the cocoa butter rose to the surface.  Doesn't impact the taste, they just look a little yucky.

Jer's throws the word toffee in here.  According to The Nibble:
http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/candy/toffee/toffee-information2.asp
this might be buttercrunch, but it ain't toffee.  I'm calling everything that involves the peanut, and is labeled peanut brittle, peanut brittle.  We'll get to toffee someday.

These weren't that hot.  I like milk chocolate better than dark with peanut brittle, and Jer's brittle had a funky aftertaste.  It's almost a smokey taste.  Didn't like it.

I got these at Candy Expo - chocolate covered peanut brittle:

The peanut brittle was overpowered by waxy, crappy chocolate.  Warrell must be another distributor of cheap, crappy candy.  Good idea, but Feridies does it like 1,000,000,000 times better.

The people at The Peanut Patch (aka Feridies storefront) told me they changed their peanut brittle to make it crunchier (thus the name - Peanut Brittle Crunch).  It used to be called Peanut Squares and just wasn't as good.  Don't get me wrong, it was good and tasted like peanuts, but this has a more buttery flavor and is better.

I met the folks from Old Dominion at Candy Expo.  Their stuff is at Walgreen's, and I'm starting to see it in other places too.  Both of these are their bar, just in different packages.  I like the top one better.  Looks much classier:

This one reminds me of the circus:

See?  Same bars.

I think this is an Old Dominion bar too:

Why do I think that?  The ingredients are exactly the same - peanuts, sugar, corn syrup and salt (no butter like in Feridies crunch).  And all say they have 286 calories.  They are all good, but Feridies crunch blows them away.

Mars Munch bar also has a buttery taste and indeed, butter is added to the ingredient list above:

I like Feridies WAY better than the Munch bar.  I even like the other peanut bars better.  The butter taste is a little yucky in the Munch, overpowering the peanuts.  I say Boo!!

Now this bar looks and tastes burned:

Seriously!  What happened?  It's made by  the Golden Grove Candy Company in Warsaw NC, so I really wanted to like it (rooting for the home state and all).  But I can't recommend it - it's overcooked!  I may grab another sometime just to see if this was a bad batch. 

This is a sample I got at Candy Expo from Taylor's Candy:

It was supposed to be coconut peanut brittle.  It was the worst of the lot!

I mean - can you see how few peanuts are involved?  And coconut?  It tasted weird, but not necessarily coconutty.  If you go to their website it looks like they just do cheap, crappy candy and this certainly fits.  Bleech.


Atkinson's (maker of the Chick-o-Stick) makes Peco Coconut Peanut Brittle.  Now Peco means Sin in Spanish.  I'm not quite sure what to say about that:

I can't taste any coconut here either.  Maybe my taste buds are just shot.  This peanut brittle is a bit chewier than the others (which I like) but some of the peanuts taste way over cooked like in the Carolina Crisp bar.  It's also darker in color like that bar.  But the chewiness keeps me eating it and it has lots of peanuts, so I can't totally diss it.  There's something about it that I like.  Maybe it's the Sin factor.  So it's better than Munch, but not as good as Old Dominion.  Now if Old Dominion could get a little chewier - well - SNAP!

This Peanut Crunch is just squares of peanut bars:

It's also from The Peanut Shop of Williamsburg and I think it's the same Old Dominion bars.  Ingredients the same, looks the same, I'm sure it is the same.  The best one?  Feridies Peanut Brittle Crunch - hands down.  In fact, I'd say it's a ten and the others are a three at best in comparison.  Smack down!

Lessons?

The more I learn, the less I know.  Who knew all this about brittle and toffee?  That peanuts could be so different?  That peco means sin?

As usual, you can't judge a book by it's cover!  Here we have the same stuff in four different packages.  It's the inside that counts.

Peanut butter and jelly tomorrow!!!