Trader Joe’s always has an interesting assortment of candies and sweet goodies around the holidays. But without brand names (and previous years) to guide you, how do you know what’s good ... or even what’s inside the box? I’ll devote the rest of the week to the Trader Joe’s hostess gifts.

First up is Trader Joe’s Fair Trade Chocolate Truffles because nothing says thank you for having me in your home than not oppressing people six thousand miles away. It frees you up to drink in celebration instead of out of guilt!

This box is certified by Equi-Trade as commerce equitable! The box looks kind of like a take out container, with pretty amber and brown African designs. Inside are two layers. There are 14 truffles in five flavors (Spicy Hot Chocolate gets shorted with only two of those, three of each of the others).

Double Dark - these were quite nice looking. The 70% dark chocolate coating is a little on the acidic and “high note” side, but is buttery smooth and on its own has a slightly dry finish. The ganache center is melty-smooth. It’s firm when bitten in half, but melts quickly. It has similar flavors as the shell, giving the whole truffle a consistent flavor, with the only difference in the textures.

Field Raspberry - this one was easy to pick out from the rest, the dark chocolate shell had little raspberry bumps on the top. I was kind of surprised at the pink color of the filling. It’s a light ganache, not quite white chocolate. Sweet, tangy and very much an authentic raspberry flavor. It overpowered the dark chocolate, but there were other, more chocolatey experiences in the box.

Cappuccino - has a milk chocolate shell with a little cap of white chocolate. It’s sweet and has a nice creamy milk chocolate ganache center. It’s more firm than the raspberry one. The coffee notes are a little, well, coffee-ish instead of true rounded coffee. But then again cappuccino is often as much about hot milk as it is about espresso. This has nice milky flavors in it as well.

Spicy Hot Chocolate - it’s a very pretty truffle. A glossy dark chocolate shell and a spiced dark chocolate center. However, the spices gave this more of a woodsy flavor reminiscent of cupboards and cardboard than warm chili. It was smooth, but I was glad when I got rid of these two and they stopped infecting the others with that kind-of-sour spicy note.

Creamy Milk - the milk chocolate shell has a strong dairy component reminiscent of fine Swiss chocolate. It’s a creamy smooth shell with an achingly silky ganache center. There’s not a hint of grain in here, though it is a bit sweet it never becomes sticky or cloying.

As a gift, the packaging is okay, it does communicate the fair trade aspects, which I’m guessing is one of its biggest selling points. It’s nice and compact, but not as easy to just open it up and dig in because it’s double-deckered (and the plain truffles are on the bottom, not all mixed up). The cream “label sleeve” in the center of the box slides off and then it actually looks much better (that’s where all the nutrition facts are). As far as price goes, $7 for six ounces of fair trade chocolate with all-natural ingredients is pretty freak-tacularly good. They’re not the best truffles I’ve had, but for the price (less than $20 a pound) they’re certainly an incredible value and should get you kudos when given as a gift or served to guests.

These were made in Canada. (I suspect that they’re made by Terra Nostra, seeing how there aren’t that many Equi-Trade chocolate companies in Canada.)

Related Candies

1. Terra Nostra Pocket Bars
2. Endangered Species: Eco-Rounds
3. Theo Confections
4. CocoaVino

Sometimes I want a little more information on the package. I saw these at Trader Joe’s last Friday and I was intrigued. Trader Joe’s English Soft Peppermints. I liked everything I saw. Peppermint, good! English, yes, they know good candy. Soft, why yes, I like soft things. Even the blue tin was compelling. But what were they?

The back of the package didn’t tell me much more except that they were actually a product of The Netherlands (and not English as the name may have led me to believe). The ingredients were pretty simple: Sugar, Cream of Tartar and Natural Peppermint Oil.

What what manner of soft mint were they?

Open the package and it’s clear. They’re pillow mints. Lovely, king sized pillow mints (not those domestic throw pillow mints you get at the drug store!).

They smell of sweet peppermint and at first as light and cool on the tongue. Then the blistering peppermint kicks in. It’s like the word “English” is code for"Altoid” or something.

I enjoy pillow mints and their Butter Mint brethren, but the intensity of these doesn’t make for popping them one after the other very pleasant. Perhaps that’s a good thing, I could learn a little self control through negative feedback behavior modification. With fresh breath as a side effect whether I’ve learned anything or not.

As a breath mint, these are fine and dandy. As a candy, they’re not quite munchable.

Related Candies

1. York Mints
2. Russell Stover Organic Pecan Delight
3. Chocolate Dipped Altoids
4. Necco Mint Julep
5. Choward’s Violet

Here’s a quick guide to all things chocolate up for grabs in the Menu for Hope IV fundraiser for the United Nations World Food Programme. You can see a full list of the prizes and the instructions on how to enter the drawing. Tickets are $10, you can buy as many as you like for any prize.

It’s a great selection of chocolate and I envy each and every person who wins and applaud everyone who enters/donates!

I wrote about Sponge Candy a couple of weeks ago and Dom from Chocablog rightfully pointed out in the comments that I’ve never mentioned Cadbury Crunchie. This is true, though I’ve eaten a few of them before. Time to rectify!

I first bought a Crunchie a few years ago, thinking it was a Cadbury version of the Nestle Violet Crumble. They’re slightly different.

The Crunchie is a plank of dense honeycomb “sponge candy” covered in milk chocolate. While sponge would make you think that it’s somehow soft and yielding like marshmallow, this is hard and will shatter into shards when smacked. The honeycomb has an inconsistent texture, as shown in the photo. There’s a center stripe of sparkly, very crunchy honeycomb. The margins have a smaller bubble size. Still, it’s heavier than the other Sponge Candy from Parkside Candy and the Violet Crumble.

The flavor of the center is sweet with a light hit of salt and a strong note of burnt sugar, especially in the middle stripe.

I think the bar is nice, but in no way comes close to the experience of the Sponge Candy I recently had. The consistency of the center is just to, well, consistent and far too dense to have a quick melt-in-your-mouth quality. The chocolate is okay, it’s sweet but a little on the waxy side and doesn’t really lift up the experience as much as it could. I prefer the stronger taste and more textured honeycomb of this to the Violet Crumble, probably because the chocolate is a bit better, too.

I honestly don’t know why there isn’t some version of this made in the States by one of the major candy companies. I don’t have too much trouble finding Violet Crumble in Los Angeles (they carry it at many 7-11s near me) and I got another of these Crunchie bars at a Brit import shop as well. You’d think that Nestle or Cadbury would just sell them here themselves.

Related Candies

1. Parkside Candy Sponge Candy
2. Walkers Nonsuch Toffee
3. Jelly Belly Chocolate Malt Balls
4. Violet Crumble

Here’s some good news! Candy Blog is one of the finalists for the Food Blog Awards in the Theme category.

I’m up against some pretty serious food blogs: Eat Local Challenge, Fat Free Vegan, Lunch in a Box & Meathenge.

Go vote! (Deadline is Friday, December 14th.)

Check out all the categories, you might find some fun new reads. (Rosa at ZOMG Candy was also nominated for best new blog!)

Menu for Hope is a fundraiser for the UN World Food Programme. The Menu for Hope III raised almost $63,000 for the WFP. I’d love to see MFH4 top $100K - it shouldn’t be hard, there are dozens of wonderful prizes.

I’m donating a gift certificate for Chuao Chocolatier worth $100. This prize can be yours if you win the prize drawing for item UW26. The raffle tickets are $10 each, you can buy as many as you like and select how many go for which prize. There are many other fine prizes as well, please see the master list on Chez Pim, the host of this program and the West Coast prize list on Rasa Malaysia. (Here’s a roundup of the candy-related ones.)

The traditional techniques of European chocolatiers combine with pure Venezuelan chocolate and infusions of fresh ingredients and flavors in Chuao Chocolatier’s collection. Choose from a huge array of items in their webstore including their hot chocolate mixes, fine bonbons, chocolate bars and highly portable ChocoPods. There’s something there for every kind of chocolate lover: those who love the comfort of creamy milk chocolate caramels, those who crave the heat of spicy caramelized cacao nibs and even those adventurers who might want to go for a chevre, pear and black peppercorn bonbon.

The winner can chose a certificate good in the retail stores or on the website (it will not be good in both places).

Chuao Chocolatier is based in Encinitas, California.

If you would like to bid on this item use code UW26.

If you’re not interested in bidding, well, here’s a review of some items I picked up over the weekend:

Everyone seems to have a cacao nib product these days. Chuao’s is quite different. Their Coco Nib Snack may not even be considered candy, it might be a nut product. They start with small nib pieces, caramelize them with a little bit of sugar and toss them with a smidge of salt and chipotle & pasilla chilis. They look kind of like burnt Grape Nuts cereal.

It has a nice toasty flavor, not really spicy and not even that sweet. It does have some coffee and malt tones along with other dark chocolate and charcoal notes. This is nice to put in a little shot glass and tip into your mouth for a snack and would probably go well on ice cream, tossed in salads or maybe in a stuffing.

I love the combination of orange and chocolate. I especially enjoy it when the combination includes real orange peel. There’s something wonderfully essential yet complex when using whole ingredients.

These Dark Chocolate Orangettes are made with candied orange sticks dipped in chocolate. The orange is a bit sweet, but nice and soft. It’s not at all grainy either, so it’s smooth with a strong orange essence.

Ginger is one of those great crossover roots. It works great with savory food because it has such a great earthy spiciness. But it also works as a sweet base for all sorts of candies.

Candied ginger is a wonderful way to experience ginger. It’s so simple and uncomplicated. Candied ginger can come in a few different formats. Medallions (slices), cubes, julienne slices and even planks.

In the case of Chuao’s Gingerettes, they use little medallions, about the size of a quarter. They’re candied until just a the “jellied” stage and don’t have any of that crystallized sugar coating on them. So it’s all smooth. Then they’re dipped in dark chocolate.

The unique selling proposition here is that in addition to the spicy ginger, these have a light dusting of chili powder. It’s not a really strong cayenne, just a light spicy burn that goes well with the other light spicy burn that is ginger.

These are nice to simply eat or serve on the side of a piece of apple pie or perhaps some ice cream.

Previous Chuao Reviews: Chuao Chocolatier’s BonBon Selection, Chuao ChocoPods, Chuao Filled ChocoPod Collection.

So now that you’re drooling you want to buy a raffle ticket or two, right?

Donation Instructions:

The results will be published on Chez Pim on Wednesday Jaunary 9th.

For more see Chez Pim for the complete instructions.

Don’t have any money to spare but want to help people?

1. Try FreeRice.com, a little vocabulary game where the ad dollars earned when you play go to feed some of the hungriest people in the world.

2. Use GoodSearch.com and/or GoodShop to benefit your favorite charity.

1/11/2008 UPDATE: The winner of the raffle drawing was Melissa Wong! Congratulations!

You know what’s great about the Holiday season? Hostess gifts. People come to my house and for no reason I can tell other than crossing the threshold they feel like they have to give me something. And the gift most often in their hands is some sort of sweet goody.

I should just leave the door unlocked from November on!

My brother-and-sister-in-law brought some wonderful New Mexico goodies for my husband (posole & green chiles) but I got some Jo’s Candies Peppermint Crunch. The box makes it look like a pretty simple confection: dark chocolate over crunched up peppermint candies.

Oh, they’re so much more than just chocolate and crushed candy canes. I was worried that the center would just be a mint honeycomb (not that it would be bad that way). Instead The center is a mix of white chocolate/confection with crushed hard candy mints then covered in a dark chocolate.

This makes the center easy to bite but still satisfyingly crunchy, not overwhelmingly minty or tacky/sticky to chew.

They’re also all natural and Kosher. That means that even the little crunchy candies don’t have that dreadful Red #40, instead they use Red Beet Juice. Jo’s Candies are kind of pricey but quality ingredients, good packaging and freshness costs money. I’m deeply curious about their Dark Chocolate Turtles and the Mint Coco Jo’s that sound like a much better Girl Scout Cookie.

The little squares a dang pretty, glossy and dashed with little dark chocolate squiggles. The dark chocolate coating is pretty thick on the top, thicker usually than the photo above shows. So the proportions are pretty equal.

I think they were intended as a gift for me and my husband, but I don’t see myself eating his green chiles, so I’m pretty comfortable eating the whole box on my own to keep things equal in the relationship.

Related Candies

1. Junior Mints Peppermint Crunch
2. Recipe: Peppermint Stick Layer Cake
3. Chocolate Filled Candy Canes
4. Green and Black’s White Chocolate

I keep seeing this bar, but only in its jumbo form shown here. It clocks in at 4.5 ounces, no mere chocolate bar, this is a plank. Like the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Filled with Creamy Peanut Butter that’s also found in this size, I was hoping I’d run across a King Size or perhaps single serve size at some point. It’s like it barely exists. It’s never shown up on the Hershey’s official Hershey’s Milk Chocolate page.

But it’s clear it exists, not only because I have photos, but also independent corroboration from Nicole at Baking Bites with her review. For a while I saw the bar at the Dollar Tree so I though there must be something wrong with it, maybe it was old, maybe it was an import. But when I saw it at Ralph’s and flipped over the package to see that it expired in September 2008, it was made in the United States and it was on sale for a dollar, I figured it was time to give it a try.

It’s a lovely looking bar. It looks like a Hershey bar, a light caramely brown with 16 segments each with the Hershey’s name on them. It smells like, well, a Hershey bar. A little sweet, a little tangy. That Hershey’s tang isn’t quite as noticeable when you eat it though. What’s noticeable is a mellow malty note from the actual corn flake bits in there. They’re pretty dense and solidly crunchy. The malty corn flake flavors develop more as the chocolate dissolves away. I could use more corn flakes.

It’s in no way as good as the Ritter Sport Knusperflakes bar, but I ate the whole thing ... all 4.5 ounces of it (I got it on Sunday) so it has to be pretty good.

It’s a nice combo. It’s a terrible name for a candy bar though. I think they should have just called it an extension of the Krackel line and called it Corn Krackel. Or maybe Mr. Cornbar.

Thanks to Patti for being the first to alert me to this possible domestic contender for Ritter Sport Knusperflake’s place in my heart.

Related Candies

1. Peeps Monster Mash Ups
2. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
3. Paskesz Klik
4. Ritter Sport Assortment