New Foods: Marich's Pumpkin Spice Caramels

A few years ago, I discovered some fantastic candies at the Andronico's supermarket in the Sunset.  They were chocolate covered peanut butter caramels, and they were awesome.  How could they not be? To me, peanut butter + dessert = delicious*.  And on top of that, these little beauties had chocolate and caramel, too.  Are you kidding me?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Peanut butter, chocolate, and caramel?  You've got a sale there, mister!  Unfortunately, Andronico's pulled the product (they were presumably exacting revenge against me for referring to the store as overpriced).  Every now and then I pick up similar looking products when I come across them.  I'm just trying to recapture the joyful taste sensation that Andronico's introduced to me and then cruelly took away.  They never measure up.  This post is about the most recent poseur caramel.

A couple of weeks ago, Duc and I were invited to dinner at a friend's.  We brought a homemade apple crisp made with apples from our tree.  Apple crisps must be accompanied by vanilla ice cream (California state law.  Proposition 75.  Look it up), so we stopped by Canyon Market in Glen Park.  Now, you can't buy just one thing at a grocery store.  Everybody knows that.  Fortunately, Canyon Market was selling a curious little product, Marich's Pumpkin Spice Caramels, and I was instantly reminded of those Andronico's chocolate peanut butter caramels.  I had to try them.

They weren't cheap.  $5.89 for an 8 oz. package.  According to our scale, one caramel (the last one, as it turns out) weighed 0.125 oz.  So the package had about 64 caramels, so each one cost 9 cents.  But did I get $0.09 of pleasure out of each caramel?  Well, let's put it this way, I have no intention of buying them again.  They're not terrible, though.  They're sweet, and they definitely have some of the flavors you associate with pumpkin pie.  I think Duc put it best.  They're just a little too much.

I think you can get to the crux of the problem by looking at the list of ingredients.  First ingredient: white chocolate (right now, as my mom reads this she's wincing and saying something nasty about how white chocolate isn't chocolate).  I have no real problem with white chocolate, but it doesn't really contribute any flavor to food.  It's really just sweetened fat.  The second problem with the list: there's no mention of pumpkin at all.  I'm not sure how well pumpkin would hold up in confections and candy, but this still feels like a case of false advertising to me.

So I guess I'll just have to keep looking for that elusive candy to replace the Andronico's chocolate peanut butter caramels.  Or those petty bastards at Andronico's could just bring them back.

* Thursday night I had dinner at a Brazilian Churrascaria.  They had a dessert called a "Peanut Butter Thing" (I have to assume it's a traditional Brazilian treat).  There was no way I was going to pass on that.