CandySnob's Easter Candy Guide - Best of Reds Filled Ballotin

Richart Chocolates Gourmet Best of Reds Ballotin.
Another great Easter candy choice from RICHART. dedicates the Best of Reds to true lovers of filled chocolates, a collection merging the best of their "Red" collections.

But truthfully, we're blown away by the beauty and artistic flair of the candies themselves. This is a perfect Easter candy gift for that special someone who will appreciate the visual and taste aspects of candy.

Richart Chocolates Gourmet Best of Reds Ballotin.

CandySnob's Easter Candy Guide - Cache Cache Chocolate Bunny

Make Easter egg hunts more fun with the Cache Cache Bunny from Richart Chocolates.
These long-eared delights are perfect for hiding in the garden or in the house. And they come with a great gift box for hiding as well. And if they're from Richart, you know the chocolate is top-notch.

Cache Cache Bunny from Richart Chocolates.

White Chocolate Keyboard Makes Carpal Tunnel Almost Worth It

We're not 100% sure whether this keyboard is for real or not, but it sure looks real...and delicious. The perfect Easter gift for the geek in your life.

Via GearCrave and WIRED

CandySnob Monthly Roundup for February

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Candy Reviews

Lollipops

This lollipop is as good as gold - 24 karat gold to be exact

Random Candy Stuff

The Chocolate Research Facility

Review: Cadbury Picnic Bar from India

This is another Cadbury bar I picked up in Bangalore, India, so its a bar you can find in specialty shops in the US, but likely not too many places. The Cadbury Picnic Baris a chocolate bar with milk chocolate and peanuts, covering nougat, caramel, biscuit and puffed rice.

A popular slogan for the Cadbury Picnicis "Deliciously ugly". They got that right (see photo). I know I'm not the best photographer around, but man, this bar is ugly. We can get over the looks. But the problem, of course, is that it isn't delicious either.

The Cadbury Picnic Bar
reminds me of a Baby Ruth with a wafer middle. First, this is a hodgepodge of textures. Second, the wafer tasted like cardboard. I also caught a faint, almost smokey flavor, which was off-putting.

Hodgepodge, or mish-mosh, are good ways to think about the Picnic bar. There simply is way too much going on - the bar doesn't know what it wants to be. Which, for the consumer, means the whole experience doesn't make sense. There are too many textures and too too many flavors, none of which make a coherent experience.

Some info via Wikipedia

Review: Judy's Candy Peanut Butter Cup

Judy's Candy Company may not be a household name, but they've been around for many year, blending tradition with new ideas - striving to make candy that's true and classic but forward-thinking. We love the vision. Unfortunately, we didn't love the peanut butter cup we tried.

The Good:

The chocolate was nice, creamy, and flavorful. By far the strongest part of the piece.

The idea of one big cup, in this case 2.5 oz., is also really nice. We're always fans of larger, single cup candy.

The Bad:

While we liked the chocolate, it was really thick, which hurt the bite and overpowered the peanut butter.

In fact, the peanut butter flavor was completely non-existent.

The peanut butter and the chocolate were completely separated.

The peanut butter had serious problems. First, it was grayish in color - which makes me think this was an old piece. Second, it was really dry. Put the two together and you have something that reminds me of smokey ash. Put smokey ash together with the hard, thick chocolate and you have a very off-putting texture.

We're not off Judy's, we're still holding out hope that we caught a bad piece. But they now have some work to do to win us over.

Visit Judy's Candy

This lollipop is as good as gold - 24 karat gold to be exact

A lollipop that is made by hand with genuine 24 Karat Californian Gold Flakes.

The health spin on this is that gold is supposed to have anti-bacterial properties when eaten. Not sure about this, but its a cool lollie.

It runs £3.75 GBP, which is actually better than I'd have thought.

From Edible via NOTCOT

Review: Cadbury 5-Star from India

You can get this fudgy Cadbury confection in the US, but I got mine where it is actively marketed, Bangalore, India.

The 5 Star chocolate bar has been around for 25 years. It was launched in 1969 as a bar of chocolate that was hard outside with soft caramel nougat inside. Over time the bar has reinvented itself, which is clear because this is not the bar I consumed.

Cadbury calls it "A leading knight in the Cadbury portfolio," with the second largest market share after Cadbury Dairy Milk.

We don't get it.

It has a nice bite - the Cadbury chocolate mixed with the the caramel and dark nougat make for a nice eating piece of candy. However, there are flavor issues. On the plus side, it is very "caramely" which we like. But overall the flavor is...how do we put it accurately...funky. And not the good kind funky. It tastes more like a health bar, like a Balance Bar or Power Bar. Not a candy bar. Pass.

[Some info from Cadbury website}

The Chocolate Research Facility

The Chocolate Research Facility is a candyshop for the serious confection connoisseur.

The "facility" is in Singapore, the chocolate 'lab' and cafe offers an impressive 100 flavors of chocolate, ranging from "Exotic" to the "Double Fruit Series", all packaged in equally sophisticated, beautifully designed wrappers.

And they have a very fun, animated websites, where molten chocolate gradually covers the whole page...yum.

Chocolate Research Facility

From PSFK via Below the Clouds