Dreyers/Edys Fruit Bars: Mango

I should probably admit up front that I have nothing but love for practically the entire line of Dreyers/Edy's Fruit Bars. They are additively refreshing and they are almost always my bedtime snack of choice.

Mango is the newest bar to join the family. Much like the strawberry, blueberry-açaí and the elusive (but irresistible) peach bar, the mango is made up of what I believe is frozen puree--rather than the flavors which are more like simple frozen juice (like the grape bar, etc).



The flavor of this bar is like that of a perfectly ripe mango. Sweet, with that vaguely pine-like flavor and none of that "green" taste that under-ripe fruit can have. The bar finishes with that slightly apricot/peachy aftertaste that seems to be found less when eating an actual ripe mango on its own, and more from products made with mango. I am not sure how much sense that last made--but it tastes good either way. I know a lot of people like to sprinkle a mixture of salt and chili powder on fresh mangos, and I don't see why that couldn't also be done to the bars. I personally don't really like mango that way, so I didn't experiment with it.

The texture of the bar starts melting in your mouth instantly. I know that must sound redundant, but the texture is velvety smooth to the point it reminds me of a chunk-free frozen smoothie. Unlike the juice bars, or even a kids style ice pop that stays reasonably solid as you eat it, these bars go just shy of actual liquid in your mouth. Again, it is one of the best treats on a hot day (or night).

I am even going to so far as to say this flavor is second only to the pineapple, it's just that good!



PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

PRICE:
$3.99

CALORIES:
80 calories per bar

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Fat free, kosher, gluten free, does not contain nuts.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
dreyers.com

The Power of Fruit: Tropical Fruit Bar

Summer weather has finally hit Southern California. Boy, has it hit! We've had high temperatures around 100 for about a week now, and a couple days ago it reached 106 degrees F. (For those of you outside the States, that's a hair over 41 C.) And let me tell you something: just because this is reclaimed desert and it's dry heat, that doesn't make it any less oppressive. Air conditioning, IMHO, is the greatest invention since the wheel.

Anyway, one of my favorite warm weather snacks is the frozen juice bar. And the good people at The Power of Fruit were kind enough to send me a stash of their 100% whole frozen fruit bars.

When these guys say pure fruit, they mean it. There are no added colors, preservatives or sweeteners, and each bar is the equivalent of half a day's serving of fruit. They sent me three varieties, and I decided to start with the Tropical Fruit bar because my flavor obsession of the moment is pineapple.

The Tropical bar features pineapple, mango and banana. These bars are actually old school stickless tubes, the kind you squeeze out of their plastic wrappers.



What I liked best about the bar/tube is that you can actually see the chunks of fruit. I also liked that the fruit was in such big pieces that it was easy to tell which was pineapple and which was mango. The banana chunks were less distinct, and seemed to act sort of like a binder to hold it all together. The flavors of all of the fruits were really bright and fresh.




Because it's a plastic-wrapped tube, you push your portion up so there's minimal drip. Texture-wise, this is what kind of threw me: As I said, everything is in what looks like decent-sized chunks. And that's what it feels like too. So it wasn't what you'd think of as a Popsicle. It was more like you'd made a fruit mash yourself and frozen it solid -- not a texture I am used to, but which I guess is the whole idea, and it's a good one.

All told, it's a really refreshing treat! I'm looking forward to tasting the others.



PURCHASED FROM:
Sample from company

CALORIES:
30 calories per bar.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
poweroffruit.com

Chocomize Custom Candy Bar: Currying Flavor

Once again, guys, I am going to indulge my love of creating custom candy concoctions (say that five times fast) by reviewing another bar that the nice folks over at Chocomize let me create.

I love Indian food. This was not always the case. In fact, as I have said in previous reviews, it really took the chef/owner of a sadly now-closed Indian restaurant in northern Georgia to bring me around -- but once he did, I was hooked. (Ken, wherever you may be, I would kill for an Indian crabcake). In addition to loving not only traditional Indian (and Indian fusion) dishes, I also just like the spices and ingredients that go into them.



"Currying Flavor" was inspired by my love of all things Indian. (And I'm hard core here. I even have my own copy of the Bollywood musical version of Fight Club.) As I do with all my custom bars, I am only rating the bar based on the individual ingredients and NOT the overall taste of the bar. Because I put the combination together myself, the ingredients could be top-notch on their own, but maybe never should have been put together -- and if that's the case, the fault is mine and not Chocomize's, so I won't ding them for it.



Anyway, Currying Flavor contains:

A milk chocolate base
Crystallized rose petals
Hot curry powder
Roasted pistachios
Diced mango

I liked the milk chocolate base more in this bar than I did in the first review I tried it with (the "Sugar High" bar). It's still very milky and a little sweeter than I prefer -- but in this case, the sweetness balances the heat and spice from the curry and the mango perfectly, and it just works really well.

The mango chunks are exactly what you'd expect of dried mango. They are generously sized and are a little chewy. The flavor is fresh and it has that nice, light warmth that mango has. The mango pieces are good enough to snack on by themselves!

The pistachios are on the small side, but they whole and very fresh. They were still nice and crunchy, though I would have liked for them to have been salted a bit more. But they were good either way.



The curry powder is liberally sprinkled on the top of the chocolate. There is enough so that you see it and you definitely taste it...but not so much that you feel like it's flocked like a cheap Christmas tree. I like it because it adds just enough curry to wake you up and let you know it's there, but not so much that you wonder what demon ever possessed you to put curry in with chocolate.

The rose petals were a pleasant surprise. Honestly, I was expecting them to simply taste like sugar. And while they certainly do have a sugary edge and crunch to them, you can actually taste the rose! I love that!

All in all, every single one of the ingredients on its own was pretty good. Yes, the milk chocolate is still sweeter than I liked, but when paired with everything else it just worked.

While I will not be rating the bar on the overall taste, I wish I could -- everything just paired up much better than I could have hoped for.

If you would like to try this bar (or create your own), the nice folks over at Chocomize have given my readers a generous 10% off coupon. If you use coupon code "Gigi" at checkout, you get 10% off your order! How can ya say no to that?

This bar was just really, incredibly good!



PURCHASED FROM:
Sample from company

CALORIES:
133 Calories per 1/5th bar.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains nuts. May contain traces of milk, nuts and gluten.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
chocomize.com

O.N.E. Coconut Water with Mango

It's a cool, overcast day as I write this. Yes, we have them even here in sunny Southern California. However, I am kinda wishing that I was sitting on a sunny beach with a girly, fruity drink in my hand (the kind I normally do not drink).

Since I (sadly) will not be doing that anytime soon, I'm going to pretend that I am on a white sand beach while drinking this mango flavored coconut water. And yes, those of you who pay attention to my ramblings probably are well aware that I am on record as hating coconut. And I do. But I don't mind coconut flavor -- it's mostly the texture I dislike.



I reviewed the Guava flavored O.N.E. about a month ago, and was surprised at how refreshing I found it. It also passed the taste test of my best friend -- who shall officially be known as Mr. X, simply because he thinks it sounds cool who grew up in the islands. (It's a long story; just read the first review.) So once again, I made him my guinea pig...I mean guest reviewer.

Mr. X, incidentally, can always pick the most perfectly ripe mango in the bin. I couldn't pick one if my life depended on it, but he can walk to an enormous display of mangoes and pick up a perfect one on the first try. And he loves mango everything, so I thought this drink might be the drink of his dreams.

Inside the spiffy grownup juice box looking Tetra-Pak lurks a bright orange/yellow juice/water. It smells like mango puree -- and I mean that in a good way.

The first sip is a little on the salty side. The mango tastes strong but muted at the same time...weird and contradictory description, I know. It reminded more of mango leather than, say, freshly sliced mango. It doesn't taste artificial in any way, but it doesn't have that brightness that a really good cheek of cold, ripe mango has. (Yes, mango slices are called "cheeks." Like butt cheeks, OK?)



The coconut water itself doesn't really come through as much as it seemed to in the guava version. It's hiding in the background and you can only faintly taste it.

Mr. X's opinion and mine happened to mesh completely (as they often do) on this one. While he adds the extra praise that O.N.E. has once again provided the best packaged coconut water he has ever tasted, we both wish the mango flavor had been less dominant and that the coconut flavor had been stronger. But we'll give it a pass because it has electrolytes, and that's what plants crave!

Right?



PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

Extra Fruit Sensations Mango Smoothie Gum

OK, guys...I know we had gum week not that long ago, but I love gum and could not resist trying a new flavor.

Mango Smoothie is a mix of mango and strawberry. Why does it always have to be strawberry? While I don't mind some artificial flavors, strawberry is one that I either love or hate -- and most of the time it's hate.



Smelling the gum, it's like a mix of off-brand Kool Aid-type powder, cheap air freshener, and the bottom of an old woman's perfume soaked purse. But it is a pretty, light orange sherbet color.



Fortunately, it does taste better than it smells. It has almost a yogurty dairy note to it at first. It reminded me of a mango lassi. I liked it because it kept the fruit flavors nice and mellow.

You only taste the strawberry towards the end when the overall flavor starts to wane. And yes, it was the children's chewable vitamin taste I feared it would be. The best part, though, is the aftertaste. Once the yogurty mango and nasty strawberry are gone, it all melds into what tastes like white peach. Not sure how that happened, but I would have liked the gum better if the whole stick had tasted like that (of course then it really wouldn't have been mango...oh well).

Nothing special.



PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

Mikawaya Mango Mochi

I've eaten a lot of ice cream lately.

No, check that: I have eaten a lot of "frozen dairy dessert" lately. (Yes, Dreyer's/Edy's, I am mocking you.) And part of the reason for that is because it's just perfect ice cream weather...not too hot, not too cold.

So I figured it was time to add something "exotic" into the mix. What's more exotic than mango and mochi? (OK, probably everything else you can think of, but we'll allow me my delusion.)



Mochi, in case you're not sure, is a ball of ice cream -- or ice milk in some cases, but not this one -- that is encased in a thin dough made from pulverized sticky rice. But trust me when I say it tastes much better than it sounds.



The outer rice layer is sticky and kind of sweet. It doesn't have much flavor of its own. I think it's mostly there for texture -- and maybe as a kind of ice cream containment field. To describe the shell, I could tell you to imagine a gummy bear that's more gummy and less bear. Or a really thick Vietnamese spring roll wrapper.



The mango ice cream is the best part. The mango flavor is more sweet than tart. This version reminds me almost of a mango/pineapple blend. Any of the sour piney notes that mango can sometimes have are missing from this version. It's mango-lite, but in the best possible way.

The texture is smooth and creamy. While it is technically ice cream, it's not the highest fat most premium ice cream you've had in your life, so it doesn't have a very rich mouthfeel. If the pieces were bigger or if it was a scoop portion, that might be an issue...but in this case it's not a problem.

I really liked this flavor. Again, not the most complex or true-to-life mango, but overall it's very, very good. Definitely something I'll buy again.



PURCHASED FROM:
Trader Joe's

Matt's Muchies Island Mango

I wasn't sure I was the right person to review this flavor, Island Mango is a mango and coconut leather
I have a well documented hatred of coconut- well let's check that- I hate untoasted coconut. It's a texture thing, I like the flavor of coconut just fine. It's that moist, mushy yet oddly crunchy, stringy texture I really hate. Now toasted coconut manages not to have any of those problems. Luckily for me the good folks at Matt's Munchies thought of this (clearly they did it just for me because DUH! the world does in fact revolve around ME!) while I am not sure if the coconut is actually toasted or if it somehow seems to become toasted during the "leathering" process, but either why it has that great slightly crunchy, toasty taste and texture.

The Mango leather base is incredable! It's like someone took the most perfectly ripe slice of mango ever and dried that. It's sweet but it had that piney sour notes to it. Combined with the coconut it almost picks up a papayaesque flavor. .
I knew I would like the mango it's self but I am surprised at how much I liked the coconut with it.

For those of you who aren't coconut fans or can't eat coconut Matt's also makes a "plain" mango leather- there's nothing plain about it, it's the same fantastic mango base that's in the Island Mango.

By the way both leather's are under 100 calories (70 for the Island Mango and 50 for the Mango) and they are Organic and free of gluten, nuts, eggs & dairy. They are also certified both vegan and Kosher.


PURCHASED FROM:
Sample From Company
You can purchase directly from them by visiting their website HERE or by phone at (516)319-3135