Toasted Marshmallow Jelly Belly Jelly Beans - 10 lbs bulk
Click to buy directly from Jelly Belly!
Click to buy directly from Jelly Belly!
The Good: Amazing initial taste, Environmentally responsible bulk
The Bad: No real nutritional value, Becomes generically sugary after a handful.
The Basics: Toasted Marshmallow Jelly Bellys taste great for the first handful, but then fade to something less distinctive, but it's still hard to not want a whole box of them!
Sometimes, it's hard not to love things that we know are not as good as they ought to be. After all, so few things are perfect and Jelly Belly jelly beans get a lot of credit from me for their creativity. Take, for example, Toasted Marshmallow Jelly Bellys. What genius thought up making a jelly bean flavored like a marshmallow?! Whoever it was, they deserve an award. Genius! Unfortunately, the taste which starts out precise and yummy quickly fades to something more obvious and generic.
For those who might never have had Jelly Belly jelly beans, these are easily the best jelly beans on the planet, packing a lot of flavor into a very small size. Unlike most jelly beans which are only vaguely flavored and are more based on colors, Jelly Belly jelly beans have a wide variety of actual flavors, like chili mango, pina colada, dark chocolate, or their signature flavor Buttered Popcorn.
Who needs ten pounds of Toasted Marshmallow flavored Jelly Bellys? Anyone who wants to enjoy the taste of campfire-cooked marshmallows without the danger of getting that close to a fire! Anyone who might like Toasted Marshmallow jelly beans will likely find that this is the best way to get them in bulk in an environmentally responsible way for the least amount of money.
Basics
Toasted Marshmallow is a flavor of Jelly Belly jelly beans. Jelly Belly jelly beans are approximately one half inch long by one quarter inch wide and they are roughly bean-shaped. These little candies are marketed to taste precisely like Toasted Marshmallow and they live up to that with surprising accuracy . . . for a time.
Toasted Marshmallow flavored Jelly Belly's are available in a wide array of quantities, but the largest quantity available is the ten pound bulk case. This is a decent-sized box with a plastic lining and while some might wonder why anyone would need a ten pound box, I say "clearly you have never set yourself on fire while cooking marshmallows before!" I suspect that for most people, a ten pound case is a year's supply of these jelly beans.
Toasted Marshmallow flavored Jelly Bellys are remarkably easy to recognize and distinguish from other Jelly Bellys as well. They are an off-white jelly bean with little brown spots that are quite distinctive. They look like no other Jelly Belly and are thus easy to distinguish from the other Jelly Bellys.
Ease of Preparation
These are jelly beans, not cooking a whole bag of marshmallows for a troop of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in heat. Preparing them is as easy as opening the box and popping one (or a handful) into your mouth. In the case of the ten pound box, one might want to put them in a candy dish of some form as opposed to always going into the box. Then again, it's safer to eat these out of the box than trying to cook them over a campfire, so one suspects eating them out of the box is fine!
Taste
Toasted Marshmallow is one of those flavors of Jelly Belly that seems to be a real catch-22 on the taste front. First, there is no aroma and truth be told, that might be why this is not one of the more enduring flavors of Jelly Belly. The thing is, Toasted Marshmallow is a weird case in that it starts out tasting precisely and potently like Toasted Marshmallows. There is the beautiful mix of sugar and the insinuation of being cooked that makes it taste like a cooked marshmallow, not a raw one.
The unfortunate taste problem for Toasted Marshmallow is that the taste rather rapidly fades, to a generic sugary taste like the worst Jelly Bellys. Indeed, one can hardly consume more than a handful of these Jelly Bellys before they taste just like sugar. Of course, it does encourage rationing when the taste slides from perfectly Toasted Marshmallow to something more generic.
Nutrition
Again, these are jelly beans, so anyone looking to them for nutrition needs to ask "Do you truly expect to get any nutrition out of anything with marshmallows?!" Jelly beans, even Jelly Belly jelly beans, are not a legitimate source of nutrition. These are a snack food, a dessert, and are in no way an adequate substitute for a real meal. A serving is listed at thirty-five beans, with each Jelly Belly jelly bean having approximately four calories. This means that in a single serving, there are 140 calories, which is 12% of your daily recommended intake.
The thing is, Jelly Belly jelly beans are not as bad as they could be in the nutrition area. They have no fat and no protein, but for those who have ever dated a Vegan, these are Vegan compliant because they contain no gelatin! Some more vigilant Vegans might object to the bee's wax in the coating. They have only one percent of the daily sodium with 15 mg and they are gluten free! The main ingredients are sugar, corn syrup and modified food starch, so it's not like this is an all-natural food, but they could be far, far worse.
Storage/Clean-up
Jelly Belly jelly beans have a shelf life of approximately one year and I have yet to run across a stale Jelly Belly (though that could have something to do with a package never surviving a year around me . . .). They remain freshest when they are kept in an airtight container (the bag in the bulk box is sufficient if it is kept closed) and they ought to be kept in a lukewarm environment. Storing them in hot places is likely to make the beans stick together and be gross. Kept in a cool, dry place, the beans retain their flavor perfectly.
As for cleanup, unless one allows the Jelly Belly to get hot to the point that the waxy coating on the bean melts, the dyes on these do not bleed or denature, so there is usually no cleanup necessary, not even washing one's hands after eating them (always wash your hands before eating Jelly Bellys, even if they aren't sticky). I've never had Toasted Marshmallow Jelly Bellys stain anything. Still, it's pretty wild to eat something so like a Toasted Marshmallow (as far as taste goes) without having to worry about one's fingers getting sticky or getting burned!
Overall
Quite simply Toasted Marshmallow flavored Jelly Belly jelly beans are one of the better flavors of Jelly Bellys, but they are knocked out of a pretty high perch by the fact that they do not seem to retain their true Toasted Marshmallow flavor over great quantities in one sitting.
For other Jelly Belly flavors reviewed by me, please check out:
Orange Sport bean
Superfruit assortment
Lemon Drop
7/10
For other dessert reviews, please check out my index page!
© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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