The Daim bar is a popular crunchy toffee bar covered in chocolate that originated in Sweden.

According to Wikipedia, the development tale is rather curious. Marabou, the preeminent Swedish chocolate company, approached Heath Bar back in the early 1950s for permission to license the Heath name and recipe to be produced for the Swedish/Norwegian marketplace. Heath said they couldn’t but did furnish the basic recipe so Marabou created the Daim Bar. The Daim went on to become quite a sensation, so much so that Hershey’s decided it needed its own crunchy toffee bar and copied the Daim in the US and called it Skor (along with the tag line of “The Taste of Sweden” in their launch advertising). The funniest part of the whole thing about Hershey’s marketing a copy of a Swedish candy that was a copy of an American candy was that Hershey’s ended up buying Heath Bar when they acquired Leaf Candy Company in 1996.

Marabou, in turn, was bought out by Kraft back in 1993 which distributes the Marabou chocolate products around the world. The easiest place to find Daim bars is at IKEA.

The bar does look a lot like the American Skor. It’s a smallish bar, flat and with a crisp buttery toffee center with a few bits of almonds in there. The milk chocolate coating is a little thicker on top with some attractive swirls and waves.

At only 28 grams (about .99 ounces) it’s a small bar but provides a lot of crunch.

I’ve bought this bar at least three different times for review on Candy Blog and each time I’ve managed to eat it before reviewing. (The photos here are from a 2008 episode where at least the bar made it into the studio for documentation.)

While I was in Europe I was pleased to see Daim widely available. Not only does it come in the familiar bar format, the toffee chips are also used in other co-branded confections, like a version of the Milka Bar (Jim’s Chocolate Mission has a review)

Since I knew I could find another bar in the States if I wanted it, I picked up this 100 gram (3.5 ounce) bag of Daim. The package says nothing else on the front - no description, no brand name ... just Daim. Not even the fact that this is not a bar but little chocolate covered nuggets. I guess the picture on the front says it all. My guess is since Daim is available in so many countries, it’s just confusing to say things, why not show them? The back of the package features micro-printing to accommodate at least 8 different language versions of the ingredients and still no actual name of the product. So I’m going to call these Daim Nuggets.

The little pieces are actually better, in my opinion, than the bar. I loved them. The chocolate is certainly not of excellent quality but good enough for this purpose. It’s milky and sweet and just creamy enough. It seals in the crunchy pieces of toffee to keep them from getting sticky and syrupy.

The toffee has a light burnt taste to it, plenty of milk and a touch of salt. It’s crunchy and every once in a while I think I got a little bit of an almond. The toffee is cooked to perfection - it’s crunchy but not too hard (having small pieces helps) and also doesn’t get tacky or stick to my teeth in large clumps.

I bet this is great on ice cream or added to cookies, of course it would need to come in larger bags, because this one is empty.

Other Daim reviews: Chocablog, Jim’s Chocolate Mission and Candy Addict.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
2. Godis Gula Snoren (Toffee Laces)
3. Lindt Excellence Toffee Crunch
4. Roca Buttercrunch Thins
5. Valerie Toffees & Nougats
6. See’s Peanut Brittle Bar

Sweden’s best selling confectionery product is available at Ikea stores around the world: Cloetta Kex Choklad.

Kex was introduced in 1921 as Five O’clock but was renamed Kex around 1941. Kex, in Swedish, means simply biscuit (or cookie to Americans). The Kex line from Cloetta is pretty extensive with all sorts of chocolate covered cookies and biscuits. But the chocolate covered waffle crisps are by far the most popular. Even the regular Kex comes in a few variations, currently it’s available in milk chocolate, dark chocolate and a summer raspberry version.

The reach of this bar must be pretty wide, there are 18 translations of the ingredients on the back of the package. (Probably more of a testament to Ikea than Cloetta.)

The bar is a nice size, 13 grams (.46 ounces). They’re flat and thin, about 2 1/3” long and 1 1/4” wide. So it’s like a snack size version in the bag. The ingredients say that it’s a chocolate flavored coating, but as far as mockolate goes, it has real cocoa butter just an additional bit of vegetable oils (palm and/or shea nut oil).

They smell milky, again, the ingredients say that milk is the second ingredient in the chocolate flavored coating. The wafers are light, airy, very dry and crispy. They filling between them is hardly noticeable. There’s a light malt note to the bar and a strong dairy component. The cocoa is barely discernible as a flavor but the texture of the coating is creamy and smooth. Since the cookie is front and center and the coating is really just there to contain it all, it’s more like a cookie than a candy.

They’re mildly addictive. I held back five for review and shared the rest with coworkers and found that I ate my five without realizing it. However, I didn’t find them wholly satisfying. The chocolate wasn’t chocolatey enough, which I guess is why I kept eating. (Clever!)  The Tunnock’s (yesterday) was a bit more filling but still not quite what I wanted either. (Yes, it’s the Q.bel bars that I crave at this point.) But I see why these are so popular in Sweden and at Ikea.

Related Candies

1. Glutino Gluten Free Dark Chocolate Candy Bar
2. Q.Bel Double Dark Chocolate Wafer Bar
3. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Delights
4. KitKat Inside Out
5. Cajeta Elegancita
6. Tadelle

Just before Christmas I went to Ikea for the first time in years. Our office was adopting a family for the holidays and I opted to get the wholly unsexy but necessary housewares gifts. My ulterior motive (besides getting a whole kitchen setup in a single easily wrapped box) was to get some candy.

I’d heard that Ikea had these strange candy laces a while back via Candy Addict and had to try them for myself. They’re called Godis Gula Sn?ren by Ikea Food.

The package is radically generic, a simple matte white plastic package with san serif black print in English and French and a high-key photo of the candy itself.

While it’s tempting to call them Toffee Laces since the description on the bag says candy laces with toffee flavour I’m going to go with candy spaghetti. And when I say candy spaghetti, I’m going all the way, from the fact that it’s made with wheat to the color and shape of the stuff.

I had 16 laces in my package. Each is 1 meter long. They’re quite thin, like cooked spaghetti. However, unlike cooked spaghetti these are actually hollow. They’re very, very long candy tubes. Perhaps more like bulk surgical tubing for Barbie Dolls.

They smell more like dishwashing liquid than candy, a vaguely sweet and vanilla scent but also a bit artificial. (The package actually lists no artificial ingredients - they’re colored with beta carotene.) The flavor isn’t actually toffee, but thankfully it’s also not butter flavored. It’s just, well, vaguely sweet and chewy.

They’re flexible and pretty useful candies. Tie them in knots and make an edible bracelet. Decorate cupcakes by cutting them like chives. Or when the craze hits a la candy sushi, you can make your own candy Pho. 

As something to simply buy and eat, well they were passable. They’re either for people with far too little imagination or far too much.

More fab coverage & pictures on A Table for Two and actual Spaghetti & Meatball Cupcakes from Not Quite Nigella.

(I looked up Godis Gula Sn?ren via an online translator and it told me it was Candy Yolk Cord.)

I got two wonderful gifts of salted licorice recently. One from Anne of Anne’s Food and the second for Christmas from our friend Christian.

These little monkey shaped licorice pieces are coated in salt. I was a little bit of a scaredy cat (but overall adventurous lately, so don’t be too hard on me) so I dusted off as much salt as possible. The first thing I noticed upon putting it on my tongue was that the salt was not as “salty” as I was used to. It was like a watered down salt. Very salty by volume, but just slightly less salty by intensity for the amount. And more metallic tasting. I looked at the package and it doesn’t say sodium chloride, it says ammonium chloride. It’s amazing that the pallette can detect the difference between the two mineral salts, but there you have it.

After the salt part melts away the inside is a firm, chewy piece of licorice that is by contrast very creamy tasting. It’s an odd combination, the sweetness of the licorice is also not a sugar sweet like we’re often used to, but the root sweetness of licorice itself (a lot of licorice we eat like in black vines is not actually real licorice root).

These other buttons are actually “double salt” and are from Holland. They’re the size of pennies, only thicker. What’s devilish about them is that they don’t look salty. They don’t look any different from a regular licorice button except for the firm warning letters emblazoned on them…. DZ. They’re firm and rather solid feeling. But put it on your tongue? Shazaam! It’s a powerful jolt. I’m serious, I’ve given it to a few people now and all of them have an immediate and clearly visible reaction.

I was curious what kind of salt this one had as it came in an otherwise unmarked package. Here are the ingredients that I found on one of the internets:

Ingredients: sugar, modified starch, gelling agent (protein), glucose syrup, ammonium chloride, liquorice extract, wheat flour, color (carbon medicinalis vegetalis), flavoring (aniseed oil), glazing agents (vegetable oil, beeswax).

I have to admit that I’ve only eaten three of these. The first one was on Christmas Eve when I got them, and I’d been eating cheese and crackers (and maybe had a glass of wine) and it didn’t seem too overpowering. The licorice taste was readily apparent. I popped another one when photographing a couple of days ago and found it really strong and if I dissolved the salt on the back of my tongue it didn’t seem so bad. Yesterday I made the mistake of chewing it up before the salt dissolved and I was shocked (repulsed) to find that the whole mess suddenly tasted like basement: the basement of a home that has a lot of cats and rarely cleans out the catbox. There was a definite rooty, earthy flavor there and an overwhelming cast of ammonia (this was before I’d researched ammonium salts). I actually went to the bathroom, spit out the rest of the candy and rinsed out my mouth. I’m game for most things, but when it tastes like known poisons, I’m not gonna take that bullet for a blog.

As someone who didn’t grow up on this stuff, I may have missed the boat on appreciating it. I probably shouldn’t have started with double-salted, maybe half-salted. I’m actually rather fond of mixes of savory and sweet, and of course I love licorice so this should be right up my alley. I’ll keep trying. Well, I’ll keep trying with the monkeys, I can’t bring myself to try the Dubbel Zouts again.

Here’s more from Wikipedia on Salmiakki (salted licorice) and Ammonium Chloride. It says that ammonium chloride is a good expectorant and I’m gonna have to agree with that after all the coughing when I was done. Here’s what Bad Candy had to say about Dubbel Zouts.

Name: Milk Chocolate filled with Dalecarlian Polkamint Truffle
Brand: Dalecarlia Chocolates
Place Purchased: gift
Price: unknown
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 160
Type: Chocolate/Mint

I got these little cuties as a gift from fellow webmaster, Russ, from NaNoWriMo last month. (Unfortunately the box only had three little minty horses left!)

Inside the box are little individually wrapped candy horses. Made with a molded milk chocolate shell, they’re filled with a pink mint cream:

The detail on them is really nice, the proportions are good (nobody likes to eat what looks like a deformed animal). Not just an ordinary horse, they’re Dala horses, which are a common symbol for Sweden. The chocolate is rather in between a milk chocolate and a semi-sweet. It’s not heavy on the dairy milk notes, which is just fine with me. The chocolate is smooth and the cream filling is not too sweet. It has a nice mild peppermint hit to it that doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate.

The packaging is obviously for the English-speaking market and I think they probably should have consulted some English-speaking folks to comment on their catch phrase of “A Nice Taste of Sweden!” I’m not sure if other tastes of Sweden are foul and they’re trying to differentiate themselves or if perhaps it’s a catch phrase from their popular culture that just didn’t make it in translation. I think they could also work on the name of the candy. I like to know what to call the things in conversation ... Dalamints? Horsetruffles? Milk Chocolate filled with Dalecarlian Polkamint Truffle, well, you’ve already dozed off reading that, haven’t you?

That aside, it’s nice stuff and if someone gave me a full box of these, I’d be pleased. I was pleased to get 3/10ths of a box ... it can only get better than that!

Rating - 8 out of 10 (I’m a fan of mint and chocolate)

Thanks goodness Ikea’s proclivity for sassy names does not extend to their treats at the food section. I have enough trouble buying candy shaped like rats that looks like the felt pulled out from a highlighter pen that I don’t need it to be further called Bjarf, Puke or Funkis.

Name: Licorice Boats
Brand: Aroma
Place Purchased: Ikea (Burbank, CA)
Price: $1.69
Size: 5.2 oz
Calories per ounce: 94
Type: Licorice

I gave these to Russ to try the other night and he agreed that, “The licorice in my licorice boat had already set sail.” These are definitely sweet - you just open the bag and the sugary smell permeates the air. But there’s no there there. The jelly center has a bit of a licorice perfume to it, but no bite. I think I’ve come to expect molasses with my licorice as it’s a good anchor for the flavor.

Name: Jelly Rats
Brand: Aroma
Place Purchased: Ikea (Burbank, CA)
Price: $1.69
Size: 5.2 oz
Calories per ounce: 94
Type: Jelly

They’re rather scary looking, and I’m telling you that’s the actual color - some sort of slightly translucent-neon hazard color. They also have a strong sweet smell infused with violet which didn’t thrill me, but biting into them I found a nice, tart and fruity jelly candy. The flavors aren’t complex or strong, but just nice. If I am planning on having a Swedish jelly candy though, I really want some Swedish fish.

Name: Marabou Milk Chocolate with Nuts
Brand: Marabou (a Kraft Foods division)
Place Purchased: Ikea
Price: $.99
Size: 2.4 oz
Calories per ounce: 128
Type: Chocolate/Nuts

This was the positive find in the whole experience. They’re little chunks of milk chocolate with crushed hazelnuts. Really creamy, very sweet with good nuts. The chocolate is smooth and the toasty taste of the nuts infuses it well.

It’s simple and satisfying. The roll is easy to share and I might make a point to pick these up at the start of my shopping experience at Ikea as a little boost. I ate them all before I finished typing this review.

Ratings: Licorice Boats - 4 out of 10
Jelly Rats - 5 out of 10
Marabou Milk Chocolate and Nuts - 7 out of 10