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Organic

Monday, November 8, 2010

Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt

Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea SaltCooler temperatures mean more chocolate consumption in my world. I’ve really been enjoying the bars from Equal Exchange, so I decided to branch out from the plain dark chocolate bars to their flavored offerings.

The Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt is a modest bar, sporting only 55% cacao content, it’s not extraordinarily dark and has more of a candy bar flair to it with bits of salty toffee.

The bar is wrapped simply in a burnt orange and brown wrapper that goes with the color coding Equal Exchange has going on for their line.

Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt

The bar is inside a thin white plastic sleeve which is easy to open and slip the bar back into. The bar looks great, it has a reddish hue to it and the inclusions of toffee bits are visible within the chocolate mass.

Equal Exchange Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt

The bar has a distinct and bright snap. Breaking the bar reveals a plethora of big crunchy toffee bits (made with just four ingredients: cream, sugar, vanilla and sea salt). The chocolate itself smells like coffee and has a light acidic bite to it. It’s sweet, but not sticky and has a well rounded woodsy chocolate flavor. The toffee bits are crunchy and buttery with a strong salty note. They go exceptionally well with the chocolate and complement the smooth melt of the chocolate with the hard burnt sugar notes and the dash of sea salt.

This bar straddles the world of easy to eat candy and decadent treat. The chocolate isn’t as nuanced as the darker single origin bars, but it’s also more accessible. It’s one of my favorite toffee chocolate bars now. (It still prefer the slightly more candy-ish Green & Black’s Peanut Bar, but that’s milk chocolate and I’ve had more of those bars than the Equal Exchange.)

It’s fair trade, organic and Kosher. It’s made in a facility that processes tree nuts and peanuts and of course isn’t vegan because of the milk in the toffee.

UPDATE 11/16/2010: I transcribed the ingredients incorrectly in an earlier version of this review. There is no corn syrup in this bar. The only sweetener is organic unrefined and/or raw cane sugar. I’ve revised the review to reflect the accurate ingredients.

Related Candies

  1. Equal Exchange Dark Chocolate: 65%, 71% & 80%
  2. Green & Black’s Peanut Milk Chocolate
  3. Sweet Earth Chocolates
  4. Mini Mentos: Orange, Apple, Lemon & Strawberry
  5. Valerie Toffees & Nougats
  6. Equal Exchange: Espresso, Mint & Nibs
  7. Equal Exchange Miniatures


Name: Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt (55%)
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Equal Exchange
Place Purchased: samples from Equal Exchange
Price: $4.00 retail
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Equal Exchange, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, Single Origin, Toffee, 9-Yummy, Switzerland

POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:06 pm     All NaturalCandyEqual ExchangeChocolateEthically SourcedKosherOrganicToffee9-YummySwitzerland

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups

Justin's Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter CupsI am a huge proponent of improving upon classic candies. The peanut butter cup is so simple, yet there are a few weaknesses in the most commonly found ones on store shelves.

So could a company known for it’s amazingly fresh tasting peanut butter (and other nut butters) make something like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup even better? The new Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups and Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups have a lot going for them in their lists of specs. They’re all-natural, organic and gluten-free, they use fair-trade chocolate, contain no preservatives and are packaged in compostable wrappers.

Justin's Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

They’re also about $2 per package of two cups. Premium has a premium price. But I was on board, I wanted to see if eco-awareness would make the actual candy tastier (and possibly limit my other candy consumption because of the pricetag.) So after I got them home and took a few pictures I turned over the package to see some serious trash talk from Justin himself:

Think of your favorite peanut butter cup. How would you feel if I told you that compared to ours it tastes like chocolate covered sawdust? That’s right, I said it. Imagine what happens when I take the best tasting organic peanut butter in the world and delicately place it into the highest quality organic and fair trade chocolate available. Yup. Peanut Butter Cup Perfection. [signed] Justin

I don’t mind a little puffery in sales copy, but I don’t like it when my preferences are insulted. Why would Justin start out our relationship by exhibiting such contempt for my predilections? (For the record, my problems with Reese’s have never involved the peanut butter, it’s about the lackluster chocolate.) It took me a while to shrug this off, but I think I managed to center myself back to zero on the predisposed opinion scale.

Justin’s Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

There are two cups in the package, which weighs 1.4 ounces (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are 1.5 ounces per two cup package). Each cup is exactly 100 calories.

Justin's Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

I picked these up at Whole Foods within a week or so of them being placed on store shelves (I frequent the one near my office for lunch and I always cruise by the chocolate shelf). The “best by” date was 5/11, so they’re are definitely fresh. Yet there was a slight bloom on all of the cups. This is the opposite of the issue I usually have with peanut butter cups, which tend to get a greasy sheen as the peanut butter oils migrate into the chocolate.

They smell wonderful, mostly like grassy, fresh peanuts but with a light note of milk and cocoa.

What I noticed first when biting into the cup was how sandy and dry the center was. Most peanut butter cups will bend first, this crumbled and broke into chunks. Not a bad thing, just different. The chocolate is silky smooth and like a silky not-to-sweet chocolate butter. The peanut butter center is salty and sweet with strong roasted peanut notes. The texture is odd, it’s not pasty or buttery, it’s crumbly. It’s not grainy either, it’s a very fine sort of powdery texture. The chocolate really makes up for a lot of that with its silken texture and consistent melt.

The other thing I noticed, as the photo shows is that it’s not a coherent block of peanut butter filling. It has some swirls of milk chocolate in it and a rather thick chocolate reservoir on the top. This was the same with all of the cups that I got (see the dark chocolate one below as well).

Justin's Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter CupsSo after the milk chocolate version, I was definitely curious how the dark chocolate would fare with the different texture style for the peanut butter center.

The Justin’s Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are also gluten free, organic, use fair trade chocolate, Kosher and packaged in biodegradable wrappers. They’re also vegan. I consider this a pretty big deal, lots of dark chocolate bars are considered vegan but very few “candy” bars are. (But note that they are processed on shared equipment that has been used for dairy ingredients, so they’re not for folks with dairy allergies.)

Justin's Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

Many all natural products have brief ingredients lists, but Justin’s is quite elaborate, mostly because each ingredient needs a qualification:

Organic Dark Chocolate (Organic Evaporated Cane Sugar, Organic Chocolate Liquor*, Organic Cocoa Butter*, Organic Soy Lecithin, Organic Vanilla), Organic Peanut Butter (Organic dry roasted peanuts, Organic palm fruit oil), Organic Evaporated Cane Sugar, Organic Cocoa Butter, Organic Vanilla Flavor, Sea Salt.

* denotes Rainforest Alliance Certified products

I don’t know what the status of Palm Fruit Oil is on the list of palm oils these days. Palm plantations displace rainforest, but then again this is organic. Maybe some free range, wild-foraged palm fruit oil would be preferable.

Justin's Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

The chocolate is silky smooth, just as the milk chocolate version was, but much more intense. In this case the chocolate flavors overpower the peanut butter flavors in many bites (mostly because of the inconsistent distribution of the chocolate, both of my cups had a full chocolate center). The cocoa flavors are woodsy with a slight acidic burn and tannic, bitter bite. It balanced well with the lightly sweet peanut butter center.

I liked the chocolate but I bought these because I thought they were peanut butter cups. Where’s my peanut butter!

I like that the peanut butter is less sweet than many other peanut butter confections, but I wanted it to be more buttery, it was like they used peanut flour instead of actual ground peanuts with all their glorious native oils. For this price I need a cup that delivers consistent ratios of peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a new product and maybe they don’t have things worked out, but the fact that the same swirling and high chocolate ratio occurred in both versions leads me to believe that this is either intended or permitted. Some folks might prefer it that way, so there’s a unique selling proposition for Justin’s. But it doesn’t rise to the level of Peanut Butter Cup Perfection.

Justin’s Nut Butters makes a variety of nut butters, like Honey Almond (which I love) and also a Hazelnut Chocolate (which I haven’t tried yet) ... so once they get their inconsistencies settled, I think that should be their next product developed. An Organic, Fair Trade Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Cup. Then we’ll talk about chocolate nut cup perfection.

UPDATE 3/14/2011

I picked up some new samples of Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups at ExpoWest. They were given to me directly by Justin himself. The packaging is identical, but the cups are greatly improved.

Justin's Peanut Butter Cups

My main complaints about the cups were that the peanut butter was too dry and there was too much chocolate. New versions hitting store shelves addressed this. As you can see from the photo above, the peanut butter is more consistently distributed in the center and appears less crumbly and dry. The chocolate shell still has a crisp, well tempered bite to it, but the peanut butter portion is well defined and flavorful. It tastes like a little darker roast as well and perhaps even a little saltier.

On the milk chocolate version I have to update my rating to 9 out of 10. Justin really did rise up to the challenge he made on the wrapper, this is better than a Reese’s.

The dark chocolate version also gets an upgrade, but only to 8 out of 10. It’s vegan, so that’s a huge thing, but the chocolate is still bitter and has a strong olive and grassy taste to it that overpowers the peanut flavors. The textures were excellent and the ratios dead on perfect.

My last hesitation on this product line is still the price though, but they’re definitely worth it now.

I was a bit overwhelmed when talking to Justin that I forgot to mention my desire for the Hazelnut Cup (though he said he’d read the review). Instead of pitching that I told him I wanted someone to make an all-natural peanut butter that had an additional bit of cocoa butter in it instead of hydrogenated tropical oils to keep it emulsified. The cocoa butter would keep it from separating but also add that inimitable texture, (and if you used un-deodorized) a light malty taste and keep it spreadable.

Related Candies

  1. World’s Largest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  2. Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  3. Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster
  4. Colt’s Bolts
  5. Factory Fresh Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  6. Boyer Smoothie


Name: Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Justin’s Nut Butter
Place Purchased: Whole Foods (Park LaBrea)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 143
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Justin's Nut Butter, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, Peanuts, 9-Yummy, United States


Name: Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Justin’s Nut Butter
Place Purchased: Whole Foods (Park LaBrea)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 143
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Justin's Nut Butter, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, Peanuts, 8-Tasty, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:57 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewJustin's Nut ButterChocolateEthically SourcedKosherOrganicPeanuts8-Tasty9-YummyUnited StatesWhole Foods

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Equal Exchange Dark Chocolate: 65%, 71% & 80%

Equal Exchange Dark ChocolateThe first experience I had with fair trade chocolate as Equal Exchange exactly five years ago. I was in love with their ethics and their product. Fair Trade as a concept means that everyone in the chain to create a product for sale gets a fair payment. It also means that working conditions are safe and that child labor or slaves are not engaged.

The bars are now much easier to find and the breadth of the program and the product line has expanded over the years. I was sent this assortment of their darkest bars: Ecuador 65%, Very Dark 71% and Panama 80%. First of all, they’ve redesigned their packaging to great effect. The wrappers are simple and compelling and distinctive in the now cluttered world of chocolate bars. The focus is on the product and the producers, the inside of the wrapper details Equal Exchange’s programs.

Each bar is 3.5 ounces and is certified organic and Kosher. Unlike some Fair Trade bars, all of the ingredients in Equal Exchange’s dark bars are Fair Trade content.

Equal Exchange Dark Chocolate

The Organic & fairly traded Dark chocolate from Ecuador (the bar on the top of the pile) is 65% cacao content. The bar looks crisp and perfect, right down to the snap when I broke it in half. Each bar is sealed inside an opaque plastic sleeve to keep it fresh.

This silky, 65% cacao content origin bar is reminiscent of baked brownies fresh out of the pan. Highlighting the work of cacao farmers in Ecuador, the bar’s sweet, fudgy richness is balanced by hints of citrus and floral notes.

This bar did have a crunch to it, the tempering was crisper than the other two bars. It smelled of toffee and stewed fruits. It was sweet on the tongue at first but had a lot of flavors going on immediately, a light tangy note of apricots and then some more fudgy flavors like the tasting notes predicted. It was sweet and didn’t have the puddly melt like the others but still had a very fine texture.

Equal Exchange Dark Chocolate

The Organic & fairly traded Very Dark chocolate is 71% cacao content but doesn’t list the origin beyond “Latin America.” The bar was nicely molded, shiny and with no voids or bubbles. It had a slight red cast to it.

71% has a great blend of flavor characteristics. It has a rich scent, very woodsy with coffee and cherry notes. On the tongue I was getting more green notes, like olives and asparagus plus a little hint of charcoal. It’s bitter but also has a silky melt that’s also a little sticky.

Equal Exchange Dark Chocolate

The Organic & fairly traded Extra Dark chocolate from Panama is 80% cacao content. This bar was more of a smoky brown and had less of the red color that the other two had.

This 80% cacao content bar is Equal Exchange’s darkest yet. Unlike many high cacao content bars that are dominated by a bitter or sour note, this bar is perfectly balanced in a way that allows the true chocolate flavor of the Panamanian beans to shine.

This bar smells distinctly like raisins, tangy and fruity with a little wine note to it. The flavor is the same: a strong tannin base but with berry and cherry notes. It’s a little tangy but with a great soft melt on the tongue and a light dry bite. For a very dark bar this is incredibly munchable, smooth and not too bitter or chalky.

I found myself drawn to both the 80% and the 65% for wildly different reasons, they were all distinct but those two fit my desire for rich chocolate at the moment. I liked the wrappers and the plastic sleeve that held its own (I was able to put the uneaten portions back in there without making a crumbly mess or melting it by handling too much).

Equal Exchange has also made some more “candy” version of their bars such as Organic Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt and Orange Dark Chocolate. I’ll have reviews of those soon. All of their chocolate is a pretty good value, retail for these bars is around $4.00 which is less than some of the more upscale bars but more than your standard Lindt or Ghirardelli.

They’re vegan, soy free and gluten free. They may contain traces of tree nuts, milk and peanuts.

Related Candies

  1. TCHO Fruity
  2. Sweet Earth Chocolate Cups
  3. 3400 Phinney: Fig, Fennel & Almond and Hazelnut Crunch
  4. Equal Exchange: Espresso, Mint & Nibs
  5. Equal Exchange Miniatures
  6. Divine Chocolate: Fair Trade
  7. Equal Exchange Chocolate


Name: Dark Chocolate: Ecuador 65%
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Equal Exchange
Place Purchased: samples from Equal Exchange
Price: $4.00 retail
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Green Halloween, Equal Exchange, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Single Origin, 8-Tasty, Switzerland


Name: Very Dark Chocolate 71%
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Equal Exchange
Place Purchased: samples from Equal Exchange
Price: $4.00 retail
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Green Halloween, Equal Exchange, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Single Origin, 8-Tasty, Switzerland


Name: Extra Dark Chocolate Panama 80%
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Equal Exchange
Place Purchased: samples from Equal Exchange
Price: $4.00 retail
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 163
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Green Halloween, Equal Exchange, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Single Origin, 8-Tasty, Switzerland

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:42 pm     All NaturalCandyGreen HalloweenEqual ExchangeChocolateEthically SourcedKosherOrganicSingle Origin8-TastySwitzerland

Friday, September 24, 2010

Newman’s Own Ginger Mints

Newman's Own Ginger MintsAs some of you who follow along on my twitter or flickr photostream might know, I’m an avid whale watcher. For the past six years I’ve been a certified naturalist with the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and American Cetacean Society and lead whale watching trips as a volunteer from December to April in the nearby Santa Monica Bay when the Gray whales migrate by.

I love it so much that I often go up to Santa Barbara in the summer to see our other nearby visitors: Blue whales and Humpback whales who come to feed near the Channel Islands. Unfortunately I also have a problem with motion sickness. So I’m often seen on the boats eating little ginger candies (and sharing them with other like-stomached passengers).

Newman's Own Ginger Mints

Ginger has been proven to reduce nausea. The great thing about that is that I love the taste of ginger and it’s not an expensive product for the most part.

I found these Newman’s Own Organics Ginger Mints at Mother’s Market in Orange County. They were only a buck and a nice compact format, like a roll of mints instead of an awkward package of individually wrapped candies (the wrappers can get blown away on a boat and into the water) or a tin (which can easily spill while I’m trying to open it).

Newman's Own Ginger Mints

The little disks are about 3/4 of an inch around and have a little “Newman’s Own Organics” engraved into them.

They smell toasty and earthy with a light citrus note. They’re sweet and a little chalky on the tongue, like Life Savers Wintergreen at first. The ginger is readily apparent, very woodsy and with a strong warming property that kept the back of my tongue and throat burning.

They dissolve quickly or can be chewed easily, which I guess speeds relief. I don’t know if ginger really works for tough stomach upset, but I find that occupying myself with hard candies (even non-ginger kinds) helps. Anything that keeps nausea from really taking hold can help since the cruises are only 2 to 3 hours. They’re sweet and not that complex overall, there’s no lemon or honey in them. But they seem to do the trick for me. I like how small and portable the package is.

As an organic product, as you can guess, they’re natural and contain no colorings. They’re Kosher and vegan. However, they are manufactured on shared equipment with peanuts, nuts, milk, wheat and soy.

Blue Whale off of Pt. Vicente

I’ll leave you with a photo from last weekend. There is a strange and welcome gathering of Blue whales off of Los Angeles right now, at least 30 individuals hanging out within 5 miles from shore. They’ve never been spotted here in these numbers like this before. They’ve been feeding on a huge upwelling of krill, and I guess they’ll stick around as long as there’s food. So if you’ve ever wanted to see the biggest animal on earth (ever), get yourself out to the sea. I go out with Voyager Excursions.

Related Candies

  1. Ginger Chews: Hot Coffee
  2. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Gingersnaps
  3. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
  4. Altoids Chocolate Dipped Ginger Mints
  5. St. Claire’s Organic Mints & Tarts
  6. Ginger Bears


Name: Organic Ginger Mints
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Newman’s Own
Place Purchased: Mother's Market (Laguna Woods)
Price: $.99
Size: .87 ounces
Calories per ounce: 46
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Ginger, Organic, 7-Worth It, Mexico

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:50 pm     All NaturalCandyNewmans OwnGingerKosherOrganic7-Worth ItMexico

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Endangered Species Organic Chocolate

Endangered Species Organic Dark ChocolateEndangered Species Chocolate’s hook is that the packages feature attractive, threatened animals and their profits go towards education about and protection of the environment.

They recently reformulated all their bars when they got a new cacao source (which does change the flavor profile for high end chocolate), so they sent me an array of bars to try. Today I thought I’d start with their simplest offerings, their single serving bars in Organic Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa and Organic Milk Chocolate 43% Cocoa.

The chocolate in the bars is Rainforest Alliance Certified as well as gluten free, Kosher, organic and ethically trade. The dark chocolate bar is also vegan (though made on equipment that also processes diary, peanuts and tree nuts). The package is made of 30% post-consumer recycled material yet it’s pretty nice to look at. The 70% Dark bar features the Karner Blue Butterfly, which is only about 3/4 of an inch across but a sparkling iridescent blue that draws the eye.

Endangered Species Organic Dark Chocolate

The bars are nicely proportioned. They’re slender - about 5.25” long and only 1.5” wide. Each is divided into three segments that are slightly domed and thick enough to provide a satisfying snap when broken.

The melt is smooth for the most part, though I did get an occasional spot of grit (fibery bits of cacao). It’s thick and lightly acidic with some bitter cherry notes. There’s coffee and anise and maybe some light citrus peel plus a strong note of vanilla. It puddles like pudding on the tongue and though I think there’s a smidge too much cocoa butter in it, the ratios support the flavor profile well. There are a lot of flavors going on and at times the finish is dry while other pieces I’m noticing a much lighter green tea note at the end.

Sometimes very dark chocolate isn’t as munchable as milk or milder stuff. It’s as if it’s too complex; this bar is dark and has a good mix of flavors but doesn’t feel too sophisticated for snacking. It pairs well with salty foods as well as nuts and dried fruits.

Endangered Species Organic Milk ChocolateThe second bar is the Organic Milk Chocolate 43% Cocoa Bar. I have to say that 43% is a pretty dark shade of milk chocolate. Some are as low as 20% cocoa content and there are those that go as high as 68% - but the low 30% range is what I think we’re most accustomed to.

This package features a lion. The package tells me that lions spend up to 21 hours a day sleeping. The rest of that time is spent in search of food, though they don’t eat every day. The package also says that lions are the only felines that live in social groups, maybe meaning that society leads to such high levels of cooperation that 21 hours of sleep are possible ... maybe we could learn something from that.

Endangered Species Organic

I stuck the milk on top of the dark here to show you the difference in color.

Endangered Species Organic Milk Chocolate

The main dairy ingredient in this bar is organic milk powder. It smells just like that - like sweet powdered milk.

The snap is much softer than the dark chocolate, though not fudgy like some milk bars like Cadbury can be. The melt is smooth, though not light and slick like Dove. It’s much thicker and velvety. The dairy notes fade and there’s a stronger caramelized sugar flavor along with the stronger bitter cocoa notes. There’s a hint of coffee, toffee and cedar in there.

This wasn’t my style of milk chocolate, it’s just too powdered milk flavored to me. I don’t know quite what that flavor is, but it reminds me of nutrition, which is not what I want in my treat. I’m guessing that this is just the profile that others prefer. The fact that it’s organic will also have appeal for folks who are looking to avoid hormones in their dairy products.

Related Candies

  1. NewTree Dark Milk
  2. Scharffen Berger Dark Milk (68%)
  3. Lake Champlain Organic Dark Bars
  4. Endangered Species: Milk Chocolate with Peanut Butter
  5. Endangered Species Halloween Treats
  6. Endangered Species Chocolate
  7. Thompson’s Organic Chocolate


Name: Organic Dark Chocolate (70%)
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Endangered Species
Place Purchased: samples from Endangered Species
Price: $1.99 retail
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 143
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Endangered Species, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, 7-Worth It, United States


Name: Organic Milk Chocolate (43%)
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Endangered Species
Place Purchased: samples from Endangered Species
Price: $1.99 retail
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 157
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Endangered Species, Chocolate, Ethically Sourced, Kosher, Organic, 7-Worth It, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:32 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewEndangered SpeciesChocolateKosherOrganic7-Worth ItUnited States

Monday, February 1, 2010

Sun Cups

Sunflower Butter Cups ... saying it out loud it doesn’t even make sense, is it a flower or is it a candy? Seth Ellis Chocolatier of Boulder, Colorado has come out with a nut free, peanut free, gluten free, fair trade and organic candy. They simply call them Sun Cups.

Seth Ellis Sun Cups (Sunflower Seed Butter Cups)

Sun Cups come in milk chocolate and dark chocolate. Confusing sounding name aside, they’re sunflower butter (like peanut butter only made with sunflower seeds) in a chocolate cup. Just like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, except, well, not like them.

Each cup is .75 ounces and comes in the industry standard dark brown fluted paper cup. The packages I picked up from the Seth Ellis booth at the Winter Fancy Food Show were flawless and perfect. Even the glossy and bold packaging is made from a compostable film.

Seth Ellis Sun Cups (Sunflower Seed Butter Cups)

The Milk Chocolate Sun Cups smells sweet and milky. There’s a touch of sunflower scent, but mostly it’s a fresh note. The organic milk chocolate is silky smooth and has a strong European dairy note. It’s cool on the tongue as it melts. The sunflower center is creamier than a Reese’s, not exactly moist, but not crumbly and not oily. The center is made with sunflower butter mixed with white chocolate, so it’s a little stiff but has an amazing melt with just a hint of sea salt.

Seth Ellis Sun Cups (Sunflower Seed Butter Cups)

The Dark Chocolate Sun Cups smell like semi-sweet chocolate - a little bit woodsy and fruity. The chocolate is actually rather dark and bitter and though it’s vegan (no milkfat) the cups overall aren’t because of the dairy in the white chocolate & sunflower center. The sunflower butter isn’t very sweet, so the whole cup has a much more savory appeal to it. There’s a grassy note to the sunflower which reminds me a little of jasmine tea and tahini.

I thought I was going to love the dark chocolate more than the milk chocolate, but I found both compelling for different reasons. In the milk chocolate version the milk flavors and silky textures blend together well for a decadent and rather fatty feeling treat. The dark chocolate version is deep and complex and kind of requires a little bit of attention while eating to appreciate how it all fits together.

The fact that they’re gluten free and nut free (both tree & peanut) will set these cups apart from most others right away. The milk chocolate version will be easily gobbled up by kids with allergies and sensitivities without any feeling of them getting a compromise candy. Grown ups without allergies will still appreciate the social responsibility (organic & fair trade) behind them along with the tasty ingredients. I still prefer peanut butter, as it’s a more rounded flavor, but I can’t ignore how great these are.

They might be a little hard to find, though most Whole Foods will order if they’re in the system and not on the shelves. They should be in Whole Foods (Rocky Mountain, Northwest and Bay Area) chain-wide at Pharmaca, Sunflower Markets, Cost Plus World Markets, Jimbo’s in So Cal. I still haven’t found them in stores yet, but they should retail for less than $2.00 a package. Hopefully they’ll have individually wrapped ones around for Halloween later this year.

Related Candies

  1. Sunbursts Natural Mix
  2. Short & Sweet: Bites & Bites
  3. Super Sour Worms
  4. Colt’s Bolts
  5. Sjaak’s Vegan Chocolate Assortment
  6. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
  7. Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops
Name: Sun Cups (Milk Chocolate & Dark Chocolate_
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Seth Ellis Chocolatier
Place Purchased: samples from Fancy Food Show
Price: retail $1.79
Size: 1.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 160 & 153
Categories: Chocolate, United States, Organic, All Natural, Kosher, Fair Trade

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:54 am    

Friday, January 15, 2010

Rococo Bee Bars

Rococo Bee BarsRococo is a small chocolatier and chocolate maker based in London. They grow their cacao in Grenada, in a partnership with the Grenada Chocolate Company. They grow organic Trinitario beans which are then turned into bars and fine chocolates at founder Chantal Coady’s space in London.

The design of the packaging and candy itself is charming, quaint and distinctive from other chocolatiers. The flavors she employs are also a distinctive palette of aromatics, spices and florals.

The chocolate is sold primarily in Great Britain, though there are a couple of shops that have mostly the bars in North America. When I was in San Francisco last time I found the line of Bee Bars at Miette Confiserie. The bars are expensive, so I opted for the petite versions - these are only 20 grams each but cost $3.50 (that works out to $39.50 a pound). The bars are about three inches long, so really just one portion.

The packages are beguiling with reproductions of antique French chocolate mold images lined up and printed in pastel colors like purple and olive green in the case of my bars and navy blue, pink and orange for other bars. I picked up Organic Plain Lavender (dark), Organic Milk 37% Cocoa and Organic White Cardamom.

Rococo Milk Chocolate

I was a bit surprised when I got home and opened my boxes that there is no inner wrapper. No foil, no cellophane, no overwrap for the box or even glue or tape for the tabs.

Still, my bar was in exquisite condition - glossy and beautifully molded. The bee bar, my guess, is named for the mold that has a little bee with outstretched wings on each segment. There are no honey ingredients.

The Milk 37% Cocoa Bee Bar is quite simple. It’s a little softer than a dark chocolate, though certainly doesn’t bend like a Cadbury bar.

It has the light scent of milk and sugar and a little musky hint or malt. It’s quite dark for a milk which appeals to me, though it still has that light cooling effect on the tongue that’s common in milk chocolate. The melt is silky and smooth though on the sticky side because of the sugar and 17% milk content. The chocolate notes are overshadowed by the milk for the most part, but it’s still a great texture and the fresh dairy flavors are a highlight.

Rococo Dark Chocolate with Lavender

The Lavender Bee Bar is made from 65% cacao and uses no vanilla, instead it’s organic lavender essential oil that gives this bar its pop. The fact that they use oil instead of flowers is different here. I’ve had other bars that use whole flowers to flavor the chocolate and while that does a nice job of imparting complex flavors, lavender buds really aren’t that tasty or smooth.

The dark chocolate is smooth, a bit dry and bitter. The lavender is woodsy with a hint of pine and a whiff of aromatics like menthol. I like the flavor of lavender, it reminds me a lot of rosemary - both go well with all kinds of chocolate.

Rococo White Chocolate with Cardamom

The bar that was most compelling to me was the White Cardamom Bee Bar. This one was wrapped - both in foil and then a paper-overwrap. The mold of the bar is also slightly different - it’s four sections instead of six.

The bar is beautiful, a light and creamy yellow with specks of spice. The ingredients list 28% cacao (that’d be cocoa butter) and 22% milk.

I love cardamom and love tasting it in candy. This bar utilizes it perfectly, it’s like a rich rice pudding. It’s a little sweet, but the deep nutty flavors of the cardamom, which is kind of like nutmeg, coriander and saffron all in one. I could eat this bar regularly. I wouldn’t mind a little vanilla in it, to give it some bourbon notes, but this is fabulous as it is.

Other flavor combinations I’m eager to try are Gold, Frankincense & Myrrh; Arabic Spices; Basil & Persian Lime; Orange & Geranium and Peppered Mint. For web orders in the US, it appears that Miss Del’s General Store in Clarksdale, Mississippi. At these prices they’re certainly not an everyday indulgence, more of a way to explore the world of flavors.

Related Candies

  1. My Bay Area Candy Adventure
  2. Boules de Miel (balls of honey)
  3. The Apothecary’s Garden: Herbs (and some Bees)
  4. Recchiuti
  5. Nougat de Montelimar
  6. Green and Black’s White Chocolate
Name: Organic Bee Bars: Milk Chocolate, Lavender Chocolate and Cardamom White
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Rococo Chocolates
Place Purchased: Miette Confiserie (San Francisco)
Price: $3.50 each
Size: .7 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Chocolate, White Chocolate, United Kingdom, Fair Trade, Organic

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:31 am    

Monday, November 9, 2009

Green & Black’s Peanut Milk Chocolate

Green & Black's Organic PeanutThe problem with Mr. Goodbar was that it was never Mr. Greatbar in the first place.  When Hershey’s replaced the cocoa butter in it, I completely lost interest. So, I’ve been looking for Mr. Betterbar because I still believed there could be a simple, satisfying combination of milk chocolate and fresh roasted peanuts. When I was at the Target in Harbor City shortly before Halloween I spotted this new bar: Green & Black’s Peanut. Since Green & Black’s is organic and expensive, I thought for sure it was going to be better.

After I got the bar home and photographed it, I read a little closer to see that it wasn’t just a plain milk chocolate with whole (or half) pieces of peanuts. No, this was something quite different but still equally compelling: Milk chocolate with caramelized peanuts and a hint of sea salt - 37% Cocoa Content.

Green & Black's Organic Peanut

The bar looks smooth and shiny. It also looks darker than most milk chocolate bars, somewhere between a true dark and a milk chocolate. I like how Green & Black’s bars are just a little thicker than the Lindt Excellence or Scharffen Berger. This is great especially when there are inclusions, because it leaves room for them to stack and still be surrounded by chocolate.

The bar smells incredible. It’s deep and smoky with a great authentic peanut scent along with the faint hint of caramelized sugar and milk. The texture is equally great, there’s a silky smooth melt and a sweet dairy flavor along with some dark bitter notes of both chocolate and toasted nuts. The peanut flavors are quite strong, and the nuts themselves are crunchy but there’s also the wonderful surprise of both little buttery toffee bits and a crisp toffee coating on some of the peanuts. The salt is also a nice complement to the flavors, keeping the rather sweet milk chocolate from becoming too sticky and setting off the woodsy notes.

I ate this bar up in less than two days. Then I went looking for another. I still haven’t found one, but when I see it, I’ll buy it. Oddly enough, it’s still not the Mr. Goodbar substitute I was looking for, but I’m going to just be happy with the serendipity that brought it into my life and be grateful that my mistakes are so tasty.

Related Candies

  1. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Peanuts (plus Mr. Goodbar)
  2. Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster
  3. Hershey’s Miniatures
  4. Green & Black’s Ginger Chocolate
  5. Nestle Crunch with Peanuts
Name: Peanut Milk Chocolate (Organic)
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Green & Black's
Place Purchased: Target (Harbor City)
Price: $2.99
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 184 (I don't think that's correct)
Categories: Chocolate, Peanuts, Toffee, Green & Black's, All Natural, Organic

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:02 pm    

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