Wednesday, January 9, 2013

GooGoo Clusters: A Yummy Regional Sweet + Giveaway

Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant
Make sure to enter below for a shot at winning a Collector's Tin of GooGoo Clusters!

In February I wrote about a Budget Travel article mentioning 15 of America's Favorite Regional Sweets. 

There was one item from the list that I really wanted to try. If I ever made it to Tennessee, I had to get my hands on a GooGoo Cluster. Luckily, on my recent trip to Louisville & Nashville, I was successful in my quest.

GooGoo Clusters were invented in 1912 in Nashville, Tennessee. They are the world's first combination candy bar. GooGoo's are "made of luscious caramel, smooth creamy marshmallow and fresh roasted peanuts all covered with a thick coating of pure milk chocolate".

GooGoo Clusters come in three varieties:
  1. Original- described above
  2. Supreme- with fancy pecan pieces instead of peanuts
  3. Peanut Butter- replacing the marshmallow filling
When we started planning our trip , I remembered that I had to find a GooGoo Cluster to taste when I made it to Tennessee.
On the shelf at Dollar General
The first GooGoo Clusters I bought were just outside of Nashville. We stopped at a gas station for a snack and a fill up. While Kim waited in the car, I went in to buy the snack and spotted them in two varieties. I bought one of the Original & Supreme. They each cost .99 cents. We both enjoyed the Original variety but didn't love the Supreme as much.

 We expected to see the GooGoo Cluster for sale all over and planned to try it a few more times. The next morning, at breakfast I noticed a display at Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant selling Original GooGoo's for $1.99 each. Wow! Talk about pricey. I wasn't going to pay double what I had payed the day before. I hoped to find more Clusters for sale before we left Nashville.
A photo with the prized GooGoo Cluster
After finishing up breakfast we needed to buy some water and spotted a Dollar General right down the block from Puckett's. We stopped in for the water and decided to wander down the candy aisle. Well what do you know, Dollar General carried boxes containing 3 GooGoo Clusters for $1.99! This seemed like a great price so I bought a couple of boxes to take home. (I kind of wish that I had bought a few more!)
Piggly Wiggly
We didn't see GooGoo Clusters for sale anywhere else in Nashville until the last night of our trip. I went into a Piggly Wiggly (a Southern supermarket chain- I had to mention the name) and spotted a display selling Original & Supreme Clusters for .99 cents. This seemed like a fair price but we decided to pass. If they had the peanut butter variety available I would've bought a couple.
A GooGoo and it's wrapper
A review of the GooGoo Cluster:
Kim and I are now big fans of the GooGoo Cluster. We both appreciated that it seems to be just the right size- not too big, not too small and just the right thickness.  These lumps of tasty goodness smell great too! Kim told me she could smell the peanuts and chocolate from a few feet away, not knowing I had opened the package.
Layers of yummyness
To show all of the layers of flavor, I cut one of the GooGoo Clusters in half with a sharp knife.

You can see all of the ingredients present in the cluster. They don't skimp on anything. There are lots of tasty peanuts on top, followed by a nice layer of caramel. They sit on a thick pillowy bed of marshmallow and then the whole package is coated all around in tasty chocolate.

A nice thing about the GooGoo Cluster is that you can actually taste all of the elements working together. What stood out most for me was the peanuts and chocolate. The marshmallow added a nice, light texture and the caramel added just the right amount of sweetness. It is a perfect mixture of smooth, crunchy, sweet and salty.

 I'd love to try out the Peanut Butter variety in the future. Maybe I can hunt it down in a candy shop in the NYC area.

If I could recommend one thing to the Standard Candy Co. (the makers of the GooGoo Cluster), I'd suggest that they consider making a dark chocolate version!

Find out more out Goo Goo Cluster and order some online HERE

***Giveaway: Win a Collector's Tin of GooGoo Clusters***
I decided to contact Standard Candy Co. to let them know how much Kim and I enjoyed the GooGoo Cluster. I mentioned how I really wanted to try the peanut butter variety but had no luck finding them in Nashville.

I received a speedy response from Standard Candy Co. and they were very kind and generous. Not only did they offer to send me some Peanut Butter GooGoo Clusters, they also offered a little something for me to giveaway to my readers!

The Prize: One Collector's Tin of GooGoo Clusters
  • Collector's Tin filled with 8 Assorted GooGoo Clusters: 4 Original, 2 Supreme and 2 Peanut Butter. (value: $19.95)
  • Contest ends 1/15/13 at 12:01AM
  • Enter in the widget below. The more ways you enter, the better your odds are for winning!
    a Rafflecopter giveaway

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8 comments:

  1. Omg this sounds sooo good!

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  3. We saw these on a television show this Christmas! It was the first I've heard about them but they look sooooo good!

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  4. Being from Nashville it can be hard to find goo goos at times but they have an app for that. No seriously they do.

    One note about the piggly wiggly is that it was the first true self service grocery store.

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  5. They are my favorite candy. Two problems: hard to find, and expensive. Just a few years ago I was still buying them for 25-50 cents at WalMart. Dollar General use to have boxes of 5 or 6 (I forget which) for $2, now it's 3 for $2. And that's the cheapest I see them. Higher at Cracker Barrel, or direct.
    One other caveat - Don't get them too far ahead. When I used to get them at WalMart, it was rare. So I bought a batch ahead, but in less than a year they were hard (but still tasty). So you have to keep buying them, rather than purchasing them in big quantities.
    When I was a kid they were a dime, and bigger, and the display said something like A meal for a dime.
    And I'll second your suggestion for a dark-chocolate version.

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  6. I can't say I ever paid attention to them before.

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  7. I commented yesterday, but don't see it? I love goo goos!!

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  8. I never realized this was a regional treat. They have them in Ohio, where I grew up.

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