Adventures in Eating: Dark Chocolate Minty Mallows

Marshmallow?
meh.
Dark Chocolate?
well......
Peppermint?
I'm listening....

I've been a terribly negligent horrible blogger.  I apologize.  Fortunately for you all, I have been provided with inspiration in the form of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Minty Mallows.  My good friend and lab-mate, Steve, put them on my desk and said, "Here's something for you to blog about." (true story).  That just goes to show you that inspiring me to blog is as simple as giving me free food.

Let's get down to brass tacks.  What are Minty Mallows?

They are "Light and Fluffy Peppermint Marshmallows Drenched in Smooth, Dark Chocolate", just like the box says.  There's a decidedly wintry theme to the decoration on the package -- ice, snow, candy canes, etc.  I don't know if Minty Mallows are a seasonal treat (just like Ma used to make us on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Eve back in the day), or if the mintyness is meant to evoke a cooling sensation a la York Peppermint Patties.

I'm not really a marshmallow guy, so these weren't exactly the best snack for me.  Marshmallows are too springy.  If I'm going to expend extra effort chewing, I better get a substantial pay-off in flavor.  Plain marshmallows are just gelatinized corn syrup, so the only flavor you get is sweet.  They're like eating big chalky gummi bears with no fruitiness.  You may like 'em, but they're not my fave.  The minty mallows supplement the mallow with -- you guessed it -- mint.  That's an improvement, but is it enough?  No!  Fortunately, the good people at Trader Joe's realized that, and they coated the mallow with a layer of dark chocolate.  Okay, now we're talking.

Here's what they're like to eat:  When you pop one in your mouth, it fills up a whole cheek -- left or right, it doesn't matter which.  Frankly, these suckers are too big.  If they were a little smaller you would get more dark chocolate per volume of mallow, and I'm in favor of that.  When you first bite down, the outer chocolate shell crumbles apart, and you get your first blast of mint.  The flavors aren't bad, but you still have that spongy wad of sugar to get through.  As you chew, the chocolate bits from the outer shell start to melt, and gradually, with effort, the mallow dissolves away.  What you're left with is a nice creamy residue of peppermint tinged dark chocolate coating the inside of your mouth, and eventually that too disappears.

Minty Mallows are just okay.  If it were up to me, I'd dump the mallow business completely and just make Dark Chocolate Mintys, and call it a day.