Located in a standalone building (and tiny "parking lot") in front of South Fork Beverage, this little 2-room shop a is run by an unflinchingly accommodating woman. Said employee/owner kept insisting "lemme know what you think next time" before I'd made a decision to buy anything at all. Fortunately, she seemed to genuinely love what she was doing, so I overlooked that because her enthusiasm was pretty contagious. Packed to the teeth with mostly at-home-use DIY items, there's a formidable stockade of likely-esoteric baking supplies, though I'm unsure of how the prices stack up. With signs everywhere your eyes dart (no refunds/exchanges, would imagine a CC restriction of some sort, etc) and ubiquitous plastic receptacles of sweets, it's overwhelming in a way that such a place can easily be without meaning it. Luckily, individual pieces lined one wall, and I chose 4, @ $3.32 by weight.
1. Milk chocolate truffle-ish peppermint-covered doodad was alright but had a lingering tinge of staleness (not sure which component) and was VERY hard when I took the first bite.
2. PB fudge, the smallest piece they had, wasn't any better than my homemade (admittedly pretty substandard) iteration.
3. Dark chocolate coconut cluster was tasty but not much of an improvement from the boxed variety (Whitman's/Stouffer's/etc).
4. So much reluctance preceded my final decision, from the flavor medley (or assumed alck thereof) to the fact that the season for it had yet to arrive. IDK how long the chocolate-covered candy cane had been sitting in the seemingly-airtight container, but it must've been a while, since it was soft as anything and tasted like a bag of old air, even the part not tainted by low-quality chocolate; I gave it a chance and kept chewing and chewing and eventually just regurgitated it, a rarity that sets off more alarms than the most heavily secure home. The chocolate-covered portion, as I had a bad feeling of, was absolutely inedible and an offensive combination. I have forsaken peppermint gum/other products and chocolate for quite a while following this blasphemous catastrophe.
I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt: Much like Candy Island down the road -- even more so, in fact -- I hope for the best but expect the worst (although it seems to be a mainstay of some sort...or maybe it's just old and rundown). Hours are seasonal and change constantly, so call before you go (don't rely on their site, though it does exist and is more informative than I anticipated). It's not a pizzeria or nail salon, so you'd think it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle around here, but it does, perhaps due to its execution.
(I started to pen this review as a 4, having not eaten what I'd purchased, and leaving a star open for my return to purchase some baking knick-knacks. It has been immediately and GENEROUSLY downgraded to a 2. The proprietor's unbridled warmth, sorry to say, doesn't make up for the quality of all of the edible products I sampled here.) read more
