I've already made it plain that I like coffee. In the US, coffee and donuts (doughnuts for you purists) go together like white on rice or ugly on an ape. It's not quite like that for Filipinos in the Philippines, but it is for Americans like me. What's even better than a cup of coffee and donut? A cup of coffee and a coffee cake donut!

Dunkin' Donuts in the Olongapo City Mall

I make it a point to avoid coffee and donut shops in the city. It's really pretty easy to do since parking next to one is nearly impossible. There are numerous "Mr. Donut" and "Dunkin' Donut" coffee and donut shops throughout the city.

I was walking through the Olongapo City Mall a week or so ago, looking for the ATM. The sign on the ATM said "Out of Funds" and I thought that was that and I was ready to head out. Lo and behold, a Dunkin' Donuts shop was between me and the exit. Not really, but I spotted it nevertheless while en route to the exit.

One of my brothers-in-law was eyeballing the place, so I had him accompany me inside the shop. I was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and the sweet odor of freshly-baked donuts. I ordered a dozen of the "coffee cake" donuts, paid for them, and then hurriedly headed out the door before ordering something else. I can't drink coffee while driving in the demolition derby known as downtown Olongapo City anyway.

Coffee Donuts and Coffee Cake

I need "fat pills" called "donuts" like I need a hole in my head. I rarely eat sweets (other than coffee candy) of any kind, so treating myself to donuts is an extremely rare event.

The "coffee cake" donuts taste almost exactly like coffee cake would. In years past, I had plenty of opportunities to sample coffee cake and when I say the taste is almost the same, I mean it.

Unlike relatives of mine (on both mine and my wife's side), I don't like most types of cake. I always avoid the cakes that everyone else seems to like. I like coffee cake and pineapple upside-down cake and that's about it.

Now that I've found out that Dunkin' Donuts carries coffee cake donuts, I may have an extremely difficult time avoiding those coffee and donut shops.

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The store where I usually get the Kopiko coffee candy recently ran out of the bags in the size that I normally buy. They have a huge bag available for 300 pesos, but I don't want big bags. When my nieces and nephews see a large bag of candy, they won't stop hounding me until it's gone. Their teeth are bad enough as it is and they don't need MORE candy to make them worse (they already eat candy every single day).

The store is on Magsaysay Drive, near the Olongapo City Mall, and the sign says "Circle J" outside (very similar to the Circle K stores in the US). Some of the labels and racks inside the store say "J-Mart", so I can only assume they decided to change their name at some point and didn't change all the references. Anyway, since I wanted coffee candy, I decided to buy another brand.

X.O. Coffee Candy

The X.O. Coffee Candy comes under the brand name of "Jack 'n Jill" for the candy division of the Universal Robina Corporation (URC). URC is one of the largest brand food product companies in the Philippines and they have a ton of candies under the "Jack 'n Jill" brand, including candies that resemble cough drops.

I don't know how much a bag of X.O. Coffee Candy costs. I wasn't paying attention, but it's near to the same price as Kopiko. Kopiko is made in Indonesia whereas the X.O. products are all made in the Philippines.

Ingredients

Like Kopiko, X.O. Coffee Candy isn't the healthiest candy to have around. I'll live with the consequences. The ingredients are sugar, glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, skimmed milk powder, coffee powder, soya lecithin and iodized salt.

When I see "hydrogenated" on anything, I tend not to buy it or consume it. I've seen and eaten worse and I want my coffee candy, so I'll live with it.

The Taste Test

While a piece of Kopiko coffee candy is a little dark brown square, a piece of X.O. Coffee Candy is oval-shaped and a little thicker. Kopiko comes in bags of 150 grams (the regular size anyway) and X.O. Coffee Candy comes in bags of 175 grams, which means X.O. provides 25 grams more for about the same price.

To be honest, I can't tell the difference in taste. Kopiko is a little stronger in flavor and that's about it. I think I'll be sticking to X.O. Coffee Candy from now on, unless they run out of it as well. In that case, Kopiko is the backup treat.

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In my never-ending quest to be smoke-free, I always need something to occupy my hands and mouth. Kopiko is my latest crutch. It's a coffee candy made in Indonesia and distributed in the Philippines and other countries.

KOPIKO Coffee Extract

That's what it says on the bag, but it's just candy that contains coffee as one of the ingredients. I recently bought two bags, not knowing how much it cost in advance. One of my brothers-in-law was going downtown for other reasons and I just had him get them for me. I would never waste a trip just for some kind of confection.

I'm surprised at how inexpensive this candy actually is. It's 150 grams (5.269 ounces) and it costs 25.30 pesos (or about 53 cents in US dollars at the current exchange rate). You can't touch any kind of hard candy, in this amount, for that price in the US.

Ingredients

Okay, so it isn't the healthiest candy (what candy is?) to have around. I'll live with the consequences. The ingredients are sugar, glucose (another form of sugar), vegetable oil (probably partially hydrogenated), coffee extract, butter, emulsifier, and caramel.

I've seen and eaten worse.

Made in Indonesia

According to the packaging (and I can't read ALL of these languages), Kopiko is produced in Jakarta, Indonesia and is distributed to the countries of Malaysia, Philippines and Viet Nam.

I spoke to my wife last night and she told me this coffee candy is available at most of the Asian stores in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area. It's imported to the US along with thousands of other Asian products, including jasmine rice from Thailand.

Comparison to other Coffee Candies

In the past 30 years, I've had plenty of opportunities to sample all kinds of confections containing coffee. Until I tasted Kopiko, I thought that the Nips candy (with a variety of flavors) was the best. Kopiko is far superior in taste and coming from an American coffee fanatic, that says a lot.

I really can't say anything more about Kopiko except that it's now included in my arsenal of weapons to keep my mouth occupied while I'm writing stuff like this.

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