Sugar Savvy

I’ll spare you my usual account of how my pulse quickens when I see a new twist on an old favorite. This has been established. But I will say that I have yet to get very excited about any of the limited edition offerings I’ve seen thus far from the Almond Joy line, including Piña Colada and Key Lime. Key Lime I would try, but I just think dark chocolate goes so much better with coconut than milk chocolate, so it has never been much of a temptation to me.

On that note, my big regret with the “sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t” conundrum is that I ALWAYS feel like a nut and I ALWAYS feel like dark chocolate. So where does that leave me? Well, I’ll tell you… it leaves me quite frustrated with Peter Paul for never allowing the two (dark chocolate and almonds) to live together in perfect harmony on a single candy bar. If they truly wanted to fill an empty niche on the candy shelf, why don’t they just make an Almond Joy Dark, or, identically, a Mounds With Almonds? This, Mr. Paul, would earn you my devotion. (By the way, Peter Paul was purchased by Hershey in 1988, but continues to bear the Peter Paul logo – see pic.)

Okay, so even though it doesn’t involve almonds, the new bar that I came across earlier this week manages to tie three of my favorite flavors together: coconut, dark chocolate and orange. “Yeah”, I thought, “This one sounds like a winner.” I snagged 4 bars from the shelf, since they were such a deal at 2 for $1, and lord knows when and where I would find them again. You never realize just how limited the edition is going to be until sometimes it’s too late, as many of us have had the misfortune to experience.

When I opened the wrapper, it looked exactly like an original Mounds except for the fact that it seemed just a skosh smaller. (It is, in fact a full 3 grams smaller than the standard Mounds, f.y.i.) But it was when I broke the bar open that any previously-held Mounds paradigm was indeed subverted. The shredded coconut is ORANGE. Not just orange-flavored, but I mean really orange in color. I don’t know why this surprised me so much, but I suppose I expected simply an orange infusion in the chocolate or even just a slight orange tint to the coconut. But this filling is as orange-colored as a pumpkin. Not the muted orange-brown of pumpkin pie, but orange like an actual rind of a jack-o-lantern. It is very orange.

Once I got over this initial visual shock, I put the candy in my mouth – its true raison d’etre from the start. The texture as well as the coconut-chocolate ratio seemed to be identical to the standard version. However, my sister, who co-tasted along with my mom and me (family bonding through candy) thought that the coconut shred was a little more course than a plain Mounds. So I bought one (in the name of research) and upon close inspection, I noticed no discernable difference with regard to shred size.

In a “nutshell” I must tell you that I APPROVE. . My mom and sister, also big fans of dark chocolate and orange, both agree. Orange is one of the few fruit flavors that taste good to me in its artificial application, unlike cherry, raspberry, watermelon, and banana. The label’s claim of “naturally and artificially flavored” must be referring to the chocolate and coconut with regards to the “natural”, because the ingredients include nothing having to do with an actual orange. No matter. The orange flavor comes across just as it should, perfectly balanced to its coconut and dark chocolate partners. It is my hope this bar reaches the mouths of enough orange-chocolate lovers to somehow transcend “limited” status. Dare to dream.

Side note. All this talk has reminded me of a joke that I thought was pretty hysterical when I was about 9 years-old:

“You know, Reggie Jackson isn’t the only celebrity to have a candy bar named in his honor.”
“Oh, who else has one?”
“Well, Dolly Parton, of course. Haven’t you ever heard of a Mounds bar?”

(In my mind’s eye, this joke is being told by a rapid gum-chewing Burt Reynolds, circa Cannonball Run and Sharkey’s Machine…just to set the tone - and reveal my age.)