Haribo Dragibus

To defend my title as an absolute sugar lover, I want to present another goodie to you, today.

Most of you probably know the brand Haribo which are quite famous for their gummy candy all over the world. Although it is actually a German confectionery company, that doesn’t mean that we can also get hold of all the different products that are out there.

One of these seemingly exclusive varieties are the Haribo Dragibus. They are supposed to be quite popular in France and also pretty much only available in this country, as far as I know.

There are three different Dragibus varieties: Dragibus Bi Cool, Dragibus Soft and the original Dragibus. I got a 120g pack of the original ones in one of my latest (rather extensive) online orders of foreign sweets.

Teekanne 'Sweeteas'

As a lover of both tea and sweet treats, a combination of the two basically just had to appeal to me. Naturally, I got all excited when I saw new tea creations online which are supposed to emulate the taste of the world's most loved pastries. This excitement was followed by big disappointment when my local supermarket didn't stock them and finally ended with even bigger excitement when I finally found them in a big department store in a city near me.

The new tea range I’m talking about is by the brand Teekanne and was appropriately named 'Sweeteas'.

So far, there are 3 different flavours: Caramel Apple Pie, Lemon Cake and Blueberry Muffin all of which are flavoured fruit infusions.

First of all, I have to say that the smell of all three of these is just heavenly when you pour the boiling water on them. If you closed your eyes, you could literally imagine to be standing in your local bakery! Also, they are all naturally quite sweet due to the stevia leaves contained.
But now, let's get to each individual blend!

Blueberry Muffin:

This blend combines the slight tartness of blueberries with the tenderly sweet note of a muffin - I am very pleased!

Ingredients: apples, hibiscus, rose hip, stevia leaves, muffin aroma, blueberry aroma.

The Chocolate Factory

As nearly everything’s normally shut down on Sundays, me and my family occasionally like to visit a little seaside resort nearby called Eckernförde on those days. The shops there are allowed to be opened because of a special regulation for such resorts here in Germany.

The city certainly doesn't offer a ton of different stores, but I really enjoy browsing around the little shops without the intention of necessarily buying anything.

Anyway, there is a very special place in Eckernförde that is definitely worth stopping by - especially for everyone that has a sweet tooth like I do! The place I’m talking about is in fact a candy factory (in German 'Bonbonkocherei') where you can see how the candies are made and also purchase a ton of different sweets. Although I should warn you: Especially on Sundays it’s really busy in there!

However, this place also includes a separate chocolate factory in an outbuilding  which I stepped into as it was much less crowded. And let’s be honest: I prefer chocolate over wine gum and hard candies anyway.

For me, it’s always interesting to see which types of chocolate they have to offer when I go in there, as those tend to  vary throughout the different seasons. For instance, you can get ‘apple-cinnamon’ in winter and something like ‘strawberry’ or ‘orange’ in spring and summer.

All of the different chocolates just look so nice and appetizing next to each other! ^_^

Top 10 favourite Yogi Teas

As I'm slowly revealing all of my more or less secret passions, I'll let you in on another peculiarity of mine: not only am I obsessed with sweets and nail polish but I'm also a huge lover of tea.

I have already tried quite a lot of different tea brands from all over the world and if I were to pick a favourite one out of them all, it would have to be Yogi Tea.

Let's first talk about the amazing idea of putting a yoga pose on the side of every tea box. In my mind, there couldn't be any better recipe to help you relax and destress than the combination of a warming tea and yoga!

After getting the actual tea bag out of its envelope, you also get to read a lovely little philosophical quote/ piece of advice.
["Happiness is taking things as they are."// "To a friend you can lend the whole content of your heart." // "Empty yourself and let the universe fill you."]

Anyway, enough about the packaging and onto the actual tea itself.

Yogi Tea make a variety of different spice and herbal teas which are all based on authentic Ayurvedic recipes. By now, they have already brought out over 40 different kinds of tea! Out of all these blends I'd like to recommend my personal top 10 to you.

[Side note: Yogi Tea also does green and black teas but due to my hypersensitivity to caffeine -I literally will not get a wink of sleep if I have some-, I’ve only included caffeine-free teas]

10. Women’s Tea

I have to say that I was kind of sceptical towards the concept of a tea that is specifically meant to be for women. According to Yogi Tea it’s supposed to 'support the feminine side of creativity and inner balance'. Although I'm not quite sure whether it really does that for me, what I can say is that it's pleasantly light, comforting and just delicious tasting.

Prevailing flavours: ginger, cinnamon, orange, fennel, chamomile.

9. Classic

You can never go wrong with a simple, classic and yet still somewhat exciting Chai tea. Just add a little bit of sweetness and milk to it and you've got your perfect, homemade Chai Tea Latte!

Prevailing flavours: cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, black pepper.

Glico Pocky Milk & Strawberry Flavour

There are honestly so many reasons why I’m urgently wanting to go to Japan one day:

1. I have been loving to read manga, watch anime and play Japanese video games since I was a little girl and there are so many good memories attached to these things (like my brother and I having intense Pokémon sessions together).
2. The country's stunningly beautiful landscape and architecture is so fascinating to me.
3. Their exceptional fashion sense as well as the entire lifestyle in general just excite me.
4. They've got so darn many flavours of Pocky! (with this being the most important aspect, of course)

Although Pocky is also sold under the brand name “Mikado” in Germany, there are by far not as many flavours available as there are in Japan.

Just look at the amazing variety (even without including the huge amount of seasonal editions that come out every year)!

Skittles Desserts

In today's post I'm going to present another goodie from one of my foreign candy orders to you. This time it's about a sweet produced by the Wrigley Company or more precisely by their famous brand Skittles.

We can also get hold of Skittles in Germany but there are only a few sorts available. The original Skittles Fruits as well as the Crazy Sours have been out for a longer time already and I just recently passed a supermarket shelf that held the Skittles Wild Berry which I hadn't seen before.

However, my internet research has shown me that there are many more creations available, especially in America, like the Skittles Confused/Riddles, Tropical, Darkside and Desserts.

Especially the last one tickled my fancy (which might also be due to the pink packaging) so I went on and purchased a 56,7 g / 2.0 oz pouch to give them a try!

This creation includes 5 different flavours which are all named after a certain dessert creation.

Here are the 5 sorts reviewed in detail:

1. Blueberry Tart

The shell of this one initially tastes nothing but sweet and maybe a little fruity. However, once you start chewing it, you can sort of taste the slight tartness that a blueberry would have. What I definitely miss to actually make this resemble a dessert, is the typical soft sweetness of a pastry, though. The flavour reminds me more of a fresh berry jam which is very delicious, nonetheless!

Jelly Belly "Snapple Mix"

As I've already confessed to my love for Jelly Belly Beans it will probably come as not much of a surprise to you that I'm going to present another mix in this post.

Similar to Jelly Belly "Soda Pop Shoppe", the flavours in the following mix are also based on drinks that actually already exist. Instead of transforming drinks from different soda brands into the famous bean-shaped sugar candy, they focused only on one brand, this time: Snapple!

Whilst the artificial flavouring/ colouring could have been a point of criticism against "Soda Pop Shoppe", Jelly Belly claims to only have used 100% natural flavours as well as colours only from natural sources in this mix.

To be more precise, they used real fruit purees and juices in the production, such as cranberries, lemons, raspberries, cherry juice, grape juice, kiwi juice, mango juice or strawberry juice. Sounds promising, doesn't it?

Let's have a closer look at the 5 different flavours in this mix:

1. Fruit Punch

What a way to start! The taste of this bean could best be described as intensive and fruity. More precisely, it is a nice blend of grape, pineapple, orange and apple flavours. Although I have to say the grape flavour is definitely the most dominant one. This might also be due to the colour which I wouldn’t necessarily associate with pineapples or oranges.

Pretzel M&M's

Sometimes the internet - and with that the chance to see how many different kinds of products exist all over the world- can be rather disadvantageous - at least when you're as excessively curious as myself. To be more precise, the disadvantage is that I end up purchasing products online that I can't get hold of in Germany at a horrendously immoderate price. The order I placed (that amongst others contained the Jelly Belly Soda Pop Shoppe) also included a pack of Pretzel M&M's.

As far as I know, there are only three sorts of M&M's available in Germany at the moment: Milk Chocolate M&M's, Crispy M&M's as well as the Peanut M&M's.

I'm already a big fan of the first two sorts whereas the Peanut kind just isn't for me, which is not too surprising considering my fundamental distaste for nuts in general (I assume many people without this restriction love it though, otherwise it would probably have long been taken off the market by now).

Following my natural instinct, I immediately put the Pretzel M&M's into my virtual basket shortly after they had appeared on my screen.

Jelly Belly "Soda Pop Shoppe"

I've been a fan of the Jelly Belly Beans for quite a long time now. One thing I especially like about them is that they have really distinct flavours. During my longtime career as a professional candy tester (my personal everlasting pipe dream) I developed a slight avaration to wine gum that tastes nothing but sweet and somewhat gummy-like so that the only difference between the "flavours" seems to be the variation in the artificial colouring agents used in the production.

With Jelly Belly on the other hand, you get many different flavours which are mostly identifiable even without looking them up. The taste is fairly intensive and they come in a huge variety with already alone 50 flavours being in the official range. In Addition, there are also the special flavours from extra assortments like the ice cream parlor mix, smoothie blend, cocktail classics, 5-flavor-sours or others.

Unfortunately, not every single mix that exists in the States is also available in Germany which is why I placed an order online. Amongst other goodies, this order also included the Jelly Belly "Soda Pop Shoppe" which I'm going to present in this post.

The mix contains 6 different flavours which are all based on the taste of soft drinks by popular soda brands.

1. Orange Crush

This sort really does taste just like orange lemonade! It has a very intensive and slightly artificial orange aroma just as regular soda never tastes exactly like the actual fresh fruit. Of course, this jelly bean doesn't have any carbonic acid in it but nonetheless it kind of has this prickling freshness that is typical for a good soft drink.

Lindt HELLO Chocolate Sticks

From time to time many chocolate companies come out with new products in the craziest varieties imaginable. However, most of these novelties cannot persuade me or I don't even dare trying them (my taste buds just don't agree with the combination of chocolate and chili).
Nevertheless a relatively new product range could actually surprise me. The Swiss chocolate company Lindt, who are known for their rather traditional and old-fashioned image, launched a new chocolate collection called HELLO which is supposed to target a much younger audience. The packaging has a modern design with each product "introducing" itself with the words "Hello my name is ... nice to sweet you". The appealing presentation as well as the interesting sounding flavours (of which there are currently 8 out) eventually made me want to try the products. 

You can get them in the regular 100g-size and also in stick-shaped bars (about 40g) which is a really practical size when you're not quite sure whether you're actually going to like a flavour. So far, I only bought the sticks but I'm pretty sure the bigger version tastes just the same.

Cookies & Cream:

milk chocolate surrounding a cream filling (36%) and small chocolate chip cookie pieces (8%)

Although this flavour is definitely quite delicious it is also not very exciting at the same time. I would prefer if the cream had more of a taste of its own as it is not much more than very sweet. Also, the cookie pieces could be a bit bigger which might balance out the sweetness of the filling.