I’m keen on the combination of dark chocolate and mint. I’d say that there’s nothing better, but then avid readers will probably find instances where I’ve said the same about the combination of chocolate and peanut butter and probably orange and chocolate and probably pretzels and chocolate.

There have been a few new versions of Junior Mints, including the Inside Out, Junior Mints Pastels and Heart Shaped Junior Mints over the past few years. They didn’t mess with the peppermint flavor or the proportions of the elements. Instead they messed with the chocolate element.

The new Junior Mints Deluxe are jumbo sized. They’re the same size as Cella’s Chocolate Covered Cherries, which are also made by Tootsie. At the top of the chocolate shell are the initials JM.

They’re two bites big (about a half an ounce each) and the soft fondant center flows quickly if you don’t tip it up quickly after biting it open. The chocolate shell is thick and dark but is pretty sweet. It doesn’t have that waxy shellac that Junior Mints usually have.

I really liked the flavor of the huge reservoir of the fondant center. It was intensely minty, so much that it cut through what would ordinarily be very sweet. The large two bite version can be messy and I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it. I suspect popping the whole thing in the mouth at once is the way to go, but I can’t resist looking at the innards.

Again, there is the issue of proportions here, I think this is a little off for my tastes with the gooey center, but if you’re a fan of the gooey center, this may be your new favorite. They should be available in stores after Halloween. This box comes with 12 in it and weighs 6 ounces. There are no dairy or egg products in this (though may be processed on equipment that comes in contact with milk) so it may be suitable for liberal vegans.

Related Candies

1. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
2. York Mints
3. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
4. The Mysterious Cup-O-White Gold

Last year I tried the Limited Edition Chocolate Covered Pop Rocks. They were interesting, not really anything to bring me back to eating Pop Rocks on a regular basis.

But this year Pop Rocks had something completely new and not packaged in a flat envelope. This is the new Milk Chocolate Pop Rocks Bar. The gentleman at their booth at All Candy Expo was careful to tell me that they used premium chocolate for this bar. (I’m not sure I’d call it premium, it does have PGPR in it.)

The bar is petite at only 1.16 ounces and three chunky segments.

The chocolate is soft and rather creamy but sweet. It melts quickly to reveal the chunks of Pop Rocks that, well, pop. It’s like a proactive Nestle’s Crunch Bar (with better chocolate).

The chocolate is light and lacking in the darker chocolate flavors, I got an overwhelming taste of raisins, but I don’t know if that had something to do with some actual flavor to the Pop Rocks.

The bar can be eaten two ways, as far as I’m concerned. The first is to simply let it melt and allow the Pop Rocks to pop. This creates a mild and interesting effect, but not terribly different. The second is to chew up much of the bar and then let it melt, giving it another chew or two as it dissolves completely. This is extremely noisy (at least inside my own head) and by far the most fun.

Popping candy chocolate bars have been around for a few years, most notably a brief appearance in the United States by the Wonka Xploder bar, which I never got to try.

I expect them to be found in the same places I see Pop Rocks (7-11, Target and candy shops), no word on the retail price. This bar was made in Spain.

Related Candies

1. Gummy Fishies
2. Soda Can Fizzy Candy
3. Astra Flying Saucers
4. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola
5. Pop Rocks Limon

I’ve been on quite a nougat roll this summer, mostly because it’s a very satisfying candy that does well in the heat. The funny thing is, before this year I don’t think I considered nougat a summer candy, I’ve always associated nougat with Christmas.

My husband picked up these two nougat bars at a deli in Santa Monica. (He’s always so considerate that way!) It’s always a good sign when the ingredients list for a nougat starts with nuts. In this case it’s pistachios. They were nicely sized and spread out in the bar and provided the chewy crunch that sets off the sweet nougat so well.

This pistachio bar was also flavored with pistachio, so it had that perfumed taste rather like green tea ice cream and violets along with the grassy notes of the nuts. The honey didn’t stand out much, as I often prefer in my nougat.

The flatness of this bar made it particularly easy to eat. The nougat was also pretty soft. The only weird thing about it was because there was a wafer on each side, biting it was sometimes a little difficult (maybe I need my teeth sharpened) and the nougat wanted to spread out the sides of the wafers. Also, because there was more wafer by proportion, there was more of a “cereal” taste to it.

Overall, it wasn’t my favorite nougat of all time, but certainly portable and a nice after dinner snack.

I haven’t had many chocolate nougats, but this one certainly smelled chocolatey.

There was a slight grainy note to the nougat, like little sugar crystals. The chocolate flavor was more like cocoa than chocolate but exceptionally nutty - the ingredients list both toasted almonds and hazelnut paste. Think of a very high end Tootsie Roll with nuts, I know it sounds weird, but it was still very satisfying.

The nuts were just as abundant in this nougat as the Pistachio. I wanted a stronger honey note to it, but it wasn’t too sweet and had a light texture that was definitely just the kick I needed during the summer heat.

Nougat also travels particularly well, so keep that in mind when putting together your air travel survival kit.

While at the All Candy Expo I made a point to stop by the booth of the American importer of Ferrara products. The company also makes the La Florentine line of torrones, you know, the ones in the little boxes that come in orange, lemon and vanilla and have stately portraits of royalty on them. That was the brand I used to get those in my stocking at Christmas, so they’re one of the first nougats I’ve ever had and quite special to me.

The bars above, of course, are more meaty portions (and more economical packaging). I grabbed a traditional Ferrara nougat bar which I’m excited to try after the Pistachio as well as their chocolate covered plain nougat (it comes in a large box and they’re not individually wrapped). I think nougat is a wonderful hostess gift, though some might disagree. (But if I’m the hostess and you’re coming to my house, I’ll think you’re pretty special and invite you back often.)

I’m a little late to this Limited Edition Milk Chocolate Razzberry M&Ms story, but mostly because I couldn’t find them anywhere in Los Angeles. I tried all my usual haunts (RiteAid, Walgreen’s, Von’s, CVS, Target & 7-11) and finally found them Wednesday night at the Dollar Tree in Harbor City on my way to San Pedro.

The bag felt a little light, and it is. It’s only 1.5 ounces instead of the usual 1.74 ounces for the Peanut variety or 1.69 ounces for the Milk Chocolate. (Of course the Pirate Pearls ones were similiarly scant.)

The bag is a pleasant hot pink and urges me to “Get Razzed” ... which as far as my understanding of the lingo that the kids use these days, that means, “Get Harassed.” Okely Dokely!

At first when I dumped these out to take their photo I thought I got a bad bag. The color looks completely off. Now if you just handed me a bowl of them, I might say, “Oh, what a lovely muted pink color!” But because of the brightness of the package, this feels like it clashes, which makes me feel like it’s unintended. But looking around at other photos on Flickr of the candies, it seems like they’re supposed to be this way.

The size and shape is also irregular. Some are the same size as typical Milk Chocolate M&Ms and others are as big as the now-discontinued Mega M&Ms. I rather like the regularity of M&Ms when spread out on my desk when eating them, but these just didn’t please me as much with their appearance.

The candies smell, like, well, someone spilled a bottle of raspberry after-bath spritz. I’ve spent a lot of time with fresh raspberries. When I was a kid, for several years when we lived in Ohio we had a raspberry patch in the back yard which was absurdly productive. While they weren’t wild berries, they certainly weren’t like the commercial ones sold in stores today. They were on the small side but bursting with flavor, a combination of sweet, tart and floral. By the time I was a teenager and we moved away, I was so spoiled by the real thing that I couldn’t stand raspberry flavored things or bring myself to spend $5 for a teensy little portion of watery-tasting fresh berries at the grocery store.

The Milk Chocolate is okay, for some reason it tastes sweeter than the regular Milk Chocolate M&Ms (remember, I’ve eaten a lot of those lately), it could be the larger size of most of them that gave a bigger hit of the ordinary chocolate center. The chocolate simply wasn’t creamy and I have to wonder if these were stored properly. Southern California experienced a wicked heat spell around Labor Day weekend and there were sporadic power outages all over which means that these could have bloomed in some way.

M&Ms stressed in their press releases about these that they’re the first fruit flavored M&Ms ever given full distribution. (I guess they were ignoring those super exclusive fruity ones they did last year.)  I’m sad that they didn’t do orange, as I think that’d be a good place to start. It’s easy to get an authentic orange flavor with chocolate. But then again these aren’t raspberry M&Ms ... no, they’re razzberry M&Ms, here to mock real raspberries (and us) with their fakeness.

Other views: Candy Addict gave them a mixed review and Gigi Reviews. If you like Raspberry Frangos, you’ll probably like these.

Related Candies

1. Koakuma Goth Puccho
2. Mentos Berry Mix
3. Joyva Joys
4. Sunkist Fruit Gems
5. M&Ms Line

If you haven’t been in a Target store and browsed their candy aisles, you’re missing a price-conscious chocoholic’s dream. There are shelves and shelves of high end bars at reasonable prices these days. They’ve started carrying more European bars and even some lines of organic and fair trade bars.

I noticed a series of bars in smart paperboard wrappers called Frey from Switzerland and thought I should give them a try. All the bars were flavored (I kind of wanted to just try their “chocolate” first) so I ended up choosing two of the lemon flavored bars.

Frey Supreme White Lemon & Lime is a pretty bar made with, as you can guess, white chocolate as a base.

The white chocolate is more off-white (that’s real cocoa butter in there), and has a nicely sweet, milky scent mixed with citrus zest.

The little flecks in the bar looked promising too. I didn’t read the ingredients until after I opened the bar, so I was a little confused when I finally had a bite.

It was crunchy! There were little tangy, citrusy, crunchy bits, like someone had mixed some pulverized lemon drops in my chocolate!

Here I was thinking I was going to get bits of zest. But why was I thinking that? Pure assumption. Mostly because that’s what I wanted. After I got over that initial shock, it wasn’t bad. The tartness of the candy bits set off the chocolate nicely, but interfered with the overall creamy texture because it had a dry aspect to it. There was a very small note of black pepper in this as well, which did give the ordinarily bland white chocolate a little kick.

The second bar I picked was also on the lemon theme, Citron & Poivre. Mmmm, lemon and pepper. Lemon and pepper go so well together, they’ve bottled it and called it Lemon Pepper. And if it’s good on fish, it ought to be great in chocolate. (If they had a milk chocolate and lemon bar, I would have bought that, too.)

The package says that this is extra fine dark chocolate with a fruity touch of lemon and black pepper. The bar is lovely, large and thin with a good snap. It’s 55% cocoa solids ... which isn’t terribly dark, so I was expecting a sweet and creamy bar.

A couple of things bugged me about this bar before I even started eating it. One, it’s very thin. While some folks like that, I kind of like a little depth to my chocolate when I bite it. It also makes the bar a bit more compact. This 3.5 ounce bar was packaged to look big (at least an inch longer than a regular 3.5 ounce bar from Green & Black’s or Endangered Species which are featured nearby on the shelf), but was really no different in mass.

The scent of the bar immediately gave off woodsy notes and the black pepper.

Biting into it I found the same bitty, crunchy candy crumbles in it as the white chocolate bar. They had a nice tart bite to the, though some had a different bite: the black pepper.

The dark chocolate was largely overshadowed by these strong flavors. The texture was nice, not as buttery as the Lake Champlain I had yesterday which was a similar cocoa content. Instead it was sweet and then had tangy bits that just made the sweetness more apparent.

The dark bar contains no milk products so is suitable for vegans. (However it is processed in a facility that also uses milk and nuts, so is not for those who are allergic or very strict.)

I have to say that I wanted to like these more. The flavor combinations are certainly ones that I’m predisposed to like, but I wanted a smooth, creamy, Swiss chocolate experience. They have a huge selection of bars and I might have to try the Caf? & Cacao, which is extra fine milk chocolate with coffee and crispy cocoa nibs. At $1.99 I certainly don’t feel cheated, they were a fun experience. The White chocolate bar has a slight edge if I had to pick from these two again. The packaging is nice, the box folds back together well and I was able to put a piece of tape on it to keep the leftovers until I finished them. I’m certainly thinking about trying other bars in the line, so stay tuned for what I hope are rave reviews.

SugarHog has a review of the Frey Japonais, which sounds like a winner ... a combo of hazelnut and milk chocolate. Nicole of Slashfood (now of Baking Bites) liked the Citron & Poivre bar a bit more than I.

Related Candies

1. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection
2. Chuao ChocoPods
3. Green & Black’s Ginger Chocolate
4. Dolfin: Anise and Red Pepper
5. Dagoba Dark Bars

Yesterday I did a little roundup of all natural candies and I forgot to mention Lake Champlain. It’s a little expensive to feed to kids but they do make actual candy bars. It’s an excellent brand that uses carefully selected ingredients, which I always appreciate and recently introduced an organic line.

Each bar is 1.25 ounces, which I think is the perfect portion of good chocolate.

The bars look like they’d be great for traveling too, small enough to tuck in your bag and finish in one sitting but they also feature a nice paper wrap with an inner foil wrapper that means you can actually close it back up (some of these foil wraps used these days are two atoms thick and fall apart in a light breeze).

Dark Spicy Aztec also features a 55% cocoa base chocolate. This one also has spices and pumpkin seeds. I’ve had a few spicy bars over the past few years and my share of spicy hot chocolate as well. This is probably the best of all of them. The spices, while strong, are still very flavorful and don’t overpower the chocolateness. I love pumpkin seeds (pepitas) and they go so well here, adding a little crunch and setting off the spicy flavors all over again.

While it tastes like there’s a whole cupboard of spices in here, the label says only cayenne and cinnamon. I could have sworn I tasted a little nutmeg, some clove and cumin. Amazing!

I have to admit that the spice is, well, spicy. It gave me a bit of a tingly burn on the back of my tongue and in my throat. Not so much to stop me from eating it, but more tender mouths may not appreciate the power. 9 out of 10

Dark Chocolate is a basic semi sweet bar. It’s on the sweet side but also very creamy and has a good, quick melt on the tongue.

I’m not as keen on this as the Spicy Aztec, but since it’s the same chocolate base, it’s a good place to finish off the review. The chocolate notes are rather middle of the road - there’s nothing that jumps out at me like coffee or balsam or raisins. It’s just nice and thoroughly chocolatey. It doesn’t feel like a “better for me” compromise because it’s organic. It’s smoothly conched and nicely tempered. 8 out of 10

The Organic bar line from Lake Champlain also includes milk chocolate, with a plain bar and a sea salt and almonds bar. The Lake Champlain website offers a kit of all four bars as an introduction or you can order them singly. They also make little squares, which I’ve tasted at the Fancy Food Show before, but to be honest, I don’t care for very thin chocolate, l like it a little thicker ... these bars are the ideal thickness.

My hesitations on Lake Champlain as a whole are that it’s not that easy to find and a bit expensive (and I don’t like the logo much). Of course it’s good quality, nicely packaged and all natural, so you get what you pay for. If you’re tentative about them, keep an eye on their Sale Page on their website, sometimes there are insane deals in there (nothing at this writing though).

Related Candies

1. Chocolate Hellfire Chip Cookies
2. Chuao ChocoPods
3. Xocoatl 73.5%
4. Dagoba Dark Bars
5. Cha-Cha-Cha Choxie
6. Green & Black’s Maya Gold
7. Pumpkin Pie

After Christmas last year I bought some marzipan that I actually loved. Made by Niederegger in Germany, these folks have been making marzipan for over 200 years. I wanted to buy more, but the only ones I’ve seen in stores are the regular flavor which I tried at the Fancy Food Show and found to be okay.

While I’m not ordinarily a marzipan fan, it’s my dislike for Amaretto that prompts my avoidance, because I actually love almonds and eat them just about every day. But I’m coming around on marzipan ... Charles Chocolates makes an excellent and zesty set of marzipan and I was hoping that Marzipan Orange was a more easily available version of it. (But sadly, really not less expensive.)

I was a little irritated when I opened the bar to photograph it and found that it was slightly bloomed. At first I cursed myself for not storing it properly (this was before the Great Heat Wave of Labor Day Weekend ‘07 that got temps in my candy studio up to 99 degrees during the day when the power went out), but when I opened the other chocolate items my husband brought back from NYC (the Ritter Sport Schokowurfel and another bar) I found that it was just this one and then I raised my fist to curse the folks who sold him a SIX DOLLAR bar that had not been stored properly.

But you know, I ate it anyway. ‘Cuz it smelled sooooo good. I feel pretty good about it, too.

It smells like someone has been in the kitchen juicing fresh oranges and perhaps baking cookies at the same time. The orange zest scent is lovely with an added note of vanilla and a sort of caramelly nut smell topped off with a light chocolate. It makes me happy.

Though the chocolate wasn’t as creamy-melt-in-your-mouth as the capuccino one I had before, I’m pretty confident that this was still tasty stuff, with full chocolate flavor to add to the light zest of citrus. The marzipan was firm and a little on the dry side and only lightly sweet (one of the hallmarks of Niederegger). It wasn’t a super-smooth, doughy version like a fondant or anything, this felt like a rustic almond paste. (It’s pretty high in protein too, 4 grams per 1.4 ounce serving.)

I would definitely plunk down $6 again for a fresh and properly stored bar. I saw on the Niederegger website that they little foil wrapped pieces in various fruity flavors (this is how I’ve tried the plain), I’m going to keep my eyes peeled at the holidays at places like Cost Plus World Market. If you’ve tried these before, where have you found them? GermanDeli.com has the orange bar (and on sale for $4.99 right now).

Unfortunately it’s not vegan (milk in the semisweet chocolate) but it is otherwise vegetarian.

Related Candies

1. Soubeyran Array
2. Queen Anne Orange
3. Niederegger Capuccino Marzipan
4. Hachez Chocolates
5. Orange KitKat

I guess if there were a national flavor for Canada, it’d be Maple. After all, there’s a Maple leaf on their flag. How cool is it that a flag actually features a flavor? (I don’t consider dragon or eagle to be a flavor ... though I suppose the Olive branches of Eritrea may count.)

Lately Canada has seen quite a few candy bars featuring Maple in it, including the shockingly red-centered Oh Henry! Oh Canada! bar and a version of the Coffee Crisp.

Caramilk are not found in the US, but its cousin, the Caramello is. It’s just a Cadbury milk chocolate bar with a flowing caramel bubble inside each section. The simplicity Caramilk Maple bar really appealed to me, especially since I was hoping that the flavor of maple would cut through the intense sweetness that keeps me from eating Caramellos more often than every 5 years. (Yes, the sweetness is that satisfying!)

This Caramilk Maple bar was the full 100 gram version (3.5 ounces). A little too much Caramilk, really, but beggars can’t be choosers (Amber brought this to me from Toronto back in April).

Even without breaking a section open to reveal the molten caramel, the bar smelled like sweet, woodsy maple.

Biting into the little section causes the caramel to ooze out. It’s actually pretty nice, smooth and creamy and not too sweet ... it appears that the chocolate itself is the throat-burningly sweet part of this bar. The caramel filling is woodsy tasting without being too artificial and has a little salty hit to it. The milk chocolate, well it’s Cadbury and it has a distinct milky flavor to it that many folks crave. I’m not one of them, but I find it interesting. It reminds me of baby formula or powdered milk.

It’s a fun bar, and I think I’d probably like it in the single-portion size better (they also have a slightly different proportion of chocolate to caramel) and they also come in the Cadbury Caramel Egg for Easter. (I think they’ll be back next year.)

Note: this was not marked Kosher, though American Cadbury products are.

Related Candies

1. Eat-More
2. Naked Chocolate Maltballs
3. Pure Fun Candy Floss
4. Russell Stover Cream Eggs
5. Pearson’s Buns