The pros: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Honey Mints are a spin on peppermint patties, but with a strong honey flavor. People who are looking to have more natural ingredients in their candy might want to give this a look.
The cons: Strong honey flavor from the fact that there are only three ingredients in this. This is just as sugar laden as the more commercially available peppermint patties.
The verdict: Trader Joe's is known for the basics and the abstract food items it sells . This manages to be both in the fact that it's a back to basics food item using only three ingredients. Usually, a peppermint patty has an entire list of ingredients. I wondered if this would actually be tasty, or if the lack of ingredients would cause me regret buying these. As a rule of thumb, I can barely sit through a movie without eating an entire box of Junior Mints. There are much closer to York Peppermint Patties. Fortunately for this mint addict, I had no problems polishing off this bag.
The first thing that struck me about eating these was how crisp the chocolate was that surrounded the mint center. The bottom of the mint also had a very thick coating which made the bitterness of the chocolate very apparent. The middle part of this is where the honey flavor became very pronounced. The chocolate seemed to mask the honey flavor, but the center is only honey and peppermint oil. Texturally, the center of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Honey Mints was somewhere in between a Junior Mint and a York, but much closer to the latter. After one of these, the taste of honey was very prominent, but after a few the flavor mellowed.
For $3.99 for about 18 pieces of candy, they aren't bad, it just depend on how much you like honey and how important natural ingredients are to you. They weren't my favorite mint out there. In fact, I'm partial to Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Mint Creams. Yes, I'll admit, I've purchased this item twice, because it was a bit harder to describe that most especially with only three ingredients.
Overall, I'm not sure I'm going to buy a third bag of these. I think they are something fun to try, but the emphasis of this product is that they have more natural ingredients. They're good, but they would not be my go to peppermint candy of choice.
If you do buy this product, here is a quick visual run down of what you can expect:
The bag:
The nutritional information:
The ingredients:
Out of the package you get:
Would I buy this again? I wasn't crazy about the overwhelming honey flavor, but it did grow on me. If you enjoy peppermint patties, this is at least worth a try once. I'm not sure if I would buy this again although I had to purchase two bags in making this review because I kept eating them.
Want to see more items I've reviewed from Trader Joe's? Click on Thoughts & Reviews of Trader Joe’s for a searchable list.
Did you try it? Let me know what you think in the comments section!
May Walker says
Our family loves the Dark Chocolate Honey Mints and our Trader Joe's does not carry any longer. They said they are discontinued. Where can I get them?
becomebetty says
If you can't find them, then check on either amazon or ebay.