Sugar Pressure

Reese's Easter Assortment Egg

Reese's Easter Assortment Egg
Originally uploaded by SugarPressure.com

I picked up this Reese's Egg after Easter when it went 50% off. Chocolate and peanut butter are such a great combination and I love the Reese's peanut butter eggs. This mini assortment of Reese's products is a collection of perfect sizes, flavors, and shapes. I purchased this assortment because I loved the plastic egg and thought I could use it at some point for something else when taking pictures. I also wanted to try the white chocolate peanut butter egg because I have not tried it before. The white and milk chocolate eggs are identical in size and coating. The only difference is the shell surrounding the peanut butter.

I'm always surprised at how powerful the peanut butter taste is in a Reese's product. I don't think it's a bad thing...I really like it. But I always wonder why it is so much more powerful than the peanut butter on my sandwich. I was also surprised at how muted the white chocolate was versus the milk chocolate. The white chocolate had a very pleasant flavor (I like white chocolate, unlike many of you). It was muted, but I could tell it was there, it just waited patiently while the peanut butter took over and overwhelmed my taste buds. Then, the white chocolate showed up a bit later and reminded me that it was there covering all that peanut butter in the middle.

I would have to say that I really wasn't missing much by not purchasing the white chocolate peanut butter cup alone. I'm glad I held out for a sampler with 2 small white chocolate eggs. It was a good flavor, but it's so hard to beat the milk chocolate peanut butter egg. I would recommend you try this combination for something different, but there is a reason why Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in milk chocolate is the #2 candy in the United States. It's a great combination that is extremely hard to beat. It's no surprise it has been a favorite (at Easter and the whole year through) since its introduction in 1928.

Milk Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Egg
Taste: 5/5 Loved It
Calorie Counter: 1 piece = 1 serving= 170 calories, 10g fat
Price: $1.74 for entire assortment egg on 50% clearance at Target
Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Website

White Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Egg
Taste: 3/5 Liked It
Calorie Counter: 1 piece = 1 serving= 180 calories, 11g fat
Price: $1.74 for entire assortment egg on 50% clearance at Target
Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Website

Hershey Kisses filled with Buttercreme

Hershey Kisses filled with Buttercreme
Originally uploaded by SugarPressure.com

I love limited edition candy (although I rarely find it to be as good as the original). So, when I saw Hershey had a new filled Kiss for Easter, I had to buy it. With all of the Easter candy I've reviewed, I haven't had a chance to review these yet. This isn't a new earth-shattering candy, it's a familiar candy with a twist.

When I opened the bag, I could instantly smell chocolate and frosting. I'm a huge fan of frosting, especially buttercreme frosting. I was really amazed that this Kiss did taste like buttercreme frosting. It's not the best buttercreme flavor I've ever had, but it wasn't terrible. I could taste vanilla, butter and salt as the primary flavors which are more powerful than the chocolate taste. It's amazing how secondary the chocolate flavor is in this candy. I don't think that is a bad thing because I'm never overly impressed with Hershey chocolate anyway. It's not terrible, but it's not great. It's a very sweet chocolate that compliments the creamy sweet buttercreme filling inside this candy. It lies in that big land of mediocrity that is mass-produced American candy from the big three candy companies.

The very sweet chocolate does complement the creamy sweet buttercreme filling inside this candy. Since I mentioned sweet, let me say, this Kiss is overly sweet. If you are not one of those people that hopes you get the corner piece of birthday cake with the frosting roses, then this candy probably is not for you. This is one of the better limited editions of Hershey Kisses that I've had, but as usual, you just can't beat the original.

Other reviews of this candy: The Candy Enthusiast, Gigi-Reviews

Taste: 3/5 Liked It
Calorie Counter: 9 pieces = 1 serving= 210 calories, 8g fat
Price: $2.75 purchased at Wal-Mart
Hershey Kisses Website

Cadbury Dairy Milk Hollow Milk Chocolate Egg

Cadbury Dairy Milk Hollow Milk Chocolate Egg
Originally uploaded by SugarPressure.com

While most people normally purchase a chocolate bunny for Easter, this candy blogger goes with his favorite candy, inside a candy. Say what? Yes, this is my favorite Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate with my favorite Cadbury chocolate mini-eggs inside it. When I saw this at the store I was like a moth attracted to light, I had to have it. It was like some candy developer at Cadbury was like, "How could I make two wonderful things even better? I know, I'll put one inside the other!"

I've never hidden my love for all things Cadbury. You can see my glowing reviews of other Cadbury products HERE, HERE and HERE. I'm drawn to the purple packaging, the recipe that puts milk before sugar in milk chocolate and in this case, tiny scrumptious little Cadbury Mini Eggs inside. What a clever idea those Cadbury people came up with. Hiding one of my favorite candies inside one of my favorite chocolates, so I'd have to eat my way through their wonderful chocolate to get to them. Oh...I can see them laughing now with one of those mad scientist evil laughs, "Muahahahahahaha, they will never be able to resist this." I could not wait to review this and I waited until Easter Sunday to do it. The suspense almost killed me.


I went from elation to frustration in seconds though. The first problem I encountered was that I dropped the egg on the floor as I took it out of its package. I'm not sure who designed this box, but he should lose his engineering degree. What a travesty (see the picture below). The plastic inside the box opened in the back, so after gently cutting the tape I opened the box while looking at the front of it. Once the egg was out, the plastic opened and the egg smashed to the floor. I was sorely disappointed. After carefully opening the tinfoil and snapping the picture below, I then noticed there was only a whopping 5 Cadbury Mini Eggs inside the chocolate egg. *sigh* Double disappointment.

Okay, so even after I was extremely disappointed twice, I still LOVED this candy. It was a thousand times better than a silly old chocolate bunny, which everyone buys for a basket.  The chocolate had a great thickness and bite. It was milky and creamy like all other Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. This is a fantastic chocolate with another fantastic candy inside. The design also ties Cadbury Mini Eggs to Cadbury Chocolate as some people might not realize are from the same company.  I loved everything about this egg and would highly recommend you pick one up next year, I know I will. My son also thought this was the coolest idea ever and he was almost as excited to open it as I was. The only problem was that he wanted to treat my , I mean, the chocolate like a rattle. He did tell me that waiting to eat it made sitting through "adult" church completely worth it (if only I could bribe him with one of these every week so he'd sit quietly in church!)  I loved this product, the idea, the packaging, the egg shape instead of a bunny, and most of all, THE CHOCOLATE.

I also ran out and purchased some more Mini Eggs but in this really interesting tube package. I've made mention before that I hate buying entire bags of candy, so I thought this tube was perfect. I cannot buy entire bags, especially not the family size, of Cadbury Mini Eggs because I will eat the entire bag in one night. I know I'm not alone here, if you've done the same thing you can give a little chuckle while reading this because the Mini Eggs are really that good. I love the flavoring on the candy coated shell and the chocolate is the perfect size. Don't get me wrong, I love the larger Cadbury bars that you can buy year round but I often want just a little bit of chocolate and not an entire bar and they still haven't made a candy shell coated version of that bar, and it is the shell which makes the Mini Eggs so appealing.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Hollow Milk Chocolate Egg
Taste: 5/5 Loved It
Calorie Counter: 1/3 egg = 1 serving= 200 calories, 11g fat
Price: $4.49 purchased at Target
Cadbury Website

Cadbury Mini Eggs
Taste: 5/5 Loved It
Calorie Counter: 12 Mini Eggs = 1 serving= 190 calories, 8g fat
Price: $2.99 purchased at Target
Cadbury Website

Look What the Bunny Brought - Day 5 - Filler Items

Every Easter basket needs a few filler items. These are the small candies that range from $.29 to $.50 a piece that fill in those gaps between the larger candies in your Easter baskets. I purchased a few examples and there are a lot more to choose from at the store. I somehow missed getting a Cadbury Creme Egg this year. I'll definitely try to pick one up in an after Easter sale.

I don't think any basket is complete without Peeps in it. These are a staple for every Easter basket. I really like this video by The Bewildered Brit "Peeps Must Die!" Here is the Washington Posts Peep Diorama Contest, I love the UP Peeps diorama, so amazing.

I purchased this Absolutely Divine creme egg at CVS. This is the store brand of candy. I wanted to try it out and see how it compared to a Cadbury creme egg. It had an okay flavor, not as good as Cadbury, but it wasn't bad. I think some type of creme egg is a must in any basket.

This is a Dove Truffle Egg. I love how decorated the chocolate is on the outside. The taste was pretty good. This is your typical very smooth Dove chocolate with a truffle filling. This makes a great filler item for $.29.

I also picked up a Russell Stover truffle egg. Fantastic design on the outside and the chocolate was much better than the Dove truffle egg. I really like Russell Stover candy and chocolate, they do such a great job on their candy. Another great filler item.

This is a new item out this year by Whitman's. Normally Whitman's is a chocolate-only company, but they were purchased by Russell Stover, so look for new items to come out using the Whitman's name. This is a pretty good candy. Candyblog.net has a very good review of this item if you'd like to read more about it.

The last item is the Reese's peanut butter egg. I believe this is the 2nd best selling item for Easter and the Cadbury creme egg is the 1st. You can't go wrong with a peanut butter and chocolate combination and Reese's does it perfectly. I love these eggs and this one was the smaller size that comes in the large bag. I had the large bag full of candy to review, but somehow it disappeared before I could review it. Fantastic candy!

Look What the Bunny Brought - Day 4 - Sour vs Sour Jelly Beans

I'm not sure what it is about sour candy that makes kids love it. Do they like the shock to the taste buds, the mouth-pucker feeling or is it that it actually tastes good? When I saw both of these bags at Walgreen's, I knew I had to get them and try to figure it out. Besides that, we love taste tests at our house. We think it is a lot of fun to put items into the arena of taste and let them duke it out with our taste buds. With this review, there is a clear winner, by a knockout.

We started with the Sour Patch jelly beans because we've had their smaller bags and theatre box of Sour Patch candy before. We like the chewy texture and the sour powder that is followed up by a sweet gummy-like candy. We were very excited about the flavors in this package, well... all of the flavors except the redberry, I have no idea what flavor that is supposed to be. Lemon, orange and lime are three of our favorite flavors (in general), so that this package included those made for a very good start. After opening the bag and trying a few, we decided that these jelly beans were WAY too small in size. Also, I'm not sure these count as jelly beans since they do not have a panned sugar exterior with a jelly interior. These are exactly like the normal Sour Patch candy with a gummy-like texture (think swedish fish). The flavors were really good, but there wasn't enough bean in each jelly bean to really enjoy it. We also decided that these do not "taste like Easter" at all. We like the product, (if the beans were twice the size), but we don't think it belongs in the Easter selection. This candy was a clear loser for us in this particular contest.

On to the Warheads Sour jelly beans! I've tried a few Warheads products in the past, so I wasn't all that excited about these jelly beans based on my past experience. However, we loved the extremely large size of these jelly beans. They are the largest jelly beans of any brand we've tasted so far. The colors are nice and bright, they are very pretty! The flavors include black cherry, apple, lemon, watermelon and blue raspberry. These are a traditional jelly bean with a sour-sugar panned exterior, with the sour built right in, no powder here. The interior is a normal jelly that has a slightly grainy, but pleasant, texture when chewed. We really liked all the flavors except the watermelon, oh my, it was super sour and not tasty at all. The sour in the rest if the flavors does not overwhelm you, it is actually very pleasant. It tastes like these are flavored all the way through and they have a taste that fits with Easter. This was our clear winner and runaway favorite. So, if you can only buy one sour jelly bean, I'd pick this one. In fact, I'll pick this one up again next year, we really did like the flavor. FYI...these are sold exclusively at Walgreen's.




Sour Patch Jelly Beans
Taste: 2/5 Did Not Like It
Calorie Counter: 40 pieces = 1 serving= 140 calories, 0g fat
Price: $2.00 purchased at Walgreen's
Sour Patch Website

Warheads Sour Jelly Beans
Taste: 4/5 Really Liked It
Calorie Counter: 13 pieces = 1 serving= 130 calories, 0g fat
Price: $2.00 purchased at Walgreen's
Warheads Website

Look What the Bunny Brought - Day 3 - Milk Carton Candy

One of the things I hate is how super-sized everything has become. It's hard to enjoy all 16oz of a bag of candy....I get a bit tired of it partway through the bag...sometimes I'd rather just have a few ounces and be done. That's what I like about these cute little 3.5oz boxes. It is a nice amount of candy at 2.5 servings per box. Do you remember the milk cartons from school lunch? This packaging is exactly like those milk cartons. Boxes like this are also great because most of the candy is 100% intact, no chips, smashed or ruined candy inside these cartons.

These are not the most exciting candies Hershey makes but they are nice classics that fit well in the Easter candy selection. Reese's Pieces Pastel Eggs (introduced in 1995) are enlarged Reese's Pieces with pastel colors for the holiday. They are a great candy, but I prefer the smaller pieces size over these gigantic peanut butter eggs. On the other hand, the Whoppers eggs and Whoppers mini Robin Eggs are too small in size for me, although a perfect size for children. I love malted milk, so I find this smaller size gives you more chocolate and sugary shell instead of that great malted milk interior.

I love the price on this candy too. These are great buys and portion sizes for $1.00. You can't go wrong adding these to any Easter basket.

Mini Robin Eggs
Taste: 3/5 Liked It
Calorie Counter: 24 pieces = 1 serving= 190 calories, 6g fat
Price: $1.00 purchased at Target
Hershey Whoppers Website

Reese's Pieces Pastel Eggs
Taste: 3/5 Liked It
Calorie Counter: 12 pieces = 1 serving= 180 calories, 8g fat
Price: $1.00 purchased at Target
Hershey Pieces Website

Whoppers Eggs
Taste: 3/5 Liked It
Calorie Counter: 31 pieces = 1 serving= 190 calories, 8g fat
Price: $1.00 purchased at Target
Hershey Whoppers Website

Look What the Bunny Brought - Day 2 - Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix

Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
Originally uploaded by SugarPressure.com

This candy was good enough that I wanted it to have a review all to itself. The Candy Professor asked me the other day if I had tried this mix, but I was completely unaware it existed. I finally found it at Kohl's in their Easter section. We do not have a lot of different places to look for candy where I live, so it often takes some serious hunting to find something like this. I'm really glad I did find it though. Here's a quick review...

This mixture has several great items in it. Of course, there are Jelly Belly jelly beans inside. There are not a lot of them, but there are some great flavors. Starting with my favorites, lemon and lime, oh my, I ate all of these instantly (my son won't notice they are gone). You can also find cantaloupe, grapefruit, some type of punch flavor, and what I think is grape, inside this package.

The other candy in this mix includes moulded sugar candy (mellocremes) in great Easter shapes. Ducks and rabbits mostly--I absolutely loved the super sweet flavor and texture of these. You can also find candy corn (which is an odd thing for Easter...but maybe this is why corn syrup is included in the ingredients list, ha ha ha, a little candy humor). You will also find some foil covered chocolate eggs which were made of an okay quality chocolate, nothing special. I liked the giant chocolate and candy shell malted milk eggs, they were excellent.

Overall, my son is going to love this candy and I think all kids would love it. It's a very, very super sweet and full of sugar candy mix. It's fun to get something from Jelly Belly that isn't just jelly beans and after reviewing several bags of them, we were ready for something different. I also think this would make a beautiful mixture sitting out on a table (for all ages), it is full of so much color that's perfect for Spring and Easter. I enjoyed snacking a bit on this package before I packed it up and put it into my son's Easter basket.

Just saw this on Amazon: 'Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix 9oz.' by Jelly Belly for $6.19


Taste: 4/5 Really Liked It
Calorie Counter: 1/6 of a package = 1.5oz = 1 serving= 160 calories, 2g fat
Price: $3.78 purchased at Kohls's
Jelly Belly Store Link for Deluxe Easter Mix

Look What the Bunny Brought - Day 1

This week I'll be looking at what items I'm putting in my 5 year old's Easter basket. I have a lot of Easter candy purchased, so I cannot review it one candy at a time. I'm calling this the "Easter-basket-palooza-extravaganza". I should trademark that, I'm sure Wonka would want to use it.

Brach's Classic Jelly Bird Eggs are an Easter classic. As we opened the bag and tried the first few bird eggs, my wife said, "This taste like Easter" and I agree with her. These are not the fanciest jelly beans out there. They don't even have the greatest taste. What they do have is the loyalty of customers who always put these in their children's Easter baskets. These are lightly flavored. There's no exciting flavor that blows you away. They are not even flavored all the way through. However, a fresh bag of these for $1.00 is very, very hard to beat. They are not great, like a Jelly Belly, but they sure do taste good.

Taste: 4/5 Really Liked It
Calorie Counter: 14 pieces = 1 serving= 150 calories, 0g fat
Price: $1.00 purchased at Walgreen's
Farley's Sathers - Brachs Website

I purchased this Reese's Pieces Peanut Butter Carrot because it is so very cute. I love the very clever packaging. This is an existing product that Hershey did not change, but repackaged for the Easter holiday. It's the same product they normally sell for $.50 but for Easter it's repackaged and sold for $1.00. These look great in any Easter basket and I can't resist Reese's Pieces, they are a very tasty classic.

Taste: 4/5 Really Liked It
Calorie Counter: 50 pieces = 1 serving= 200 calories, 10g fat
Price: $1.00 purchased at Wal-Mart
Hershey - Reese's Pieces Website

No Easter basket is complete without a PEZ Candy & Dispenser Bunny. PEZ is such a wonderful classic candy that kids love. I know my son loves loading up a dispenser and eating the PEZ compressed sugar bricks. Since 1 roll is only 35 calories, I don't mind letting my son eat an entire roll and he really thinks he's getting something special, eating so many pieces of candy. It's also "how" he eats them that's special, biting each one out of the bunny and making up games with it. It's candy you can play with, and that's one thing kids love. There are several other wonderful PEZ dispensers you can purchase, I loved all of them, but liked the bunny one the most.

Taste: 3/5 Liked It
Calorie Counter: 1 Roll = 1 serving= 35 calories, 0g fat
Price: $1.00 purchased at Walgreen's
PEZ Website

Wonka SweeTarts Jelly Beans

Wonka SweeTarts Jelly Beans
Originally uploaded by SugarPressure.com

Here is yet another great jelly bean that is for sale this Easter season. These jelly beans are made by Wonka and carry over the SweeTarts name and tangy taste from the circular sugar powder pressed candies you can buy in rolls at the grocery store check-out. I would have to say that this jelly bean is toward the top of my list for non-gourment jelly beans, with the Starburst jelly beans winning by a slight margin. Keep reading for some of my thoughts on this candy.

I'm not a big fan of SweeTarts in general. I find the newer formula they are using on SweeTarts and Chicks and Ducks to be inferior to the old recipe. As I pointed out in my Valentine's Day SweeTarts heart comparison review, the new formula makes the candy turn to powder in your mouth almost instantly, which leads to fits of choking on powder. The taste has also been modified and it is not an improvement over the old taste. Because of this, this year I have avoided the Chicks and Ducks that I've bought religiously every Easter for years (pun intended). I bought these jelly beans knowing my very strong opinions on SweeTarts in general because I really did want to compare them to the other jelly beans I've been reviewing.

As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, I was very surprised at how much I liked these jelly beans. There are 6 flavors in this bag; cherry, lemon, grape, blue punch, green apple and orange. Like most things we sample at our house, we LOVED the citrus flavors. The lemon was our absolute favorite with its slightly citrusy, refreshing, perky lemon flavor. The orange was our second favorite, but we thought it need more of an orange PUNCH! because it was only slightly orangey, but still very good. I liked the green apple flavor, I thought it was only slightly apple but still had a very good flavor. My wife was done sampling after the orange and lemon. The other flavors were nothing spectacular, although still good. The only flavor we hated was the blue punch, I hate this flavor for a normal SweeTart and I hated it as a jelly bean. I mean, what flavor is blue punch anyway? I tossed all of those into a bowl along with the grape, cherry and leftover lemon, orange and green apple and dropped them in our kitchen/break room at work. They did disappear after a few days, so there must be some SweeTarts fans (or mindless snackers) at my work.

I especially enjoyed the nice tangy flavor of these jelly beans. I also enjoyed the overall texture. These jelly beans were soft and chewy and the outside shell had a melt in your mouth quality that we really liked. The shell was a very nice surprise. I would say that these jelly beans taste exactly like their powdered sugar cousins, which is good for SweeTarts fans.

You can find other reviews of these jelly beans at Candyblog.Net, The Candy Enthusiast and at Candy Addict.


Taste: 4/5 Really Liked It
Calorie Counter: 26 pieces = 1 serving= 140 calories, 0g fat
Price: $2.00 at Target
Wonka Website

Jelly Belly - Pink Lemonade

Jelly Belly has a crazy number of mixes for sale in stores at all times. I found a few new ones at Wal-Mart and could not resist picking one up to add to my jelly bean stash. I picked the Pink Lemonade bag because it's a mixture of lemon and cotton candy Jelly Belly beans, both of which are favorites at our house. The other mixes were Blueberry Muffin, Key Lime Pie and Berry Smoothie.

These were located in the color coded sections next to the Easter candy aisles. Everything in the section was yellow or pink, part of a whole Spring and Easter theme. It was the same for the other Jelly Belly mixes mentioned above.

We loved both flavors in this mix by themselves. But, when you put 2 cotton candy with 1 lemon it really tastes exactly like pink lemonade. The flavor is fantastic. We loved combining the flavors but both flavors are great on their own. It's a win-win situation in my opinion. Whatever comes out of the bag tastes great. We love the flavor of cotton candy and these beans taste almost like the real thing. (At some point, I'll link photos of the cotton candy machine my in-laws bring to all family events.) All that is missing is the great super sugary-sweet stick-to-your-face aspect of cotton candy, but the flavor is perfect. The lemon flavor was amazing on it's own too. Light lemon and tart flavor that reminds you of lemonade, so good.

While you could go to the bulk bins and buy your own mix, I really like how Jelly Belly has packaged this for you already. I'm not sure about you, but when I'm looking at all those amazing bins and trying to figure out what flavors to get, I have such a hard time making up my mind. There are way too many choices and I love ALMOST every flavor Jelly Belly has to offer. This bag is a decent price and makes it very easy to decide what to get. As long as you like all the flavors in the bag, this is a great item to pick up at the store.

Taste: 4/5 Really Liked It
Calorie Counter: 35oz beans = 1 serving = 140 calories, 0g fat
Price: $2.99 at Wal-Mart
Jelly Belly Website