Hello, I’m Sera. Welcome to my candy blog.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m head-over-heels in love with confectionaries. It all started with my unusually large sweet-tooth, paired with an adventurous palate, and a need to document it all.

If you ever have any suggestions, ideas (or both!) I’m always open to them. You can reach me at: sera (at) thecandyenthusiast.com

NOTE: Please, please, please do not take any of the photos on this site. I spent a lot of time and energy taking the photos myself and I wish for them to remain original to the blog. Thank you.

My goal as The Candy Enthusiast is to try everything once so you don’t have to. I think that’s pretty sweet, don’t you?

To follow up my review of the Dark Chocolate Peanut Chews earlier this week, here’s a peek at what some classic packaging looked like. I have to admit, I actually prefer this color scheme, as I feel it fits the candy better. 

A Cadbury Triple Decker bar, which is a tasty bar if you can find one to try! This one was raspberry and just look at how bright pink that is! Wow. I wish I remembered what it tasted like, but a picture is worth a lot in your imagination, right? It looks very flavorful.

An assortment of Pocky flavors available in winter season of 2007. Man that seems like ages ago…

These have always been a staple in my house growing up, as my parents love it so much. I was always confused because Lindt uses blue coloring for dark chocolate and red for milk, and it seems everyone else does it the other way around. Confusing. 

More candy from Finland: Mommin Lollipops! And they’re on skiis! Cute!

With Valentine’s Day only a few weeks away, I often get asked for chocolate and candy recommendations for gifts by friends and family. Being a candy enthusiast and all will lead to that, and over time I’ve acquired a few good ideas I’d like to share with you. So just in time for shopping, here’s a list of five sweet things to give to your sweetheart.

Please note that I have not received anything in payment from the companies mentioned here, I just think they’re great ideas.

1. Edible Chocolate Box from Charles Chocolates. Nothing says “I love You” like the traditional box of chocolates. Charles Chocolates takes it a step further by making the box edible as well. There’s many flavors and designs to choose from, so it’s easy to choose which the recipient will enjoy most. 

2. Good Quality Foreign Chocolate from Chocoshpere.com. Chocosphere carries all that great imported yet hard to find bars of chocolate. It’s easy to buy a few to make a gift set on your own. I highly recommend Amedai, Amano, El Rey, Michel Cluizel, Valrhona and Dolfin as personal favorites of mine.

3. Chocolate Silk Spa Gift Set from The Merry Chocoholic. ($34.50) A chocolate scented gift set that comes with body scrub, body butter and hand/body lotion. A good option for those who might not want to eat chocolate (gasp!) but still wants to indulge.

4. A Chocolatetelegram. For those out you in Europe, it’s a love letter and chocolate combined! Your sweetie will get a box with chocolates spelling out a message inside. A really cute idea.

5. Licorice Allsorts Earrings from ErikaPrice at Etsy.com. These cute earrings are a perfect option for the non chocolate eating lover in your life. The colorful licorice are nicely sculpted and a lot of fun.

This was given to me by one of my good friends from college. He comes from Finland, and he gave me a care package of Finnish candy. He knows I love the Moomins, so he gave me these little boxes of licorice. So cute! 

I wanted to let you all know that I am in the December 14th edition of Woman’s World magazine (the one with Paula Deen on the cover)! Exciting, yes? Well, it is for me at least.

I was interviewed by them a few months ago about a favorite budget chocolate truffle/bonbon that I particularly enjoy for a inexpensive indulgence. Which is a hard thing for me to choose, since I love so many! I eventually narrowed down my choice, but I’ll let you go peek in the magazine on page 43 to find out what it is. You can find the mention Here’s a hint though: it rhymes with “bees”. 

I wanted to make all my readers aware that of this past Monday, October 5th, the Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.) is requiring all bloggers as of December 1st to claim full disclosure of all their tried to advertisers and any free products we may receive.

So what does this mean to TCE? Not much, as I’ve done my best to tell you my readers whenever I’ve received samples of a particular candy. I will make an effort to make that more clear from now on. When accepting samples, I always make sure it’s a product I’m either interested in or am fairly confident that I can give a nice review to, as I really hate taking a freebie and then trashing it. I’d rather pay the money than deal with the guilt.

You can read the full article from the New York Times here.

I know this pertains mainly to all us bloggers, but I figured you as my readers should be aware of this as well.

Wow, can you believe it’s already been a year? I sure can’t!

I want to thank all my readers, whether they’ve stopped by just for a glance to those who regularly check back everyday. This blog is all for you.

I’ve been thinking for some time and I am going to change things around here a little bit. I’m going to start posting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from now on. I need to start making room for other things in my life, and it’s gotten to a point that even though I love writing here on TCE, I feel a need to cut back a little to make room for new shifts in priorities off the internet.

As always I’m open to your suggestions, comments, and stories. You can email me at sera(at)thecandyenthusiast.com

Thank you again. Here’s to another successful year full of sweet things! 

I realized a bit too late that I didn’t have a post for today. So sorry! To make up for it I’ll post some nice “eye candy”, or photos of candy that I’ve had but I’ve lost my tasting notes/they’re no longer available/ it’s been too long since I ate them to give a proper review. Sometimes it’s all about looking.

Times are tough and Mars wants to help. They’ve started the “Real Chocolate Relief Act” in hopes of making Americans smile more with gifts of free chocolate. Every Friday Mars will be giving away 500,000 pieces of chocolate at 9am at the website for the act, realchocolate.com, from now until September. Be sure to visit and enter your email to get some freebies!

I find this campaign very compelling since it’s a known fact that candy sales increase during a recession. I also like how it also is informing the public on how Mars isn’t making it’s chocolate into mockolate, like many companies are doing to cut manufacturing costs.

They also have this sweet video of Neil Patrick Harris supporting the Chocolate Relief Act:

He’s right, chocolate freebies are pretty awesome.

Links: Mars Real Chocolate Relief Website