Easter Caramel

I love caramel!!! And there is plenty of it at Easter! Yahoo!!

I love the colors of these Sugar Babies:

How festive are these?

And the taste?

Well, they are pretty hard, not as soft and chewy as I would like. The taste is okay, but there are soooo many better options as you are going to see. But I do love those festive colors!!

These turned out to be one of my favorite of all the Easter candies:

They are by Harry and David and come in festive colors and are shaped like eggs. I actually thought they were almonds when I first saw the package:

But no - they are caramel, wrapped in a layer of dark chocolate and coated in a candy shell:

And they are completely delicious and addictive. I wish I had 12 more packages. They are one of my top Easter candies. At least so far.

These assorted eggs by Neuhaus were expensive as hell - over a dollar per egg!

Gorgeous colors in a wide variety of flavors - as you will see:

This is caramel (there was only one):

This is a rich, chocolately caramel. It was delicious - a smooth, creamy caramel. It's a chocolate lovers caramel, not a caramel lovers chocolate. And I'm all about the caramel.

Here are the cheaper competitors -all clothed:

One of each clothed and naked:

From our friends at Palmer - look at that - $1.oo for the whole bag!

Not the flowing caramel we see elsewhere, but a good size. And I hate to say it, but sometimes you get what you pay for. These are not so good. Too sweet chocolate, and compared to the others, not so great caramel.

From Williams-Sonoma:

This was the smallest of the little eggs:

And I have to tell you, these were really, really delicious. A+++ A little more chocolate than the Cadbury Mini's, but the caramel is just as good. These are fantastic. I mean, just look at them! Yay!! (And there are 50 of them in the bag! Wheee!!!!)

From Nestle, slightly larger than Williams-Sonoma:

See all the chocolate? Not so much caramel:

These were in the same category as Palmer, maybe a tiny bit better. Both have that waxy chocolate and only average caramel. Why bother with them when you can have the Williams-Sonoma eggs or (drum roll please) these:

This one was the second largest, slightly smaller than Palmer:

And look at all that delicious, gorgeous caramel. Cadbury has it going on when it comes to caramel eggs. They are so very, very, very good!!

And the gold standard:

Isn't that a beautiful, beautiful thing? Cadbury is a winner because both the chocolate and the caramel are great. It is the most oooey, gooey amazing stuff on the planet!!

Another lame egg by Lammes:

Just like their crappy peanut butter egg, this one was hard to cut. Hello - hard caramel? BOO!!!

This was a dog. I hate Lammes now.

This is another treat from The Chocolate Bear. Doesn't that bunny look familiar?

Look at the little green bow on her ear and her eyelashes! Cute!

See the caramel and nuts? WOW!! This was terrific!! Nuts, chocolate and caramel is one of my favorite combos. And this was really good because there are soooo many nuts!!! YUM!

I loved this - The Chocolate Bear is making a good comeback!!

You know if we're going to talk nuts and caramel, we gotta talk Snickers. I love all the different colors of the eggs:

I'm a Snickers fan, BUT this wasn't as good as The Chocolate Bear's rabbit "lollipop." Don't get me wrong, it's good, but compared to that there are too few nuts and too sweet nougat.

But, of course, the Snickers was better than this:

As usual, Russell Stover sucks. I mean - can you even see a nut? Oh wait - there's one. And does that caramel look even a little gooey?

If you're going to play in the big leagues, you gottta step up. Sorry, RS - you just don't cut it. Again.

This is weird - it says it's a dark chocolate covered pecan melt-a-way:

I see the dark chocolate and some pecans, but I thought caramel would be involved. I dunno - maybe that's why they call it a brick egg. By Elmer Candy Corp. Unique in that it has dark chocolate, but overall - crappy.

The lesson? The find the best caramel you gotta break a lot of eggs.

Christmas Eve Peanut Butter

In honor of Christmas Eve, I am reviewing the holy combination of peanut butter and chocolate. And my favorite holiday representative is Hershey's Reese's (which has been running some great full page ads in USA Today - saying things like "And visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. Sugar plums? Seriously?" surrounded by Reese's bells). YUM!!


Let's start with the trees:


This great box was filled with 6 of the standard size trees. Love the Christmas tree cutout on top. Great new packaging. Here's the standard size dressed for the season:



The mini trees were in these assortments:






The first one we covered earlier when I reviewed the York Peppermint Snowflake. The second one has white chocolate trees in addition to the milk chocolate ones.


I like that the white tree wrapper has such a different look - nice touch.


And then there's the Big Daddy:




Family portrait in their Christmas best:


The whole group naked:




Okay, the artistry isn't so good. But, honestly, who cares? They are sooooo damn good they can get away with it. Man, I love these!! The minis are the perfect size to just pop in your mouth. All that peanut butter - ooooh weee! But I do have to say that I prefer the milk chocolate to the white chocolate trees. The white chocolate is too sweet, doesn't offset the peanut butter as well. Pass on these.


Don't forget the Reese's Bells:







I can't believe I'm going to say this, but there's too much chocolate. I guess it has to be thicker to hold the nice bell shape. I'll take the blob tree instead. Don't get me wrong, these are good, but the trees are GREAT!!


Palmer has some entries:

Okay, Palmer has the artistry going on!! Look at all those different colors of foil wrapping! Even when unwrapped you have different colored bows on the presents. Fancy!

However, these are not so good. Too much chocolate, too little peanut butter, and the chocolate isn't that good. Bells are better. But outstanding artistry.

There are also Palmer peanut butter Santas:

Okay the naked Santa seems to have lost his glasses and his list, and he looks pretty shocked that I'm shooting him in the nude, but he's pretty detailed. Good for Palmer! Should we cut up Claus? Is autopsying Santa on Christmas Eve appropriate?

Of course not! Let's do it!!

These guys are better than the presents - more peanut butter. Better than the trees? HA! Not possible. But strangely likeable. I can't stop eating them. I scare myself.

Speaking of peanut butter and Santa, check this out:

I love peanut butter. I love Snickers. I thought this would be great. (And isn't he the cutest Santa evah?) But cute won't fool me - he wasn't that good. Look how thin that layer of peanut butter is - I mean, why bother?

Even Palmer has more PB:

Now this guy brings it:

If you like Snickers, go with the nutcracker. Love the detail (loved it in their Santa too) and this guy is delish - loaded with peanuts and caramel and a thin layer of chocolate - YUM!! No peanut butter, but that's okay. Everybody can't be a Reese's tree. Variety is the spice of Christmas. Or maybe that's cinnamon. Who the hell knows?

Wait, let's ask Martha!

Martha says "Many spices work at the holidays - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. Wrap spice bottles in old maps for a lovely Christmas gift."

And here's something Martha would never do:

Decapitate Santa.

It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it.

Hope your Christmas is fun and just a little bit crazy.

Make sure you:
1.) Do something no one expects.
2.) Laugh - a lot.
3.) Look at some lights.
4.) Burn all your old maps.
and finally
5.) Eat some chocolate - life is short - live it!!!