Candy Blog

Storck Merci were introduced 45 years ago by the German candy maker. It was always position as a hostess item, small individually wrapped pieces of chocolate in flavors to suit everyone.

The package calls it the Finest Assortment of European Chocolates. They’re priced pretty well for an upscale styled hostess gift, I paid $5.29 for my box that weighs 8.8 ounces (that’s less than $10 a pound). The ingredients are heavy on the sugar and milk and a bit lighter on the cacao content, but it’s all real chocolate in there.

I picked these up mostly because I’ve never reviewed them. But I was also curious if there was a difference between these and the newer Werther’s Chocolates.

The assortment comes in a smart and spare little box. It’s made of thin card but styled to fit the sticks perfectly. There are 20 but only 7 varieties ... so the breakdown was a little odd for my tastes:
4 x Milk Chocolate
3 x Hazelnut-Creme, Dark Mousse, Hazelnut-Almond & Praline-Creme
2 x Coffee and Cream & Dark Cream

The little bars are three inches long and 3/4 of an inch wide. There’s a little score in the center to snap them in half easily. All are imprinted with the word Merci on each segment.

Praline-Creme

I didn’t take an individual shot of this one. It’s a milk chocolate bar, the wrapper has a purple band on it. The filling is a sweet cocoa paste that’s rather truffle like. It’s all quite buttery and melts well, there’s even a slight hint of salt to it. It didn’t do much for me, there’s something missing, probably a stronger chocolate note.

Milk Chocolate

The focus on this piece is milk. Actually, it’s more like butter. The melt is silky smooth and quick with a slight grain to it. The dominant flavors are powdered milk, caramelized sugar and a light note of cocoa.

Hazelnut Creme

It’s a milk chocolate bar with a filling of sweet, milky hazelnut paste. It’s very sweet but has a good grassy and roasted flavor of hazelnuts to it. I’d probably prefer it in dark chocolate ... but then again if I were really looking for a gianduia fix I’d go for some Caffarel. It’s definitely rib-sticking.

Coffee and Cream

This was far and away my favorite. It smells like freshly ground coffee. There are two layers, a dark chocolate and a white chocolate base. The coffee is far and away the strongest flavor, so much so that I couldn’t really detect any chocolate notes in there. The texture is smooth and has an excellent melt that’s a bit firmer than the milk chocolate varieties. The coffee is bold with a light acidic note and a hint of charcoal and toffee.

Dark Mousse

The Dark Mousse is dark chocolate filled with a chocolate cream. The bar was beautiful looking, glossy and nicely tempered. The chocolate has strong berry notes with a little hint of black pepper and raisins. The mousse filling was a little more of a paste than a cream but wasn’t very sweet, it was like a good chocolate frosting. The whole thing had a lightly dry finish to it.

Dark Cream

I was confused at this point about the difference between Dark Cream and Dark Mousse. Dark Cream was more like a dark bar, no filling as far as I could tell.

The flavor was like a dark milk chocolate, there were strong dairy notes, something I didn’t get at all from the Dark Mousse. It wasn’t as sticky or sweet as the milk chocolate and also had a hint of a dry finish to it without being chalky. It was firmer than the nut and milk versions of the little bars, but it was still pretty soft and melted quickly into a puddle in my mouth. (It was not swirled though like the Werther’s Dark Cream was.)

Hazelnut Almond

This was my second favorite variety. As far as I can tell it’s just the milk chocolate with crushed almonds and hazelnuts. The scent is still sweet and milky but has a great roasted nut flavor. The little nibs of nuts are chewy and fresh - mostly hazelnut comes through.

I enjoyed these, though I hesitate to say that they’d satisfy any of my strong chocolate cravings. This had a wonderful texture and luxurious melt, but not a lot of cocoa punch. I see them more as accompaniments than stand alone treats.

Each stick is about 73 calories (it does depend on the variety) and features 14% of your recommended daily allowance of saturated fats. (But there’s also a bit of protein, calcium & iron in there.) There are also a lot of allergens in here. The only ones that aren’t listed are eggs and of course shellfish.

As for the Werther’s Chocolates that Storck also makes ... I don’t see any reason to pick those up instead of these unless you’re only going by price. The ingredients seem a bit better, I like the packaging and the fact that you get a variety in the box is a plus in my mind (though if you don’t like all the flavors that’s a negative). They really are a great hostess gift and a nice item to have on hand to serve with coffee or dessert. A little stack along with some cookies would make an excellent little treat without being too fussy. And the word Merci doesn’t hurt, everyone enjoys a little thank you.

Related Candies

1. Storck Toffifay
2. Choceur Coffee & Cream
3. Ice Cubes
4. Milka Alpenmilch
5. Storck Chocolate Riesen

The Cadbury Flake has been made for 90 years by Cadbury and has a clever little story to go with it. The story goes that a line worker in the Cadbury factory noticed that the over-run of the one their molds made little folded sheets of chocolate that was a tasty way to eat the chocolate. They’re billed as The crumbliest, flakiest milk chocolate..

I’ve had a few of the Flake bars over the years and never quite understood them (and preferred the versions that were dipped in chocolate). They seemed chalky and sweet but not chocolatey. So I thought I’d give it another try. I got a hold of a very fresh bar (expires February 2011).

The ingredients are similar to all of the Cadbury’s UK milk chocolate offerings. This bar was made in Ireland and contains: Milk, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, vegetable fat, emulsifier, flavoring. Milk solids are listed at 14% and the cocoa solids are 25%. So it’s a lot of chocolate and milk ... but there’s also a little bit of vegetable fat in there, which by United States FDA standards means that this doesn’t qualify as real chocolate.

Again, I’m coming to this bar with an outsider’s perspective. I didn’t grow up with it and I’ve never seen any advertisements for the bar. So taken at face value, the idea of a bar made of chocolate shavings is interesting, I like it when I find a pile of chocolate shavings on my dessert. The reality of the bar isn’t quite as attractive. It reminds me of elephant skin. It’s about six inches long and holds together well.

It smells a bit like cheesecake instead of milk chocolate. The dairy tang is like yogurt or cream cheese. It’s a bit crumbly upon biting, but not as bad as I’d feared. The texture is soft and chalky, but not quite fudgy. It dissolves more than it melts. It’s not sticky sweet, I think the milk notes cut that, but the cocoa isn’t quite as apparent for such a high cacao milk chocolate (as far as American chocolate goes for comparison).

The crumbly texture doesn’t feel decadent or indulgent to me, it just feels old or stale. The sour note to the milk wasn’t pleasant (though I can imagine becoming acclimated to it).

The bars are marketed as a low calorie, highly pleasurable experience. But they’re hardly low in fat, they’re about normal at 150 calories per ounce for chocolate, it’s just the portion that’s small at only 1.13 ounces per bar.

The Cadbury Flake Praline is similar to the classic Flake, except it sports 7% hazelnuts. It’s also partially covered in chocolate.

This bar is just a little shorter than the plain version, about 5 inches. It’s also made in Ireland.

The scent is a little nuttier, but still have the dairy note. This one also had a little more cocoa to it.

The bite was softer and the hazelnut was immediately apparent. There were little hazelnut bits and a nice roasted flavor overall. It seemed a bit moister and a bit fudgier ... but it also felt sweeter. So much so that my throat was seared by it after consuming half the bar.

I understand that these bars are remarkably different than others, but it’s just not something that appeals to me. The dryness just takes away all the fatty mouthfeel for me. I’m not keen on the fact that they’re not real chocolate, considering how expensive they are in the States, for that money I’ll get something that really pleases me.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Aero 70% Dark
2. Elite Aerated & Lotte Airs
3. Cadbury Twirl and Snow Flake
4. Flake Dipped
5. Aero

One of my favorite global candies are Mentos because they reflect local flavors so well. Sometimes it seems unfair that other locales get such great flavors and in the US we’re stuck with a more limited assortment.

This little plastic jar of Mentos Mix Grape was given to me by Santos of Scent of Green Bananas. They’re sold in the Philippines and other parts of the Pacific. They’re actually made in Vietnam but Perfetti van Melle and have Halal certification, but all of the other packaging is in English.

Instead of a mix of fruity flavors, this combo pack has a mix of different kinds of grapes - purple, white and red.

Muscat - a green grape. This version has a light peppery flavor at first followed by something that’s more like apple cider and then a grape skin note. It also reminded me of hibiscus iced tea. Tangy and fresh.

Standard Grape (magenta) is the most disappointing of the bunch. It does taste like real grapes, but like a far away version of the, like I’m tasting concord grapes from across the street or watching it on TV.

Red Wine Grape (light pink) has an amazing flavor profile. It’s like white grape juice but with more of the grape skins flavors, right down to an almost-dry finish.

I’ve found with the Asian Mentos that the quality isn’t always consistent. Some are soft and chewy, others are crunchy in the middle. These were close to their expiry, but I experience this on a consistent basis with all varieties not made in Holland.

I love how Mentos gets subtlety. While grape isn’t my favorite flavor, I like how distinctive these are yet how well the package holds together and a single candy. I can pop them mindlessly or I can pull out the flavor I feel like at the moment. I wish that the American ones were like this, but then maybe I wouldn’t appreciate them as much.

These are Halal but not marked Kosher. They no longer contain gelatin (they use gellan gum) which is vegetarian ... but they also use carmine color, so they’re not actually vegetarian.

Related Candies

1. Grape Vines
2. Barley Mint Mentos
3. Banana n Cream & Red Orange Mentos
4. Meiji Gummy Choco
5. HiCHEW Assortment
6. Dalandan & Juicy Ponkan Mentos

After my review of Goody Good Stuff Sweet & Sour Mix & Match the company offered to send me updated samples. The Mix & Match I had was from an early batch of samples and didn’t have the final packaging. The hook with Good Good Stuff’s candy is that it’s free of many allergens and made with all natural colors and flavors. But the most interesting part of all this is that their “gummies” are completely vegetarian because they don’t use gelatin.

Instead Goody Good Stuff uses a combination of gelling agents (polysaccharides) such as carrageenan (from seaweed) and gellan (from bacteria). Traditional (true) gummis use gelatin, which is a protein. Though they all look the same in the finished product, the texture and behavior can be quite different. 

So, the Goody Good Stuff Koala Gummy Bears are jelly candies. That’s cool. But wait a second, do they look like Koalas to you? Not to me. The ears are too small, the nose is all wrong. Most importantly these “koalas” have belly buttons. Koalas are marsupials (non-placental) and do not have belly buttons while bears are mammals and do have navels. They look like standard generic ursids.

But that doesn’t mean that this can’t be good candy. (Lots of candies are named incongruously, starting with Circus Peanuts.)

The Goody Good Stuff Bears come in five flavors/colors. The main difference between these and a traditional gummi is the texture. The Goody Good Stuff Bears are soft and chewy, but they’re more on the jelly side than the gelatinous side. When you take a regular gummi bear and pull it apart, eventually it will break - pull it long enough and it will simply snap, usually leaving clean edges and right angles. Pull a Goody Good Stuff Bear apart and it will stretch and stretch until it’s tiny little, sticky jelly strands. In the mouth the chew is similar until the dissolve comes, the Goody Good Stuff Bears dissolve into a bit of a sticky puddle. They remind me a little like okra mucilage ... in a good way.

The flavors are perfectly gummi-like:

Orange - good mix of zest and juicy tartness.

Strawberry - sweet and fragrant with a mild jammy flavor and light tangy note.

Lemon - strong lemon peel and oil flavors without as much of a tart bite as others.

Green Apple - very mild with notes of both apple juice and that unnatural “green apple” flavor. Bland but pleasant.

Pineapple - bold and floral with a little an authentic pineapple sizzle behind it all.

Though the flavors are not as intense as some other gummis, such as the ones from Japan, these are nicely flavored. The candies are well made, even though they’re all naturally flavored and colored, they’re vibrant looking and each tastes distinctive. They’re mainstream looking and tasting, I don’t think kids would know the difference.

The candies are made without any animal products (no gelatin, no insect-derived colors), however they do use a touch of beeswax so they can’t be considered vegan. They’re nut free, dairy free, gluten free, soy free and peanut free. They’re not easy to find in the US yet, but I expect that to change because of this important vegetarian distinction.

Related Candies

1. Goody Good Stuff Sour Mix & Match
2. Surf Sweets Gummi Swirls
3. Brach’s Gummi+Plus & Tropical Gummis
4. Katjes Tropical Gummis & Yogurt Gums
5. Organic Surf Sweets

About 15 years ago Tootsie introduced a new lollipop. Like many of Tootsie popular lollipops it was a combination of two already famous candies. In this case the Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops combined a hard candy with caramel. It was a base of green apple flavored hard candy covered with a hard caramel (think Sugar Daddy).

Since they candy is meant to mimic a caramel covered apple, it only makes sense that other varieties of apples get their day in the sun. Last year Tootsie introduced their Assorted Apple Orchard Caramel Apple Pops. The bag has a variety: Green Apple, Golden Delicious and Red Macintosh.

I admit that I’ve had these before, well, I’ve had Green Apple pops in my possession before. I used to do product photography, so I’d get large quantities of candy to take pictures of and then I’d get to keep it. I had huge box of these and never actually ate one myself. They’re messy, the packaging doesn’t really highlight them well either. Worse, I saw them being made on TV (I think it was Unwrapped, but can’t find a mention of it on the Food Network website) and they look radically different when purchased than when they roll off the production line.

They’re puckered and irregular and often little bits of caramel poke out of the bottom of the wrapper. But I actually like Sugar Daddy and regular Tootsie Pops, so I should give these a fair shake.

The pops start with a hard candy disk, in this case flavored like green apple. Then the pop gets a coating of hard caramel and then a wrapper. During shipping and storage there’s some sort of glaciation that takes place and the pop flattens and takes on the shape of the wrapper. The hard candy gets marbled with the caramel.

The hard caramel is smooth and sweet with a light toasted sugar flavor with a hint of milk. The green apple candy is slick, without the painfully sharp edged voids of Tootsie Pops and Blow Pops. They’re not as intensely flavored as Jolly Ranchers, just a tart apple flavor. They’re comforting and mellow.

My main complaint is the width of the pop, it’s a little too wide for my mouth. The edges tend to be irregular, kind of rippled from the wrapper, this is uncomfortable when sucking on the pops after a while. The whole pop will eventually be soft and pliable and of course stick to the roof of my mouth if I’m not careful (I’m sure those impressions are like fingerprints).

The Golden Delicious variety comes in a mustard yellow wrapper. In the real fruit world, golden delicious are not on my list of favorite apples - I find them too sweet and often mealy. In the case of the candy version of the golden delicious, neither of those qualities was an issue. The scent of this pop was actually very apple like, it reminded me of peeling apples.

The apple flavor is muted and sweet and doesn’t quite stand up to the caramel as well. It’s almost like applesauce or apple pie a la mode (with caramel sauce).

I was glad that Tootsie didn’t go with red delicious on this one, instead it’s Red Macintosh which is a much more flavorful apple. The pop in this case is kind of in the middle of the flavor profile gamut - it’s not as intense or fake tasting as the Green Apple, but a little bolder than the Golden Delicious. The flavor of the red candy part was like an apple cider - notes of the apple peel and juice but still on the sweet side.

Getting over the messy look of these is a bit difficult, but the candy inside definitely has merits. I don’t see buying them for myself again but I love the idea and think that Tootsie did a great job of making the flavors distinctive enough. The pops are only 60 calories. The combination of textures and flavors makes these a good treat for those watching their calories.

Related Candies

1. Caramel Apple Kisses & Caramel Creams
2. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
3. Caramel Apple Sugar Babies
4. Mentos Fuji Apple
5. Tootsie Pops - Regular & Super Sized