Things are looking up in Los Angeles. More and more small confectioners are opening storefronts. Last year it was Valerie Confections, where I’ve been picking up teacakes and petit fours along with their toffees and truffles.

I was so pleased to see that Little Flower Candy Company also opened a cafe in Pasadena at the beginning of the year. Since my whale watching trip was canceled on Saturday morning, my husband and I went over for some lunch and sweets.

They only make candy during the week, so there wasn’t anything to see in the kitchen except our lunch being made. I had a vegetarian sandwich with a tempeh base, olive tapenade, sprouts and avocado on a hearty whole wheat bread. I also had an excellent fresh cup of coffee roasted by City Bean Coffee.  My husband had a turkey and cheese sandwich on the same bread and we both got super-garlicky and salty pickles. 

After lunch we browsed their selection of fresh candies that include Little Flower’s famous caramels and marshmallows, but I wanted to try something new. So I picked up a package of the stunningly gorgeous Honeycomb and some Marshmallow Puffs.

Honeycomb is pretty simple stuff, the recipe is easy, most call for something like this:

The first three are boiled together to 300 degrees, then removed from the heat and the baking soda is added. (Read more here.)

The trick with Honeycomb is working quickly and of course having the benefit of low humidity. The fellow behind the counter said what was special about Little Flower’s is that they actually use a bit of honey in there too.

It smells wonderful. Sweet and a touch like honey and a bit like cotton candy and butter.

The look of it is also lovely, with the glossy sheen on top and all the nooks & crannies.

The taste was a little disappointing. The crunch was good and it dissolved well. The honey and burnt sugar flavors were wonderful but towards the end it became a bit of a ball of soft sugar with a very strong taste of salt, metal and baking soda.

I was so disappointed. But I gave it another try and found the trick was to eat a smaller bite, not a whole piece at a time. But if I did put too much in my mouth I’d just spit out the unpleasant dreck at the end. (I also found it gave me the burps later on, just like soda does.)

This was the big surprise of the whole thing, while I like honeycomb, I didn’t like theirs. And while I don’t usually like marshmallows, I liked these!

The Marshmallow Puffs sold at the cafe are not like the gourmet, handmade marshmallows that Little Flower Candy Co. is already known for. What attracted me to these first of all was the packaging and the curious cross-branding. The narrow funnel shaped bag is in red, white & blue, in a rather retro design.

What I found so quirky and adorable about it was that the brand on there, besides Little Flower Candy Co. is Melissa’s, a Los Angeles-based produce company. (I have no idea why, but hey, I’m not going to argue.) They’re actually made in Belgium (not a place I knew did marshmallows.) But packaging & origin aside, what got me to buy the bag was the flavor assortment, Strawberry, Vanilla and Orange Blossom. I tasted one before I bought it and it’s divine. It’s not orange juicy, it’s more of a floral essence that has some strong bergamot overtones.

It reminds me of honey and flowers and Earl Grey tea and the wonderful marshmallows that make up the bulk of See’s Scotchmallows.

The marshmallows are all natural and have no artificial colors. The little puffs are extruded drops. They’re rather firm and latexy, but still have a good puff that melts in the mouth.

Strawberry is fragrant and sweet and reminds me of angel food cake and cotton candy.

Vanilla isn’t as sweet as I’d feared and tastes, well, like a marshmallow.

The clerk was kind enough to pick out a package that had a preponderance of orange blossom in it, so I only had three vanilla and five strawberry. The rest are the divine orange blossom. They don’t sell them on the website, but I was told if you called in an order they’d sell them to you. But you may also see them in grocery stores that carry Melissa’s produce as well. (I’d guess look at the more upscale ones like Gelson’s or Bristol Farm style chains.)

Here’s the review at Colorado Chow that got me off my duff and over there. Little Flower is known for their excellent artisan caramels & marshmallows. I’ve only reviewed the Lemon, Vanilla and Salted caramels on the blog, and can recommend them highly.

Little Flower Candy Co.
1422 W. Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91105
(626) 304-4800

Related Candies

1. Parkside Candy Sponge Candy
2. GudFud Stuffed Marshmallows
3. Melster Marshmallow Eggs
4. Littlejohn Caramel Marshmallows
5. Artisan Marshmallows: Plush Puffs

Canada and the UK have Nestle Aero and Cadbury Bubbly bars. Israel has the Elite and Korea and Japan have Lotte Airs. Everyone else seems to have an aerated chocolate bar except for the United States. It’s not like we’ve been completely denied. Nestle did have a chocolate bar called the Choco’lite back in the 70s, but that didn’t go over well.

Maybe we’re just waiting for the right bar.

I was really looking forward to seeing Bubble Chocolate. Mostly because they’re using higher quality chocolate. The cacao content on their dark bar is 60%. There’s apparently a lot of engineering involved with balancing the viscosity and whatnot when doing different things to chocolate, so I’ll leave that to the industrial engineers. Apparently you can’t just foam up regular chocolate and expect a great result - there are a lot of things to take into account.

Bubble Chocolate comes in three varieties: Milk, Coffee Milk and Dark 60% Cacao.

My Coffee Milk Chocolate bar got a bit banged up in the trip back, so that pile above is just of the dark and milk chocolate. Handsome, aren’t they?

They’re huge looking, twice as thick as a normal 100 gram bar but only 80 grams. It’s kind of odd to pick them up, because it’s so surprising how light they are - 50% air ... that’s some lite chocolate. It’s kind of like pumice!

Dark Chocolate - the bar has a nice aroma that mixes berries and smoke. Despite the high cacao content, it’s very creamy and sweet. There’s a fudgy consistency to it as it melts so distinctly different than a regular un-bubbled chocolate bar. The airiness of the bar seems to make the scent of the bar carry better too, as you eat it. There’s a slight grain to the chocolate as it disintigrates, but no trace of the chalkiness I’ve complained about with other aerated bars.

Milk Chocolate - the bar is much sweeter than the dark, but also melts far quicker on the tongue. It’s a little stickier too, but exceptionally smooth. The milk flavors are not at all like the dairy chocolate I usually have from Cadbury or European Nestle. This is much more American tasting. I don’t know the cacao content on this chocolate, but it’s certainly dark looking. I was a little disappointed that there’s vanillin in here instead of real vanilla. However, if they’re keeping the bar under the $2 price point retail, I can see this as an acceptable compromise.

Coffee Milk Chocolate - this one smells like a coffee house - fresh and warm and roasty. There’s real coffee in there, but happily no coffee grounds (which is kinda a pet peeve of mine). It’s especially creamy and has a really nice melt on the tongue. This bar has no vanillin in it at all, and that may be why I’ve gravitated towards it. It’s a tasty bar, totally satisfying. The coffee isn’t fake tasting like some of the Hershey products, and it’s not grainy or too bitter. It is sweet, as it’s the milk chocolate, not the dark. But on the whole, my favorite of the three.

Overall they’re nice, munchable chocolate bars with an interesting texture that highlights the flavors. It’s not the best chocolate in the world, but it’s very tasty and enjoyable. It will never replace a good, high quality bar but I feel like it’s more than a novelty item.

As a serving suggestion, I do not advise that you let the chocolate get too warm. When it gets warm it gets fudgy and pliable and the airyness doesn’t quite hold.

Bubble Chocolate is still completing their first orders to get them in stores, but right now you can expect to see them at Trader Joe’s in September.

Interesting note from label: made in Belarus.

Before CandyBlog came into my life, I was completely unaware of the wonders of flaked and aerated chocolate. How can this be? I’m the kid who seemed to have as much fun blowing bubbles into my chocolate milk as I did drinking it.

It seems that the UK does not have the corner on the market when it comes to bubbly chocolates, I’ve now discovered these from Israel and Japan:

Elite Aerated Bittersweet Chocolate: This is the first semi-sweet bar I’ve tried that’s bubbly. I’m not even sure if Nestle or Cadbury make one anymore. This bar is large, about the size of a 100 gram one, but weighs only 85 grams. The pieces are oddly light in the hand and melt quickly on the tongue. The bubbles are very consistent and I think a little smaller overall than the ones in the Aero bars. Very sweet at first and with a nice sweet smell but perhaps a little too much fake vanilla to it. It’s very buttery on the tongue, though with a little grain towards the end but a nice crisp finish. This bar is 48% cocoa solids.

Lotte Airs: This isn’t a bar at all. Inside the box, after opening the plastic pouch you’ll find a tray with little pieces. (12 in all.) Kind of like the Dars I tried before. The Airs bar is milk chocolate but what’s really different about it is that there’s also hazelnut paste in there. It gives the bar a wonderful nutty aroma that mixes well with the dairy milk taste that might make it a little too sticky otherwise. The bubbles in them are very small, which gives it less of an airy feeling on the tongue, but it still has a good cool sensation. I love that it’s in pieces, which makes it easy to share. Also, the other aerated bars tend to be a little messy when you break off a piece. Lotte is so clever.

See these other reviews: Nestle Aero, Nestle Mint Aero and Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly.

Name: Dairy Milk
Brand: Cadbury
Place Purchased: Sainsbury (West Los Angeles)
Price: $1.29
Size: 1.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 148
Type: Chocolate

I picked this up in the interest of documenting all the UK frothed chocolate bars. For those of you keeping score at home, the most well known is the Nestle Aero Bar (which comes in several flavor variations).

Not as wide or plank-like as the Aero (about a third of an ounce smaller), this is a little bar contains bubbleated Cadbury milk chocolate. Cadbury milk, for those of you that have had it, is distinctive in that it tastes like chocolate and powdered milk. Some people think that’s a good thing. I don’t find it that appealing as it reminds me of that time when I was poor.

But with a little positive reinforcement I’m getting over that and finding the flavor rather intriguing (just like it took me many years to get over the rather yogurty flavor of Hershey chocolate).

The bar is light and melts easily on the tongue. It’s sweet, but not as sticky as I found the Aero bar. As with the Aero bar, the bubbles really help to bring out the toasty nuances of the chocolate (I’m guessing the air allows more aromas to combine and give more “flavor” to the bar).

Rating: 7 out of 10

Name: Aero Peppermint
Brand: Nestle
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: 3 for $2.00 (Canadian)
Size: 45 grams
Calories: 237
Type: Chocolate/Mint

I reviewed the regular Milk Chocolate Aero bar a few months ago and while I found it pleasant and rather novel, it didn’t really compel me to buy another. However, many folks urged me to try the Aero Mint so when my husband called from the drug store in Canada and listed all the candies he could see (we have free mobile-to-mobile minutes), this was one I was curious about trying.

The first thing that surprised me was that the center was green! I thought it was a milk chocolate bar that had a touch of mint flavor to it and that famous fluffy Aero bubblyness. Instead it’s a white (well, green) mint bar covered in milk chocolate. Because of the lighter color the bubbles were much easier to photograph for you. Yes, it looks like some sort of styrofoam but melts quickly in the mouth and is very minty. Like one of those pastel smooth & melty mints ... or maybe like an Andes Mint.

Oddly enough the label advertises that the bar is a source of calcium. The nutrition information lists that it provides 7% of the daily recommendation. Hurray, I only need to eat 13 more for my full day’s supply!

As there are few minted chocolate bars out there, this one is right up there at the top (well just about everything is above that Cup-O-Gold Peppermint). I liked it a bit more than the regular milk chocolate bar but not as much as the Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Mint.

Rating - 7 out of 10

Name: Aero
Brand: Nestle Rowntree (UK)
Place Purchased: Cost Plus
Price: $1.29
Size: 1.62 oz
Calories per ounce: 142
Type: Chocolate (Milk)

I’ve seen these bars before, usually in import stores, and as I recall I picked up one or something similar in London when I was there. It’s basically a milk chocolate Nestle bar that’s been whipped into a froth and then quickly molded into a bar. It creates a bit of a lighter feeling treat than a dense chocolate bar.

What’s amazing about this is when you look at the bar unwrapped, it looks like a king sized bar, but it weighs about the same as a regular bar. It’s overwhelmingly sweet and chocolately smelling. Upon biting into it, it yields easily, more like marshmallow or fudge than chocolate. In fact, that’s what it resembles most to me, fudge. It’s definitely very chocolatey, a little sticky feeling in the mouth, but because of all the air, it melts fast, bursting on the tongue.

Note that because of the bubbles, I suspect that it’s a little more prone to softening in the summer warmth than other bars, so you might want to store this one in the fridge. In fact, I’ve heard that some folks prefer it that way.

On the whole, it was a pleasant bar. The chocolate is very milky, as European chocolate usually is and if you like that, you won’t be disappointed. I find European milk chocolate tastes a little like powdered milk to me which is not an entirely pleasant reminder.

My rating: 6 out of 10.

See also - taquitos.net review.