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 Chocolate

How did Christmas get so close?? I have much candy to review and it's almost here! I love holiday candy, hell, I love ALL candy, but around the holidays new and different stuff comes out. Yay!

Let's start with one of my favorites - Hershey's Kisses. They have these two Christmas flavors:

Hot Cocoa looks just like a regular Kiss, maybe a little lighter in color, but it is VERY creamy. It does claim to be filled with hot cocoa creme. Good, but addictive. Do NOT sit a bowl of these on your desk - you might eat them all! But don't let these get away - try them!

Oh yeah, baby!! These look festive - and there are little red candy canes on the foil wrappers. They are great! Sweet, and I love the little peppermint chunks in them. These are a stocking must and would be VERY festive on baked goods or in desserts. Go Hershey!

Hershey also some some back wrapped Kisses in a pouch labeled Naughty and silver ones in a pouch labeled Nice. Brilliant marketing!!!!

Sugar Babies has an entry, and even though they are not chocolate I wanted to check them out:


Now it's been a long, long time since I've eaten a Sugar Baby, but I remember them fondly. These, however, are not good. They are really hard - like really stale Sugar Babies. Maybe the coloring didn't work so well? What a bummer - I was really looking forward to these. Also the green on the package looks great! The green on the candy is a pastel green. Not festive. Festive for Easter maybe, but not Christmas. Oh well, maybe they'll be better next year. Go with the regular ones for the stocking!

I've seen these around the holidays for years and always wanted to try one. I couldn't really get what it was:

I mean are these chocolate covered orange slices? Is there a real orange in there? What IS it?When you open the box, this is what you see:

I whacked it with a stapler, but it didn't really do much:

So I whacked it again and pulled the pieces apart:

They do come apart just like orange slices. If you like orange and chocolate, this is for you! It's milk chocolate and orange oil and it definitely delivers on the orange. It started as a big hit in the UK, now it's sold all over the world and is manufactured by Kraft. Get this - according to Wikipedia, "Its history dates back to the 1920s, when the so-called "Chocolate Apple" was first produced. The orange was launched in the 1930s and was much more popular than the apple, leading to the apple's phasing out in 1954.[1]" I can't image the apple tasting very good, although a REAL apple covered with or dipped in chocolate is fabulous. This is VERY fun for a stocking! Definitely more fun than a regular ol' orange.

Whoppers has a holiday entry - Whoppers Sno-Balls:

These are like regular Whoppers, but they have a candy coating. I liked them. The box is cute, they are addictive. Now, don't get me wrong - Whoppers can not compete with Chocolat Moderne's caramels. But as a fun Christmas candy - they are okay. (I like Reese's Whoppers the best, then the regular ones because they have more chocolate, but I swear I can't stop eating these!) The box is small - grab one!

The last candy is something that looked interactive:

I thought that maybe you were supposed to somehow decorate the star with the "snowballs"? I don't know - it seemed like they were supposed to go together. So I opened the package:

Um...I don't get it. The little "snowballs" really taste terrible. The dark chocolate star isn't bad, but it's not too good either. It's hollow and I'm not a big lover of hollow chocolate shapes. I like solid chocolate. Maybe you're supposed to split the star open and then load the snowballs in and eat that. Or just look at it. Maybe it's a decoration. I don't know, I really don't get it. There's also a Christmas tree. Don't buy these. They are weird. I'm scared of them.

I love the season - from the wonderful to the weird - how fun are all of these? How lucky are we that confectioners are working to develop new ideas and new treats for us? Yahoo!! Make sure you have some fun this season and try one or two new holiday candies. We'll be trying more here!!! On Donner, On Blitzen!