Friday, April 13, 2012

Raspberry M&Ms

This blog certainly features a lot of artisan chocolate bars, which I like doing because first, these bars are generally well-crafted and delicious, and second, because they are not cheap and most readers likely want to know what will and won’t be worth their while before they invest.

Yes, chocolate is an investment. Possibly a more sound investment than a lot of equities these days.

However, not everybody has access to this kind of chocolate on a regular basis. So every so often, I try to review something that might be more accessible to most, possibly chocolate that can be found at a standard grocery or drug store. When I found out that Raspberry M&Ms were being rolled out, I figured that this was a perfect opportunity – a new product, easy to find, and delightfully combining berry and chocolate flavors.

Then, I tried to find them myself, at a few dozen grocery stores and drugstores. No luck.

So much for accessible.

Until the day that I saw them on a shelf at a downtown DC CVS.

Wonderful day. Even more wonderful: the raspberry M&Ms are dark, not milk, chocolate based, which gave me homes for a more intense chocolate flavor than the standard M&Ms.
A distinct berry aroma emerges the minute you open the bag, while the red and pink colors give raspberry M&Ms a nice aesthetic appeal – for M&Ms – and elicit thoughts of berry flavors.
They also happen to be quite large compared to plain M&Ms, with a thicker candy shell that takes longer to melt away, but a higher overall chocolate to candy ratio.

 
Once the shell dissolves, the raspberry flavor is clear, with a generic coffee-centric dark chocolate flavor coming forth next. The chocolate has a gritty melt characteristic of low quality chocolate – but come on, these are M&Ms. Not fine chocolate with carefully selected cocoa butter. Enjoy them for what they are – candy, and in this case, candy with a relatively varied and pleasing flavor profile.

And of course, if you are an M&M chomper without the patience to let them melt (you know who you are), you’ll get less of the raspberry and chocolate flavors with the sugar of the candy shell dominating instead.

13 comments:

  1. If you had a stress fracture and used all of your dark chocolate M&M medicine before the healing period was over, which M&M variety would you recommend for complete recovery?

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  2. I love M&Ms!! My favorite is peanut butter but I will be on the lookout for these raspberry ones!

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  3. oh dear me, I need to find these immediately. I was HOPING it would be dark chocolate...

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  4. Oh man. now I want these really bad!

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  5. Y'know -- I can read your blog but not miss chocolate that much. Until now. Sigh. M&Ms....

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  6. I saw these and they were perhaps the ONLY variety I wasn't interested in..until now!

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  7. It's still the peanut butter ones that I wish would come to Australia...

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  8. Girl the day I let an m and m melt in my mouth is well a new day haha...They do sound good-I may have to do some hunting for them. Though-somehow if you struggled to find them in downtown DC, I might struggle just a bit to find them in rural upstate...ha!

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  9. I've had a bag of these for a couple months I've been meaning to crack open, thanks for the reminder! ;) Maybe I'll throw 'em into some cookies...

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  10. These sound yummy! I love raspberries, so I'm hoping these will live up to my expectations. Can't wait to find some.

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  11. Classy! Actually, I mean that. I've never bought fancy M&M's.

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  12. Wow! These might just be amazing!
    I love m&m's but really don't like smarties. Smarties have such a differnet mouth feel - they are harder. M&M's for the win!

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  13. Exec. Summary: CBS (Chocolate-Better-Than-S*x)

    Let me tell u these things are chocolate CRACK!!!! I hope they're "limited time only" -- it's been 8 months! -- 'cause I've never had anything take away my willpower like these! & no *little* bags available!!! I honestly thought all these years "Melt in your mouth" only meant "not in your hands," but if melting these in ur mouth is like y'all say, I might need professional help! I'm talking Betty Ford here! I just might choose the coronary & die with a big smile on my face. :)

    All kidding aside, life has made me kind of ascetic now in my 40s, plus I'm a trained moral theologian, so when I pull on clothes in the middle of the night & make a special trip... or I'm in the drugstore or supermarket and tell myself NO, and moments later grab me one of those purple *sacks*... well, I'm wondering, are they spiked with nicotine or something?!! rat poison?! extra caffeine?! coca? opiates? extra sugar or fats or something?! booze?! I've never had an addiction problem before.... It's possible I assumed they were for a very ltd time, because they came out just after the Dark Choco. Mint ones, which I was associating with St. Patrick's Day (green!), but they too have stayed around. Point being, I may have felt less inhibited 'cause 'they won't be around forever!'

    Also, I've recently realized they remind me of better times, in the '80s, when I was drinking choco.-raspberry tea for a while, & that stuff was almost as good as this(!). Compared to the tea, these M&Ms are like mainlining it, or like a choc.-raspb. I-V drip!

    Sorry if all the drug & medical references offend, but my last gainful employment was in that field, so the comparisons come pretty readily to me....

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