Around this time last year I barely knew what Fair Trade was and there really weren’t that many chocolate products out there that were Fair Trade Certified. Now you can not only get cocoa and plain dark chocolate, but also some pretty cool flavored chocolate bars. Endangered Species seems to be leading the way with the Fair Trade “candy” bars in their new Premium Organic line.

Each bar is a single serving and easy to pick up at the checkout of your favorite “wholesome” market like Whole Foods, Wild Oats or Zoo gift shop.

Along with the Fair Trade and organic certifications, this bar boasts high cocoa content of 52% (high for a milk chocolate). This wrapper has a giraffe on the label and everyone knows that the pattern on giraffes is known as the peanut shell. (Okay, I made that part up.)

The chocolate is buttery smooth and very sweet on the tongue. It has very strong smoky qualities with a slight bitterness at the start but a good nutty flavor. Once I start eating the bar, the unpleasant burnt quality goes away, but each time I stop and start I have to go through the process all over again. I’m afraid I can’t give it the highest marks because of that. Now, I’m one of those “supertaster” people, so I tend to be more sensitive to bitter, so your mileage may vary.

Interesting fact about giraffes from the wrapper: A giraffe’s neck contains seven vertebrae, just like ours.

These were introduced almost two years ago, so I was a little confused by the NEW! starburst on the package. But I hadn’t had them anyway, so into the basket they went.

I don’t know when citrus flavors stopped being the normal “sour” flavors, but I’ve missed them a bit. It’s not like blue raspberry is any more natural as a “licorice” flavor than orange or lemon.

These are a wheat-based chew, which is what most “licorice” is. The center is flavored and then dusted with a sour sugar coating. They smell really nice as a combo - a little floral, a little fruity and a slight tangy essence. Leave them in a desk drawer and it’s kind of like an edible sachet.

They’re wee morsels, smaller than most licorice bites. They have the same basic star shape in cross section, which is great for holding onto all the sour dust.

Strawberry - mild in the strawberry department and with a decent tart bite.

Cherry - a nice chemical cherry flavor with a solid sour kick, but no complexity. A bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Green Apple - a pretty good sour apple flavor with a combo of the floral notes and that realistic apple juice taste and a sizeable tartness that satisfies. My favorite of all of them.

Blue Raspberry - floral and with an odd sort of yellow mustard note in there that confused the heck out of me. Not as sour tasting as some of the others and of course the mustard thing was kind of unpleasant.

Overall, they’re tasty, but don’t really provide any more candy satisfaction than some other tangy chews that I’ve had lately. I might even prefer the Sour Strings I had this summer or the SweeTarts Shockers - Shockers have the lead because of the variety in a single roll.

The lovely folks at Endanged Species thought I should try more of their bars (well, so did the lovely Candy Blog readers in the comments section). They happily sent me a small selection to try, here are a couple of the milk chocolate bars.

Milk Chocolate with Peanut Brittle - there’s an elephant on the package! I’m guessing because elephants like peanuts. The base of this bar is a very dark, rich milk chocolate with 52% cocoa content. In fact, it’s so chocolatey that the sugar (made from water-filtered beet sugar) is third on the list of ingredients instead of first in most milk chocolates. That’s not to say that the chocolate isn’t sweet, but it also has an intense creaminess to it that I’ve found very rare in other milk chocolates. The dairy component is quite rich but it doesn’t feel sticky.

Sprinkled in there are peanut brittle chips. They have a nice salty bite and crispness and add a good peanut crunch. I’d argue that it isn’t really peanut brittle but toffee, since it’s so buttery, but I don’t feel that argument much matters.

This is a fantastic bar that may convert some folks who say they don’t like milk chocolate because it’s too homogeneous tasting but it still retains its munchability. I ate the whole bar in a matter of two days. 9 out of 10.

Milk Chocolate with Rice Crisp - this bar has a manatee on the front. I doubt manatees have a fondness for rice though as vegetarians I don’t imagine they’d be adverse to it. This bar contains the same dark 52% cocoa content milk chocolate. This bar has a slightly smokier taste to it, which I’m guessing is added by the crisped rice. The first third of the bar, I hated it. The crisped rice tasted bitter and burnt to me. But I thought maybe I just had a bad rice crisp or two. I waited a day and tried it again. The crisped rice still reminds me of those bits of barely popped popcorn that end up in the bottom of the bowl. Very toasted tasting and with a much denser crunch.

Though the second try was more successful, I just wasn’t keen on the rustic taste of the rice crisps. There weren’t enough of them to make it a really crunchy bar and the intense flavor they added didn’t thrill me. I’m a huge fan of grains and eat a lot of them (barley is my favorite, if you didn’t already know) but this just wasn’t my thing. 6 out of 10.

Endangered Species is now based in Indiana (they moved from Oregon last year) and the make ethically traded chocolate bars in a huge variety of flavor combinations. The cool part is that the commitment to the environment goes to all facets of the production and marketing. The packages are printed on recycled paper and with soy-based biodegradable inks. The 10% of all profits are donated to animal conservation causes. Each bar is branded with a different endangered animal and the inside of the wrapper has that animal’s story. There are often coupons as well and tips for making small changes in your life to lessen your impact on the environment.

Though the bars are all natural, these are not organic (though there are other bars in their repertoir that are). Some of the cocoa beans that they acquire are Fair Trade certified and others do not have the certification but are ethically traded. Their packaging and story helps them to appeal to kids moreso than other wholesome-branded chocolates.

Sometimes I buy chocolate and it melts. Lately that’s been happening a lot. Why not just buy already melted chocolate?

A dear reader sent me an email telling me about this new product called Lava Bar which is just that, liquid chocolate in a pouch. I wrote to the manufacturer and soon I had a few in my hot little hands to try! And this is one case where my hands being hot was not necessarily a bad thing!

The Lava Bar is billed as the world’s first liquid chocolate bar.

Since you’re probably curious, here are the ingredients: corn syrup, chocolate liquor, sugar, butter, water, high fructose corn syrup, whole dry powdered milk, vanilla extract and salt. Chocolate liquor listed there is not alcoholic, it’s just ground up roasted cocoa beans - it contains both cocoa butter and cocoa solids.

So now that we know what’s in there, what’s it like? Well, it’s like brownie batter. Very, very good brownie batter. It’s smooth and thick, but not sticky. The chocolate is very sweet, which is a little disappointing, but has some nice complex flavors. Mostly it’s woodsy notes and some smoke. There’s a little bitterness to it, but I didn’t mind that at all.

I don’t know if this could ever replace my desire for a chocolate bar, which has other things to recommend it from a sensual point of view - it’s a solid and then a liquid, you can break off pieces of it and share, you can stack the little pieces up or just admire the unwrapped bar.

The dispensing system, which amounts to squeezing the stuff into your mouth is a little odd, too. Unless you squeeze it out and then lick it off, you never really see what you’re eating. The package holds two servings (2.5 ounces) but it’s not that easy to just reseal it for later (I’d recommend a clip or something for that). I think astronauts would love it though (of course M&Ms and Hershey Kisses probably travel well in space, too).

The wrapper and website recommend using it as a sauce or dip, which I found much more satisfying. I squeezed a little on pretzels and almonds and found that to be great because I could control the proportions or each element. You can also add it to ice cream or use it in shakes.

It’s certainly interesting, but lacked the sort of ultrasmooth true chocolate experience that I was looking for. I think it’s because of the lack of enough cocoa butter ... but if there were more cocoa butter it would be a solid and then it wouldn’t be the Lava Bar.

I can see this being a great thing to hike with. You don’t have to worry about it melting, because it already is. As a nutritional replacement ala Chocolate Cliff Shots, it’s got a lot of fat: half the calories are from fat, some solid chocolate have 2/3 of their calories from fat. So if you use it as a sauce to satisfy a craving, this could be a way to keep on a diet.

I could see the flavor extensions on this being quite interesting: mint, coffee & dulce de leche. Lava Bars should be showing up in stores soon, or if you can’t wait you can order online.

Equal Exchange has been at the forefront of the fair trade chocolate and coffee movement in the United States for twenty years. But I think they understand that it’s great to give people a living wage and all, but the important thing is to sell something of value to the customer to keep everything in motion.

At their launch, the Equal Exchange chocolate products were rather mundane. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice, but the selection wasn’t very exciting. They’ve remedied that with the introduction of three new bars: Mint Chocolate, Espresso Bean Chocolate and Dark Chocolate with Pure Cocoa Nibs.

The Organic Chocolate with Espresso Bean is made with a 55% cocoa solid chocolate (the lightest chocolate of the three new bars) with good reason. Coffee is a powerful flavor and needs a good balance in order for both flavors to shine though.

In general I’m not fond of coffee bars that have coffee grounds (or bits, whatever) in them. The chocolate itself is infused with the coffee flavors, which are dark and pungent, a little smoky and acidic. The beans are crunchy and crisp, which is better than some fibery ones that some companies put in their bars. But still, it’s just not my thing. The chocolate was wonderfully buttery but very sweet so that it can stand up to the espresso beans. Of the three bars, this is the one that I still have some left of. (7 out of 10)

Organic Mint Chocolate. This dark chocolate bar made with 67% cocoa solids was quite a surprise. I fully expected it to be dark, mint flavored chocolate. Instead, it’s a mint crunch bar. It’s not quite like a mint bark that has little pieces or starlight mints in it. Instead it has little sugary grains of mint in it. The grains aren’t large, like big sugar crystals. The chocolate itself is not as sweet as the espresso bar, and has a strong acidic quality to it with a complex chocolate profile. Then as you chew or allow the chocolate to dissolve on your tongue you come across these little crystals of mint. It made the bar much more fun than I expected.

The acidity of the bar still got in the way of the mint, it just wasn’t the ideal match for me. (8 out of 10)

Organic Dark Chocolate with Pure Cocoa Nibs. Now this is the bar for me! 68% cocoa solids make this a pretty dark bar. The acidity here doesn’t bother me a bit, because it goes right along with the blissfully crunchy and rich cocoa nibs. Every nib was great, no fibery ones, no bad ones. The crunch of the nibs isn’t quite like a nut, they’re not quite as fatty tasting, but crisp and of course flavorful, creating a new texture without interrupting the pure chocolate density of the bar.

If you’re a nib fan, you should really seek out this bar. I’ve tried the Endangered Species bar and the Scharffen Berger and this bar really wowed me. At about $3.50 per bar retail for a 3.5 ounce bar they’re a good value for high-end chocolate. Add in the social responsibility and you’re silly not to at least give this bar a try. (9 out of 10)

I’ve been spotting Equal Exchange at Whole Foods, so keep your eyes open. If you have a favorite store that you shop at that doesn’t carry them, ask. (They don’t know what you want unless you tell them!) You can order on the Equal Exchange website, but only in full boxes of 12 for the bars.

Equal Exchange bars are not only organic but Fair Trade certified ingredients are used whenever possible, including the sugar. I think the only part that isn’t fair trade is the organic vanilla bean.

William at Chocolate Obsession has a large review. Siel at GreenLAGirl had a tasting party, so you can see lots more opinions on the bars there. If you’re interested in anything that has to do with incorporating fair trade, social responsibility and environmentalism into your everyday life, she’s your girl.

I’ve had Dove chocolate a few times, but I’ve never bought it before. It’s usually on someone’s desk in an assortment and I’ll take a bite, but it was never something I was terribly blown away by. But then again, if the assortment has Reese’s Miniatures, I’m pretty much blind to everything else.

At Target over the weekend they had these bars, which said they were NEW!, but I’m not sure there’s much new about these except the shape. These bars are just like a bunch of linked Promises miniatures.

If there’s one thing that defines Dove chocolate, it’s their promotion of its silkiness. The bars aren’t large (1.3 ounces each), but they pack a lot of chocolateiness into each little segment. The dark bar has a lovely sweet aroma, but the vanilla notes aren’t as complex as I’d like.

The Rich Dark Chocolate melts quickly on the tongue, giving a thick taste of chocolate instantly. It’s very sweet, so the chocolate notes aren’t as prominent as they are in some of the upscale bars I’ve tried. The flavor is just middle of the road chocolaty, there aren’t hints of raisins, cherries or smoke. Just chocolate. But it’s dependable and wonderfully creamy.

The ingredients in the Rich Dark Chocolate bar start with sugar, which is apparent from the beginning. But this is another candy, like the Dark Raisinets that uses milk products in the “dark” chocolate, though not quite to the degree that the Nestle product did. Right after cocoa butter the ingredients list milkfat, which probably explains the cholesterol level (5 mg), which is the same as the Milk Chocolate bar.

The smoothness of the bar, I’m guessing, can be attributed to a process called conching. This process is what the liquid chocolate is continually ground up using rollers or metal beads, this works all of the larger particles of the cocoa bean into ultrafine pieces that cannot be detected individually by the tongue. Less expensive chocolate is usually conched for a much shorter period of time, which means that it might have some noticeable grain to it. Conching is an expensive process because it takes so much time, so some companies skimp on this step. Lesser chocolate can be conched as little as 6 hours and the finest chocolate may be conched for 72 hours. (Unusual graininess may also be caused by bad tempering, which results in an inconsistent cocoa butter crystaline matrix.) This conching process is one of the reasons that you can’t make chocolate at home - the particles in standard cocoa are not fine enough.

The other thing that accounts for the silkiness of the bar is the fat. These bars are pretty high in fat, which is definitely not a bad thing, but rather uncommon in the standard consumer chocolate bars like Nestle’s and Hershey’s.

I’d never tried Dove Smooth Milk Chocolate before, so I was kind of curious if it was like European milk with its powdered milk taste or if it was like American chocolate which can be a little smokier/tangy tasting.

It’s smelled rather like the European version - sweet and with lots of dairy tones to it. This bar is also very sweet, sweeter than the Dark by a longshot, which is easy to see on the nutrition label, the dark as 17 grams of sugars, the milk has 20 grams (the only other difference seems to be the dark has 3 grams of fiber and the milk only 1 gram).

I actually found this to be a very pleasant bar. It went well with my strong coffee and I ate some of it with some salted pretzels. It’s a little on the sweet side and lacks some chocolate notes, but those are replaced by the complex dairy flavors. There is some tangyness to it, which I rather liked.

My biggest fear about the bars was that they’d be waxy, which is something I’ve noticed with the chocolate on the Dove ice cream bars (but the chemistry associated with frozen chocolate is vastly different than room-temp chocolate). But still, there’s something that feels very plastic about the bars, I’m not quite sure what it is, and it’s not a feeling that I get with Hershey’s Kisses or M&Ms. It might be that I don’t like ultra-smoothness. And that’s purely a personal preference.

(Update: Because it has become an issue, no comments will be allowed here promoting any sales of Dove at Home or any other chocolate. Please limit your comments to the products reviewed here.)

My recent shopping spree at Mel & Rose’s has a little story attached to it. A commercial was recently shooting on our street and the production crew paid us $300 for the inconvenience of having other people park in our driveway and the fact that they were going to wake us up 90 minutes earlier than they told us. I vowed to spend $100 of that on import/upscale candies (I consider it an investment in Candy Blog!). So off to Mel & Rose’s while the crew was making a ruckus and fouling the air with their diesel generators.

I was very tempted to get the Nougat de Montelimar again, but they had quite a few other import varieties, so I thought since someone else was footing my experimentation bill, I’d branch out to other continents.

Massam’s Deluxe Nougat is about as far flung as I could find, made in South Africa. It’s a lovely chunk of nougat, about the size of half of a Snickers bar. The white inside wrapper on it is actually a potato starch paper that’s edible. The nougat itself is not quite hard and not quite soft. The almond distribution is a little uneven. I had two bars, the first one had a great balance of them, but the second one had a complete void of almonds on one half and then a nice amount in the other half.

The taste of the nougat is sweet and smooth and the starch of the potato wrapper gives it a rather cereal quality. It’s odd, as I get to the end of the chew it reminds me of Cheerios. The honey notes weren’t as rich as I’d hoped, but these bars are pretty good in their own right. I had a little trouble biting them, so for the second bar I started cutting it with a knife and it worked a bit better.

At a dollar twenty-five a piece for an imported nougat (they’re a little over an ounce each when I weighed them, but there’s nothing on the label) they’re pretty good. I might pick them up again, especially for the novelty of the potato paper.

For the record, I only spent $50 on candy that day, including a tasting kit of Michel Cluizel that I’ll have a review of soon. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I guess you should never go to a candy store AFTER lunch. I bought a new bike with the rest of the money.

This nougat is both Kosher (Parev) and Hallal.

I got to try the Dark Chocolate Raisinets at the All Candy Expo a couple of months ago and I was pretty underwhelmed. They handed them out in little sample cups, so there was no packaging to look at and after eating two sample cups I asked if they were the new dark ones, because they honestly didn’t taste that way. But these were on sale so I decided to give the retail product another try.

The new Dark Raisinets herald their healthiness on the package as a “natural source of antioxidants from fruit & dark chocolate” as well as “30% less fat than the leading chocolate brands.” I’ve got no complaints with either claim, although comparing Raisinets to a Snickers or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups seems rather like apples to chocolate covered oranges.

My other complaint is that they say it’s Dark Chocolate when really it’s just darker milk chocolate. The ingredients for the coating go like this: Sugar, Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Milkfat, Soy Lecithin, Nonfat Milk, Lactose, Vanillin, Natural Flavor.

But really, who cares? The big questions are, do they taste any different than the regular Raisinets and do they taste good?

They’re actually rather nice. The raisins are plump and often big. The chocolate coating is a little grainy and very sweet but provides a nice counterpoint to the tart chewiness of the raisins. I’ve been spoiled by Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Raisins for a long time which are wonderfully rich and complex and these are far from rivaling those. However, as a single serving pack that’s easy to find anywhere, I’d pick these up as a healthier alternative to a full on candy bar. There’s still 22% of your daily saturated fat intake in here including 5 mg of cholesterol (really, why’d they have to go and do that?), but also 2 grams of fiber and 2 grams of protein. And all those antioxidants, whatever they are.

A little history about Raisinets, Goobers and SnoCaps. All three were originally made by the Blumenthal Chocolate Company. Goobers were introduced first, then Raisins and finally SnoCaps. All were popular movie candy and for a long time the only place I could find them was at the concession counter. Nestle bought Blumenthal in 1984 and the candies gained wider distribution in a variety of packages with some slight changes in their recipes. Raisinets are a Kosher (OU D) product.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Cherry Raisinets
2. Sno-Caps, Goobers & Raisinets