Candy Blog

I’ve been looking for this kooky little novelty chocolate item for a while. Kinder is a widely distributed confection brand that also makes the intensely addictive Kinder Bueno (which is a must-try for any hazelnut lover).

I found a new candy source in Los Angeles (posting tomorrow about that) called Mel & Rose’s on Melrose Avenue. They have EVERYTHING that you might want from Europe or Australia. It’s not a big shop, but they had an excellent selection and decent prices. In fact, my little Kinder Eggs were less than a dollar each. I was led to believe that these were not permitted to be sold in the US because of the “choking hazard” of the toy surprise inside, but after opening one, I’d have to wonder what child could (or would want to) eat that toy-filled capsule.

Think of these as those toy eggs that you get in the gumball machines at the mega-marts. Except instead of being a plastic egg, it’s a chocolate egg.

The egg is pretty much the size of a regular chicken egg. Inside the white and red foil it’s a rather lack-luster milk chocolate with a distinct seam. I wasn’t quite sure if there was a way to open it, so I just pressed my finger into the top and sort of tore it open. On my second egg I found that if you sqeeze about halfway along the seam the whole thing pops apart rather neatly.

Inside the egg it’s “white chocolate” (I say in quotes because it says on the label that it’s actually a “milky white lining” which doesn’t even sound edible). It smells sweet and rather like powdered milk. Inside the egg is a yellow plastic capsule that contains the Kinder Suprise (kinder means children in German and is pronounced with a short i). The chocolate is passably edible, nothing I’d want to buy by itself.

The yellow capsule holds a little plastic toy (usually one you have to put together). I’m not really sure what the one is in the picture. It’s a little baby in a crow’s nest with a crab crawling up the mast ... I think. There’s a little wheel on the bottom of it and if you roll it around it wiggles the mast and crow’s nest. The second prize (in the other egg) was a little metronome on a wheel with a funny little anthropomorphic musical note riding on it.

As a candy/toy, I find these much more compelling than Pez. I have poked around and have seen that some prizes can be rather sophisticated and you can collect theme prizes. (See other prizes in this flicker kinder pool.)

If you’re traveling someplace where you can pick these up, they’re usually pretty cheap (about 50 cents) and make great little stocking stuffers or gifts. It’s too bad they can’t sell them in the States.

Kinder is part of the Ferrero family of companies/brands. They also make the Ferrero Rocher, Bueno, Mon Cheri, Nutella & Pocket Coffee, among other things.

If you’ve had Kinder Eggs before, what sort of prizes did you get in yours?

It seems like some parts of the country are known for different confections. The South does wonderful things with pecan pralines, San Francisco has a wonderful way with dark chocolate, the Jersey Shore has its salt water taffy. Now I’m noticing that Colorado is attracted to toffee. My neighbor got this as a gift at the office from a co-worker returning from Colorado. It’s, apparently, the thing that people bring back from Colorado.

These thick slabs of almond toffee are described thusly on their website:

Sweet cream butter from select Midwest dairies, pure cane sugar from the Hawaiian Islands and paper shell almonds from the finest California groves. A generous layer of rich milk chocolate from the renowned Guittard family and a final sprinkling of crushed almonds complete this world renowned treat.

Instead of pieces of almonds dotting the toffee, this toffee has generous whole almonds. The slabs are extra thick and the chocolate coats both sides with an extra dusting of powdered almonds. The toffee has a crisp bite with a strong buttery taste to it. It cleaves well and melts on the tongue with a good salty bite and caramelized sugar flavor.

I can see why Enstrom’s is so highly regarded. This is tasty toffee. The only thing that bugs me about is the whole slab idea. I’d prefer my toffee to be in regular pieces that I can pick up and bite or pop in my mouth whole. But if that’s my biggest complaint, well, I don’t have much to complain about. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go wrong with any of the toffees I’ve had from Colorado (see Silver Bear).

While working on the Frequently Asked Questions, one subject has come up that I thought might demand its own post. How did I start writing about candy?

That question assumes that there was a time that I didn’t write about candy.

To illustrate this, I present a short story I wrote at the age of 10. As embarrassing as it is to reveal my earlier works, it is kinda funny that the only fiction I can find from my grade school days has candy as a main subject.

There’s not much text, so I retyped it as the caption for the page images. Click here to see the story.

This version of the Cafe-Tasse bars are long and thick and frankly, I prefer this format to the flat ones. It’s more compact and I like a good thick piece of chocolate.

The design on these is quite lovely too. Soft, matte paper with some stylish engraved designs. Easy to read and color coded, too!

Extra Noir this super dark 77% cocoa bar is quite rich. Instead of sacrificing buttery smoothness for high cacao, I think they’ve lowered the sugar content, which is just fine with me. The bar has a strong smoky flavor with many hints of tobacco and vanilla. It has a rather dry finish that’s not exactly astringent, but leaves a rather chalky feeling in the mouth. Still, it has a fantastic melt on the tongue, just slipping around in all it’s cocoa-butter goodness. It’s not sweet, but at the same time, it’s not blisteringly bitter - just dense.

Noir Praline this bar smelled much sweeter than the others, and had a rather fruity aroma as well. The dark chocolate shell looked the same as the other bars, but inside it was as sweet. After having the creamy richness of the Baci bar, this one really can’t compare. It’s missing that buttery lightness and depth of flavor. I’m not saying it’s not tasty, it’s just had more sugar and sweetness than hazelnuttiness.

Noir Orange after sampling the super dark bar, this one seemed quite sweet at first. This bar is only 54% cocoa, so there’s plenty of room for that cocoa butter base as well as sugar and an ample supply of little candied orange bits. The candied orange peels threw me, they’re kind of crystallized, so a bit more sharp and hard than pliable and forgiving. The texture mix aside, the orange infusion is intense and profuse. This is nothing like the Terry’s Chocolate Orange. This is a full chocolate experience with a little fruit essence thrown in. After a while I was hoping for the chewy bits of orange peel. This was by far my favorite of the three.

These were a gift but I’ve seen them for sale at Cost Plus World Market, Economy Candy in NYC and online at Chocosphere (the chocolate covered lemon peel looks divine).

One of my favorite treats we’d get in our Christmas Stocking were Baci. If you’ve never had this little Italian chocolate, you’re missing something. It’s a hazelnut nougatine with chopped nuts topped with a whole hazelnut and covered in a thin shell of rich dark chocolate. They’re wrapped in silver foil with blue printing and wrapped around the chocolate is a little piece of glassine with a saying about love or kisses in four languages, after all, baci means kiss in Italian.

Instead of individual morsels, the Baci Bar is a thick semisweet chocolate bar with domed sections filled with a mix of chocolate, hazelnut paste and crushed hazelnuts.

Holy moly, it’s good.

Seriously good. The chocolate is rich and buttery with a slight bitter and dry hit to it - which offsets the super-sweet and nutty, thick filling. The little bits of nuts give it a wonderful crispy crunch. There wasn’t a bad nut bit in the bunch.

If there’s anything at all wrong with it, it’s that it’s kind of soft. It’s getting warm here in Los Angeles, and eating a bar like this mid-day is just plain messy. No matter, I’m having the rest of it for breakfast ... see, I’m flexible! I miss the whole hazelnut you get the with traditional Baci, but the chocolate ratio here is amped up a little, which I like just as well.

Now that I’ve raved about this bar, I fear I will never have another one. I’ve looked around on the Perugina/Nestle site and find no reference to this bar. It was generously transported directly from Italy to me by uber-blogger, JozJozJoz. Maybe if you’re in a European airport you’ll spy one.

Perugina is an Italian company, started in the 20s but was bought out by Nestle in 1985, which explains their wider distribution in the United States late in the last century.