I’ve been accumulating chocolate bars faster than I can review them. (And faster than I can eat them, to boot!)

Here’s a selection of what’s been in my queue for a while with some brief thoughts on each. I don’t know much about the companies that make them, but all were tasty enough that I’m going to keep an eye out for the brands again.

My boss went to Spain and brought back three amazingly beautiful artisan chocolate bars from a company called Mallorca. Each bar was similar in format - 10 squares and wrapped in clear cellophane. The plain bar was wrapped face up, the nutted bars were bottoms up to show off the elegantly placed nuts.

The basic bar is called Kilamanjaro Chocolate and was an admirable middle-of-the-road 75% dark chocolate. It was smooth and creamy with woodsy notes and a bit of coffee in there. There was a slight grain to it and a later crisp dry finish. It was pleasant but perhaps a little too dry and acrid for me in the end.

This bar was by far my favorite. Called Chocolate con Leche Avellana Caramelizada it is a milk chocolate bar with caramelized hazelnuts.

The milk chocolate was creamy and had strong dairy notes, almost sticky and fudgy (but then again it was rather hot when I was eating it). The hazelnuts were dreamy little spheres - they were coated with a crispy sugar glaze of caramelized sugar with the nuts fresh and crunchy inside. They went so well with the chocolate I was often torn between pulling the nuts out and eating them whole and eating them with the blocks of chocolate.

I would love to get my hands on this bar again.

The Chocolate Negro con Almendra Marcona Chocolate features two blanched Marcona almonds in each square. The almonds are crisp and buttery (and are always more rounded than the pointy American almonds).

The dark chocolate here was not as strong as the first Kilamanjaro bar. It was sweet and bright tasting, some citrusy flavors along with light woodsy notes and a good buttery melt on the tongue.

The almonds were the star here, I love Marcona almonds, it’s like they’re a different nut from the almonds I usually get, they have an almost hazelnut/pine nut flavor to them.

This bar came from a friend traveling in South Korea (thanks Kiele!). It’s almost like a greeting card in chocolate!

Since it was purchased in South Korea, I have not idea what the back of the package says except for the web address: www.happynco.com which didn’t help me much in figuring out this bar. Sure, the front says stuff like “lighten up your day with dark angel dark chocolate” but I was curious about ingredients and stuff. The website is filled with cutesy images with butterflies and daisies but no sign of this bar. The character on the package, the spindly-legged princess with blonde hair is called Happy Girl with her even blonder Happy Guy. But the bar is called Dark Chocolate Dark Angel from Hatai and says it’s 42% cacao. Not too dark ... kind of in the middle.

The back of the package has some helpful pictograms that told me that the bar can be broken in half while it’s still in the package (the paperboard sleeve is scored). Then I think you’re supposed to share.

The bar inside the package is quite cute (mine was a little broken, but I reassembled it). It features a large section with a butterfly in darker embossed chocolate and four smaller squares with a milk chocolate heart and potted flowers opposite a darker chocolate piece of wrapped candy and a rainbow.

The pieces have a nice snap (obviously, since they broke easily before I got the bar). The flavor is creamy and has a slight dairy edge to it. I wasn’t wild about it, but I thought the packaging was sweet (a little too sweet and immature for me, but fun for a tween or teen and the fact that you can get sheets or pillows to match just sends it over the top for me).

What I found in the end was it didn’t have quite enough of a chocolate hit to me, but it went well with a handful of almonds and pretzels as a snack.

Finally, I got three bars from Cacao et Chocolat in Paris shortly after Christmas from my father. Two of the bars (including the one shown) were dark chocolate. One was called Teculi and was 79% cacao. It was rich yet still buttery. The bar was crisp and glossy and really smelled glorious. It has some fruity cherries in there, maybe raspberry and plum along with the deep cocoa notes.

The second bar (which looked an awful lot like the first so there’s not another photo) was called Tobago and was 88%. This one I actually still have about 1/3 sitting around in my chocolate box. It’s very dark and really a lot of effor to eat. It’s like a riot of flavors in my mouth. Some acidic notes of citrus (grapefruit mostly) and dark woodsy tones of cedar along with coffee ... but then it’s just too dry for me. I miss the creamy cocoa butter to float it all around on my tongue.

The final bar in the set was a white chocolate one (which I didn’t photograph because it was broken). It was glorious ... it was so buttery and though sweet, it had some wonderful cocoa background notes (I don’t know if it was deodorized cocoa butter as a base or it just assumed some of the chocolate flavors from being shipped to me with the other strong bars).

In my package were also some truffles, which didn’t look photo-worthy after their world travels, but I found them quite nice, very simple. Creamy, toasted flavors and a good buttery melt. They have a nice website in both French and English (though I don’t know if they’ll ship to North America). It looks like the kind of place I’d definitely put on my list of shops to visit (along with everywhere else David Lebovitz tours).

I give the whole pile of chocolate a 6 out of 10 with the standouts of the Mallorca Chocolate con Leche Avellana Caramelizada and Cacao et Chocolat White Chocolate bar at 8 out of 10 (bars I would buy for myself). I have no idea of the price on these and of course none of them have nutrition labels on them.

Related Candies

1. Theo Confections
2. Michel Cluizel Les 1ers Crus de Plantation
3. Cafe Tasse: Orange, Extra Noir & Noir Praline
4. Pierre Marcolini Chocolates
5. Carlos the Sweetie

I found this bar at a store called Kearn’s on Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. I’ve passed by this little convenience store for 13 years without ever stopping in. Because it’s in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, I thought they might have an interesting selection (and perhaps some leftover Passover Coke). They carried a good line of candies, with a strong focus on jelly based ones (Sunkist Fruit Gems, anyone?). They also had some imported items, especially ones from Israel in the Paskesz brand.

I’ve had a few Paskesz candies and find them decent middle of the road fare, rather like Hershey’s or Mars but with a good wholesome twist on the ordinary crunch.

Looking at the Milk Munch bar it was pretty obvious that it’s a Milky Way knock-off (Mars knock-off for your European readers).

The milk chocolate is unremarkable. It’s sweet and creamy, but lacks any real chocolate flavor contribution here. The main flavor here is the rather cereal tasting nougat. Salty and perhaps a little malty, it tastes a bit like cookie dough. The caramel is nice and soft, but again, not very flavorful.

I was hoping for a Milky Way Bar here, but I got something a little more toned down but far saltier ... and Milky Ways are pretty sedate as it is. But there was something more dense about the nougat portion that just didn’t please me. And at more than the price of a regular Milky Way, it just wasn’t worth it.

I tried the Paskesz Klik before and really liked them, read about it here.

Note from wrapper: made under the supervision of Rabbi O.Y. Westheim, Manchester

I spend a lot of time looking a photos of candy on Flickr. It’s a good way to stay in touch with what is enchanting other people. The thing that I’ve noticed lately is that people are often attracted to the same thing, over and over again. In general this would be like people taking photos of common landmarks (lots of photos of the Eiffel Tower that are tagged Paris, a lotta Golden Gate Bridge shots in San Francisco and “cute” has more cats than dogs or babies).

One of the things that pops up with startling regularity in the Candy tag is a candy vendor at the Mercat la Boqueria in Barcelona, Spain. So I did a quick search and found more than a smattering of them (well here are 48 at least):

Has anyone ever shopped at this market or bought anything there? How much are those gummis?

While at the All Candy Expo over the summer, there was some excitement over the new chocolate Pop Rocks to come out later in the year. I got a sample of them there, in a little cup, not a packet with the final design. In fact, when I saw the packet at the 7-11 last night, I didn’t even recognize it. The colors on the package look more orange than chocolatey brown (and I was actually interested in orange pop rocks).

The Pop Rocks Bubble Gum was a bit of a disappointment. I was expecting it to be like the bubble gum cotton candy I had earlier this year. Instead it was a little bits of white bubble gum mixed with even smaller bits of rather unflavored Pop Rocks in light orange and pink. The fun is gone in a matter of seconds. Either you chew up the gum part and all the pop rocks go off at once or you leave it in your mouth and have the gummy unreactive lumps at the end.

The gum itself is nice, soft but it takes about half the packet to create enough gum to make a bubble.

The Chocolate Pop Rocks are very light in color and look kind of like little crisped rice, but about the size of sesame seeds. In fact they remind me of Cocoa Krispies. The popping is light and refreshing, but not as pronounced as the Green Apple I’ve had recently.

But Pop Rocks are not the only game any longer. There is a Turkish company called HLeks that’s making carbonated candy as well under the name Shoogy Boom. They have a nice range of flavors, including lemon and cola. I picked up the comparable flavors: Chocolate Covered and Bubble Gum. They also have a freaky chinless clown as a mascot. Seriously, this cannot be endearing to children.

Shoogy Boom is a slightly smaller serving, at only 7 grams per packet instead of the 9.5-10.5 grams you get with Pop Rocks.

The Shoogy Boom Popping Bubble Gum had a similar format to the Pop Rocks, just a mess of little gum bits and some light orange popping candy pieces mixed in. I have to give it to Shoogy Boom, they deserve their boom name, the popping is definitely active, more than the Pop Rocks. However, the gum absolutely sucks. It was like when you decide to eat a piece of paper and eventually get that stiff unchewable piece of fiber. Only this had a light bubble gum flavor.

The Chocolate Shoogy Boom were darker than the Pop Rocks and a bit rounder. The chocolate tasted much more like chocolate instead of cocoa. The popping though was far and away better than the Pop Rocks. A slight tartness to the candy inside but overall a good noisy affair. They’re both a tasty and interesting change from the original.

I think what’s best about them is that they don’t have the same tendency to lose their pop over time because of humidity that the regular popping candies can.

An internet search revealed nothing about any retailers in the US carrying Shoogy Boom, so please leave a note here if you’ve seen them sold anywhere.

Other Reviews: Candy Addict (Chocolate)

If I’d planned it a little more, this week could have been Cola Flavor Theme Week. But here I am again with another cola flavored candy.

I got these cute little packets of Cherry Cola flavored Pop Rocks at the All Candy Expo. They come in a wee little lunchbox looking tin. The packets are a little larger than a packet of sugar or about a third of the size or a regular Pop Rocks package. I’m actually okay with a small packet, as Pop Rocks tend to get all sticky when exposed to humidity and I like to eat my Pop Rocks slowly.

The little grains are different colors, some pale yellow and some pink, I was guessing they were just a mix of rock flavors. They were very fizzy and popped really well, must better than my experience with the Sal y Limon ones. The cherry flavor was soft with only a slight tangy tone to it, but I completely missed the cola notes. Every once in a while there was a burst of caramelized sugar flavor, which was really nice, but didn’t ring as a cola flavor. Granted, I’ve never had Cherry Cola, but I’m guessing it tastes like cola in some way or another.

If you’re looking for stocking stuffers or party favors or a theme gift, these are an excellent choice. The packages are decorated in the style or a 50s diner or soda counter with bright red and black accents. The tins are limited edition, so they may come out with different varieties. This one was Series 1, Edition 2. (You can buy them online here at CandyFavorites and I think I’ve seen this or something similar at Cost Plus World Market.)

I wonder if they’ll ever make Root Beer Pop Rocks?

If you like Haribo’s Happy Cola gummis but wish they were more like real soda and gave you burps and such, wish no more. Fizzy Cola not only has a the nice spicy cola bite, it also has a sugary/tart sanding that gives it a sassy, fizzy feeling.

I always thought that the Haribo Happy Cola bottles were a little tame. Sure, they tasted like cola, but they also tasted a little ‘flat.’ These little gummi bottles are the best candy I’ve had that capture the soda experience.

That said, I’m not really that big a fan of soda.

Since they are a little gassy, I can’t gorge myself on them without negative feedback. So in that respect they’re good for helping me to monitor my intake. I doubt that other people have the same issues I do with them so I’m still giving them a good rating because they are quite different from other candies and cola is an underutilized flavor in the candy world.

Pop Rocks are a Spanish product, so it’s only natural they would angle some of their product towards the large Hispanic market in North America. I this at the Walgreen’s in Echo Park, which is (or was) a rather traditional Hispanic neighborhood in LA. Half of the package is in Spanish, just as half the packaging in Canada is in French.

The top half tells us that it’s Salt and Lemon Pop Rocks ... Popping Candy. The bottom half says Sal y Limon ... Dulce con Chasquido.

I didn’t know what the word chasquido meant (though by context it means popping) so I looked it up on babelfish. No luck there ... so I googled the word and found a page in Spanish that had a definition, which I then ran though the translator. So, the bad internet translator says:

chasquido

  1. n. Sound that takes control of the whip or the sling when they are shaken in the air.
  2. Noise that takes place when breaking itself some thing.
  3. Noise that takes place with the language when separating it of blow of paladar or when rubbing the yolks of the fingers heart and thumb of a hand:

But you want to know about this strange savory, sweet and tangy version of Pop Rocks, right?

First, you have to shake it well because the salt and rocks tend to separate. Then I poured it on my tongue and I admit it was a riot of tastes - they’re all there. The salt is, well, intensely salty. It’s the first ingredient on the list, so there’s a lot of it in there. Next, it was bitter, like some sort of mineral taste. Then the rocks started popping and releasing a bit sugar and there were other little snaps of sour released as well.

It was hard to keep it in my mouth. It’s really salty. I’m used to salt as a condiment, not as the main dish. There are 984

grams

milligrams of salt in this little package - that’s about 50% of your daily allowance or about as much as you’d find in a serving of canned soup. Of course the recommended “portion” for these Pop Rocks Limon is 1/8 of the package.

I had one mouthful of the stuff and then tried dumping some out on a piece of paper and just eating the rocks but it’s just too salty for me. I’d also like it to taste more like lemon. How hard would it be to put a little zesty lemon flavor in there too? I’m thinking someone might be able to come up with something interesting to do with this savory version of Pop Rocks. Maybe use it as the final garnish for a salad or something. Could be the next trend in haute cuisine.

The one thing that I did really like about this version of Pop Rocks is the packaging. The long, narrow tube is much easier to handle than the flat packs that Pop Rocks usually come in. It’s easy to fold over and reseal and easy to dispense onto the tongue.

I’m keen on sour things and I guess it’s pretty surprising that I’ve never had Airheads, let alone anything else in their line.

I saw these at the 7-11 and thought they were so intensely pretty that I had to buy them.

In fact, I thought they were so pretty when I was taking their picture, I made them into a woven piece. I know, I shouldn’t be playing with my food.

The colors are vibrant: red,  yellow, green, orange and aqua. The flavor, as far as I can tell, is strawberry or possibly green apple or maybe a cross between the two. I dissected a couple of the belts to figure out if there was a difference in flavor between the colors and I couldn’t tell. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t, I just couldn’t figure it out.

They’re sour, but not in a toxic way. They’ve got a dusting of sugar crystals to keep them from sticky, but they’re soft and chewy. The best thing about them is that the flavor lasts all the way through the chew. Some chews lose their initial flavor, like they’ve been dusted or something when you chew them. But these are tangy and sweet all the way to the end.

The only complain I have is that as an adult I find them a little hard to eat. The sugar gets on my hands and I don’t want to eat the whole thing at once, so I’m left holding it or pulling it apart. As a kid, I’d probably think they were the coolest thing in the world and wouldn’t mind the sticky fingers in the slightest.

Interesting note: AirHeads are made by the same company that makes Mentos - Perfetti van Melle. The company is Italian, but the Xtremes were made in Spain.