Candy Blog

Last year Trader Joe’s had a standout product called Fleur de Sel Caramels (they’re back for 2007 as well). Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels seem to be capitalizing on the trend of the salted caramel and throwing in dark chocolate for kicks.

It’s obviously a seasonal item as well, with little string/line drawings of pine trees and the green theme. The package says, “buttery smooth caramels drenched in Belgian chocolate then sprinkled with crunchy rock salt from the Dead Sea.” Wow, Belgium ... the Dead Sea ... and they’re made in Ireland. I feel so worldly.

This is one of those instances where the product looks pretty much like the photo on the package, so no disappointment there. Although out of the box they had a little dusting of microfine salt dust. (A little paintbrush took care of that for the photoshoot.) They smell nice, like chocolate and a little hint of butter.

The box has a plastic tray with a dozen little chocolate covered caramels. They fit snugly, so there were no problems with dented or broken pieces, though there were a few salt chunks rattling around.

Biting into them they have a light flowing caramel filling. It’s not glossy smooth like advertised though. There’s a very slight grain to it, but it’s completely consistent. (I wonder if this is because the boxes are displayed above the frozen food and the package specifically says “do not refrigerate”.)

There’s something a little off about the buttery-ness of them though. It’s too buttery. In fact, it’s butter flavored. Looking at the ingredients I found that way down at the end was something called “natural butter toffee flavoring”. It’s not that there isn’t butter in there. There’s lots of butter fat and milk and sweetened condensed milk. But for some reason they felt the need to give it that extra little push. It’s still all natural, but unnecessary. The crunchy bits of salt were a nice touch, not too much and a good texture complement.

Personally, I prefer the thicker, chewier texture of caramel that also has more complex burnt sugar flavors. (Remember the recent poll?) I think I’d like those other Fleur de Sel Caramels covered in chocolate. They were gorgeous.

Related Candies

1. Dove Caramels & Chocolate Covered Almonds
2. Das French Salted Caramels
3. Sanders Caramels & Titans
4. Fran’s Gray Salt Caramels

Trader Joe’s always has an interesting assortment of candies and sweet goodies around the holidays. But without brand names (and previous years) to guide you, how do you know what’s good ... or even what’s inside the box? I’ll devote the rest of the week to the Trader Joe’s hostess gifts.

First up is Trader Joe’s Fair Trade Chocolate Truffles because nothing says thank you for having me in your home than not oppressing people six thousand miles away. It frees you up to drink in celebration instead of out of guilt!

This box is certified by Equi-Trade as commerce equitable! The box looks kind of like a take out container, with pretty amber and brown African designs. Inside are two layers. There are 14 truffles in five flavors (Spicy Hot Chocolate gets shorted with only two of those, three of each of the others).

Double Dark - these were quite nice looking. The 70% dark chocolate coating is a little on the acidic and “high note” side, but is buttery smooth and on its own has a slightly dry finish. The ganache center is melty-smooth. It’s firm when bitten in half, but melts quickly. It has similar flavors as the shell, giving the whole truffle a consistent flavor, with the only difference in the textures.

Field Raspberry - this one was easy to pick out from the rest, the dark chocolate shell had little raspberry bumps on the top. I was kind of surprised at the pink color of the filling. It’s a light ganache, not quite white chocolate. Sweet, tangy and very much an authentic raspberry flavor. It overpowered the dark chocolate, but there were other, more chocolatey experiences in the box.

Cappuccino - has a milk chocolate shell with a little cap of white chocolate. It’s sweet and has a nice creamy milk chocolate ganache center. It’s more firm than the raspberry one. The coffee notes are a little, well, coffee-ish instead of true rounded coffee. But then again cappuccino is often as much about hot milk as it is about espresso. This has nice milky flavors in it as well.

Spicy Hot Chocolate - it’s a very pretty truffle. A glossy dark chocolate shell and a spiced dark chocolate center. However, the spices gave this more of a woodsy flavor reminiscent of cupboards and cardboard than warm chili. It was smooth, but I was glad when I got rid of these two and they stopped infecting the others with that kind-of-sour spicy note.

Creamy Milk - the milk chocolate shell has a strong dairy component reminiscent of fine Swiss chocolate. It’s a creamy smooth shell with an achingly silky ganache center. There’s not a hint of grain in here, though it is a bit sweet it never becomes sticky or cloying.

As a gift, the packaging is okay, it does communicate the fair trade aspects, which I’m guessing is one of its biggest selling points. It’s nice and compact, but not as easy to just open it up and dig in because it’s double-deckered (and the plain truffles are on the bottom, not all mixed up). The cream “label sleeve” in the center of the box slides off and then it actually looks much better (that’s where all the nutrition facts are). As far as price goes, $7 for six ounces of fair trade chocolate with all-natural ingredients is pretty freak-tacularly good. They’re not the best truffles I’ve had, but for the price (less than $20 a pound) they’re certainly an incredible value and should get you kudos when given as a gift or served to guests.

These were made in Canada. (I suspect that they’re made by Terra Nostra, seeing how there aren’t that many Equi-Trade chocolate companies in Canada.)

Related Candies

1. Terra Nostra Pocket Bars
2. Endangered Species: Eco-Rounds
3. Theo Confections
4. CocoaVino

Sometimes I want a little more information on the package. I saw these at Trader Joe’s last Friday and I was intrigued. Trader Joe’s English Soft Peppermints. I liked everything I saw. Peppermint, good! English, yes, they know good candy. Soft, why yes, I like soft things. Even the blue tin was compelling. But what were they?

The back of the package didn’t tell me much more except that they were actually a product of The Netherlands (and not English as the name may have led me to believe). The ingredients were pretty simple: Sugar, Cream of Tartar and Natural Peppermint Oil.

What what manner of soft mint were they?

Open the package and it’s clear. They’re pillow mints. Lovely, king sized pillow mints (not those domestic throw pillow mints you get at the drug store!).

They smell of sweet peppermint and at first as light and cool on the tongue. Then the blistering peppermint kicks in. It’s like the word “English” is code for"Altoid” or something.

I enjoy pillow mints and their Butter Mint brethren, but the intensity of these doesn’t make for popping them one after the other very pleasant. Perhaps that’s a good thing, I could learn a little self control through negative feedback behavior modification. With fresh breath as a side effect whether I’ve learned anything or not.

As a breath mint, these are fine and dandy. As a candy, they’re not quite munchable.

Related Candies

1. York Mints
2. Russell Stover Organic Pecan Delight
3. Chocolate Dipped Altoids
4. Necco Mint Julep
5. Choward’s Violet

Here’s a quick guide to all things chocolate up for grabs in the Menu for Hope IV fundraiser for the United Nations World Food Programme. You can see a full list of the prizes and the instructions on how to enter the drawing. Tickets are $10, you can buy as many as you like for any prize.

It’s a great selection of chocolate and I envy each and every person who wins and applaud everyone who enters/donates!

I wrote about Sponge Candy a couple of weeks ago and Dom from Chocablog rightfully pointed out in the comments that I’ve never mentioned Cadbury Crunchie. This is true, though I’ve eaten a few of them before. Time to rectify!

I first bought a Crunchie a few years ago, thinking it was a Cadbury version of the Nestle Violet Crumble. They’re slightly different.

The Crunchie is a plank of dense honeycomb “sponge candy” covered in milk chocolate. While sponge would make you think that it’s somehow soft and yielding like marshmallow, this is hard and will shatter into shards when smacked. The honeycomb has an inconsistent texture, as shown in the photo. There’s a center stripe of sparkly, very crunchy honeycomb. The margins have a smaller bubble size. Still, it’s heavier than the other Sponge Candy from Parkside Candy and the Violet Crumble.

The flavor of the center is sweet with a light hit of salt and a strong note of burnt sugar, especially in the middle stripe.

I think the bar is nice, but in no way comes close to the experience of the Sponge Candy I recently had. The consistency of the center is just to, well, consistent and far too dense to have a quick melt-in-your-mouth quality. The chocolate is okay, it’s sweet but a little on the waxy side and doesn’t really lift up the experience as much as it could. I prefer the stronger taste and more textured honeycomb of this to the Violet Crumble, probably because the chocolate is a bit better, too.

I honestly don’t know why there isn’t some version of this made in the States by one of the major candy companies. I don’t have too much trouble finding Violet Crumble in Los Angeles (they carry it at many 7-11s near me) and I got another of these Crunchie bars at a Brit import shop as well. You’d think that Nestle or Cadbury would just sell them here themselves.

Related Candies

1. Parkside Candy Sponge Candy
2. Walkers Nonsuch Toffee
3. Jelly Belly Chocolate Malt Balls
4. Violet Crumble