I eat a lot of sweets. An embarrassing amount, really. Sometimes, these sweets are noteworthy enough to merit a blog post. In fact, sometimes, I seek them out specifically to blog about them. But most of the time, the sweets I eat are banal, or lackluster, or both, satisfying a biological craving but nothing more. These are the sweets that I scarf on my own time. Work versus play, separate but not necessarily equal.

However, I recently had an experience where a me-sweet was so good, so transcendent, that I felt it would be a shame to stay quiet. You, good readers, should be privy to this knowledge! I shall not be silenced!

Okay, so that was a tad melodramatic, but seriously: this one, the Passion Spice candy bar from Liddabit Sweets, is a winner.

You may recall Liddabit from this earlier post. While I know that there are a lot of worthy dessert spots to explore, sometime you have a fortuitous experience that forces you to reexamine an old favorite with a sharper lens. This candy bar opened up my eyes.

The ingredients are unique enough to catch a wandering eye, like mine:

For passion fruit fans, such as myself, the first bite of this candy bar is heavenly. The tart, puckering taste of the passion fruit sings, and then the mellow cocoa notes of the creamy dark chocolate come through. The bar is chewy from the thick ribbon of caramel (an obvious Liddabit specialty) oozing at the bottom, yet textured; also bound in caramel, the puffed rice loses some of its crisp edge, but not so much that it loses its integrity. Together, the candy is in perfect harmony: sour but very sweet, buttery and silky with an envious textural contrast, chewy yet not sticky.

And then, the best part. While you’re chewing, you start to notice a faint warmth building at the back of your palate. It is barely noticeable at first and easy to confuse with the piquant passion fruit flavor. But make no mistake – this heat grows until the back of your mouth is noticeably tingling. Initially obscured by the potent flavors, the cayenne takes center stage last, but what an entrance it makes!

A candy bar with a surprise. A sweet with a secret weapon saved for the very end. Not worth a penny less than its $8.00 price tag. If that’s not worth sharing, I don’t know what is.

Liddabit Sweets
Available in various markets and stores throughout New York City (list here)