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Chocolate

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Espresso Truffle Bar

Name: Pike Place Espresso Truffle Bar
Brand: Seattle Chocolates
Place Purchased: Target
Price: $1.79
Size: 2.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 160
Type: Chocolate

On my quest to find a good consumer coffee-infused chocolate bar, I found this at Target recently. It’s not quite mass-marketed but at least it wasn’t prohibitively expensive.

The package heralds the candy as a “Truffle Bar” but it really doesn’t rise to that level at all. As far as I know, a chocolate truffle is a mixture of chocolate and butter and/or heavy cream. It’s usually dipped in chocolate because it’s gooey but may be rolled in cocoa to keep it from sticking to things. The fascinating thing about a chocolate truffle is that it’s more fat (often) than chocolate, but this fat helps to highlight the intense and subtle flavors of chocolate in ways that a higher cocoa solids bar is not able to. This bar had no such center. The center was slightly softer than the plain chocolate outer shell, but more like a Frango than a melty chocolate cream.

The coffee flavor in the firm center comes from “Turkish grind decaffeinated [coffee]”, which probably explains the graininess of the center. The bits aren’t big enough to be considered crunchies but large enough to interfere with a smooth texture. Of course being decaffeinated means that there won’t be much of a problem with eating this bar before bedtime.

Overall the bar is a little sweet but has a nice chocolately flavor and a really good punch of coffee once it melts on the tongue. The chocolate and coffee blend well, with good woodsy notes and a slight acidic bite.

It’s not my dream coffee bar though, so I’ll keep looking. (I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but it’s been a fun quest.)

Rating - 6 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:08 am     CandyReviewChocolateCoffee6-TemptingUnited StatesTarget

Monday, September 26, 2005

The Chocolate Traveler Bittersweet Chocolate Wedges

Name: Bittersweet Chocolate Wedges
Brand: The Chocolate Traveler
Place Purchased: Trader Joe’s
Price: $2.29
Size: 3.5 oz
Calories per ounce: 149
Type: Chocolate

I’ve seen these tins at Trader Joe’s for about a year. While I was fond of the idea of a tin of chocolate instead of a foil wrapped bar, I just didn’t get a good feeling from the package. I was worried that the chocolate would taste tinny or perhaps be chalky.

Happily, as you can see from photo the wedges are shiny dark chocolate with a good snap to them. They’re simply bittersweet Belgian chocolate that’s been repackaged here in the states in Chinese made tins.

The chocolate is 70% cocoa solids but it’s still rather sweet for bittersweet. The sugar is most apparent upon first resting a bit on the tongue. Then it melts pretty easily with only a slightly uneven grain to it. It’s got good chocolate notes, mostly in the lower, earthy range without the higher acidic and fruit notes. The smoky quality is there as are the woodsy tones. The cocoa butter is really nice and light and allows the flavor to spread easily, there is only a slightly dry finish to it.

The grain is a little distracting and the sugar a little too apparent. However, I did just what the package shows, I traveled with this chocolate, putting it in my bag and taking it on a humongous two-day road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back and it not only weathered it well, it was a welcome treat.

Rating - 7 out of 10 (I’m keen on trying the flavored chocolate wedges, too)

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:17 am     CandyReviewTrader Joe'sChocolate7-Worth ItBelgiumUnited States

Thursday, September 22, 2005

The New Caramels: Hershey’s & Nestle

Both Hershey and Nestle recently introduced their standard chocolate bars now stuffed with a caramel center. If they could stuff two different candies into one, I can stuff two bars into one review.

Name: Hershey’s with Caramel
Brand: Hershey’s
Place Purchased: Target
Price: $.79
Size: 1.3 oz
Calories per ounce: 138
Type: Chocolate/Caramel

Hershey seems to have changed their chocolate recipe. Maybe it’s like the New Coke. Many of their products, including their limited edition line are sporting something they call “Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate” but here it’s called simply “Creamy Milk Chocolate.” It’s definitely different than the chocolate I’m accustomed to in my Kisses.

This is a four segment bar with a little filling of soft, flowing caramel. The chocolate is very sweet and doesn’t really smell like much, but the caramel has a nice toasty scent to it. It’s rather runny, so instead of biting each segment in half, I’d recommend stuffing the whole thing in your mouth. It’s got a little salty tang to it, but mostly it’s a very sweet bar.

(After writing all of this I realized I should probably pick up some Rolos and find out how different this bar is from them.)

Name: Crunch with Caramel
Brand: Nestle
Place Purchased: 7-11 (Hollywood)
Price: $.85
Size: 1.52 oz
Calories per ounce: 132
Type: Chocolate/Crisp/Caramel

 

Since the Crunch bar is the centerpiece of the American Nestle brand, it only makes sense that they’d put caramel inside of it eventually. This bar has three beefy segments. The bottom layer of chocolate is very thick, about half the height of this bar and contains a good amount of crisped-rice crunchies. The rest of the chocolate coating does not have crisps in it.

This caramel center is less runny than the Hershey’s but is immediately saltier. I checked the label and it has twice the sodium content of the Hershey’s. The salt is actually a nice counterpoint to the exceptionally sweet Nestle chocolate. The crisps really aren’t as dense as you’d find in a regular Crunch bar, which is kind of disappointing. This bar had a bit more of a cardboard flavor to the chocolate and it was so sweet that it made my throat hurt. Though I love Nestle’s European chocolate, I really don’t care much for the American stuff because of the lack of chocolatey flavor to it.

If I could, I’d put the caramel from the Nestle version in the Hershey version and call it a great bar. As it is now, both are good bars but nothing mind-blowing for me. The Five Star bar holds my heart right now for caramel bars.

Ratings - Hershey with Caramel - 7 out of 10
Crunch with Caramel - 6 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:29 pm     CandyReviewHershey'sNestleCaramelChocolate6-Tempting7-Worth ItUnited States

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Droste Pastilles: Extra Dark

Name: Extra Dark Chocolate (72%)
Brand: Droste Pastilles
Place Purchased: Trader Joe’s
Price: $1.79
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 164
Type: Chocolate

If someone told me that there’s a black hole at the center of these chocolates, I’d be inclined to believe them. I’d also wonder about the prowess of chocolatiers being able to implant a chocolate singularity at the center of each disk ... those Dutch, they’re really talented.

Anyway, these are the familiar Droste Chocolate Pastilles, which I used to (and still do) get in my Christmas stocking. Because Santa thinks I’m very good. I usually get the mixed Pastilles that are half milk and half dark chocolate, because I’m inclusive like that.

These are new to me, so I picked them up. I’m fond of very dark chocolate, though as a snack item they’re more difficult to eat a lot of because of the flavor density. Droste’s 72% Extra Dark Chocolate is super-duper dense. Unlike some super dark chocolates, Droste strikes the right ratio of cocoa butter so that the chocolate actually melts on the tongue. The scent is a wonderful nutty/smoky aroma. On the tongue the disk melts right away without a hint of grain. There’s a pretty immediate bitter bite to it though followed by a puckering dryness that’s at once intriguing and thirst inducing.

As a solo snack item, I’d probably pass on these, but the cool thing about the Droste Pastilles is that they’re in these wonderful little disks in an easily reseable foil package (just twist it shut and it keeps the air out and pop it back into the hexagonal cardboard tube for later). I think this would be paired really nicely with some red wine, maybe some dessert cheese or put it into a bowl of coffee or vanilla ice cream as a garnish ... or maybe with some nuts and dried fruits.

Rating - 7 out of 10 (I know, I’m giving out a lot of 7s lately)

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:54 pm     CandyReviewDrosteChocolate7-Worth ItNetherlands

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Head-to-Head: Smarties vs. M&Ms

Yes, in the continuing quest to not only bring you the best and worst candies in the world, I’m going to educate you on the subtleties between our seemingly identical candy choices.

Today I’m tackling the UK product, Smarties, which is made my Nestle and the American product M&Ms which are made by Mars.

 

First, a little background (some of this I only know vaguely so feel free to correct me). M&Ms were originally developed as a candy for soldiers to give them quick energy in combat situations and be easy to carry. Some people wonder what M&M stands for, and many think it’s for the Mars brothers, but in reality it’s Forrest Mars, Sr. and Bruce Murrie. Murrie’s father was one of Hershey’s trusted partners at the company and provided the chocolate inside M&Ms until the 70s.

As with most UK treats under the Nestle name, they were originally made by Rowntree which was later swallowed up by the growing Nestle corporation. Developed several years before the M&M, Smarties are still one of the most popular candies in the UK. The UK version are purported to have orange chocolate flavored orange Smarties (and back when there was a brown Smartie it was mocha flavored) but I am using Canadian Smarties for this head to head.

 

First, Smarties are slightly bigger than M&Ms. An M&M is approximately 1 cm in diameter while the Smartie is 1.5 cms.

 

However, the Smartie is slightly flatter than the M&M. I didn’t weigh them.

 

The most noticeable difference between the two is the candy shell. The Smartie shell is much thicker and has a very pronounced crunch to it. It also seems to have a flavor. When I looked at the ingredients for the Smarties, I saw that there is wheat flour (and cornstarch & sugar) in the shell whereas the M&M shell is made only of sugar, cornstarch and color. The Smartie has a slightly graham cracker taste to it. It’s pleasant and perhaps a little cinnamonny (I know there’s no cinnamon in it). The M&M provides more chocolate punch. I guess geometry would tell me that even if the mass of the Smartie is the same as an M&M it still has more shell by virtue of being less spherical.

As appearances go, they’re both exceptionally pretty candies. Given a choice between the two, I prefer less shell and more chocolate. In reality I usually buy Almond M&Ms more often than the plain ones, but if someone puts a bowl in front of me, I can hardly resist. But I can see that there would be times that I’d crave the cookie-like taste of the Smarties.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:16 am     CandyReviewMarsNestleChocolateM&MsUnited KingdomUnited StatesHead to Head

Monday, September 19, 2005

Kinder Bueno

Name: Kinder Bueno
Brand: Kinder
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: unknown
Size: 43 grams
Calories per package: 240
Type: Nut Cream

I’m a little confused by the name of this bar. Maybe my language skills aren’t that good, but I’ve had a dabbling of German and took five years of Spanish. Kinder, as far as I know is Children in German. Bueno means good in Spanish. The package for this particular treat was in English and French.

All that linguistic stuff aside, candy is good in all languages. What we have here is a crisp shell filled with a hazelnut cream and covered in a very thin shell of milk chocolate. As with most candies, two pieces are better than one, so Kinder Bueno gives you two fingers. Each is further sealed inside a clear plastic sleeve to protect the crispy wafers from getting stale. The candy is basically a formed, crisp shell filled with a creamy, milky hazelnut paste and covered in a sweet and melty milk chocolate.

I know that all of the stuff in here is probably horrible for me, reading the ingredients in either language reveals copious amounts of palm kernel oil and 30% of my daily RDA of saturated fats (oddly enough no cholesterol). No matter, it’s really good. Hazelnut is such a wonderful complement to milk chocolate and the tasteless wafers, I’d probably accept a hit of 100% of my saturated fat.

It’s rich and creamy and the roasted flavor of the hazelnuts lingers. They were wonderful with my morning coffee. Even though they’re sweet the fatty texture spreads the goodness all over allowing all the notes of the nuts to come out. The filling is a little sticky, so keep some milk or coffee nearby to cut it. I would probably buy these again if I were to take a long flight or something where I really wanted an indulgence to go with bad airplane coffee. Even though they’re double packaged, these candies don’t travel well, so don’t throw an apple on top of them in your purse. I’m also eager to find some Kinder Eggs to try out sometime soon.

Rating - 7 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:18 am     CandyReviewFerreroChocolateCookieNuts7-Worth ItGermany

Friday, September 16, 2005

Mars Maltesers

Name: Maltesers
Brand: Maltesers
Place Purchased: London Drugs (Vancouver, BC)
Price: unknown
Size: 37 grams
Calories per package: 180
Type: Chocolate Malt

I know, you’re probably getting sick of me reviewing malt candies! But I’m not, as I’m on the search for the perfect malt candy in all markets. The description of Maltesers on the package is this, “Crisp, light honeycombed centres with chocolately coating.” In the States when a package says “chocolately” it means that the coating is not chocolate (it’s usually made with some other fat than cocoa butter). However, the ingredients list says Milk Chocolate in the first position, so it’s real chocolate (one of my pet peeves with Whoppers is that they use some sort of chocolatey wax).

What I noticed about these right away is that they’re small. About the size of a peanut M&M. The chocolate coating is rather thin, more like a shell than a dip. When you pop it in your mouth it’s rather easy to chip off 1/3 of the chocolate by chiseling it with the eye-teeth. At first I found the candy salty ... really salty for a malt ball. But then I came to really like the taste. The extra salt brings out the malt as a separate flavor from the chocolate. After chipping away most of the chocolate on many of them I let the malt honeycomb dissolve on my tongue. It’s a rather complex flavor, almost like a cereal flavor with good solid malty overtones along with some other notes that you’d find in a good hearty loaf of bread or kashi breakfast cereal.

At first I wasn’t wild about them, this exercise was more of an intellectual one, but as I ate more and more of them, I was trying to perfect removing the chocolate so that I could enjoy just the malted centers and found this to be a great activity while working tackling a rather complex project here at the office.

Next time in the UK or Canada, I’m definitely going to pick up more of these.

Rating - 8 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:09 am     CandyReviewChocolateMalt8-TastyUnited Kingdom

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Necco Sky Bar

Name: Sky Bar
Brand: Necco
Place Purchased: Candy Express, Pittsburgh Airport
Price: $.79
Size: 1.5 oz
Calories per ounce: 150
Type: Chocolate/Filled

I don’t know if this bar is sold at this little candy shop at the Pittsburgh airport because it’s called Sky Bar or because they carry a lot of other hard to find nostalgia candies (they didn’t have Valomilks, but they did have Cow Tales). I’d seen these when I was growing up, but was never really interested in them, as I’d always assumed that they were the candy bar version of Whitman’s Samplers.

It turns out that it’s not far off from that. The bar is undeniably pretty. Four joined pieces of candy, with pretty domed tops, fluting up the sides and the Necco logo on top. Unlike Necco wafers, where you never know what you’ll get in the roll, the Sky Bar is consistent. The far left piece (if you set your bar like the package shows you) is caramel. Not a chewy caramel, it’s a sweet, sticky concoction with a nice salty hint and good carmelized sugar notes. The next one over is by far the least interesting to me, the vanilla cream. Slightly light, very sweet and rather bland, it simply brings out the rather cardboard notes in the milk chocolate. After that is peanut which I think is their masterpiece. This is not a peanut butter, like you’d think, it looks like caramel and is smooth but has the wonderful roasted taste of peanuts and a good hit of salt to balance out all the other sweets. The last section is fudge. Sweet and with that slightly cooling grain to it, the fudge is nice and not too sweet but suffers from the same blandness of the whole bar - too much sugar and not enough chocolate in the chocolate.

I can see how this bar was so successful for so long. Steve Almond talks about the history of the bar in Candy Freak (chapter 2), that it was one of the most popular bars on the east coast and had a prominent billboard in Times Square which was re-lit at the end of WWII. As a bit of nostalgia, it’s fun. But it’s not my nostalgia, I have not particular affinity for it, so it’s merely an experience for me. It’s probably a great bar to share with friends (as long as there actually is something for everyone) and probably speaks to people who really like variety in their candy.

Rating - 5 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:55 am     CandyReviewNeccoCaramelChocolatePeanuts5-PleasantUnited States

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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.

 

 

 

 

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