Jelly Belly: Krispy Kreme

The world’s best-known jelly bean brand is back on A Boy and His Beans with another package that leverages the name and flavors of a different food and beverage brand: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

I am not the world’s biggest Krispy Kreme fan, but I have definitely enjoyed the experience of going into one of their stores at a time when they were actively producing doughnuts, plucking a doughnut right off the conveyor that comes into the retail area of the store, and enjoying it while it’s hot and fresh.

I’m definitely interested to see how well these beans replicate that flavor.

As with other recent Jelly Belly reviews, they are so amazingly consistent with their size, shape, chewability, and texture that I will refer you to my reviews of Jelly Belly Snapple and Sours for details on those categories.

Size and shape

4 out of 5 beans

Chewability

2 out of 5 beans

Texture

5 out of 5 beans

Taste and flavor

I don’t know how they do it, but these beans really do taste like doughnuts. The Original Glazed flavor does indeed capture the taste of the classic Krispy Kreme doughnut, though it’s a little bit odd to be tasting it in such a dense package, compared to how light and airy the actual doughnut is.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten any other type of doughnut from Krispy Kreme, but all of the flavors do taste doughnutty. The Strawberry Iced bean tastes as I imagine the classic Krispy Kreme doughnut with strawberry icing would taste. The chocolate flavor of the Chocolate Iced with Sprinkles bean is not the world’s best chocolate flavor, but it passes.

The final two beans I’ve yet to mention, Cinnamon Apple Filled and Glazed Blueberry Cake, are the weakest. The blueberry flavor is barely there, and the apple can’t be tasted at all. But both still somehow retain that glazed doughnut aspect to them, so that’s a partial success at least.

I remain somewhat impressed at the ability to mimic the taste of a doughnut, but I can’t imagine eating a normal-sized bag of these. I was glad that I only bought a few small Easter-basket-sized boxes of them, because otherwise a lot would be going to waste.

4 out of 10 beans

The one-of-each test

Perhaps the ultimate test of a bag of jelly beans is how enjoyable it is to take one of each flavor and eat them all at the same time.¹

Normally, I would only do this for fruit flavors (see above footnote), but in this case, all these flavors are of a piece so I’ll give it a go.

Yeah, that’s not very good. It all ends up tasting like the Basic Original Glazed flavor, with a hint of the chocolate and cinnamon aspects of those two beans. The strawberry and blueberry flavors are entirely masked (and the apple was undetectable, to begin with).

It’s not a bad taste, but it certainly doesn’t enhance anything to eat all five flavors together. And, as with previous Jelly Belly reviews, this category again takes a hit due to their sub-par chewability.

4 out of 10 beans

Conclusion

Jelly Belly continues to be aggressively mediocre when it comes to their partnerships with other brands. That said, I’m looking forward to trying another of their organic varieties for my next Jelly Belly review. Stay tuned for that before the season is out!