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Coffee

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Tcho Mokaccino

Tcho MokaccinoTcho is a bean to bar chocolate maker based in San Francisco. Their early chocolate programs simplified the ideas of single origin distinctions and simply labeled their chocolate bars with the flavor characteristic based on a flavor wheel.

Though their early products were simple dark and milk chocolate bars, they’ve not created some interesting new flavored bars. I picked up two little tasting squares of their Tcho Mokaccino. They’re only .28 ounces, so it really is just a bite or two of chocolate. It’s described as: Serious Milk Chocolate + Blue Bottle Coffee.

Tcho is made with fair trade cocoa beans, organic ingredients and is certified kosher. (They do use soy lecithin in their chocolate and also handle nuts in their facility.)

Tcho Mocha

I happen to enjoy the coffee renaissance that’s been going on for ...oh, the past 30 years. The pre-ground cans of coffee of my childhood are long gone: a time when single origin meant you looked for the Colombian mountain on the can as an indication of flavor.

The little piece has a wonderful Spirograph-style pattern on it. It tastes a little smoky, very milky, with an almost cheesy note. The coffee is intense, but on the sweet side (I don’t take sugar in my coffee, so having it combined with chocolate tends to sweeten it too much for me). The coffee notes blend very well with the chocolate but the most important thing here is the texture. It’s smooth ... there’s now coffee bean grit like so many coffee chocolates end up with (or whole beans) that I don’t care for.

Tcho - Out of Beta

I’ve been watching Tcho since they started up and were in beta. Though I appreciate many of their attributes, I’ve not been impressed with the products themselves, the dark chocolate is gritty and has an odd fat balance to it for me, and often the beans taste burnt. They do some interesting chocolate covered items, like nuts, which are good but not remarkable enough for me to fork over the premium price.

That said, I’m glad I had an open mind and picked up the Mokaccino. The little squares are a bit expensive, but if I bought two of them instead of an actual cappuccino, it’s about the same price.

Related Candies

  1. Hotel Chocolat Rabot 1745 Venezuela Chuao
  2. Original Beans Piura Porcelana and Esmeraldas Milk
  3. Mast Brothers Stumptown Coffee
  4. Starbucks Dark Chocolate with Via Ready Brew Bar
  5. Askinosie Intelligentsia Coffee Bar
  6. Six Kilos of Felchlin Arriba 72% Chocolate
  7. Amano Milk Chocolate Ocumare
  8. TCHO Fruity


Name: Mokaccino
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Tcho
Place Purchased: Monsieur Marcel (Farmers Market)
Price: $1.09
Size: .28 ounces
Calories per ounce: 140
Categories: All Natural, Bay Area, Candy, Chocolate, Coffee, Kosher, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:49 pm     All NaturalBay AreaCandyReviewChocolateCoffeeEthically SourcedKosher8-TastyUnited States

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Godiva Chef Inspirations Flavors of the World

Godiva Chef InspirationsGodiva was founded in Belgium as a premium chocolatier. The company is now owned by a Turkish holding coming (Yıldız Holding) but is headquartered in New York and named after an Old English noblewoman.

The chocolate is reliably of good quality, though the prices are on the high side compared to other brands now available. I love their packaging, but I’m usually disappointed by the products as they tend to be bland.

Still, I was tempted enough by a press release about a new collaboration collection that I stopped by the local Godiva shop and picked up a box of the Chef Inspirations Flavors of the World Collection. It was $18 for a box of eight chocolates in six different flavors.

Godiva Chef Inspirations

So, six flavors and eight pieces means that I got two duplicates. The box is nice, a rounded rectangle with a plastic formed tray inside. The whole thing was shrink-wrapped and definitely fresh and flawless when I opened it. It included a little brochure that described both the chef and chocolates themselves. Here’s a little bit from the website:

Welcome our debut Flavors of the World collection—part of our new Chef Inspirations series! GODIVA Chef Chocolatiers crafted these extraordinary pieces based on inspiration from their culinary journeys in six countries - Japan, Belgium, Brazil, the United States, China, and South Africa. Let our chefs guide your through this flavor-filled adventure.

Godiva Chef Inspirations

Banana & Caramelized Coconut: Milk and white chocolate enhanced with caramelized coconut flakes, coconut milk and banana essence topped with the crunch of West African cocoa nibs. The banana flavors are sweet and have a bit of a creamy note. The coconut has a little tropical flavor, the whole thing is soft and chewy. The milk chocolate is smooth, but extremely sweet.

Godiva Chef Inspirations

Black Tea Mousse & Sichuan Pepper: Chinese Sichuan pepper flavored ganache blended with an aromatic black tea mousse and wrapped in pure Belgian dark chocolate. The mousse has a very light chocolate note but strong tannins from the black tea. I didn’t catch much of the pepper, which is too bad. But I did enjoy the tea and this one was less sweet than the others.

Godiva Chef Inspirations

Sirop de Liege with Speculoos: Classic Belgian Sirop de Liege, a pear and apple syrup, and a Speculoos cookie mousse wrapped in pure Belgian dark chocolate. This is a beautiful piece and an interesting combination. It is by far the most innovative and successful in the assortment. The speculoos is soft and creamy with a hint of gingerbread spices. The syrup is more like a fruit jelly, tart and smooth and bright, it’s really a great pairing with the dark chocolate and cookie butter. They should make this in a bar format.

Godiva Chef Inspirations

Japanese Dark Sugar Ganache: Dark chocolate layered with Kuromitsu molasses and Valencia almond praliné mixed with diced hazelnuts and Guerande sea salt. Since I started Candy Blog, I’ve been obsessed with Japanese black sugar, so this was the piece was thinking would be a home run. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but lacks any sort of black sugar note at all. The almond and hazelnut notes are great and the touch of sea salt does really balance the piece which gets a bit sweet, but the molasses is just so slight, I missed it. And I had three of these ... the two that came in the box and I bought one on the spot and ate it at the mall.

Brazilian Coffee Nut Praliné: Brazilian coffee and Costa Rican chocolate blended with hazelnut praliné enrobed in white chocolate and decorated with crispy chocolate confetti. As you would expect, this one was sweet with the white chocolate coating. The coffee notes a fresh and bright and the hazelnut flavors really mixed well. The little crisps on top gave it the texture it needed as a finish. Dark chocolate enrobing would have made me a bit more satisfied.

Honey Roasted Caramel: Caramel infused with hints of honey, almonds, brown sugar and condensed milk covered in milk chocolate and crunchy almonds. This sounds rather pedestrian and it really is, but that’s no reason not to appreciate it. It was chewy, but not too sticky. The honey and darker toffee notes were good and the milk chocolate brought it together well with some other dairy notes. The almonds were kind of lost, but at least fresh and crunchy.

Overall ... well, it was too sweet and not intense enough. I liked the attempts and part of the fun was just imagining what the combinations would be like. But I think I’ll stick with my local chocolatiers like Compartes or Valerie if I want to get into that price range, or just stop at See’s and be happy with their caramels.

Related Candies

  1. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Speculoos Cookie Butter Cups
  2. Godiva Cake Truffles
  3. Meiji Chelsea Kokutou Black Sugar
  4. Amsterdam on Foot: Three Chocolate Shops
  5. Godiva Spring Pearls
  6. Teuscher
  7. Lillie Belle Farms Assortment
  8. Godiva Easter Eggs


Name: Chef Inspirations Flavors of the World Collection
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Godiva
Place Purchased: Godiva (Glendale)
Price: $18.00
Size: 4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 153
Categories: Candy, Godiva, Caramel, Chocolate, Coconut, Coffee, Nuts, 7-Worth It, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:01 pm     CandyReviewGodivaCaramelChocolateCoconutCoffeeNibsNuts7-Worth ItUnited States

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Ritter Sport Coffee and Hazelnuts (Winter Edition)

Ritter Sport Coffee & HazelnutsRitter Sport has been releasing seasonal variations on their popular square bars for the past few years. Only in the past few years have they appeared reliably on US shelves, and usually for the Winter Editions.

The new Ritter Sport Coffee & Hazelnuts is a new bar, though it combines elements from other existing bars. I found my bar at Cost Plus World Market with the Christmas candies, they had all three varieties for this season, including the return of the Caramelized Almond and the also new Vanilla Crescents. It’s nice to see new bars in the mix, but disappointing that they’re all milk chocolate. This bar was $2.99, a smidge higher than the regulars, which sell for $2.49.

Ritter Sport Coffee & Hazelnuts

The bar looks like all the other Ritter Sport bars ... a 4x4 grid of sections, each with the Ritter Sport logo on top. This is a filled bar, a coffee cream studded with crushed hazelnuts. It’s a simple concept and rather baffling that no one has been doing this all along.

The ingredients, however, were not promising when it comes to cocoa content:

Ingredients: sugar, palm fat, milk, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, lactose, milk, hazelnuts, skim milk, butterfat, hazelnut paste, coffee powder, soy lecithin, natural flavor, natural coffee flavor.

I’m not against fat, I love the stuff. All that fat made this bar pretty high on the calorie count, 172 calories per ounce ... that’s 600 for the whole bar (for reference the whole hazelnut dark bar has 550 calories for the whole bar). Ritter Sport has been pretty good about the sourcing of its cacao, but they’re not forthcoming about their palm oil. For that reason and others mostly of taste preferences, when buying their bars for just eating, I usually stick to the solid chocolate varieties (or marzipan).

Ritter Sport Coffee & Hazelnuts

It looks great, smells mildly like coffee and cocoa but mostly sweet. The bite is soft, as most of the milk chocolate Ritter Sports are. The cream center has a cool melt and a vague coffee note to it, but it’s not as strong as the Espresso Bar, which is disappointing. The cream center is a little slick and thin, ultimately. The bar is extremely sweet for something that’s supposed to be coffee and hazelnuts. There are some hazelnuts, enough for a crunch and a touch of gianduia in the center. I really wanted a deep roasted experience ... the mix of the hazelnuts and coffee were promising, but ultimately not as deep as I’d hoped. But if you like Ice Cubes, you’ll appreciate the decadence of this bar. Dark chocolate would improve this bar immensely.

It’s not a bad bar, but like many of the bars that Ritter Sport has been making, especially the filled ones, they’re sweet and too oily without enough flavor. I want more dark chocolate options.

Related Candies

  1. Good and DeLISH Morning Rush Coffee Bites
  2. Dove Hazelnut Crisp Dark Chocolate Promises
  3. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Kona Coffee Truffles
  4. Mast Brothers Stumptown Coffee
  5. Ritter Sport Espresso
  6. Meiji Corot & CoffeeBeat
  7. Choceur Coffee & Cream
  8. Short & Sweet: Hazelnut Bites


Name: Coffee and Hazelnuts
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Ritter Sport
Place Purchased: Cost Plus World Market (Farmers Market)
Price: $2.99
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 149
Categories: Candy, Christmas, Ritter Sport, Chocolate, Coffee, Nuts, 7-Worth It, Germany, Cost Plus

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:45 am     CandyReviewChristmasRitter SportChocolateCoffeeLimited EditionNuts7-Worth ItGermanyCost Plus

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Shurms Soft Candy Chews: Caramel Apple and Caramel Coffee

Shurms Soft Candy Chews: Caramel Coffee & Caramel AppleShurms Soft Candy Chews are made in Michigan and gluten free. But that’s not what sets them apart from other artisan-style candies.

Shurms are unique in the candy world, at least in my experience. The company offered me a couple of samples and I was eager to try their Caramel Coffee candies, but also figured I should try their Caramel Apple because it’s the season for such things.

They came in a 10 piece box (3 ounces), which retails for $4.59. They’re sold on the web and locally in Michigan.

Shurms Soft Candy Chews: Caramel Apple

Since this is the season of Caramel Apple candies, I have to say that this is a unique item and deserves attention on its own. It’s amazing to look at, though kind of hard to capture with the camera. The green candy is translucent, perhaps even glowing in the dark. It’s very green (of course those are food colorings doing that) while the caramel part is the color of over-milked coffee.

The Caramel Apple consists of two layers. The green layer is a pectin based jelly candy on a base of traditional soft caramel. It smells, well, lovely. The caramel has a good toffee note to it and a little butter and then there’s the fresh scent of apple.

Shurms Soft Candy Chews: Caramel Apple

The candy is soft. There are a few ways to eat it: pop the whole thing in your mouth at once, eat the layers separately or bite through both layers. I opted mostly for the latter. The pectin layer is an fascinating candy in and of itself. It’s firmer than a jelly, chewier than a gumdrop and a bit on the sticky side by itself. The green apple flavor is mild but well developed with both juice notes and a sort of apple peel flavor in there as well. The texture reminded me of Botan Rice Candy. The caramel is soft and has a light salty note and excellent toasted sugar elements.

It’s an interesting textural experience. The sweetness of the pectin layer is offset well by the salt of the caramel. The sticky melt of the pectin is broken up by the fat in the caramel. It’s not a candy I ever would have thought of.

Shurms Soft Candy Chews: Caramel Coffee

The Caramel Coffee are a little different, since there’s no fruity tartness to cut through the sweetness. However, there is the bitter note of coffee. The pectin layer here is a deep brown and glossy, but not transparent at all. It smells like caramel, there’s no hint of the coffee. The pectin layer is definitely coffee, but very sweet. There’s a light acidic hint to it. The caramel is sweet and salty but also has a rum vibe going on. The whole thing has a satisfying chew and textures, but is missing something for me.

I appreciate how different this candy is, but curiosity doesn’t fulfill me. It’s great that these are gluten free and I do admire the limited but appropriate flavor combinations they have. There’s also a cherry and caramel version. (Gluten free but contains milk and soy.)

Related Candies

  1. Russell Stover Big Bite Caramel Apple
  2. Sugarfina: The Chocolates
  3. Sunkist Fruit Gems
  4. Ginger People Spicy Apple Ginger Chews
  5. Sweet Earth Bittersweet Chocolate Drops & Coffee Caramels
  6. Meiji Poifull
  7. Russell Stover Pectin Jelly Beans
  8. Coffee Nips


Name: Caramel Apple and Caramel Coffee Soft Candy Chews
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Shurms Candy
Place Purchased: samples from Shurms Candy
Price: $4.59
Size: 3 ounces
Calories per ounce:
Categories: Candy, Chews, Coffee, Jelly Candy, 7-Worth It, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:41 pm     CandyReviewCaramelChewsCoffee7-Worth ItUnited States

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Brach’s Caramel Macchiato Candy Corn

Brach's Caramel Macchiato Candy CornLabor Day is kind of the marker for the beginning of Candy Season ... which is the ramp up to Halloween. Candy Corn is inextricably tied with this time of year, for its associations with harvest and, of course, North America is known for its corn.

In order to keep people interested in Candy Corn, Brach’s has been introducing new flavored varieties for the past five years or so, in addition to their classic Candy Corn, Indian Corn and Mellocremes. I was rather interested in the Brach’s Caramel Macchiato Candy Corn because it sounded less sweet. Coffee actually sounds like a natural flavor combination for Candy Corn, and a touch of salty caramel should help it fit in nicely with the fondant flavor profile.

Brach's Caramel Macchiato Candy Corn

The pieces do a good job of replicating the look of a coffee drink: dark base, caramel orange middle and white top. (Though the picture shows the caramel on the top of the foamed milk.)

The ingredients list real coffee as a flavoring, as well as honey. The ingredients also list sesame oil, which I don’t think I’ve seen on the list before and note that the candy was made on equipment with milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy are present. Brach’s also uses gelatin in their Candy Corn.

Brach's Caramel Macchiato Candy Corn

The base is a bit salty and a wonderfully sweet, woodsy coffee flavor. It’s a bit of a stale flavor, like coffee powder, but this is Candy Corn, not a high end truffle. The middle section is lightly salty with a note of honey plus a little hint of butter and the continuing coffee flavor. The white top is less flavorful and also a bit on the crunchy side.

I’m finding that I like these. I was surprised, but I also enjoyed the Carrot Cake Candy Corn earlier this year. If you like Candy Corn, you may enjoy these as a little change of pace. If you don’t, these will not change your mind.

Related Candies

  1. Brach’s Carrot Cake Candy Corn
  2. Brach’s S’mores Candy Corn
  3. Starburst Original Fruit Flavored Candy Corn
  4. Jelly Belly Candy Corn Jelly Beans
  5. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
  6. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
  7. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
  8. Brach’s Autumn Mix


Name: Caramel Macchiato Candy Corn
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Brach’s
Place Purchased: KMart (Park LaBrea)
Price: $2.50
Size: 9 ounces
Calories per ounce: 101
Categories: Candy, Halloween, Brach's, Farley's & Sathers, Ferrara Pan, Coffee, Fondant, 7-Worth It, Mexico, Kmart

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:31 am     CandyReviewHalloweenBrach'sFarley's & SathersFerrara PanCoffeeFondant7-Worth ItMexicoKmart

Monday, July 7, 2014

Good and DeLISH Morning Rush Coffee Bites

Delish (Walgreen's) Morning Rush Coffee BitesI’ve often wondered why more confections weren’t made from roasting and conching. What would happen if you roasted and conched almonds or hazelnuts in the same way we make chocolate? What about coffee?

Since coffee doesn’t have its own natural oils like cocoa that are solid at room temperature, it only makes sense to add a dash of them to make a chocolate-like confection to create these Morning Rush Coffee Bites. These are from the Walgreen’s store-brand called deLISH, but I did see a review of a product called Coffee Thins on Candy Bar Review that sounds like it might be the maker.

They came in three varieties, I picked out the simplest version, the plain coffee bites (Elegant Hazelnut and Vanilla Delight were the others). There are 14 in the package, but the serving size is a little strange to decode. There’s 4.9 ounces in the package and it holds 3.5 servings. So a serving is 4 pieces. Though the package doesn’t say anything about caffeine, the Coffee Thins website does say that one piece equals a quarter of a cup of coffee. (I’m unclear if they mean an actual fourth of an 8 ounce cup and how much caffeine that cup had, as it does vary quite a bit but I’ll stick with the estimate that even eating the whole bag will probably not result it an overdose of caffeine. The front of the package is no help either, as it shows one piece equaling a cup of coffee ... though the cup is the same size as the chocolate piece.)

Delish (Walgreen's) Morning Rush Coffee Bites

They’re packaged just like a Ghirardelli Square. The pieces are about 1.6 inches square. The molding is nice, it’s a generic mold but a good thickness for biting and getting a nice aroma off of it while eating.

The ingredients are a little vague:

Sugar, Coffee Liquor (mixed fats & oils*, coffee) dairy solids, (whey powder, lactose), maltodextrins, soy lecithin, PGPR, natural vanilla flavoring, salt

The oils are a blend of cocoa butter, palm oil, illipe butter, shea butter, mango butter, sunflower oil and/or safflower oil. It’s also unclear if the coffee is the whole bean or brewed coffee. (I’m guessing whole bean.)

Delish (Walgreen's) Morning Rush Coffee Bites

The mouthfeel is pretty good. It’s not quite the silky melt of a good dark chocolate, but it’s passable. The coffee flavors are very strong and well rounded, more on the woodsy and cocoa end of the flavors than the nutty, toffee or berry notes that some beans have. The sugar is quite prominent, which is too bad, because I don’t mind a strong coffee. If it were less sweet, I’d be a lot happier, but when you remove sugar, it has to be replaced by something else. There’s a buttery, cream note to the whole thing too that I thought was a little strong for something that I didn’t think was in the milk drink zone. It’s a balancing act, if you take out sugar, do you put in more milk solids or more coffee? More coffee would make it much stronger, but that might not make it better because the bitterness or perhaps even the caffeine would be too high.

The end result is that I’m satisfied with these as a curiosity. I don’t see myself buying them again ... unless they were actually blended in with dark chocolate. However, if your a sweet coffee fan, these might be the ticket.

Related Candies

  1. Mast Brothers Stumptown Coffee
  2. Feodora Mocca’s Dark and Milk
  3. Meiji Corot & CoffeeBeat
  4. Jitterbeans vs GoGo Beans
  5. Javaz - Milk & Dark Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans
  6. Coffee Rio
  7. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
  8. Pocket Coffee
  9. Bali’s Best Coffee & United Coffee Candy


Name: Morning Rush Coffee Bites
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Good and Delish
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Echo Park)
Price: $3.79
Size: 4.9 ounces
Calories per ounce: 150
Categories: Candy, Coffee, Kosher, 7-Worth It, United States, Walgreen's

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:01 pm     CandyReviewCaffeinatedCoffeeKosher7-Worth ItUnited StatesWalgreen's

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Rococo Easter Egg

Rococo LondonWhile in London I made a point of visiting Rococo Chocolates. I’ve picked up quite a few of their bars in the United States before, I loved the packaging design and the molding of the bar in addition to their choice of Grenada Chocolate Company and Valrhona as chocolate sources. It’s not hard to find their products, they were sold in some of the grocery stores and in most of the food halls at the flagship department stores. But I wanted to see the store for myself, and pick out some individual pieces of their famous violet creams (not a whole box).

The Rococo Chocolate Shop on Motcomb Street is not far from Harrod’s and in an area with a large number of embassies. I mention this because I happened to walk past the Ecuadorian embassy, which I probably wouldn’t have given a second glance except for the demonstrators calling attention to the fact that Julian Assange was in there.

Rococo Easter EggWith my limited space in my suitcase, I wanted to bring back something special, something seasonal but also something that would travel well. The Rococo Easter Egg filled with a Selection of Ganaches seemed like an ideal item.

It was expensive, at £11.75 for only 70 grams, but something I wouldn’t find in the United States. The box is lovely, a heavy cardstock printed box with no other branding on it once I removed the product sleeve. The decoration on the box are prints from catalogues of old chocolate molds.

The egg is a common format I’ve seen in Europe for Easter. Some places call them Flame Eggs. It’s a hollow egg, made of two sections that are usually wrapped in foil separately and then filled with a selection of other chocolates, like little ganaches or just a pile of Cadbury Mini Eggs or Smarties. They can be small, like this one, or gigantic centerpiece items that can weigh more than a pound and are meant for a whole family.

Rococo Chocolate Egg

Everything inside the box was also neatly wrapped. The egg itself was wrapped in tissue paper, in a print matching the box. Inside the two hemispheres of the egg were the little ganaches wrapped in another large piece of food-grade tissue paper. Even though this had traveled thousands of miles, it fared very well.

The egg piece are wrapped in a nice orange-gold foil that’s easy to peel off. The egg itself is about 3.25 inches high and 2.25 inches wide at the widest spot.

The chocolate egg was formed in two layers, as it kind of cleaves when bitten. The quality of the chocolate is excellent. The tempering is superb, as it looks great with its beautiful glossy sheen and silky melt. The flavor profile is very rich. The toasted notes of toffee and coffee are immediately forward with some bitterness along with a sort of brownie flavor. The shell is 65% cacao, but tasted far darker.

Rococo Chocolate Egg

The ganaches inside were unmarked, the package only said that they were a mix of ganaches, so I’m not certain what I had. Here are my guesses:

Milk Chocolate - orange ganache with mango & passion fruit jelly. The light orange truffle center was sweet and tangy with a little note of zest. There was a layer of firm jelly with a wonderful tart and floral flavor, the mango was more forward with only a hint of the passion fruit.

Dark Chocolate - Valrhona Manjari Madagascar single origin. This was a wonderfully reliable piece with a nicely acidic ganache center with notes of cherry and raspberry (which means it might have been a berry ganache). Very good melt and very little sugary grain to the whole thing.

Coffee - Irish coffee white chocolate ganache in dark chocolate. This had a little sprinkling of coffee bits and turbinado sugar on the top. It was much sweeter than I was expecting, not as intense or as chocolatey as I’d hoped. As soon as the coffee flavors developed, it was gone. Maybe if I ate several of them in succession ...

Rococo ChocolateI also picked up a few impulse items. The Honecomb Crunch bar is one of the Bee Bar line, which have a charming bar mold design (see that here). It’s organic milk chocolate with a bit of crushed cinder toffee (sponge candy). The bits of the candy were too small to appreciate properly, but provided a nice toffee note. The milk chocolate was dark and had a lot of cheesy dairy notes, rather in the Swiss style. It’s quite a munchable bar.

Rococo Carre squares are single origin pieces, probably about 7 grams each. They’re each a different color, depending on the source of the chocolate.

63% cacao from Peru’s Chanchamayo Province smells strongly of honey. The melt is quick and a little thin and sweet. It later develops with excellent cherry and raisin flavors: dark and jammy. A very nice munching chocolate, especially if you like those fruity flavors that typify Peruvian chocolate.
71% cacao from Grenada Chocolate Company starts with a roasted scent and an olive note. The melt is very smooth, but a little cool on the tongue compared to the other two squares. There’s a tangy note towards the back with some black tea and maybe even a little smoke notes in there.
70% cacao from Jamaica was pretty bold with a lot of coffee notes from the smell but the flavor was far more complex. The balsam start went into pure green wood and a hint of and a lot of green eucalyptus and green tea. A little acidic towards the end with a dry finish. Actually pretty odd.

Finally, I also picked up four little chocolates from the candy counter while I was there to consume while I was in London. The key piece worth noting was the Violet Cream. This is something of a British traditional chocolate. I’m not adverse to floral flavors, I like them very much ... if I had to rank them, it would go something like this: orange blossom, jasmine, lavender, rose, geranium, elderflower and then violet. I don’t have photos, but they’re as you would imagine, a small dollop of sugary fondant covered in dark chocolate. The texture of the cream center was very nicely done, not grainy at all, not even too sweet. But the violet as overwhelming. There was scarcely a note of chocolate in the coating. They’re simply not for me.

I’ll continue to seek out Rococo Chocolates, the flavor combinations are a little more traditionally British, which is refreshing when so many other brands I’ve tried from the UK seem more in line with the Swiss/Belgian traditions.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:58 pm     CandyChocolatierReviewEasterChocolateCoffeeEthically SourcedSingle Origin7-Worth ItUnited Kingdom

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Trader Joe’s Chocolate Kona Coffee Truffles

Trader Joe's Chocolate Kona Coffee TrufflesIt’s dark in the winter, so we can all use a little wake-me-up. Some coffee candy might just do the trick.

Trader Joe’s Chocolate Kona Coffee Truffles are well priced at $3.99 for six ounces. The truffles are individually wrapped and it appears there are about 20 in the zip top package.

In the Trader Joe’s repertoire of individually wrapped truffles on shelves now, there are the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Salted Caramel (not really a truffle in my book) and the Candy Cane Truffles (sold in the winter). The new Kona Coffee Truffles definitely fill an niche.

Trader Joe's Chocolate Kona Coffee Truffles

The truffles are petite, only about 1.25 inches long, so really just one bite. The coating looks like dark chocolate, but the ingredients list all the chocolates: milk, dark and white. The filling is some sort of chocolate, Kona coffee, natural flavors and coconut oil. It’s firm,  might even be a bit crumbly if they’re very cold, but in the mouth they melt quite quickly.

It’s smooth, chocolatey, robust and has a hint of bitterness. The melt from the coconut oil is slick and silky. The coffee flavors are dark without too much bitterness, but very little sugary compensation going on. There may be a little hint of salt there, too. The only thing I didn’t like is the use of actual coffee grounds in there. They’re kind of crispy, but still a little distracting from the otherwise fully fat-laden melt.

These are a nice little item to keep nearby as a pick-me-up. Though they’re calorically dense, it’s only about 55 calories each ... so if you control yourself, two is a pretty nice treat.

Contains milk, soy and coconut. May contain traces of wheat, peanuts and tree nuts.

Related Candies

  1. Lindt Hello Coffee Blast (Limited Edition)
  2. Wow-Wee Maui Candy Bars
  3. Mast Brothers Stumptown Coffee
  4. Ritter Sport Espresso
  5. Meiji Corot & CoffeeBeat
  6. Javaz - Milk & Dark Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans
  7. Coffee Rio
  8. Mauna Loa Macadamia Kona Coffee Bar


Name: Chocolate Kona Coffee Truffles
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Trader Joe’s
Place Purchased: Trader Joe's (Silver Lake)
Price: $3.99
Size: 6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 169
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Trader Joe's, Chocolate, Coffee, Kosher, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:49 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewTrader Joe'sChocolateCoffeeKosher8-TastyUnited States

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