Sugar free candy products that taste just like the real product are hard to find. Each year, diabetics and dieters fear the holiday season where an excess of sweets and festive foods adorn home tables, business offices, and public greeting areas. Since chocolate is one of America’s favorite flavors, finding the best sugar free candy for holidays and special occasions will help guests enjoy the season without guilt.
It is prudent to mention that sugar free candy products may cause intestinal discomfort for some people. Many of the sugar free candy products are made with sugar substitutes that can have a laxative effect. Even though you may feel like you can eat a whole box of sugar free chocolates at Christmas without feeling guilty, you may later feel very sick. I have taste tested many brands of sugar free candy and found these to be the best tasting candy:
Sugar Free Russell Stover Candies
Russell Stover Candies offers a large variety of sugar free candy with chocolate. You can purchase individually wrapped sugar free candies in small bags or gift boxes of sugar free candy assortments. Small bags of sugar free candy cost $2.49 each for about 10 pieces of candy. Especially tasty are the chocolate peanut butter cups, the chocolate covered coconut with almond bars, the pecan brittle, the pecan delights that are similar to Turtles, and the chocolate covered hard toffee squares. Russell Stover also offers the best sugar free chocolate-covered mint patty that I have ever eaten!
Russell Stover owns the Whitman brand of candy and now offers a Weight Watchers sugar free sampler box of gourmet chocolate candy assortments. A similar assortment of gourmet sugar free candies with chocolate is offered in the Russell Stover brand. You can also get boxes of your favorite sugar free candy like the truffles, mints, creams, and my favorite: the Sugar Free Butter Nut Toffee Sticks.
If you like hard candy and jellybeans, Russell Stover has a great variety of sugar free products for you. The flavor selection of sugar free hard candy includes peppermint, root beer, butterscotch, lemon, cherry, cinnamon and assorted flavors. They also have a wonderful sugar free Satins and Chips gift can for $9.99 that makes a perfect hostess gift.
Sugar Free Frango Gourmet Chocolate Mints
Every year, it is tradition at our house to have Frango mints on our holiday table. Marshall Field’s Department Store in Chicago, Illinois made Frango chocolate mints famous. Each mint delicacy is solid chocolate with an extraordinary mint flavor. You can get the mint chocolates in milk chocolate or dark chocolate flavors. Frango also offers a large selection of holiday assortments with colored mint chocolates in decorative boxes and cans. Not all Frango candy assortments are available in the sugar free variety. However, there is no way you can tell the difference between the sugar free mint chocolates and the real thing. You will definitely impress guests with these wonderful, healthy alternatives to guilty chocolates. A one-pound box of sugar free mint chocolates costs $18.00, but it is well worth it!
Sugar Free Jelly Belly Candy
There is no other jellybean period! The Jelly Belly Company was one of the first candy companies that recognized the niche market for sugar free candy. Ten of the most popular flavors of Jelly Belly jellybeans are available in a sugar free variety. Jelly Belly also offers sugar free fruit slices and sugar free gummi bears that taste just like the real thing. Jelly Belly sugar free candy contains 40% less calories than regular Jelly Belly candy and is sweetened with Splenda.
Sugar free Jelly Belly candy comes in small bags, a large gift box assortment or a gift basket assortment containing different packages. Prices range from $2.49 for a 3.1- ounce bag to $34.99 for the gift basket assortment. The Jelly Belly Company warns consumers to start with only 8 sugar free jellybeans to make sure no intestinal problems occur.
Sugar Free See’ Candies
Two of my favorite holiday candies are now available in sugar free varieties from See’s Candies: Sugar Free Peanut Brittle and Sugar Free Dark Walnut Clusters. See’s Candies just began offering their famous peanut brittle in sugar free variety and you cannot tell the difference from the real peanut brittle! It is the best sugar free peanut brittle I have ever tasted. It comes in an 8-ounce box for $7.25. I have always loved the dark chocolate that See’s Candies uses for their seasonal fresh chocolate-covered strawberries. I also love walnuts, which have fewer calories than other nuts, so this new sugar free candy is already on my holiday table. An 8-ounce bag costs $12.75.
You may want to visit the See’s Candies web site to see more information about the FDA’s requirements for making, naming and labeling sugar free candy.
Sugar Free Godiva Candy
Thank goodness Godiva knew to make their Dark Chocolate with Pecans and Crisped Rice in a sugar free variety. Unfortunately, you cannot order these in a separate package. You can only get 4 pieces in an 18-piece assortment box costing $29.00. The other sugar free candy pieces in the assortment box are Milk Chocolate with Almonds, Dark Chocolate with Almonds, and Milk Chocolate with Pecans and Crisped Rice. That’s not a bad selection of sugar free gourmet candies, however, Godiva should consider selling these 4 varieties in separate boxes. All of the Godiva sugar free candies are well worth the higher cost!
