Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Choceur Nougat Bites & Marzipan Bites

Choceur Marzipan BitesI still have a few more candies and holiday items from Aldi, but of note are these Bites from Aldi’s Choceur line.

Marzipan Bites are elegantly simple little marzipan blocks covered in dark chocolate. The ingredients are simple and encouraging: Sugar, almonds, chocolate liquor, water, cocoa butter, soy lecithin and invertase. So it looks like it may be a fun candy for vegans. (The package does say that it’s processed on equipment with other tree nuts, milk and wheat though, so might not be good for those with milk allergies or gluten issues.)

The long box has a gold plastic tray inside with two compartments holding five pieces each.

Choceur Marzipan Bites

The gold and red foil wrapper is simple but elegant and thankfully has a clear label that says what’s inside. (I can see buying several of these Choceur items and then taking them out of the package and putting them in a bowl or on a serving plate with cookies.)

L?becker Edel Marzipan means marzipan from L?beck, a city in Northern Germany. The style there has some strict requirements such as the sugar content should not exceed 30% (making the product at least 70% almonds). L?beck is best known for the Niederegger confectionery (whose marzipan is among my favorites).

The pieces are a stylish two bites. They’re long and narrow - about 1.75 inches long, .75 inches wide and .5 inches high. The dark chocolate enrobing is thin but shiny and well tempered. The scent of dark chocolate is most forward upon opening the wrapper. When I bit into it, that’s when the almond flavors emerged, a bit like almond extract. Happily they dissipated quickly and the pure almond paste was left behind.

I liked the texture of it quite a bit, it’s not the smooth and doughy paste the shapes are usually made from, instead it’s a bit grainier than that. It’s moist and has a good authentic nutty almond flavor that includes those sort of toasted notes that are often drowned out by flavorings. It was very fresh and clean tasting and for someone who doesn’t usually enjoy marzipan, especially when it’s not flavored by things like orange, ginger, coffee or lemon this was quite a revelation.

Each piece is about 60 calories and being mostly almonds, it’s not as bad a treat as many others that you can indulge in over the winter holidays and is quite filling. (There are 4 grams of protein per serving of three pieces.)

Rating: 7 out of 10

Choceur Nougat BitesThe Choceur Nougat Bites were similarly packaged.

In this case the tray holds to columns of the little bricks of praline chocolate bites, 14 in all.

I had these all wrong, all wrong. I thought from the description and the kind of vague illustration that they were a little hazelnut praline (toasted nut paste with caramelized sugar) covered in milk chocolate. When I first opened them I thought, these are really light in color. I thought there’s no way they can be chocolatey.

And it’s true. They aren’t chocolate, it’s a single block of just the nougat. The ingredients go like this: Hazelnut paste, sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, nonfat milk powder, chocolate liquor, malt extract and soy lecithin. See, there’s barely any chocolate in there at all.

Choceur Nougat Bites

Then I realized I was thinking these were going to be gianduia, in the sense that they’d be a chocolate and hazelnut block. Instead they’re a hazelnut and milk block. Quite different. Once I adjusted my thinking, once I adjusted my expectations I realized that these are ingenious little cubes.

They’re only 1 inch long and .75 inches square. The color is like a milky coffee. They smell extremely sweet, a little like toasted hazelnuts and milk. It’s quite soft and melts easily (thank goodness we’re at the time of year when the unheated parts of my house hover around 60 degrees).

At first on the tongue it’s milky and melts into a cool and slick puddle. Then the hazelnut flavors emerge. It’s not as intensely hazelnut as many other gianduia candies that I prefer. Instead this is just a much better version of Ice Cubes, using the native hazelnut oils and cocoa butter for the rich fats instead of other tropical oils.

I didn’t find them terribly substantial in the end and found myself preferring the marzipan (which is kind of a shock after all of these years of proclaiming I don’t like marzipan). But the demonstration of a confection with so much cocoa butter that’s not specifically “white chocolate” is charming and worthy. I’d probably prefer it if it accompanied something a bit stronger, maybe had a dark chocolate coating or if I just at it with some salty shortbread or strong coffee.

The calorie count on these is much higher due to the fat. Each is only 55 calories, but they’re smaller than the Marzipan bites so they clock in at 178 calories per ounce.

Rating: 6 out of 10

These are two decent finds from Choceur that would be fun additions to a holiday candy bowl.

Related Candies

  1. Aldi Chocolate Swiss Assorted Chocolate Squares
  2. Hachez Edel Vollmilch Nuss (Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts)
  3. Moser Roth Chocolate
  4. Snickers Peanut Butter Santas
  5. Choceur Luxury Mini Chocolate Bars
  6. Caffarel Gianduias
  7. Niederegger Capuccino Marzipan
Name: Marzipan Bites & Nougat Bites
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Choceur (Aldi)
Place Purchased: Aldi (Youngstown, OH)
Price: $2.49
Size: 4.33 ounces
Calories per ounce: 134 & 178
Categories: Chocolate, Nuts, Germany, Aldi, Christmas, All Natural

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:10 am Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. The second candy there, the Nougat Bites, highly resemble a very popular Polish candy that I used to eat when I was younger called Cream Fudge. Except that these look like they may be of higher quality. You should take a look around for them, I remember them being very delicious but they are a bit difficult to find in America.

    Here’s a photo of them:
    http://i50.tinypic.com/x4hds5.jpg

    Comment by dr on 12/25/09 at 8:07 am #
  2. Cybele's avatar

    dr - the nougat bites are more like a chocolate cream than a fudge like the Polish candy. There is a brand here in the United States called Caramoos that I’ve tried before. I’ve also seen some similar to that picture at a Russian grocer in Berkeley.

    Comment by Cybele on 12/25/09 at 8:46 am #
  3. I love marzipan so will definitely be looking for these!

    Comment by Pam Walter on 12/26/09 at 5:55 am #
  4. Does any one know where to buy the Solidarnist luxury cream fudge…they come in yellow and also red wrappers with a cute black and white cow on the wrapper.  Thanks.

    Comment by Andi on 7/10/12 at 3:58 pm #
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