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All NaturalFriday, February 3, 2012
Michael Mischer Kentucky Bourbon Whisky Truffles
For All Alcohol Week, I have Michael Mischer Kentucky Bourbon Whisky Truffles which is a set of six dark chocolate truffles filled with a soft bourbon infused ganache and dusted with cocoa. The box is simple, just a set of truffles in fluted cups sealed up with a transparent plastic top. If I had one complaint, it was that most of the truffles touched the lid and got a little smashed against it. It didn’t break the shell, but did make smudges on the lid and take off some of the cocoa. The truffles are exquisitely formed and picture perfect. The dusting of cocoa was exactly the right amount. It coated the surface, but not so much that it came off on me as I ate it. It was like a coating of velvet. The center is a soft but not quite flowing ganache. It’s almost like a pudding, it was thick and rich with a silky melt. The bourbon flavors were not as strong in this truffle as some of the other alcohol infused confections I’ve had this week. The bourbon flavors are well rounded, a little on the rummy side with notes of leather, vanilla, toffee and cedar. The chocolate is also excellent, some of the best chocolate of all the confections I’ve had with the alcohol. It was dark, a little bitter, absolutely slick and smooth on the tongue and well matched with woodsy and coffee notes to the bourbon. Michael Mischer Chocolates are available in a few locations in the Bay Area and on the web. His assortments are interesting, with a lot of influences from Asia and classic confectionery with a little bit of an amusing American twist with flavors like Root Beer. Like most fine confections, they’re pricey. There’s no statement on the website about the ethical sourcing of the chocolate itself, but Mischer notes that he uses only the finest premium beans, many sourced from the Americas, not Africa where slavery issues still exist. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:13 am All Natural • Candy • Review • Alcohol • Chocolate • 7-Worth It • United States • Thursday, February 2, 2012
Twice the Vice Spirited Chocolates
The confections are made with Callebaut chocolate from Belgium with an extra helping of premium spirits. In fact, there’s so much alcohol in there that they can’t be sold to folks under the age of 21 and are prohibited in most states. I got to try about six different varieties while chatting with the founder and chief chocolatier, Craig Boreth. The two varieties I have for review are from different chocolate collections. The big selling point with these infused chocolates is the specificity of the spirits. For example, it’s not just Scotch, oh no, the Single Malt collection has The Macallan 12 Year, Glenlivet 15 Year, Lagavulin 16 Year and Tomatin 18 Year. The Glenlivet 18 Year Single Malt Scotch is a lovely piece. I like that they’re clearly marked on the tops. (Well, they’re clear when you’re sober.) They’re very large pieces, probably 1/3 larger than I’m accustomed to these days. (1.25” square and .75” high and about .7 ounces.) That’s not a bad thing, think of them as the generous pour. The ganache is creamy and soft at room temperature. That helps the aromatics and volatiles come to the nose much quicker. The first notes I got were smoke and a lot of leather. There are also some rather unpleasant aspects of the smoke that I notice, a little like burnt broccoli. But that’s Scotch for you. There’s a lot of vanilla and a little touch of honey as well. It’s an intense piece of chocolate and really does warm my throat, without the searing medicinal heat that straight Scotch can provide. The Chocolate Martini bonbon is from the The Chick Drinks Collection (gah, what a terrible name) and features vodka and chocolate liquor in the rich chocolate ganache. The Chicks collection is all about those sweet things that are so popular on Sex and the City and reality shows. The others in the box would be Cosmopolitan, White Russian and Margarita. It’s a nice looking piece and as far as a chocolate it’s quite good. The alcohol was much more sedate and the filling had a lot of chocolate notes. Part of it was a strong vanilla as well as a sort of chocolate frosting flavor, like it was a flavoring (probably a chocolate liqueur) instead of the actual chocolate. The texture is wonderfully smooth and mercifully less sweet than an actual chocolate martini. There’s still the light burn of alcohol in the back of my throat from it. They’re a little on the pricey side (the equivalent of $71 a pound for their small box) and I’d suggest that they have a short shelf life, since alcohol tends to evaporate even from chocolates within about 3 months. The source chocolate, Callebaut, can be purchased by chocolatiers with certifications about sustainability and ethical standards, but there was no indication on the website about that type of sourcing. The other current collections are The Kentucky Bourbon Collection, Top Shelf Spirits Collection and The Classic Cocktails Collection. The cocktails don’t interest me much, but the idea of going with high quality chocolate and then infusing it with distinctive Bourbons and Scotch Whiskeys is quite intriguing. From my tastings at the event, I really could tell the difference between the flavor profile of a 16 and an 18 by different makers. If you’re looking for a gift for Valentines or really for anyone that enjoys the hard stuff, this might be the thing. Just be sure to check if they ship to your state. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:50 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Alcohol • Chocolate • 8-Tasty • United States • Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Zotter Scotch Whisky
The things that make it hard to give the bar my fullest recommendation would be how difficult it is to actually buy it (I picked mine up while in Germany) and when purchased in the US, it’s rather expensive at about $6 to $8 for the 2.47 bar. (There’s also a little bit of a question about one ingredient, fructose-glucose syrup, which sounds like high fructose corn syrup, though since it’s organic it’s not from GMO sources.) I’ve had a few Zotter bars over the years and have read plenty more reviews of their products as well. They have a weird twist to a lot of their flavors, some that I think work well in unexpected ways, and others that seem strange simply for the sake of it. I’m talking about combinations like Coffee-Plum with Caramelized Bacon or Cheese-Walnuts-Grapes to just a little unorthodox like Pear Cardamom to the downright unthinkable like Cornelian Cherries and Pig’s Blood. Think of them as the Jones Soda of fair trade candy bars. The bar is the same format as all the others I’ve ever had. It’s about 5 inches long and about 2.3 inches wide. It’s not a thick bar but it is filled. They call them hand-scooped bars but they’re rather angular and always rectangular. This bar is enrobed, which is my preferred construction method. (My second favorite is panned, third is molded - that’s the kind of lists Candy Bloggers keep.) The full name of the bar on the front is Scotch Whisky “Highland Harvest”. There’s no other information on what kind of Whisky it is. The bar is glossy and has the slightest ripples across the top. The chocolate is 70% for the shell, the center uses the same but with he addition of the whiskey, milk, cream and fructose-glucose syrup. It smells a lot like Scotch, leathery and smoky with notes of vanilla, tobacco and of course the deep cocoa flavors. The coating is thin, but still has a bold flavor, a smooth melt and woodsy flavor profile with a touch of coffee notes. The center is like a truffle, soft and with a silky melt. It’s barely sweet, with more than a touch of salt to it as well. The whiskey is quite evident, with a light burn on the tongue and throat. There’s a dryness and sort of acidity to the filling that’s unlike the profile of the chocolate in the coating. The leathery and smoky notes are strong and for some, probably, repulsive. I enjoy the pipe tobacco flavors to it, the mix of vanilla, red berries, oak and a touch of black walnut. I loved the bar. It’s completely decadent and I found it difficult to eat more than a third in one sitting. The 9%alcohol is pretty intense, too. I would buy this bar again, most definitely. I think I prefer Zotter’s more traditional formulations. I like their spirit though I don’t care much for the pork products in my chocolate, even if they’re not in this particular bar. (I know, I’m a hypocrite since I eat gummis, which also contain gelatin.) I haven’t been able to find Zotter bars in Los Angeles, so there’s little hope of these becoming my weekly habit. For other thoughts, check out Chocablog, who liked it overall, and Jim’s Chocolate Mission, who didn’t care for it much.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Joyva Sesame CrunchIn the history of candy, I’m pretty confident that some of the earliest boiled candy sweets created were nut and seed brittles. The genre of sesame brittles fit in nicely as one of those candies that I think has been around for a thousands of years. Early versions probably used date sugar and honey instead of refined sugar. The Joyva Sesame Crunch is a dead simple candy, made well and without much fuss or fanfare. It’s sold in two formats, the large single serving plank (1.125 ounces) and little individually wrapped snaps. It has only four ingredients: sesame seed, sugar, corn syrup, honey. It’s packaged equally simply, a small paperboard card to keep the slab from breaking and then inserted into a cellophane sleeve. The logo may not be a thousand years old, but certainly looks like it could be from the 1970s. I’ve been eating these candies for years, and they seem to fall into the genre of healthy, judging by the number of natural food stores that carry them. They’re exceptionally durable too, since there’s no chocolate they don’t melt and the coating of sugary candy over the sesame seals them up so they don’t oxidize (get rancid). The brittle base is just boiled sugar and some honey, the flavor is mostly from the sesame seeds themselves, which are nicely toasted and have a good oily, nutty balance with a light grassy and bitter note. The sweetness is mild, and the overall crunch and chew is long lasting. I find that when I buy these, I have a hard time not eating whatever quantity I have in one sitting. Still, my ideal version would probably have a little more candy to it, and a little more honey flavor. Since sesame seeds are the main ingredient, there’s a fair amount of fat in the bar, though I’ve read that sesame oil is quite healthy as far as vegetable oils go. The bar is filling, but not too sweet, so it straddles the line of snack and candy very nicely. It’s filling and even has a little bit of protein, so it will probably keep blood sugar levels from spiking like other pure sugar candies might. The calories on the label say 180 for the bar, but I think that’s steep for a sesame candy that’s only 1.125 ounces. (Tahini is about 160 calories per ounce and has no sugar in it, which is lower in calories per ounce than sesame oil.) The bar is Kosher, naturally, as well as being marked as gluten free. It may contain traces of almonds or pistachios. The package doesn’t say anything about peanuts. It’s not vegan, unless you’re the kind of vegan who’s okay with honey. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:13 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Nuts • 7-Worth It • United States • 99 Cent Only Store • Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Storck Mamba Sour Gummies
The Mamba Sour Gummies end up being expensive at the 7-11, which is almost as bad as going to a concession stand at the movies. 1.5 ounces is $1.19. The package says that they’re made with real fruit juice (5%) and the calorie count per ounce (100) is actually pretty low for candy, with only 150 calories for the entire package. The package says the flavors are: orange, banana, raspberry, pineapple and cherry. The pieces are about one inch across and feature a sweet and sour sanding on them. They’re soft and pliable, like gummis. The idea of Sour Banana isn’t exactly appealing. I don’t care for unripe bananas, though they’re not really sour, just not quite sweet yet and too firm. In this case the sour banana doesn’t taste like either a ripe or unripe banana. More like a lime soaked banana. Pineapple was dreamy. It was floral and tingly and unlike the banana that started out sour, this started out sweet and got quite sour towards the end, all the way to the jaw tingling finish. Watermelon was quite mild and really only about the sour. It had a good and reasonably authentic watermelon flavor, which means not much of a flavor at all. Raspberry is a sour jam without much floral or much in the way of that seed flavor. It’s okay, not really one of the better raspberry gummies I’ve had, but it is at lease naturally flavored. I didn’t get any orange in my package, nor it appears any cherry. The gummi market is crowed, though there aren’t that many in sour available in little packets at the convenience stores, so I have to give credit to Mamba for being in that space. I think the biggest competition for these would be the Life Savers gummis. With the natural ingredients and 5% juice content in this version, I’d say a parent is much better off with these than Life Savers. The packaging and shapes don’t make it feel like it’s a compromise. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:26 am All Natural • Candy • Review • Storck • Gummi Candy • Sour • 7-Worth It • Germany • 7-11 • Friday, December 30, 2011
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
For the past two months these little 3.5 ounce bags of the peanut butter cups have been priced at 99 cents and featured in barrels by the registers in all the Trader Joe’s I’ve been in. It’s hard to resist the sub-buck price for something that’s such a good value. About half the price of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup per ounce. Not only have I fallen prey, so has everyone else in my office. So once my little supply (I’ll buy two or three bags and put them in a jar on my desk) has dwindled, someone else will come by and plop another bag on my desk to replenish. Inside the simple packet are eight miniature sized dark chocolate peanut butter cups in foil. Each weighs about 12 grams (.42 ounces) and has 60 calories. The ingredients are decent, no partially hydrogenated fats in there. But there are milk products (milk fat in the chocolate and lactose in the peanut butter filling) so it’s not vegan and no good for those with dairy sensitivities. The cups are classic, they come in little fluted paper cups and pull away easily from the candy. While some peanut butter cups will have leakage issues around the sides, the peanut butter was always completely enveloped in chocolate with every one I ate. The chocolate is semi sweet (50% cacao), not terribly dark but still with a strong bitter note to it. It’s smooth and rather fatty, so it stands up well to the fats of the peanut butter center. The peanut butter center is rather sweet and a bit on the fudgy side. It’s smoother than most, but not silken or whipped. It’s sweet but nutty, the roasting gives the peanuts a bit of a bitter and woodsy note to them that stands up to the dark chocolate. The peanut density though is a little thin, it was more like I was eating a peanut butter frosting than actual peanut butter. There’s a hint of salt in there. They’re Kosher but may contain traces of tree nuts, eggs and wheat (so they’re not gluten free). It’s a good iteration of the peanut butter cup, though not my favorite treatment for the peanut butter center. I can’t argue with the price or the portioning. I don’t know if I’m going to pick them up in the big tub, even though it’s probably a better price per ounce, but I’ve got to hand it to Trader Joe’s for their inspired stealth marketing on this one. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:44 am All Natural • Candy • Review • Trader Joe's • Chocolate • Kosher • Peanuts • 8-Tasty • United States • Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Limited Edition Ritter Sport Winter Kreation + Factory Store
Ritter-Sport is a large German chocolate brand with a unique selling proposition, its chocolate bars are square. Their standard 100 gram (3.5 ounce) bar comes in 23 varieties with another 3-9 promotional and seasonal variations throughout the year. In the United States there are about six core varieties on shelves, but some stores like Target will sell about eight. Even in Germany, I still only found about 14-16 of the versions at the stores (which included the Bio and Winter Kreation varieties). The best place in Germany to find everything Ritter Sport sells, naturally, is at their factory store. The Ritter family started making chocolate in 1912, but didn’t introduce the Ritter Sport square bars until 1930. They’re becoming better known around the world as 35% of their total sales (over 20,000 tons of the 60,000 they produce) are now for export. (Russia is their number one customer, then Italy, then the United States.) The quality for a consumer bar (sold for less than one Euro) is excellent and the company prides itself on its innovation, ethical sourcing of their raw materials and quality of their products. For the past two seasons in the United States I’ve actually been able to find the Ritter Sport Winter Kreations in stores. (Mel and Rose Wine and Liquors and a really good 76 gas station in Glendale on Glendale Blvd & Glen Oaks.) Last year the Winter Kreations limited edition set was Orangen-Marzipan (orange marzipan), Nuss in Nougatcreme (hazelnuts in gianduia) and Vanillekipferl (vanilla cookie cream). This year the Nougatcreme did not return but was replaced by Gebrannte Mandel (burnt sugar almonds). The Ritter Sport Orangen-Marzipan bar is pretty special. When I got to Germany back in February of this year, this was one of the first bars I sought out and bought. After eating some of it, I bought the little assortment above plus an additional full size bar. Then when I was there earlier this month, I again bought a full size bar, since I think it’s the right proportion of chocolate and marzipan. The bar is a little different from the classic Ritter Sport Marzipan bar in that it has a milk chocolate shell (sorry, it’s not vegan). It smells like fresh orange juice, almost like an orangesicle, actually, because of the sweet and milky chocolate. The chocolate is quite sweet and so is the marzipan center, but it all works swimmingly together. The orange flavors are both juicy and zesty, without being bitter. The marzipan is moist and sticks together like a cookie dough instead of being dry and crumbly. There’s a light hint of amaretto to it as well. It’s terribly sweet, which is usually a turn off for me, but I enjoyed the decadent sticky quality, probably because it’s cold out and I usually want more sugar when I’m chilly. I do wish that it was the dark chocolate shell though, but since this is the only other marzipan bar that they make regularly, I can understand wanting to hit the milk/marzipan market at least seasonally.
The base of the Ritter Sport Gebrannte Mandel is milk chocolate. Ritter Sport makes eleven different chocolate bases for its different bars, including several varieties of milk chocolate. This version has a cacao content of 30%, so a richer milk chocolate than most American consumer brands. The bar is light in color, silky and smells much like the stalls at the Christmas Market, like toasted nuts and sugar. The nuts in this case are crushed (I’m not sure they’d fit well in the bar otherwise and might end up a little too crunchy). It’s sweet and the sugar coating on the nuts gives it more of a grainy crunch, but also adds more toasted flavor. There might be a hint of cinnamon in there as well. Ritter Sport Vanillekipferl is based on the classic Austrian cookie called the Vanillekipferl or vanilla crescent. They’re rather like a Russian Teacake or shortbread cookie with nutmeal in it. (There are no eggs in the traditional recipe.) The bar is like many of Ritter Sport’s, a milk chocolate shell with a cream filling. In this case the cream filling was slightly sandy with a very sweet vanilla flavor. I can’t say that I got much of the shortbread or nutty qualities out of it. It was decent, but not really different enough from Ritter Sport’s non-seasonal offerings. The Ritter Sport Nuss in Nougatcreme was a 2010 flavor and was nicely done. It was a milk chocolate bar with a milky hazelnut paste center with a bit of a crunchy, crushed nuts. I didn’t think much of it one way or the other. Again, like the Vanillekipferl, it wasn’t that different from the regular nougatcreme bar. All of the above bars, oddly enough, I bought at the grocery stores (Rewe and Aldi for the bars in February and Kaufhof for the most recent marzipan and candied almonds). Our tour group visited the Ritter Sport factory campus on our last full day in Germany on our way to Stuttgart. The factory is in the small town of Waldenbuch, which has less than 10,000. But it’s about a half an hour outside of Stuttgart (which has about 600,000 people and over 5 million in the metro area) which is the center of Germany’s auto industry. The Ritter family created a museum on the factory campus. Not just a chocolate museum that shows how cocoa is grown, harvested and processed into chocolate, there’s actually an art museum there. The building houses four areas: an interactive chocolate museum (upstairs to the right), a cafe (in the back left), a factory store for chocolate (on the lower right) and the front half to the left is the art museum. The exhibit while I was there fits well with the aesthetic of the square chocolate bars. They were selections from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection in a variety of media. Most were paintings but a few sculptures as well. All of the pieces had geometric elements and either bold use of color (in primary and secondary palettes) and rarely representational. The space isn’t large, but is well laid out in four areas with tall ceilings and awash in light. The Ritter Sport Factory Store is exactly what I want from a factory store. First, the prices are excellent. They are below the standard price for the bars (except for what you may find on sale) and they carry everything. There were no varieties or shapes that they make that I could not find on the shelves. The standard price for all 100 gram bars was .69 Euro (about 90 cents US). They were all fresh and in pristine condition and a pleasure to browse. In the back corner was the spot that I love factory stores for. It was where the seconds and over-runs were for sale. If I lived in the area, I’d be sure to visit often to see what turned up. There were plenty of bulk items, such as the Schokowurfel in bags. Far off there in the corner were piles on the shelves of plain white wrapped bars. They were test bars of new flavors, so I picked up a few of those for later investigation and indulgence. They were only a half a Euro each. The branded merchandise was nice. I liked the continuity of the themes, the colors and use of either the cross sections of the bars or the square shapes. However, the prices on these items were definitely premium retail. A little back backpack was 85 Euro. There were also large tins with the chocolate cross-section design - quite large and useful for only 7.50 Euro, but that largeness thing would have been an issue for getting them home. (But what a great gift idea to buy one of those tins, then one of the bulk bags of the minis and fill it up- the whole gag would be less than 20 Euro.) I picked up the coffee mug for my husband and filled it with minis for Christmas. So, if you’re in Stuttgart and tired of looking around at the cars or just swinging through the area, it’s a worthy diversion to Waldenbuch. There’s also a Ritter Sport shop in Berlin (which I doubt carries the factory over-runs) that has its own merits for it’s interior design.
Full Disclosure: My trip to Germany was sponsored by German Sweets, a government funded trade organization. While this provided me with excellent access to people in positions at the candy companies, in this case all of the products featured here were bought and paid for by me. Of course being at the factory store with its excellent prices which were a fraction of what I pay for the products in the United States probably prompted me to buy things I might not ordinarily. The Ritter Sport factory was not actually on the tour set up by German Sweets (though they’re members), but since it only took our tour bus 15 km out of our way on the last day of our travels, they agreed to stop at my request. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:06 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Christmas • Ritter Sport • Chocolate • Nuts • 7-Worth It • Germany • Shopping • Monday, December 26, 2011
Haribo Ingwer-Zitrone Gummis
One candy that I was actually on the look out for was the Haribo Ingwer-Zitrone gummis. They’re ginger and lemon flavored and perhaps a little less mainstream and kid-oriented than many of Haribo’s other offerings. I found them at a Rewe market and bought two bags. When I returned to the States I carefully moderated myself to make them last as long as possible. Sadly, they were gone by September. When I went to Germany a few weeks ago, these were definitely on my list. I didn’t find them at the first Rewe (grocery store) I visited but did find them at Kaufhof in Berlin (a huge department store with a large food section) ... I bought everything on the shelf, six bags (they were only .99 Euros each). The package says that they’re erfrischend scharf (refreshingly sharp) which would probably be because it’s made with real ginger and lemon. The pieces look like medallions of candied ginger, complete with a sanding of sugar (well, it’s not exactly sugar, it’s a sweet and sour sanding mix).
I know this isn’t for everyone, you really have to like both the gummi texture and the spicy combination of citrus and ginger. It’s my ideal gummi, probably my favorite thing this year and will go on my list of all time favorite candies. I even returned the next day to Kaufhof to see if they restocked, but it looks like these five packages I have left are going to have to last me a while. GermanDeli.com sells them, but they’re $2.99 a bag plus shipping and their $25 minimum order - that would average out to more than $4 a bag. I’m in love, but not that desperate ... yet. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:46 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Haribo • Ginger • Gummi Candy • 10-Superb • Germany •
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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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