Russell Stover has epitomized Americana for as long as I can remember. They’re a safe and unassuming brand. Their boxed chocolates are dependably sweet and bland but have a nice flair for dependable and fresh holiday themed chocolate novelties.

I was a little surprised when I saw these new Russell Stover Day of the Dead Skeletons at the drug store.

They have two varieties, one chocolate covered caramel and one chocolate covered marshmallow - but what’s interesting about them is the South of the Border design on the package (bilingual as well).

I’ll start with the Russell Stover Caramel Covered in Milk Chocolate (Caramelo Cubierto en el Chocolate con Leche).

They’re large skeleton shaped caramel planks covered in milk chocolate, the package features a brightly clad skeleton. There are at least three different designs per confection. For the Caramel I chose this lady skeleton wearing a red blouse with poofy sleeves, a green full skirt, a yellow yat with dingleberries and holding maracas. It’s quite a sight, especially when designed with bright flat colors and accents of purple, orange and silver foil.

The pieces are large, about twice the size as the regular Pumpkin products they make. The Caramel was 2.5 ounces and about 4.5 inches long.

The design of the actual candy is not quite as impressive as the package. In fact, once I pulled it out of the wrapper, you could have easily convinced me this was a Halloween Saguaro Cactus. But shape aside, it’s a really lovely piece of candy. The chocolate is nicely tempered, it’s shiny and had very few scuffs and no leaks. The ripples were also nice to look at and gave a feeling that this was a piece of candy made by people.

The caramel is soft, but not runny. The bite is easy and the caramel has a good pull but not a lot of chew to it. It’s smooth and has a lot of toffee notes and very little grain. The milk chocolate is sweet and has a lot of dairy notes though not much going on other than that.

It’s a lot of candy - I couldn’t eat more than a third in one sitting, so it’s not an easy piece to have a little and then put it away.

It’s not an innovative piece, they make a similar product for Easter, but it’s fresh and I really loved the package.

The Russell Stover Marshmallow Covered in Milk Chocolate (Malvavisco Cubierto en el Chocolate con Leche) has an equally vibrant package design. I chose a skeleton wearing a sombrero and bright poncho beating on a magenta and yellow drum.

This piece is only 2.25 ounces, missing a quarter of an ounce because the marshmallow is so fluffy, but probably about 50% thicker than the Caramel version.

The shape is similarly blocky and poorly defined, but still has glossy rippled milk chocolate enrobing.

The Russell Stover marshmallow is always moist and smooth, fluffy but not too foamy. It doesn’t have much flavor, no honey notes but a good vanilla extract finish. It’s a clean tasting candy - everything tastes real - real sugar, real milk, real vanilla. It’s comforting and homey.

The Day of the Dead celebrations of Mexico are vibrant, social and life-affirming. It’s fun to see a confection here in the United States that feels like it’s appealing to those who want to join in the celebration without feeling like it’s exclusionary or pandering. I don’t know if these are going to be sold everywhere, I picked them up in the Echo Park neighborhood RiteAid, one of the denser areas of Mexican-Americans in the country and over 6 million people of Mexican descent in the Southern California metropolitan counties. Next, I’d like to see the inclusion of some real Mexican confectionery traditions.

Related Candies

1. Russell Stover Marshmallow & Caramel
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
3. Russell Stover Giant S’mores Bar & Mint Dream
4. CVS Marshmallow Pop
5. Russell Stover Dark Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Pumpkin
6. Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbits
7. Russell Stover Orange Marshmallow Pumpkin
8. Littlejohn Caramel Marshmallows

Candy Corn is a sugar confection made by depositing different colored layers of fondant into the shape of a narrow triangle. The flavor of candy corn is muted but often bears notes of honey, marshmallow and occasionally butter. It’s created with starch molds and the most common color layering puts yellow as the base, orange as the center band and white as the small tip. It’s an American candy, originating in the 1880s with dozens of manufacturers now in North America. The molded fondant confection is generically called Mellocreams and can come in a variety of shapes, often lightly flavored and colored.

The first thing I noticed as a trend was Candy Corn appearing out of season with other names or color variations. As a kid, I remember there were two kinds of Candy Corn. The standard yellow, orange and white and then the Indian Corn variety that was brown (a little cocoa flavor), dark orange and white. But later on came Reindeer Corn which comes in red, green and white. There’s Bunny Corn that comes in pastels and sometimes I see Cupid Corn for Valentines that’s red, pink and white.

More recently Gourmet Candy Corns have come along. They’re not really superior in any way to classic Candy Corn, they’re just different color varieties and flavored like Egg Nog, Candied Apples, Green Apple, Tangerine, Cherry, Pumpkin Spice and Toffee.

But more importantly, Candy Corn has come into its own as a flavor and is now spinning off its own set of candies. Here are a few candies that are Candy Corn flavored, but not actually Candy Corn.

Mars makes M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn. They’re white chocolate centers with a light, sweet flavor covered in candy shells in three colors: orange, white and yellow.

Level of Candy Corn-ness: 5 out of 10
Actual Candy Blog rating: 7 out of 10

Jelly Belly introduced Jelly Belly Candy Corn Jelly Beans earlier this year. Too bad they couldn’t get the stripes on them.

Level of Candy Corn-ness: 5 out of 10
Actual Candy Blog rating: 7 out of 10

Vidal, a maker of fascinating gummis in unusual shapes, created a rather unique take on Candy Corn with their Puffy Candy Corn. It’s a foamy gummi that’s actually more fruity flavored than generic sweet fondant is.

Level of Candy Corn-ness: 8 out of 10
Actual Candy Blog rating: 5 out of 10

For several years Hershey’s issued Hershey’s Candy Corn Kisses, a butter flavored white confection. The shape was a natural for Candy Corn treatment, too bad they didn’t go with the honey flavors and real cocoa butter.

Level of Candy Corn-ness: 8 out of 10
Actual Candy Blog rating: 4 out of 10

Last year was the first for Whitman’s introduction of the Candy Corn Marshmallow. It’s a large triangular marshmallow covered with “white confection” in two colors.

Level of Candy Corn-ness: 4 out of 10
Actual Candy Blog rating: 4 out of 10

Dots, made by Tootsie, have been a bit edgier and hipper lately. Their Halloween offerings are spot on, with Ghost Dots and Blood Orange Bat Dots. Of course their Candy Corn Dots also make this list. They’re just vanilla Dots, but cute as buttons.

Level of Candy Corn-ness: 9 out of 10
Actual Candy Blog rating: 6 out of 10

The level of Candy Corn-ness is evaluated on the basis of the following attributes: stacked color, colors, flavor, scale, and shape.

Related Candies

1. M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn
2. Jelly Belly Candy Corn Jelly Beans
3. Whitman’s Candy Corn Marshmallow
4. Flix Sour Gummy Pop Corn
5. Kimmie Sweet & Salty Corn Bits
6. Pumpkin Pie Gourmet Candy Corn
7. Puffy Candy Corn
8. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix

Mars has introduced a limited edition, limited distribution of a new variety of M&Ms for Halloween. M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn are appearing in WalMart stores exclusively across the United States. Since I’m not able to easily shop at WalMart (really not many in the Los Angeles area), some folks at Mars were kind enough to send me a bag for review.

It’s tempting when I hear about candies like this to write the review before I even get a hold of the candy. That would not only be a horrible disservice to the readers, it’s really unfair to the candy. I’m supposed to have an open mind. Luckily I kept mine open for this one. (In reality, I thought it sounded like a dreadful idea, and I blame the Hershey’s Candy Corn Kisses and Jelly Belly Buttered Popcorn candies for my predisposition.)

The M&Ms are larger than the regular M&Ms Milk Chocolate, though they vary a little bit in size and shape. They’re thicker and have a larger diameter. They come in three colors: white, bright yellow and bright orange. (The orange and yellow are actually different from the standard colors. The orange is darker and not as shiny and the yellow has a matte caste to it and a slightly neon note.)

Mars has marketed White Chocolate M&Ms before, in 2006 they introduced M&Ms Pirate Pearls in conjunction with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Unlike the other limited edition version of Dark Chocolate M&Ms (tie in with Star Wars), they were never added to the regular or seasonal offerings.

Mars has stuck to their Real Chocolate pledge here, it’s real white chocolate made with oodles of cocoa butter (cocoa butter is the second ingredient - sometimes white chocolate products have milk fat before the cocoa butter). There are no other filler oils.

The candies smell a bit like strawberries or cotton candy, very sweet but not in an artificial way. I was fully expecting the liberal use of diacetyl. Happily that was not the case.

Candy Corn M&Ms on the left and classic Milk Chocolate M&Ms on the right

The shells are crunchy and seem thicker than the standard Milk Chocolate variety sports. Some of the shells were cracked, I don’t know if that was because this was sent to me and got shaken up in transit or if they’re particularly vulnerable.

The center is soft and yielding. It’s sweet and buttery smooth, like a well made buttercream frosting. The flavors are only slightly milky, the sweetness is rather clean and again reminds me of Cotton Candy. I was hoping for the honey notes that good Candy Corn has, but this was all a pleasant surprise.

They’re quite rich, both in fat and in sugar, so I found that I couldn’t eat more than about a dozen without feeling a little overwhelmed by the sweetness. Ultimately though I didn’t feel like they rose to the level of an actual Candy Corn flavored candy. Still, they’re nice, and for white chocolate fans who have so few choices for real cocoa butter white chocolate, you might be pleased.

Now I’m waiting for Egg Nog M&Ms .... mmm, nutmeg white chocolate would be dreamy.

One other note I have about this packaging. I noticed on the nutrition panel that they’re giving better information. In the serving size it gives the portion in variety of formats. A serving size is 1.5 ounces, 42 grams or about 1/4 cup. So you really get a sense of how much they mean. The new green what’s inside block also breaks it out very clearly. One portion is 220 calories and 11 grams of total fat (17% DV) and 7 grams of saturated fat (35% DV).

UPDATE 9/11/2012: White Chocolate Candy Corn M&Ms are back for 2012. They’re available in all stores, in both the large bags as well as 1.5 ounce individual serving bags (with a variety of different designs on the front).

Related Candies

1. Eat with your Eyes: Meiji Strawberry Lentils
2. Pumpkin Pie Gourmet Candy Corn
3. Puffy Candy Corn
4. Toffee Flavored Chocolate Covered Candy Corn
5. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
6. M&Ms Premiums
7. Candy Corn Kisses
8. M&M Pirate Pearls

Name: Angry Birds Fruit Snacks and Gummies
Brand: Healthy Food Brands
Description: The chewy candies are shaped to resemble characters from the Angry Birds video games, and packs feature the games’ logo and graphics. Made with fruit juice, all products are fat-, nut- and gluten-free, and come in cherry, lemon, raspberry, apple, grape and strawberry flavors. Angry Birds Fruit Snacks come in 2.25 and five-ounce peg bags with SRPs of 89 cents and $1.59 while Angry Birds Gummies come in 3.5-ounce theater boxes with a SRP range of $1.29 to $1.69.
Introduction Date: current
Notes: Angry Birds has been devouring your time, now you can devour them. Actually, I appreciate that the shapes are actually of the little characters. I hate it when I get a themed candy that’s just about the packaging, nothing inside is any different from the usual brand.

Name: 3 Musketeers Coconut Bar
Brand: Mars
Description: Send your taste buds to paradise with the sweet taste of new 3 MUSKETEERS Coconut Bar. Coconut flavor has been added to the 3 MUSKETEERS signature light and fluffy chocolate nougat and then wrapped in rich, milk chocolate.
Introduction Date: December 2011
Notes: Mars has already introduced Coconut M&Ms, Coconut Twix and Dove Coconut Cream Eggs (and maybe you can count the Snickers Adventure Bar that had some coconut in it). Sometimes Mars’ innovations feel more systematic. They introduce a version of something with a new flavor, like Cherry M&Ms and then they say, “What else could have cherry in it?” So then we have Cherry 3 Musketeers, and then Cherry Dove Bars and so on. The other flavored center varieties of 3 Musketeers have been interesting, I did appreciate the Coffee one and Raspberry was interesting too. I’m not sure how long we’ll have to wait for the Chili & Lime 3 Musketeers or the Wasabi 3 Musketeers.

Name: M&Ms Mint Dark Chocolate
Brand: Mars
Description: Consumers can add some cool to their crunch with new M&Ms Mint Dark Chocolate Candies. It’s a delicious, new way to experience the colorful, shareable M&Ms bite-sized candy they love, now with cool, refreshing mint combined with creamy dark chocolate and coated in a crunchy candy shell. Mars Chocolate has responded to consumer requests for variety and has shown proven success in adding new flavors to its iconic brands. Mint is a large and growing segment of the chocolate category.
Introduction Date: December 2011
Notes: These may have existed in the distant past and I’m happy to see that they’ll return. (It also appears that the seasonal Milk Chocolate Mint M&Ms will also be back.)

Name:
Brand: Mars
Description: Consumers will experience the chocolate lover’s dream with new SNICKERS 3X Chocolate 2 to Go Bars. Layer after layer offers perfection, with roasted peanuts in chewy, chocolate caramel atop a fluffy chocolate-flavored nougat and covered in creamy milk chocolate.
Introduction Date: December 2011
Notes: I’ve never met someone who likes Snickers that would say that Snickers needs less peanut flavor. I’m not saying that this is going to be a bad bar, but if they only thing that’s still Snickerish are the peanuts, is is not going to go well. But what do I know, the experts at Mars (or their advisers) say, “In consumer testing, this new offering scored as high as the original SNICKERS Bar in overall product liking,1 and 67 percent of consumers said they would “definitely” or “probably” purchase SNICKERS 3X Chocolate Bars.”
A few years ago there was a Triple Chocolate Twix bar, it was chocolate caramel on a chocolate cookie covered in chocolate. So Mars already knows how to do this.
Don’t Miss: Gobble Monkey tried the UK iteration of the Triple Chocolate Mars Bar (really a triple chocolate Milky Way).

Name: Sun Cup Caramel
Brand: Seth Ellis Chocolatier
Description: Seth Ellis is already know for their peanut free Sun Cups, which use sunflower seed butter instead. Now they’re expanding the line to include the new milk chocolate caramel cups. They’re also gluten free, tree nut and peanut free and use
Introduction Date: May 2011
Notes: Caramel Cups. I don’t really get them. Nothing against this one, they’re just not quite my thing. But they’re also gluten free, tree nut and peanut free and use Rainforest Alliance certified chocolate and finally, are Kosher certified.

Name: Sun Cup Mint
Brand: Seth Ellis Chocolatier
Description: Love Dark Chocolate? Love sweet cool peppermint? Then you are going to LOVE Dark Chocolate Mint Sun Cups.
Introduction Date: May 2011
Notes: They’re also gluten free, tree nut and peanut free and use Rainforest Alliance certified chocolate and finally, are Kosher certified. The only real issue I have with them is that they use white chocolate as part of the ingredients list. It’s not really a problem for me, but they had an opportunity to make a vegan product (which is pretty rare in the chocolate/mint fondant world) and kind of missed the boat for our animal-free and dairy-free friends.

Name: Ritter Sport Espresso Bar
Brand: Ritter Sport
Description: Ritter Sport is introducing the new 3.5 oz. Milk Chocolate Espresso Bar, made with robust Arabica coffee. With the coffee sector still being a very “hot” category, this bar should do extremely well.
Introduction Date: unknown
Notes: This bar was introduced over a year ago in Europe. I got to taste it then and I’m eagerly anticipating it showing up on store shelves in North America. The milky flavors are quite strong, but the espresso is wonderfully rich and much more forward than the milky and sweet Cappuccino bar they make. We’re sadly lacking in actual coffee chocolate bars in the United States, this will fill that hole very well.

Name: Red Velvet Cupcake Bites
Brand: Taste of Nature, Inc
Description: A new candy promises the fun of dessert in a bite-sized treat. Red Velvet Cupcake Bites feature a cupcake center, covered in creamy red frosting with a distinctive “red velvety” taste. The bites are a play on Taste of Nature’s Cookie Dough Bites candies.
Introduction Date:
Notes: I really loathe Red Velvet Cake, mostly because it’s just yellow cake with red food coloring in it. (But I do enjoy cream cheese frosting.) This candy has it all wrong, first because the coating (cream cheese frosting) shouldn’t be red, it’s supposed to be white and the center should be red. But whatever, I haven’t actually liked any of the other Cookie Dough Bites innovations anyway (need I remind you of the Cupcake Bites?). So I’ll just leave you with the ingredients to tantalize you .... Ingredients: Confectionery coating (sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, nonfat milk powder, whole milk powder, cocoa powder, FD&C red 40 lake, natural flavor, soy lecithin (an emulsifier) and vanillin (artificial flavoring)) and cupcake bites (wheat flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel, palm, soybean, and cottonseed), corn syrup, fructose, water, palm oil, natural and artificial flavors, soy lecithin, salt and xanthan gum).

images courtesy of the respective manufacturers

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Mars 2011 Announcements
2. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2011 Part 2
3. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2011 Part 1
4. Candy Tease: Nostalgia in 2011
5. Candy Tease- October 2010
6. Candy Tease: Mars 2010

Ritter Sport makes dozens of different chocolate bars. A few are seasonal varieties, such as their new Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme which debuted last fall in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. (Some packages feature the pink ribbon, others do not.)

The picture on the front of the package along with the name of the bar gave me most of what I needed to know: Milk chocolate filled with a cream of low fat yogurt, strawberry and crispy rice.

The ingredients don’t quite match up with that description. The first ingredient is sugar, which is fine with me as I fully expect my candy to be mostly sugar. The second ingredient is palm kernel oil. Nowhere in my chocolate, low fat yogurt or crispy rice do I ever expect to find palm kernel oil. So, its dominating presence here is unwelcome but the bar is at least redeemed with its third ingredient, cocoa butter, one of my favorite butters.

The bar is a familiar format for Ritter Sport. It’s 100 grams and comes in a square bar made up of 16 sections (four by four). The recommended portion is six pieces, which of course doesn’t create a whole number of portions. (I found for this review one bar was a portion, which means that it replaced my breakfast calories and all my snack calories for the day.)

The cream inside the bar is a faint pink with spots of actual dried strawberries. In addition, there are little bits of crisped rice. The chocolate outside is sweet and milky, like the Alpine Milk variety (though I’m not certain which version of the many Ritter Sport chocolates they used for this bar). The cream inside is sweet and mostly smooth without being greasy. The crunchies in the cream were interesting, sometimes they were the crisped rice, so they were a little salty and a little malty. But other times they were freeze dried strawberry bits so they were tangy and would soften into a slick reconstituted fruit mush. I liked the different pops of tartness or saltiness to go with the cream and milky chocolate background.

It’s a good quality bar (though not great, since a large portion is palm kernel oil) and is different from other American chocolate offerings. I found it on sale at Target for $1.66 over the weekend. For a 3.5 ounce bar of this it’s a good deal. Other bars are a bit lower in fat and have no palm kernel oil, but this is a limited edition item so it’s not as if I’m going to eat them all year round.

Related Candies

1. Ritter Sport Olympia
2. KitKats: Royal Milk Tea, Ginger Ale, Bubbly Strawberry, Kinako Ohagi & Milk Coffee
3. Ferrara Chocolate Strawberry
4. Limited Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms
5. Ritter Sport Peppermint
6. Whoppers Milkshake Strawberry
7. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts
8. Ritter Sport Capuccino and Rum Trauben Nuss

There are two standard axioms for innovation in candymaking: Making it Bigger Makes it Better and Covering it Chocolate Makes it Gourmet. For the most part they’re true.

Albanese Confectionery didn’t invent the gummi bear and didn’t innovate chocolate covered gummis. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t do it well and possibly better than most other confectioners.

The Milk Chocolate Gummi Bears assortment is interesting, first that they’re pretty big. I can’t say for sure, but the bears seem bigger than the standard, but that could be the chocolate coating messing with my ability to gauge their size. The other interesting thing about the assortment are the flavors of the gummis in the center. Albanese has gone with flavors that complement milk chocolate: Orange, Strawberry/Banana, Raspberry, Marshmallow, Strawberry, Apricot.

Of course you’ll never know which you’re getting when you pick one out, kind of a fruity roulette.

Like all of the Albanese gummis, these were soft and flavorful, quite chewy and smooth. The chocolate coating is thin and sweet with a strong milky flavor. (I know that Albanese uses Wilbur Chocolate for their malted milk balls, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is also Wilbur’s couveture.) The bouncy nature of the gummi goes well with the quick melting chocolate.

Albanese sells their chocolate covered bears for about $6.00 a pound online. Chances are pretty good if you’ve found a candy store that sells individually flavored gummi bears (with an A on their bellies) that also carries chocolate covered bears then you’ve probably seen these. If you’re looking for a chocolate treat that’s not so high in calories, these are a great option. They clock in at only 106 calories per ounce, which is very low for a chocolate coated item. The individual pieces and variations in flavors should make for a lean treat that doesn’t feel like a compromise.

They’re far and away better than the Muddy Bears that come in theater boxes and I prefer them to the Koppers version (but these do have artificial colors in them). Still, the top chocolate covered gummi in my heart are the Japanese Gummy Choco.

Related Candies

1. Candy Source: Albanese Candy Factory
2. Au’some Easter 3-Dees Gummy
3. Big Bite Gummy Bear
4. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
5. Chocolate Covered Gummi Bears
6. Meiji Gummy Choco
7. Krunchy Bears

Abdallah Candies was founded in 1909 by Albert Abdallah in Minneapolis. The company still run by the family using traditional recipes and focusing on classic candy products like caramels, dipped fruit and chocolates.

I picked up an assortment of Abdallah’s Wrapped Caramels while on vacation here in California. They’re cute little two bite pieces that I thought were reasonably priced at 60 cents each.

Their varieties go beyond the typical vanilla, chocolate and nut versions. They offer about a dozen different kinds. They’re wrapped in clear cellophane, which shows of the candy very nicely.

I tried three different varieties:

Vanilla Caramels I started with the classic, as this is the base of the other caramel candies. The color is a pleasing creamy brown. The pull of the caramel was good, stringy without being too tough or grainy. The flavor was sweet with milky notes ... I tend to prefer a little more salt in my caramel these days, but this was still a great classic vanilla caramel.

Pecan Caramel Nougat is, as you can probably tell from the photo, a layer of pecan nougat sandwiched between two layers of the vanilla caramel. The pecans were soft but crunchy with a woodsy maple flavor. The nougat didn’t do much for me in the way of actual flavor (no honey notes) but the chewy and denser texture was interesting compared to the softer, quicker dissolve of the caramel.

I wouldn’t call it a complete win for me, but I loved the addition of the nuts.

Pecan Alligator Caramels are another layered caramel. The top is a chocolate caramel and the bottom is a pecan vanilla caramel. It’s great. It’s soft and chewy, the chocolate gives it a little smoky and salty edge, the nuts are fresh and ample, the caramelized sugar notes are perceptible ... I loved this one. It was a little grainier, could have just been that I ate them last of my little set, so they might have gotten a little humid.

I’m absolutely intrigued by Abdallah now. I want to order more of their candy directly but I’m a little hesitant as I sent them an email with a question on Monday and they still haven’t responded. But their prices are very reasonable. I had no trouble plunking down 60 cents for each of these.

The other items on their website include other caramel and nut combinations called Alligators (completely chocolate dipped nut caramels) and Grizzlies (caramels with whole nuts and dollops of chocolate). The confectioner has a factory store in Burnsville, Minnesota that you can get fresh candy and even watch the factory floor where they dip their chocolates (photos on their facebook page).

Related Candies

1. See’s Double Caramel
2. Trader Joe’s 70% Dark with Caramel and Black Sea Salt
3. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
4. Eat with your Eyes: Asher’s Salted Caramel
5. Bequet Gourmet Caramels
6. J Morgan Caramels
7. Grandma’s Caramels
8. Cowgirl Chocolates Buckin’ Hot Habanero Caramels

In January of this year I visited Amsterdam for the first time. I was fascinated and delighted by the sweets culture of the Dutch. My visit to the city was almost completely on foot. I arrived in a plane and left on a train, but the rest was just walking around within the area of the city known as the Canal Loop. Here’s my reference map.

I stayed right around the corner from the grand flower market, which wasn’t quite in its full glory as it was late January and many of the items they were selling were just bulbs. My goal when I visit most places is to experience candy as the locals do. Sure, I go to the touristy shops, but I love to see how candy is merchandised in grocery stores, convenience shops, vending machines and drug stores. What I found while in Europe is that candy is thriving and it’s for adults and children.

Amsterdam is a great city to visit any time of year, it’s easy to walk (or take public transportation) and really explore. As I’ve mentioned before, I like to balance my visits with tourist things (canal walks to historical locations & museums) along with living like the locals (grocery shopping, local markets and restaurants). Most of the people I encountered spoke English and I learned most of the common phrases in Dutch very quickly; reading signage (if it wasn’t in English) was also pretty simple with a smartphone dictionary app.

As with most European metropolitan areas, they’re not shy about sweets. Bakeries and access to chocolate and candy abounds. I’ll have more on my candy spotting in future posts. But here are three chocolate shops I visited in Amsterdam:

Pompadour Chocolates

This is a little tea room style shop, the front is a chocolate counter, but up a few stairs past this and the shop widens out to a little cafe for tea, coffee and pastries.

The style of the chocolates is pure classic. Creams, truffles, candied fruits, caramels and chocolate covered nuts.

They had a good selection of gift chocolate in little stand up bags (chocolate covered nuts dusted in cocoa and powdered sugar, orangettes and boxes of Valrhona chocolate) appropriate as a hostess gift or to take home and enjoy. But mostly the shop seemed to be small baked goods (dipped Florentine) and chocolates.

I picked out a small selection of chocolates by the piece. They did have gift boxes, but I had mine in a little paper bag and took them back to the office to taste with my cappuccino.

My favorite by far was the Honey Caramel with Hazelnuts & Dark Chocolate pictured there a little bit in the back. It was a caramel with a light touch of honey filled with whole hazelnuts. It was sliced and then dipped 3/4 into dark chocolate. A soft chew with lots of dark notes.

I also got a cappuccino & cognac (the twisty thing with a coffee bean on top) which was fluffier than most of my truffles and had a good leathery tang to the coffee notes and the The which was a little “dry” because it was on the intense side. In the back, the flat topped one is a nutmeg and wafer ganache: a bit of feulletine and some rich spice in a milky ganache. (I don’t remember what the other one in the front was - my guess is a dark chocolate, since I usually try to get a plain chocolate). I would definitely stop at this shop again. There are two locations.

Chocolaterie Pompadour
Kerkstraat 148, Amsterdam

The shop that I most wanted to visit was called Puccini Bomboni which also has several locations. My hotel was equidistant from both shops yet I had a bit of trouble getting there. For some reason the morning I decided to make that my coffee stop I chose to go to the Singel location only to realize that they didn’t open until 11 AM. The next day I tried going to the other location on Staalstraat but didn’t make it before they closed at 6 PM. On my third try I did get back to Staalstraat and because of my difficulties, I felt the need to buy nine chocolates.

The shop on Staalstraat is quaint and well situated on a quiet corner. They had lots of impulse items, prepackaged chocolate straws, nougats, chocolate covered nuts and house-made chocolate bars. The shop is lit in amber and had a warmer feel than Pompadour. Still, it was an overwhelming shop, mostly because the chocolates are huge. Seriously, they’re enormous chocolates.

The counter is arranged with what seemed like two dozen varieties. I pondered (and took a few photos) while the woman in the shop fetched an appropriate box.

I was attracted to the less common flavors and of course the liquor infused ones. I can’t remember exactly what I picked up but it went something like this:

Aniseseed, Cognac, Cointreau, Lemongrass, Drambuie, Coffee, Mint, Nutmeg and Hazelnut Marzipan.

Each piece is substantial, some were over two inches long. They were lighter than I expected, the ganache center, made with all natural ingredients were lightly frothed into something that was more like a mousse than a dense truffle.

It was too much chocolate for me, even eating two a day, I found myself overwhelmed with them, because each piece was so huge. The liquor flavors weren’t intense in the way that some alcohol infused kinds can burn. Instead they go more of the flavor in there, so the cognac was leathery and smoky while the cointreau was just a touch orange. The nutmeg was a dreamy, creamy comfort with just a touch of the woodsy and aromatic spice.

I want to eat more of these, but I know that if I ever go back there again I’m going to end up in the same boat - too much chocolate all at once. So my tip to travelers is to make this your stop on your first day, not the last day. I would have gladly traded one of my dinners made of black bread and yogurt for Hazelnut Marzipan.

Puccini Bomboni
Singel 184, Amsterdam
Staalstraat 17, Amsterdam

Vanderdonk Fine Chocolates

Vanderdonk is a little different from the other two I visited, they carried a lot of other chocolates from all over the world: Pacari, Taza, Bonnat, Pralus, Valrhona, Venchi and even some Dean & Deluca items. Their website has a good listing of the brands that they carry, the shop is nicely designed and well curated with only a few items from each of the brands.

They also had a selection of house made chocolates. I picked out three as a dessert for my soup lunch before I visited Rijksmuseum.

It was rather cold on that day and for some bizarre reason I decided to eat al fresco. It was probably less than 50 degrees and I huddled on a wind whipped bench by a duck-graced canal around the corner from the museum and sipped my quickly chilling squash soup before diving into my chocolates. The pieces were dense and had very mild flavors. They weren’t my favorite chocolates from the trip but they were a wonderful appetizer before strolling the museum and seeing Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid in person. (It’s much smaller than I expected, and even much bluer.)

If I’m in the city again, I do plan on visiting again to sample the other chocolate that they carry.

Vanderdonk Fine Chocolates
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 72

My visit was much more than chocolate, but I’ll have some thoughts about candy and licorice at a later date.

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