Hershey's Has Two New Sauces

Thousands of new products vie for space on supermarket shelves annually. Supermarket Sampler will appear in the Food Section, focusing on the new products from the prospective of Bonnie Tandy Leblang, a registered dietitian and Carolyn Wyman, a junk-food fanatic.

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Hershey's Chocolate Shoppe Toppings. Hot fudge sauce and double chocolate fudge. $1.69 to $2.29 per 18- to 18.5-ounce glass jar.

Bonnie: Hershey's Chocolate Shoppe toppings are richer and more calorie-dense than Hershey's regular chocolate syrup. The toppings are thick sauces made mainly from milk, cocoa and lots of sugar; the syrup, mainly cocoa and sugar. This makes sense, because the syrup is designed to be mixed in milk and the toppings to be spooned over ice cream. These toppings also contain preservatives and emulsifiers.

If you can afford to add extra calories on top of those already in ice cream, you might like to try making your own sauce without additives. Just melt bittersweet chocolate with some butter, then stir in half-and-half or milk. For those concerned about their fat and calorie intake, a scoop of unadorned frozen yogurt is a healthier choice.

Carolyn: Pouring chocolate syrup over ice cream no longer is enough - not for consumers used to the rich, thick sauces served in today's gourmet ice cream shops. This probably explains why the company with the most popular chocolate syrup has just come out with two new ice cream toppings in microwavable glass jars.

The hot fudge sauce is similar to (although slightly thinner than) the sundae sauce Hershey's used to sell in yellow cans. So I recommend the hot fudge. But the double chocolate fudge sauce is not particularly chocolatey, thick or fudgy. In fact, it doesn't seem much different from significantly less expensive, plain old Hershey's Syrup.

Homers Baseball Cookies. 99 cents per 3 1/2-ounce box or $1.99 per 10-ounce box.

Bonnie: Homers baseball-player-shaped sugar cookies are without any questionable additives. Although they do contain artificial flavor, they are much better than the Barnum's animal crackers they resemble, which contain cholesterol and saturated-fat-laden lard.

That's why I'd rather play ball with Homers.

Carolyn: Homers may be made of different ingredients than Barnum's Animal Crackers, but tastewise, I can hardly tell the difference. Compared to Oreos, Pinwheels or almost any other cookie with chocolate in it, neither cookie is anything to write home about. But if your idea of a tiger is an opposing team pitcher with a really mean slider, you'd probably enjoy them.

(Copyright, 1990, Universal Press Syndicate)

Supermarket Sampler appears weekly in the Food section of The Times.