The Japanese have some strange candies and these have to be right up there at the top. Puccho are pretty popular and with good reason, they deliver just about everything. They have variety in both the experience and the range of flavors, great packaging, they’re inexpensive and of course you can share them easily.

There was a wide variety of flavor combinations at the store and I was especially interested in the Cola one but wanted to stay away from the yogurt ones (I like yogurt, but not as a flavor).

The Cola (in the red package) was awesome. The little piece had white and brown stripes in the candy and every once in a while there was a little piece of cola flavored gummi or a nugget of sour foamy grains. The grains gave it a lemon-cola zap and the gummis gave the soft, Hi-CHEW-like taffy a little bump of longevity.

The second one is a bit more of a mystery. The English sticker on the label calls it Genki Drink, which didn’t really help me to narrow it down because I didn’t know what a Genki Drink is. A little time on Google and I knew EXACTLY what they are ... you’ve probably seen them before, those mysterious brown glass bottles by the checkout at the Asian markets and tea shops that claim to boost your mental acuity and, um, other things.

The saffron colored chews are similarly soft and have a tangy, lemon tea flavor to them but also a floral note that reminded me of violets. There are similar nuggets of white powder that release a little zap of fizz and tartness, but these seem to have a bitter bite to them. The little gummi bits linger and have a little fruity taste to them and help to scrub away any lingering taffy bits in the teeth (that’s how they’re described on the Puccho website).

I definitely found the Cola ones fun and practically addictive except for the later burps that the little fizzy bits seem to generate. The Genki, not so much, even though it probably has infusions of all sorts of healthy things (the only one I’m sure of is vitamin C). I’ll probably stick to my tried-and-true Hi-CHEW but the Cola ones are definitely compelling if I’m in a mood.

Interesting note: the motto for UHA Mikakuto is “Deliciousness is Gentleness”

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.

I’m not sure why they call these Whispers. They’re crunchy. Maybe it’s their delicate taste.

They’re just chocolate covered malted milk balls, but for some reason they don’t call them that in the UK (then again, we call them Whoppers here as a rather generic term). The other UK malt balls I’ve had are Malteasers.

I picked them up at Mel & Rose’s and hoped they were the best malted milk balls ever made. (A lot of the time I buy stuff hoping it’ll be okay. Sometimes I really go to town and wind myself up that I’ve found the perfect candy to be stranded on an island with.)

Being a Cadbury product I expected some good chocolate. It was okay, the usual sweet and powdered milk tasting stuff but then again malted milk always tastes a bit like powdered milk anyway. The crispy centers were light and had a good hit of malt with a little bit of a dark salt note to it. The proportions were good, there was a nice amount of chocolate, but it wasn’t all about the chocolate, the shell was just there to protect the crispy center.

The chocolate wasn’t creamy enough for me, it had that shellac shell on it that just made it a little too waxy. If anyone’s keeping track, I think the best prepackaged malted milk balls I’ve tried so far are the Limited Edition Pop’ables ... other than that I like to pick up the bulk ones at the grocery store (Harmony brand).

These were manufactured in South Africa.

Coffee is one of my favorite flavors. I’ve been searching for the perfect coffee chocolate bar, so when Green & Black’s offered to send me some chocolate to try (including some bars I’d had trouble getting a hold of around here), I jumped at it.

Green & Black’s basically offers two different formats for their chocolate, the big 3.5 ounce bars and these boxes of 27 little tablets. I really like the boxes because I can have just a little chocolate and save it for later or share it. But it’s a lot of packaging, too, so I’m torn.

Unlike other coffee infused bars that use whole beans to flavor the chocolate, Green & Black’s doesn’t have discernible grounds in the chocolate. Here’s what the package says:

To get the ultimate smooth dark espresso chocolate we’ve taken fresh organic espresso coffee and ground it until the coffee grains can no longer be felt on the tongue. Combining this with our dark chocolate gives the sensation of a strong espresso hit followed by the intense bittersweet chocolate flavors.

Thank goodness someone realized that I don’t want coffee grounds in my chocolate!

The overwhelming scent of these little pieces is coffee, strong black coffee. On the tongue the chocolate melts readily with no graininess but some bitter notes of espresso with flavors of licorice and sandalwood apparent as well. Just as advertised on the package the chocolate flavors emerge later as a support for the espresso, kind of like cream does in your coffee.

It’s not for the faint of heart, this is high octane stuff and I imagine there’s a good hit of caffeine in there, too. I’ve had to be careful not to eat them too late in the day lest they keep me up. I enjoyed it but the price for the box of tablets is a bit up there, for a better value grab the 3.5 ounce bar at Target (here in LA they’re selling them at Ralph’s now).

If you’re a reader from the UK, be sure to check their site for current competitions to win chocolate prizes.

UPDATE: I grabbed the retail price from Chocosphere, which as them at $13.99 a box. If you find it in stores it should be $8.99.

How many hazelnut crispy bars does Ferrero make? How many of them have wacky names? So far I’ve had the Happy Hippos and Kinder Bueno. This one is called Tronky.

The package says, “lo snack leggero e croccante.” Which means something about it being a light snack. Which is odd, because I think it’s supposed to look like a log.

Tronky is a crisp shell filled with a chocolate & hazelnut cream with chopped hazelnuts. It’s pretty darn good. The shell is crunchy though a little bland, but the filling is rich with a slight chocolate flavor and a good crunchy from the fresh hazelnuts. The size is great, it’s easy to eat a whole one, you don’t want to eat half and save it for later, it’ll get stale very quickly. Besides, it’s very messy if you don’t just wolf the whole bar down in three bites. Each bar is less than 100 calories, so it’s a nice treat but not too much of an indulgence. (Of course you can buy them in six pack bags.)

If you’re traveling in Europe and are sitting around in an airport, pick one up and give it a try.

Related Candies

1. Ferrero Raffaello & Rondnoir
2. Ferrero Rocher
3. Happy Hippos
4. Kinder Egg
5. Kinder Bueno

I’ve blogged about regional “vacation” candies before, and here’s yet another example of them: Texas Pralines. I first had Texas Pralines, which are chewy like a soft caramel instead of grainy like a fudge with pecans about three years ago when we got an assortment as a holiday gift. Since my husband was off to San Antonio for a business trip, I told him to keep an eye out for they chewy pralines.

I’m no snob, I don’t mind if my candy comes from the airport. (These days, who knows if a chewy praline is considered a liquid anyway?)

These Texas Chewie Pecan Pralines are by Lamme’s, which has been making candies since 1885! The history of the company is rather interesting, so if you have a sec, go read it on their website. The company uses a lamb as part of their logo to help people remember how to pronounce the name, I’m sure it doesn’t help folks spell it though.

This gift box had six individually wrapped “plops” in it, each weighing about an ounce. They’re darker than the usual caramels you see and have a good woodsy, sweet smell to them. The caramel is chewy and a bit salty but surprisingly not that sweet. The smoky and dark caramelized sugar flavors go well with the fresh pecans. They’re a little messy, as you have to eat them either holding part of in the wrapper or get your fingers sticky. But I wouldn’t want the pieces to be any smaller because that would mean that the pecans couldn’t be whole and crunchy. These are definitely a winner.

The other assortment I was given were these individually wrapped ones from Monterrey Products Company. They were three different versions of a chewy praline, each with different proportions of caramel to pecans.

The first one, the “more caramel to pecan” was pretty and smelled nice, but was very grainy without a good balance of butteryness or crystallization. The pecans were fresh, but of course there were only three of them. I wasn’t wild about it.

The second one was “equal caramel to pecan” - wow, this was gorgeous. The scent was like maple sugar and the nuts were crunchy and infused with the buttery goodness of the caramel. The caramel itself was grainy but in a crystallized way that made it dissolve and support the other caramelized sugar and nut flavors. Fantastic, I wish all three were this variety.

The last one was “more pecans to caramel” and was shaped more spherically than the others. For some reason this one stuck to the cellophane wrapper and I had to pull the candy apart and off the cello in order to eat it. The pecans were large and whole and sweet, but as a candy this one failed. Some nuts were nicely coated in the soft caramel, but others were untouched. I loved the nuts, but the balance was off as a sweet treat. It might be nice pulled apart and thrown in with some salty popcorn though.

I think I prefered the Lammes but the Monterrey had an impressive ingredients list: Pecans, Sugar, Evaporated Milk and Corn Syrup. Lammes had a few more ingredients, including hydrogenated oils (which meant .5 grams of trans fat per plop). But they were both a treat I’m not likely to have again, but I’m happy to recommend them.

I’ve avoided Cocoavia since it was introduced last year. There’s something disconcerting about selling candy as health food in my mind. I don’t disagree that things like chocolate can have beneficial elements in them, but the fat and calories and lack of other positive characteristics makes it seem like we’re kidding ourselves when we believe that chocolate is good for us.

But all things in moderation, eh?

I’ve only seen the bars at the store, so I wasn’t particularly interested in what appeared to be a Dove bar with a lot of health benefits. But then I found a product I hadn’t seen before, Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds. Inside this large but light box are five one ounce packets of dark chocolate covered almonds. I usually buy Trader Joe’s mix of dark & milk chocolate covered almonds, but these were in individual packets, which is a nice feature and a quick glance at the box showed that they were even fortified with extra vitamins and minerals.

Each packet has an ounce, which is about 13 chocolate covered almonds. The package is appealing, with luxurious dark colors and some sassy photos of the candy within. The chocolate is glossy and dark though it doesn’t really smell very compelling. It melts readily on the tongue and though the package says semisweet, it’s not sticky, sickly sweet at all and buttery smooth. It has a nice smoky and complex flavor without much acidity. There’s a little floral note to it that gave it a little lightness. The almonds are superb, crunchy and fresh and a decent size.

I was really surprised at how good these were. Though I still don’t subscribe to the whole “eat these for a healthy heart” thing, I will definitely finish the box. The packages provide a good degree of portion control and each bag is only 140 calories. It also offers 3 grams of fiber and protein, 20% of your calcium, 4% of your iron and 10% of your Vitamin E, Folic Acid, B6, Vitamin C and B12. The almonds contain essential fatty acids and of course the chocolate has cocoa flavanols that recent studies are showing can have a positive effect on cardiovascular disease risks. Even though there are all these things on the box and the marketing that are saying how healthy these are, I’d prefer to think that they’re at least not a detriment to your health when eaten in responsible quantities.

So, if you’re on a restricted diet and are looking for a little treat that won’t throw you off whack, I’m a huge believer in the nut and chocolate combo as a satisfying sweet. (Not nearly as bad for you as, say, a dish of ice cream.) The benefit over any old chocolate covered nuts is this proprietary Cocoapro (tm) process that’s supposed to pack more flavanols in there that can lower bad cholesterol levels. The price is, well, pricey (about $16 a pound) but try to find them on sale.

One of my splurges last month with my ill-gotten-gain (payoff from a production company) was to buy some goodies from Mel & Rose’s and this was the big ticket item of the day (I would have bought more but the heat lately is death to chocolate). I’ve only tried Michel Cluizel once before and I wasn’t that impressed. But people keep telling me how good it is and I always enjoy the variety of a tasting kit.

Michel Cluizel is a French chocolatier who is not at all new to this, his company has been making gourmet chocolate since 1948. It’s one of the few chocolates you’ll find that has no soya lecithin in it. It’s just cocoa beans, sugar and vanilla. His single origin tasting kit showcases his chocolates that are created using beans from only one plantation. Most of the chocolate that we eat is a blend of beans from all over the tropics, or perhaps one region.

It came with a nice little brochure that talked about each of the plantations that the cocoa beans came from, but I thought it would be fun to taste the chocolates first and then see how I did. So my initial tasting notes are followed with the ones from the leaflet.

Los Ancones (green) x4 - What I tasted was ultra smooth. Slightly bitter at first with some very dark smoky notes but as the buttery chocolate gives way, more acidity comes through and gives way to raisin and cherry notes.

The brochure said:

These beans bring an elegance and freshness to this fine dark chocolate with a wonderful combination of aromas: liquorice at the front of the palate, followed by red fruits and a long finish of green olives, Corinth raisins and apricots.

Maralumi (fuscia) x4 - quite a bit more acidic than the first, this one was kind of tart and brought to mind olives and apricots (dang, I shouldn’t have read that brochure!). I was also getting some woodsy notes of cedar and balsam. The acidity gave the whole thing a dry finish with a slight bitter note that lingered far after the cocoa butter was gone.

The brochure says:

They give this mellow chocolate slightly roasted and spicy flavors of green bananas and acidulates flavors of red currants.

Tamarina (blue) x2 - quite tangy with some powerfully deep smoky notes and a lowgrade bitterness that was offset by some mellow sweetness. The chocolate is slick and smooth with a dry finish.

The brochure says:

Roasted, herbaceous and liquorice notes mingle in a beautiful length on the palate.

Concepcion (orange) x2 - a great start with instant chocolatey roundness, the smoke and woodsy notes come out right away, and perhaps some coffee, followed by some tangy notes that might have some mango essence in it. Then a crisp, dry finish.

The brochure says:

gradually reveals its thoroughbred character, in which intense aromatic flavours bloom at length with vanilla hits, honey spice cake and caramel aromas with deep notes of mixed dried and black fruits.

Mangaro Noir (yellow) x4 - instant notes of raisin and fig, sweet and mellow with a pleasant tang. There are also some balsam notes, maybe juniper or sage. It reminded me of the desert, that crisp feeling.

The brochure says:

combining exotic fruit flavors with delicious aromas of gingerbread and acidulated citrus fruit notes.

It’s obvious I’m getting the general vibe of each chocolate, but not the specificity that the brochure reveals about each one. I think part of it might be the small pieces. I liked the slightly larger E. Guittard tablets that I tried earlier this year, which makes it easier to discern the more obscure notes. I was really pleased with the smooth buttery consistency of each of the tablets, they’re all in the 64% - 70% cocoa solids range, so they’re intense without being too dense.

If you’re looking for some extensive reviews and commentary on the range of single origin from Michel Cluizel and how it compares to the rest of the world of chocolate, check out SeventyPercent.com. I was really pleased with the kit, it’s fun to share or just spread out over a week as I did. I’m always disappointed when they don’t do comparable numbers of squares for each variety, but it’s a small kit and really only appropriate for two people at most.

See reviews of all my reviews of Single Origins to date. I think my favorite is still the Chocovic Ocumare, because of it’s excellent well-rounded flavors and of course the price.