Easter Jordan Almonds

I like Jordan Almonds. Mostly because I love almonds. And hey, a candy coating can only make things better in my book! I didn't realize they were a big Easter/springtime treat until this year. Not that I've been laying awake at night contemplating this. But anyway.....

Here are all the ones I could find and unlike the malted milk balls, every assortment has slightly different colors:

Harry and David had the weirdest colors, but all these were slightly different. And here is what I think of all the different offerings:

These are by CVS:

I think they have them all the time as part of their candy collection. They were hard as rocks. No good.

These are by Target:

These tasted more like sugar than almonds and were the smallest of the bunch. I guess there are some almonds in there. Maybe.

These were from The Chocolate Bear:

These had delicious, big almonds with a great, light coating. Much softer than the CVS rocks. YUM!

These are by Jelly Belly:

And they were the only ones that seemed to have some kind of flavor in the candy coating. I didn't care for that - it was like a weird aftertaste. Yuck!

These are Harry and David's:

and they have a great almond taste. These are enhanced by the candy coating, not overwhelmed by it. But they are not quite as soft and good as those from The Chocolate Bear.

These Medicis are truly in a league of their own:

I bought them at Williams-Sonoma and they are amazing. The sugar coating is very thin and they have GIANT almonds. The back of the box reads: "When Catherine de Medicis married the future King Henry II of France in 1533, her chefs dazzled wedding guests with these sweet, crunchy confections. They are slender Lerida almonds from Spain enclosed in a very thin sugar shell. The classic assortment in pastel colors (made at Easter - every other time I've gotten them, they have been white) is made at the family-owned Confiserie de Medicis, a French confectionery named for the legendary queen."

How cool is that?

This was really interesting to me - I had no idea there would be that much difference among the different offerings:

And you know what? Once you have the Medicis the others really pale in comparison. (Hell, they've been working on those things for 477 years - they outta be good!) The ones from The Chocolate Bear were second best and were MUCH better than all the others, but the Medicis are truly amazing. If you love Jordan Almonds, you owe it to yourself to try these. Wow!!!

Many, Many Malted Milk Eggs

I have fond memories of eating malted milk eggs as a kid - but I remember all that colored stuff coming off and getting all over my mouth. I swear I remember my brother's lips being blue after eating a blue malted milk egg! They don't make them like that anymore. : (

I seldom crave malted milk balls, but I like them alright. And at Easter time they seem to pop up everywhere as you shall see. And since I have now autopsied so many I know a bit about their secrets (which I shall reveal to you).

You know I had to see if Trader Joe's had any Easter Candy and sure enough:

They even give us some history on the carton:

Here, here!!

Yep - definitely egg shaped. Coated in chocolate with no outer candy coating or coloring. These are delicious and the chocolate is very, very good.

You KNOW Whoppers is going to do something! They have both regular size

and mini Robin Eggs:

Nice bright colors as advertised:

There we have an outer candy shell and a thin inner coating of chocolate. These are really good - and you can have almost twice as many for the same calories as Trader Joe's! And I don't mean twice as many mini's! It's because Joe's has more more rich, delicious chocolate. But these are really addictive and good.

The autopsy of the Mighty Malts eggs from Necco reveals something very horrifying:

NO CHOCOLATE!!! AAAIIIEEE!!! They have two types of malted eggs - one is Ice Cream Shoppe with the flavors strawberry, orange, chocolate, and cookie dough - this refers to the malted milk part - the coating doesn't seem to have much flavor. These remind me of cereal flavors - the strawberry tastes just like the Crunchberries in Captain Crunch cereal. The orange is really strong and sugary - heck these are all strong and sugary and fake tasting - kids would probably LOVE them! Me - not so much.

These are just regular old malt balls:

coated in a weird candy coating. Remember - no chocolate. Boo!!! I say. Boo!!!

Necco also makes the PAAS eggs. Interesting - the others are under the Mighty Malts brand and the Necco logo is nowhere to be seen - until you flip the bag over and look at the fine print.

These have a thin layer of chocolate:

and are the best of the three Necco offerings. I can't decide if I like them better than the Whoppers or not - they are larger and don't have the hard candy shell. Both are pretty good.

These are offered by Williams-Sonoma and Jelly Belly (I told you we'd get to those that were in the Deluxe Easter Mix!):

I think they are both made by Jelly Belly although the Williams-Sonoma bag says theirs are made exclusively for them. They taste the same, have the same ingredients, and the same autopsy results:

Get the Jelly Belly ones - I found them at Hallmark - they are $3.00 cheaper than the Williams- Sonoma ones. As pretty as these are, they were hard as rocks compared to some of the competition. The taste was okay - not impressive since these are the most expensive.

I swear these two are identical (same colors, same ingredients, same taste and autopsy results). One I found in Cracker Barrel:

And the other I found in Target:

These are good too! The candy shell is thinner than the Whoppers shell, which I actually like a little better. I'm not at all sure who makes these babies - each package just lists a distributor, not the actual maker. Another Easter mystery.

This is a Spring offering from Harry and David:

Now, I should like these! The candy coating is nice, they have a thick layer of chocolate, but for some reason - these were a no go. It was like the malted part didn't have any taste. All I had to do was eat one and then eat a Traders Joe's egg - the difference was clear. If it's going to be a malt ball it has to have that crazy crunch in the middle - it was kind of lacking here. Disappointing.

These have nothing to do with Easter, but since we're on a malted milk ball roll, check out these by World Market:

peanut butter!!!! Woohoo!!!

Yowzaa!!! These are really, really good! Very peanut buttery!! A+++

So here are the rankings as far as I'm concerned:

Peanut butter was the best, but it's not really an Easter Treat, so after that - I'd have to go with Trader Joe's.

Next up I'd go with Necco's Paas, closely followed by the Whoppers Robin Eggs.

The mystery brand is really, really close to those two. I had no idea how challenging ranking malted milk eggs could be! Who knew?

The prettiest (and most expensive) were last. (Williams-Sonoma and Jelly Belly)

The spring H & D ones weren't officially Easter treats, but if they were, they would be the worst.

Well, now I've eaten enough malted milks balls to last me the rest of my life.

The lesson - all things in moderation, all things in moderation.

Marshmallow and Easter Candy Weirdness

Well, since we got started with some marshmallow, let's just continue with the sticky stuff.

Since I'm off the evil RS (well, mostly.....), let's look at the old standard for the marshmallow egg:

These are good - but the marshmallow didn't seem as soft and fresh as it should. In fact - the chocolate covered Peeps were better!!! WAY better. Hershey - what the heck???

I've noticed that the chocolate covered Peeps seems to be sold out everywhere - I must not be the only one who LOVED them. I'm serious - I appreciate them even more now that I've compared them to the competition. (Maybe I'll get to drive that Peepmobile yet!)

These marshmallow eggs were made by Whitman's:

The colors are really pretty and festive:

And the marshmallow inside is delicious - nice and soft and creamy, but the outer shell is too sweet. I sooooo wished it was chocolate! Rats!!

From Kraft we have BunnyMallows to go with our Halloween GhostMallows:

For some reason these bunnies make me think of dinosaurs:

These are in great colors and I like the attempt at a holiday shape. The taste is perfectly average marshmallow. I have no complaints, but there is nothing really exciting here. They might be really good dipped in chocolate! Yum!

These marshmallow chicks and bunnies by Frankford Candy and Chocolate Co. of Pennsylvania are unbelievably horrible:

Are those parrots? (Why do they have pink wings? Are those wings?) The taste and texture of these are so, so, so bad. They come closest to tasting like really stale cotton candy - but that is generous. Anyone who disses Peeps should eat a couple of these. They are truly horrifying.

I can remember these from when I was a kid:

And I don't like them any more now than I did then.

They come in a bunch of colors and are festive enough. They have a thick sugary shell and something inside that looks kind of like marshmallow, but tastes weird. I'd have to say these are pretty awful.

These are an Easter staple, but are probably best as decoration. Personally I think they waste valuable Easter basket space that could be filled by chocolate!!

I'm not a big candy corn fan, but lots of people are wild about it. It is kind of cool to see it in Easter colors:

It says on the bag that this is made with real honey -and I believe it - you can taste the honey. I think honey has kind of an odd taste, so these don't set me on fire. If you like honey, though, these might be your new fav. There aren't that many candies that have a strong honey taste.

You can see the off-white color - shows the honey:

These are new this year:

and are totally weird, yet somehow fascinating. I love Brach's Nougat peppermint candies. I love their Nougat cherry chocolate candy. These are good too, but not as good as plain old jelly beans in my book. They are made out of jelly bean pieces in sugary, chewy nougat:

Some have lots of jelly bean pieces, some have no jelly bean pieces. And some are kind of mutated:

But when they get it right, they are really pretty - like a glass mosaic:

These are very sweet and have ingredients like apple cider butter, strawberry jam, grape jam, and grape jelly. If you like chewy, sweet and fruity, these are for you!! I do give Brach's huge points for coming up with something new and original, even though a lot of jelly beans had to give their lives for it. But still, sacrifices have to be made. I say - yay!!

These are from my friends at Just Born (of course, if they were really my friends I'd be cruising around in that Peepmobile right now):

These are the best jelly beans I've had this year:

This is the Americana Medley and the flavors are Savannah Strawberry, Laredo Lime, Chesapeake Cherry, Napa Grape, Indian River Orange and La Jolla Lemon. And they are all good with no weird aftertaste (like all the others reviewed below). Apparently making a good jelly bean is way harder than you'd think. Not that I've ever really thought about it. Until now.

Isn't this a great assortment from See's? We'll review the chocolate eggs soon:

See's makes two types of jelly eggs:

Regular jelly beans on the left and non-pareil jelly eggs on the left:

Now let me tell you, I love jelly beans, I really do. And these look great! But they were very disappointing. The jelly beans have a too thick outer coating and just taste crummy. And where's red - the most popular flavor??? These were so bad, I tried 'em, spit 'em out and threw the whole bag away. (I consider that a huge sin, but sometime candy is too terrible to even give away.)

The jelly eggs are no better - and the texture kind of creeps me out. Too jellyish, with those too hard non-pareils on them. Ugh. Boo to both of these!

I thought these were festive and I really wanted to see what was inside them:

This is the Harry & David Easter Candy Mix:

There are lots of little molded sugar candies - two different rabbits, an Easter egg, a duck, and a rooster. They are in white (I have no idea what flavor this is, but I didn't like it), lemon, lime, pink (cherry? strawberry? not good), and purple (grape? horrible taste!). These were MUCH better in the Jelly Belly assortment (below). They were really, really bad.

There are non-pareil jelly eggs like the See's, but with multicolored non-pareils instead of white. While these look terrific, the taste is not so wonderful. These vile things are jelly beans without the usual candy shell. Instead the gelatin bean is coated in these round sprinkles. Just creepy. The regular jelly beans were really good though!! Loved them!

The white, pink and purple balls are those great chocolate covered, candy coated mints. These were really good.

There was ONE foil covered chocolate egg which was terrible - surprising from H & D. The Jelly Belly chocolate eggs were better (see below). Although neither mix had enough chocolate. Wait - the H & D chocolate was so bad, there was too much of it.

This is the Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix:

It also has pastel candy corn, but it's white and has no taste of honey. I prefer this to the Brach's, but it's really too sweet for me. Good jelly beans kick Easter candy corn's butt. If it had a butt. And if jelly beans had legs.

Both mixes have these little pastel candy shapes - this one has three different rabbits, a duck and a rooster. They are in lemon, lime, strawberry and grape. They are way sweet and way fruity. I would never crave these and plan to never eat them again. But they are weird and festive - and I love weird and festive.

There were a bunch of Jelly Belly jelly beans - but I wish they were in better flavors - hate lemon and lime, don't care for cantaloupe or grapefruit, I did like the blue (not sure what flavor it is, but it's good) and the purple had some kind of funky aftertaste. Boo!!!

There were three foil covered chocolate eggs which were fine - average.

There were also two malted milk eggs which we'll review in the next post. You're going to learn more about malted milk eggs than you ever wanted to know.

Lesson - it takes guts to try something new. Does it always work? Will honey flavored Easter candy corn become an Easter staple? Will weird Jelly Bean Nougat? I have my doubts. But I think the chocolate covered Peep is going to be a huge success! It's easy to do the same old thing - it's safe and no one will mock you in blog postings. But doing the same old thing gets boring - trying something new keeps life interesting and keeps you growing. Try one new thing this week - personally and professionally. You've got nothing to lose except stagnation. Peep, peep!