Candy Blog

I’ve mentioned Frangos a lot on this blog, but I’ve never reviewed them before. So after Christmas when I stumbled on a 50% off sale, I picked up a variety I’d never had before, 62% Cocoa Dark Chocolate Frangos. They were regularly $20 a pound, but at $10 a pound, I thought it was time they made an appearance here.

But first, how about a little background about Frangos?

People in the Pacific Northwest and the Chicago area are most familiar with Frangos, as the history of the confection is closely tied to both areas.

The Frango confectionery line was first introduced by Frederick & Nelson department stores in Seattle in 1918. The Frango name was applied at F&N to a few confectionery products, but the Frango mint meltaway (which joined their line in 1927) is the one that struck a lasting chord with consumers. (Note: there’s some disagreement about the early name of the candy, which may have been Francos, but was changed after Francisco Franco and the Spanish Civil War gave the chocolates a less festive feel.)

A Frango is a small chocolate - currently they’re taller than they are about 3/4” high and 1/2” wide and deep. The center is a firm meltaway - harder than a truffle but softer than pure chocolate. The original flavor and still the most popular is Mint.

Frangos made their migration to Chicago in 1929 when Marshall Fields (now Macy’s) bought the store and started up Frango production right there at the flaship State Street store. Though the products are virtually identical they are packaged differently - the Northwest version are individually wrapped and the Chicago version are sold in a traditional candy box in little fluted cups.

I first had Frangos in the late seventies when my mother returned from a trip to Chicago with a box. I despised most of the flavors (Coffee, Raspberry, Cherry, Double Chocolate) but I rather liked the Lemon and of course was obsessed with the Mint. Boxes were sold with mixes of flavors and the ultimate gift was the “Foot of Frangos.” (The little paper cups gave a clue to the flavor, so there was no problem with little dents in the bottom from picky children.)

The 62% Cocoa Dark Chocolates are quite nice. They have a strong vanilla aroma mixed with the smoky notes of the chocolate. The centers are firm but the pieces are small and easy to pop into your mouth whole. The meltaway middle gets a little kick from a hit of salt (which I always loved in the mint version).

The worst thing about them right now though, is that they use partially hydrogenated soybean oil to get them “melty” in the center. This adds 1.5 gram of trans fats to a serving of 4 pieces (about 40 grams). Hopefully, they’re reformulating.

My interest in Frangos faded when I discovered chocolate truffles. It was nice to have some again and they do hold a strong place in American confectionery history, but probably not much of a place in my current candy-eating repertoire. 

You can learn lots more from the Wikipedia article about Frangos (be sure to click through to the links if you’re really obsessed). I’ve glossed over most of the controversy about the Macy’s/Marshall Fields/Northwest bruhahah but feel free to weigh in about it here.

Come on, admit it! Sometimes you go into the store and see something at an unbelievably low price and you turn up your nose because it could not possibly be any good at that price.

I’ll save you from skimming to the end of the review. Yeah, that holds true in the case of American Value bars.

This is a long thin Milk Chocolate bar that clocks in at a respectable 1.4 ounce portion and mentions the price of “4 for a Dollar every day” in a ghastly yellow logo in the corner. The label couldn’t possibly be less compelling if you gave me a version of Microsoft Word 95 to make it in. The package says nothing to recommend it, it doesn’t get our hopes up, it doesn’t lend any expectation to the experience.

Inside the package things get a bit better. It looks like a chocolate bar (and the ingredients reveal it’s real chocolate as well). It smells a little nutty and a little like chocolate. Sweet and less that ultra smooth, it’s a passable chocolate bar to give a child that isn’t very finicky, has a short attention span or perhaps you don’t like that much.

Since the bars are rather attractive (probably more so if you don’t leave it at the bottom of your bag when traveling) I would be comfortable recommending this bar for craft projects like Gingerbread Houses in the style of mid-eighties cubicle farms.

Though the Milk Chocolate bar was plain, it wasn’t pretending to be anything it wasn’t. The Four Finger Wafer Bar is a KitKat clone. Instead of the simple declaration of the contents that the Milk Chocolate bar has, this one says that it’s “Crisp Wafer Fingers Covered in Smooth Milk Chocolate.”

Oh, now they’ve raised my expectations. I’m expecting some smoothiness and some crispiness.

The wrapper features more design than a lowly word processing program could handle. This does not make it any more attractive. It’s not your monitor either, there’s a strange green cast to the package as well.

There are, in fact, four fingers. They are, in fact, crisp. They do not taste like KitKat fingers, and there’s nothing wrong with that. These are a bit less flaky and light. Looking at the ingredients I see that maize flour (corn) is used instead of wheat flour of a Hershey’s or Nestle’s KitKat. I actually rather enjoyed the malty corn flavor of the wafers. However, the chocolate here was funky. It had an odd flavor to it, kind of like a new car smell.

This bar was made in the UK (the Milk Chocolate bar was made in the USA). Taquitos.net has a few of the other Dollar General candies reviewed. I get the sense that Dollar General just subs out the manufacture of all of their candy - the Rocklets they sell under their own name are made by Arcor in Brazil, this four fingered bar in the UK and the milk chocolate bar in the US ... so you wouldn’t expect them to be so consistent.

Another Limited Edition item from Reese’s and again playing around with similar ingredients. This time they’ve taken the Big Cup with Nuts (which was also a limited edition item - review here) and added some caramel to the bottom of the cup.

I don’t have a cross section of the actual cup because I kind of trashed it taking it out of the package and though it was certainly edible, it was not photogenic. So have a look at the Big Cup with Peanuts (click to get a pop up photo) and imagine a smidge of caramel at the bottom there.

The cup itself is nice and meaty, with lots of room to explore the nuts and peanut butter and a good balance of chocolate. The center is a bit salty which is good because the milk chocolate is a bit sweet and kind of greasy (I know that’s the hazard with chocolate and peanut butter). The caramel blends in well, it has its own salty kick but it doesn’t detract from the crunchy nuts or add too much sweetness. I’d prefer a chewier caramel like you find in a Snickers, but that’s not Hershey’s way.

I actually liked this one a bit better than the Reese’s with Caramel, the caramel was distinctive and the roominess of the peanut butter/peanut stack let it all breathe.

Just to give you a sense, here are the previous Reese’s reviews: Reese’s Bites (soon to be discontinued), Reese’s Cookies, FastBreak, Reese’s Sticks, Nutrageous, Reese’s Snack Barz, Reese’s Pieces Peanut, Reese’s Easter Eggs (two versions), Reese’s Bars for those who don’t like their candy in cups or shaped like trees, and of course the less-than-comprehensive Reese’s Full Line, another Big Cup (with mixed nuts) and their new favorite child, the Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar.

My mother lives in a neighborhood where, without fail, every time I visit there’s a kid at the door at some point either trying to sell her something or delivering something she bought. This time it’s the One Dollar Bar. (Actually, I’d never seen these before, I’d only seen the World’s Finest Chocolate bars.)

The bars are sizeable - at 2.25 ounces it’s like a king size bar and at a buck, it’s a pretty good deal as consumer chocolate bars for a cause go. (I remember buying single boxes of M&Ms from the band kids when I was in high school, the boxes were probably a buck but had less than a similar king sized snack pack ... and that was, um, a few years ago.)

The Roasted Almond bar comes in a red wrapper and like all the One Dollar Bars, it’s certified peanut free. The little domed segments smelled nice and sweet with a bit of a milky boost. The chocolate is very sweet but creamy and has a good nutty note from the almonds. The almonds were fresh tasting and extra crunchy. One the whole, the milk chocolate was far too sweet for me to eat, even with the nuts cutting it. I think with some extra almonds on the side or maybe some salty pretzels I could make do with this bar.

The Mint Chocolate bar is milk chocolate with a flowing mint fondant filling. The bar was beautifully glossy, smelled sweet with a light hint of mint. Though the chocolate here was identically sweet to the Roasted Almond bar, the creamy consistency of the filling and mint hit seemed to moderate it well. I’m guessing part of the reason for that is the filling is a sugar and condensed milk concoction with some salt in it as well. (The Almond bar has 20 mg of sodium, the Mint bar has 140 mg!)

I’m not sure I’d ever buy these just because I wanted one, but if some kids were selling them in front of the grocery store (where I buy all my fundraiser candies ... the just don’t seem to go door to door in Los Angeles as much) I might pick up a couple since they’re decent quality. They come in a few other varieties as well - Crispy Rice, Creamy Caramel, Dark Chocolate & Tasty Truffle.

Van Wyck Confections, who makes the One Dollar Bar is based in Denver, CO, but the bars were made in Canada. I’m not quite sure who makes the chocolate for them.

I have too much candy and at one review a day I’m never going to get to it all.

And if I review more than one a day, well, I’m just not going to have enough time for anything else.

So here it is, a “Short & Sweet” review of a buncha stuff Japanese stuff:

High Concentration Milk Candy (made by UHA) -are little hard candies, kind of like a hard toffee. They taste distinctly of milk and are very sweet. They’re also rather satisfying without being too sticky. I’m sure there’s some high calcium content in there but the wrapper was all in Japanese.

Cubyrop (made by Bourbon) - oh they’re such cute candies! Little fruit flavored hard candies in Strawberry, Pineapple, Orange, Peach, Lemon, Muscat and Grape. Some flavors were very tasty, but I didn’t care much for the peach, which was a rather difficult flavor to distinguish from the orange. Lots of vitamin C.

They came in little wrappers that held two little candy cubes. They were completely random, so you’d never know when you were going to get a muscat and grape together.

Look Nut ala Mode (made by Fujiya) is a strange little tray of chocolates in a box with a wide, envelope-like flap. Great for sharing, they’re pretty and of descent quality even for less than $2.00.

It took me quite a while to realize that there were four different nut flavors ... not that each chocolate contained all flavors. I have no idea, beyond the rather green pistachio one which was which. I enjoyed all of them except for the macadamia, which seemed more coconutty.