Caramel M&Ms: Not Duds, But they Taste Like Them

Inevitably Caramel
Over the past few years, M&Ms has been releasing new novelty flavors almost as fast as Nabisco has been offering special-edition Oreos, powered by automation and efficient factory processes. So it's surprising that they waited this long to create a chocolate candy with caramel inside.  After all, you'd expect caramel to be a more popular variety than coconut, candy corn, birthday cake, honey-nut, coffee-nut, or strawberry-nut (?).  Any yet all those varieties saw their day in the sun (and did not melt) before caramel M&Ms hit the market.

Our playful M&M buddies are stretching two halves of the caramel-stuffed chocolate, implicitly promising a chewy, elastic caramel experience.

Getting the Right Ratio
In fairness, parent company Mars, sensing the immense potential appeal of these candies to caramel-mad America, might have just been spending a lot of extra time getting the formula right.  Previous attempts at promising varieties had failed at achieving the ideal ratio between the chocolate and the substance it encased.  Crispy M&Ms had so much crisped rice inside them that they seemed to be mostly air, their chocolate taste evanescent and insubstantial.  Pretzel M&Ms, which seemed like a home run on paper simply had insufficient mass to convey the impact of a solid, crunchy, salty pretzel coated with chunky, creamy rich chocolate.  Apparently the best way to experience a chocolate-covered pretzel is to, well...eat a chocolate-covered pretzel.  So it was with great skepticism that I popped the first caramel M&M between my molars and chomped down.  How much caramel would there be, and what kind?  The runny kind, like in a Cadbury Caramello?  The stringy, stretchy variety from Rolos? Something chunky, chewy, and thick like a Brach's caramel?

As the cross-sections show, Mars decided to be generous and bold with the apportionment of caramel.  The durable, buttery caramel within, almost like soft toffee, remains in the mouth long after the chocolate has dissipated.

Sturdy Caramel Lingers Longer

As it happens, the caramel that Mars chose resembles a Milk Dud more than anything else.  It's very firm, just shy of hard, and dominates the candy's identity.  Unlike a plain M&M, in which the shell contributes crunch but the milk chocolate dominates the flavor profile, or a peanut M&M where the peanut splinters, fragments into coarse particles, and then evenly distributes itself throughout the chocolate, a caramel M&M is dominated by the caramel center, which stubbornly holds its shape and maintains its buttery flavor notes long after the surrounding chocolate has melted and worn away.  The splinters of shell, which would normally be carried away by the melted chocolate as it slides down the gullet, instead embed themselves in the caramel stickiness and remain in the candy's orbit like a belt of detritus in a planet's gravitational field. 

This is why the taste of caramel actually grows stronger the longer you chew.  At first there's a bit of taste confusion as every component of the candy sticks to the shell and hence every flavor: the caramel, the chocolate, even the usually-unnoticed flavor of the shell glaze, is experienced simultaneously.  But as the less tenacious, more transient flavors melt away, the ball of caramel, flecked with bits of shell, rings the bells of your taste buds more clearly and cleanly.  On its own terms, it's an excellent bit of buttery, salty-sweet chewiness and it makes the candy filling and substantial.  Unlike every other previous variety of M&M, you can't pop these one after the other, devouring the package in a few minutes.  You can,  and probably should, eat them one at a time, and can count on the process lasting anywhere from 10-20 minutes.

Though nobody would actually eat them this way, the consistency of the caramel is such that you truly can stretch it.  The thick, robust caramel is elastic yet firm enough to hold its shape.

Conclusions

Caramel M&Ms take some getting used to.  Like an old V8 Mustang, they seem a little crude and lacking in finesse at first, as there's no elegant dance of simultaneous co-dissolution among the chocolate, the caramel, and the shell.  But for raw choco-caramel pleasure wrapped in a crisp candy shell, these little M&Ms deliver mightily.

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