What’s better for your heart than some good chocolate?

A good laugh.

You can have both (or give both).

Enter the Laughter is running a contest to find the best Valentine’s-themed joke. The winner gets a box of chocolates.

Enter here. (Or just read the current entries.)

I never thought I’d eat so much white chocolate in my life until I started CandyBlog.net. It’s not that I don’t like white chocolate, but it’s usually so sweet it makes my throat hurt. (I’ve heard this may be because we have some taste buds in our throats.)

While it would be easy for me to just copy and paste the review for Strawberries ‘n’ Creme in here, I have to say that they’re really not the same bar at all.

The bar was very aromatic, with a strong scent of raspberries, fake vanilla and milk. It’s not unpleasant at all and reminded me of yogurt. (I like yogurt.)

Now, I’ve had my share of raspberries in my life. When I was a kid we had a huge raspberry patch and we pretty much ate berries all summer long. When we had our fill we would make them into jam or sauces. I’ve had a lot of berries in my life. For a long time I didn’t even care for raspberries. I find the seeds really annoying and the flavor was a little too floral for me and there wasn’t enough of a textured chew. But of course now that I don’t have an unending supply, and the stuff that I do get is insanely expensive, I like them a lot and eat them at every opportunity. I’m a huge fan of the raspberry and dark chocolate combination and when I make chocolate truffles, I make more of raspberry than any other flavor.

The bar is tart, with a little tangy taste that you might be used to in all Hershey’s milk chocolate. The raspberry taste is pronounced but a little overshadowed by the strong sweetness of the bar. There’s also a very weird aftertaste to the bar that’s hard for me to pin down. I think it’s a dairy aftertaste, that sort of coated feeling you get on your tongue after whole milk.

The bar reminded me of Easter, the smell of the white chocolate and the berry overtones that are a mix of violet and rose floral notes. While I might actually buy the Strawberry bar again (a guilty pleasure, don’t expect me to admit it), I can’t see myself picking this one up unless it’s on sale. But these are limited edition bars and are no longer on the Hershey’s website, so don’t count on them being around too much longer.

Do you ever wish that Chick-o-Sticks came in larger bars? Ever wish that Butterfingers didn’t come with that fake chocolate? Ever want a little coconut on your 5th Avenue?

Zagnut has been around for ages and was once proudly made by the Clark company in Pittsburgh alongside the more famous grandfather, the Clark Bar. For some reason when the Clark company was broken up the Clark bar went to NECCO and the Zagnut bar went to Hershey’s. I have no explanation for this. My guess is that Clark was struggling to stay afloat and of course couldn’t sell off their namesake bar as a way to raise capital.

The bar was first introduced in 1930. (The Clark bar came out in 1917.) In a weird way, we have the military to thank for many of our favorite candy bars. Confectioners were usually enlisted to create ration bars for servicemen as quick and easy-to-carry calories. Servicemen would often get a taste for the bars (most of which were made with nuts and chocolate for a balance of protein, fats and carbs) and introduce them to their families back home.

The Zagnut bar, like the Chick-o-Stick is a great summer alternative to the 5th Avenue, because it has no chocolate coating to melt. It’s a large, flattened log of honeycombed peanut butter and molasses crisp. The flavorful and smooth center has a nice sparkle of salt in it and the toasty coconut on the outside goes surprisingly well with the molasses and peanut flavors. There’s some sort of a peanut/white chocolate coating on the bar, just enough to get the coconut to stick. If anything, this bar seemed more like a 5th Avenue than a Clark. (That’s a compliment.)

It’s a solid, midrange performer when it comes to candy bars, a good backup when maybe you don’t want an Almond Joy or maybe want a little more crunch than a 3 Musketeers. I know some folks aren’t keen on them, but now that Hershey’s has them in their stable, I’m actually seeing them more often. Now all they have to do is replace the hydrogenated oils in there.

Other Reading: Taquitos.net review and here’s what the wrapper used to look like.

Toffee is a strange thing. It’s like caramel gone too long on the burner, but it becomes its own special delight. In the United States, toffee is generally hard caramel: a mixture of sugar and butter. It’s boiled slowly to “hard ball” stage and then cooled, usually as flat pieces. What’s so wonderful about it is the way it cracks. It’s completely irregular. It flakes, it crumbles and it fractures. It’s buttery and sweet and often has a nice salty twang to it that cuts through the stickiness. (In the UK they also have soft toffees, which confuses the heck out of me, until I start eating them and then I get distracted. Mmm, toffee.)

I got these full-sized samples directly from Brian at Silver Bear Toffee in Colorado. The first indication of their decadence is that the label says “refrigerate,” now that’s fresh toffee!

The ingredients are pretty compelling too: chocolate, almonds, butter, sugar and corn syrup. Each package was a little white box with planks of broken up toffee. The toffee was then covered in chocolate on top and sprinkled with more almonds. The dark chocolate one was my favorite as the smoky and smooth chocolate matched the sweet and salty toffee perfectly. The toffee was so buttery though that sometimes my chocolate fell off the slab. No matter. Toffee is casual; toffee is jeans and a tee.

While I may have said I preferred the dark chocolate one, the milk chocolate one disappeared first (it could have been that toffee snitching elves were visiting my kitchen). The toffee crumbles wonderfully on the teeth and becomes a smooth and buttery experience on the tongue. There are lots of nuts in both versions but not in huge pieces, which I prefer (otherwise it’d be nut brittle).

When I eat commercial toffee bar, like a Heath bar, my usual custom is to eat the chocolate off first and then eat the toffee slab by itself. I have no desire to do that with this stuff, I want to eat the whole thing: the chocolate, toffee and nuts all at once.

The webstore isn’t open yet (I was hoping it would be in time for Valentine’s) but you can still order by phone:

Silver Bear Toffee
303-886-3892
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Toffee is $15 a pound and

$8.00 by the half pound. Mine came boxed well with a cold-pack to keep it from melting (not really an issue in the winter).