I was more than pleased with the Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars that I reviewed last week.

The other half of Q.Bel Foods’ all natural candy line are their Wafer Rolls.

Unlike the bars, which are made in The Netherlands and not Kosher, the Wafer Rolls are Kosher and made in the United States.

They come in three companion varieties: Dark Chocolate Wafer Rolls, Milk Chocolate Wafer Rolls and Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Wafer Rolls.

The packaging is a bit overly-protective and perhaps deceptive. 

There are two rolls in each package, which weigh .9 ounces total.

They come in a plastic wrap around a plastic tray. The tray does a good job of keeping the rolls in good shape. But I think if you’re going to position yourself as an all natural product, less packaging is a good idea. (Especially when your tagline is Be True - Be Honest - Be Good.)

I would suggest doing a sealed top on the tray with all the label on that and ditching the over-wrap. (Kind of like most yogurt got rid of the plastic lids and just went with a foil seal.)

The rolls are lovely to look at. A slender stick about .5 inches in diameter and 4.75 inches long, the enrobing is nicely rippled and usually has a matte shine to it. The sides were sometimes scuffed a bit from being tossed around in my bag inside the package.

I was, as you can imagine, most attracted to the Dark Chocolate Wafer Rolls.

The dark chocolate is quite dark looking though like the bar counterpart, did contain milk in the ingredients. Not that it would make any difference towards the non-dairy status of the bar. The wafer roll under the chocolate was crisp and flaky, with a light malty note, a bit of salt, it reminded me of a fresh waffle ice cream cone.

The chocolatey cream inside was also a dark and firm cream that melted pretty readily with the help of some palm kernel and coconut oils. It tasted a lot like a good cup of hot chocolate with some wafer cookies.

The portion size of two sticks means that the whole thing has only 120 calories. Even though a lot of them are from fat, the price tag alone should keep most folks who weren’t sent a whole box as samples from wolfing them down.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Milk Chocolate Wafer Rolls looked a little different than their wafer bar counterpart, this time wrapped in blue instead of orange & red.

They smelled a bit more like milk and cereal with a little chocolate cake note to it.

The chocolate seemed a bit silkier and creamier than the dark version, but also much sweeter. The toasted-flavored wafer kept it from being too cloying.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Wafer Rolls smelled like fresh roasted peanut butter. (And I get to smell that often at the LA Farmers Market.)

The silky milk chocolate sets off the wafers, which seem even more flaky in this version than the others.

The peanut butter center on this tastes different than the wafer bar. The bar is sweet and sticky, a little oily. This is salty and pasty - just the right balance. The peanut butter is very strong with a slight bitterness to it, as it tastes very darkly roasted. (This version has 130 calories.)

Rating: 8 out of 10

Besides the packaging & price for the size (retail $1.39) I think these are a resounding success. They’re not unique, they remind me of Pirouline, except more decadent. Other products on the market that are similar are the Nestle Stixx, which I do like quite a bit but avoid because of all the hydrogenated oils in them. It might be nice to be able to get them in a large tray for entertaining. They’d be the perfect garnish for ice cream, sorbet or just an after-meal coffee.

Other reviews: Candy Addict just reviewed the whole line & Chocolate Blog also liked them.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Crunch Cappuccino Stixx
2. Butterfinger Stixx
3. KitKat Bitter & White
4. Nestle Crunch Dark Stixx
5. Milky Way Crispy Rolls
6. Paskesz Klik
7. Chocolate Pocky

One of the issues these days with candy bars isn’t the empty calories, it’s the ingredients. There’s a difference between bad for you (sound cue: giggle) and bad for you (sound cue: medical equipment).

I don’t usually feel bad about calories, fat or sugar. But I do feel weird about eating partially hydrogenated oils, artificial colors and flavors.

Enter Q.bel with their line of all-natural candy bars. No artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no hydrogenated oils, no high fructose corn sweetener and no preservatives.

The happy thing to report is that candy bars never needed any of the above to be good ... they just needed them to be cheap. So quality will cost you $1.39-$1.69 (but if you’re buying your candy at Whole Foods, that’s hardly a surprise).

Their inaugural line has six products. I’m going to review three of them today, their Crispy Wafer Bar which come in Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate and Peanut Butter.

The Dark Chocolate Crispy Rice Wafer Bar (purple wrapper) is a stack of three crisp, flavorless wafers filled with a chocolate cream, sprinkled with crisped rice and then covered in dark chocolate.

They come in a two pack of fingers. Each is about three inches long and three quarters of an inch wide.

If the photo and description sounds vaguely familiar to you, it might be because this is very similar to the Hershey’s Bar None. (Except there’s no peanuts in this version.)

The crunch is light and crisp, airy and a little like an ice cream cone. The chocolate is slightly bitter, creamy and sweet with a dry finish. The cream center is sweet and a little grainy but rather buttery.

The whole experience is extremely satisfying. It’s not really a chocolate bar, it’s definitely a candy. I am in love with this bar.

Rating: 10 out of 10 (as long as I can find it in stores)

The Milk Chocolate Crispy Rice Wafer Bars are just like the dark version except with 10 more calories.

They’re a lighter taste and seem to have more crunchies to them, but that just could be variations in the manufacture.

The scent is milky sweet with a slight cereal smell. There’s less of a chocolate punch here and more of a creamy, dairy milk chocolate event going on.

I was very pleased with it (and at first though this would be like Bar None, but it didn’t have the same punch).

Rating: 8 out of 10.

The Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Wafer Bars are a little different in that they don’t have the crisped rice. Instead of a chocolate cream filling they have a peanut butter filling between the wafers.

As I’m writing this I’ve been following the RSS feed from the FDA with all the recall warnings about peanut butter & peanut products. I’ve been assured by Q.bel directly and their website that they did not source their peanut butter from Peanut Corporation of America. (And it’s easy to believe them since these bars were manufactured in The Netherlands.

As with most nutty candies, this pair of bars clocked in with the highest calorie count: 190. (Don’t get the impression that these are dainty when it comes to calories, they’re dense in sugar and fat, clocking in on the upper range of the calories per ounce that I track.)

The bars are lovely to look at with their rippled coats of chocolate. They smell like fresh roasted peanuts.

The bite on these is very different. The peanut butter cream filling tastes unsalted and unsugared - so it’s a startling pop of real peanut flavor. But it’s very oily and soft, so when I bite into the bar, sometimes I’ve broken it because it’ll slide around (you can see the kind of crack it makes along the wafer line in the photo).

The peanut butter, while not crumbly or thick really sticks to my ribs. I found just one stick here to be very filling. The milk chocolate holds its own in this battle as well, giving a sweet and milky component to bring it all together.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

I’m so pleased that someone is making a quality product and I hope Q.bel becomes a standard in the confectionery industry. That you can make something with real ingredients and still make people want to overeat it. The packaging is compelling and appropriate. It protects the product inside, doesn’t take up too much space and gave me all the information I wanted to know. The images on the front are tantalizing and the bars actually look like that.

The portions may seem a little small, only 1.1 ounces, but they appear large because of the light wafers inside (maybe a little smaller than a KitKat bar). However, this also lowers the calorie count per portion, all are under 200 calories (which means those 100 calorie folks can just eat one). The price point is a little steep too, but if I were faced with an array of these and something like Nestle’s Crunch Crisp bar (which is a one-bar version of this filled with partially hydrogenated fats and covered with mockolate), I’d pick these at twice/thrice the price.

The other half of their product line is a series of Wafer Rolls in the same flavor array. (I’ll have a review of those soon.)

Q.bel did some liberal mailing of samples, so expect more reviews to pop up on the other food-oriented blogs. They did send me a silly-huge number of “samples” which were a box of each (20 bars) flavor. I’ve been very popular with my co-workers this week.

UPDATE: They should be available at most Whole Foods nationwide and online at Natural Candy Store.

Related Candies

1. Q.Bel Mint Wafer Bars
2. Choceur Luxury Mini Chocolate Bars
3. ReeseSticks (Revisit)
4. Ritter Schokowurfel
5. Ferrero Raffaello & Rondnoir
6. Happy Hippos
7. Head-to-Head KitKat vs KitKat!
8. Butterfinger Crisp

As a huge fan of citrus, I was immediately smitten with Yuzu. Though they look like bumpy, ugly grapefruits they’re a bit more like tangerines.

I first experienced it in candy with the Yuzu HiCHEW and have eagerly consumed anything Yuzu I can get my hands on since. (And am considering planting a Yuzu tree in my back yard.)

So the Yuzu KitKat was enough to get me to place a pre-Christmas order with JBox. However, they were pretty expensive. $4.25 for 150 grams.

These little minis are two short fingers in a package (66 calories).

They smell like tangerines, chocolate and Cheerios.

The chocolate is rich and creamy and the zesty notes of Yuzu, which include grapefruit, mandarin, lime and tangerine come across immediately. The crunchy and bland wafers give it a bit of crunch. Towards the end there’s even a little bit of a bitter aftertaste from the citrus zest.

One of my favorite Japanese KitKats ever.

Rating: 9 out of 10

KitKat Oshiruko

Azuki beans are used to make many confections in Japan, including a thick and sweet paste filling for mochi and a dessert soup called Oshiruko. Oshiruko varies depending on where you get it, but the little picture on the box looks like a thin, sweet bean broth with azuki beans and a dumpling of mochi in the middle.

The first Azuki KitKat I had was a white chocolate version, so I was definitely curious to try the red bean and milk chocolate combo in the newest Limited Edition from Nestle Japan.

This is definitely the kind of KitKat that fits into my mantra of “open your mouth, expand your mind.” Before I started my candy obsessed website I was pretty content with my American and sometimes Italian candies. I stuck to flavors and combinations that seemed logical to me. Combining beans and sugar (besides perhaps molasses baked beans) didn’t seem very confectionery to me. But now that I’ve had a good amount of mochi and red bean caramels I can say that beans are a natural, earthy & textured base flavor for candy.

This KitKat comes in the lovely box that is common in the Asian KitKats. Each little portion holds a two fingered KitKat. The front of this wrapper also has the new style of nutritional labeling that includes the calories right there - 110.

They’re glossy and pretty out of the mylar wrapper.

They smell like dirt. There are notes of freshly sawn wood, beets, caramel and rusted iron. It’s quite a different experience.

The bite and textures are the same as other KitKats. The milk chocolate is sweet and pretty creamy. The wafers are light and crunchy. The flavor is just as it smells - beets, charcoal, a hint of milk chocolate and butterscotch pudding. The Azuki flavor doesn’t quite make it in there, in fact, if I didn’t know that it was a red bean KitKat I probably would have guessed beets.

It’s not bad, a little bitter at times (which I don’t usually experience with other red bean items) but overall a tasty experience.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Grapefruit Mentos (Japan)
2. Japanese Black Sugar & Tropical Chews
3. Candy Bites: The Sweet, Crunchy & Creamy
4. Frey Supreme: White, Lemon & Lime and Citron & Poivre
5. Niederegger Marzipan Orange
6. KitKat Red Bean & Fruit Parfait

At Thanksgiving I always get a hostess gift from my sister-in-law. Always chocolate. Always an indulgent amount.

This year it was from Theobroma Chocolatier, a family run Albuquerque confectionery shop.

There were quite a few items in the bag but this has to be the best among them (and it was hard to chose which one to profile).

The package doesn’t list what they are, but a little note in the bag let me know that this is their Chocolate y Maiz.

For those who don’t know Spanish, that’s Chocolate and Corn.

These rustic looking disks are huge. At about 3.5 to 4 inches across, each weighs over an ounce (I didn’t weigh them, I’m just guessing).

They’re a lovely glossy dark chocolate with a caramel colored chocolate striping which really saves the appearance.

The chocolate is mellow, a semi-sweet it has some nice fruity tones, only a slight dry finish. The tempering and snap is great and the chocolate has a smooth, creamy melt. The star here is the inclusion of corn flakes. That’s it. Just a big plop of dark chocolate with corn flakes in it.

The corn flakes are crunchy and have a great malty flavor with a little salty and corny taste to it.

They’re wonderfully satisfying - so much so that just a half of a disk was plenty. I’ve had these for almost a month and they’re still not gone. (But it was a big bag!) But they also keep exceptionally well and pair with other items easily. They’re a bit of a change of pace from the Ritter Sport Knusperflakes (Corn Flakes) bar which is milk chocolate.

Related Candies

1. Isle of Skye Seeds of Change Milk with Crispies
2. BonBonBars: Malt Ganache & Scotch
3. Hershey’s with Crisp Corn Bits
4. Ferrero Raffaello & Rondnoir
5. Paskesz Klik
6. Xocoatl 73.5%
7. Ritter Sport Assortment

I was tickled when I spied this tin of Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Gingersnaps last week.

When I was in Pennsylvania visiting my brother he took me to the Lancaster County Farmers Market as one of the stops on a candy adventure. There I found Nancy’s Candy Corner (not really a corner as it was in a center aisle). This vendor has everything covered in chocolate. Their specialty seemed to be pretzels. Pretzels dipped in chocolate. Pretzels dipped in chocolate and then rolled in things (toffee chips, chocolate chips, Oreo bits, sprinkles). Lots and lots of pretzel options. There were more traditional options like peanut butter straws. I bought a variety including some Milk and Dark chocolate covered German Spice Cookies.

They were fabulous. The cookies were dense and crunchy, the chocolate was sweet and creamy and then they were gone.

This is why I was so pleased to see these at Trader Joe’s, something I could buy locally, even if only temporarily. At 5.99 for the 10 ounce tin, it was one of the pricier confectionery items I’ve bought at Trader Joe’s lately.

The decription on the bottom of the tin makes my mouth water.

Molasses, ginger, cloves and vanilla ... these aromatic ingredients are the hallmark of gingersnap cookies. We’ve taken it one step further by gliding tiny gingersnap cookies with dark chocolate. For a sophisticated treat that mixes the creamy richness of chocolate with crunchy, spicy cookies.

Inside was a cellophane bag of shiny chocolate nuggets:

They smell of cloves, cinnamon and chocolate.

The pieces are irregular, ranging in size from a garbanzo bean to a hazelnut in the shell. The chocolate coating is glossy.

The chocolate is creamy and sweet, really has a silky mouthfeel. The spices of the cookie are overpowering, so the chocolate flavors aren’t as forward, but the texture makes a huge contribution here.

The cookies are fabulous. The woodsy molasses sets the stage for the immediate clove flavor and then the warming spices really kick in. I found they warmed my throat after two or three with both a gingery kick as well as a black pepper burn.

Trader Joe’s doesn’t have clearance sales after the holidays, so there’s no way to get these cheap or regularly. I can only hope they’ll sell them in the little tubs all year round and I don’t have to create a collection of these tins.

Related Candies

1. Starbucks Chocolate: Eggnog Latte Truffles
2. Molasses Pops
3. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites
4. Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses
5. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
6. Ethel Holiday Assortment

I’m not completely convinced that just because something is covered with chocolate that it’s candy, but I couldn’t resist a little roundup of these two chocolate covered cookies.

I first had Trader Joe’s Peppermint Joe Joe’s last year and thought they were tasty - a chocolate cookie sandwich with a mint cream filling, but like Hydrox. I had a bit of trouble with the fact that the cookie part wasn’t quite as good as the Oreo.

Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe Joe’s sucked me in this year. I mean, look, they’re covered in real dark chocolate!

The regular Joe Joe’s come in a one pound package, which is pretty dangerous in my house. Though I’m not a cake or baked goods fan in general, I do have a cookie problem. (If Candy Blog were to ever expand, it’d be into cookie reviews.)

The cute tray was sealed in cellophane and protected every single cookie from any damage in transit.

There are ten in all. Each is dusted with a bit of crushed mint candies.

They smell very minty, to the exclusion of all other flavors, such as chocolate.

They’re also pretty hefty, clocking in at about one ounce each. (And 150 calories.)

The cookie is crumbly and has a dark toasted cocoa flavor. The chocolate is creamy and perhaps a little sweet. The cream filling is where this doesn’t go as well, it’s grainy, which is fine, but it’s also a bit greasy. If I eat it all as a sandwich together, it’s great. Eating just the filling is a disappointment.

The ingredients list was pretty clear. Real chocolate, no artificial flavors or colors ... the only item that gives some folks pause is palm oil. (But some of the sugar is actually organic evaporated cane juice.)

Overall, it’s super tasty and should be enjoyed like a candy and not a cookie. (If you’re wondering what the difference is, I’d say that a serving of cookies like Oreos is three, but for these, the serving size is one.)

Rating: 8 out of 10.

I had Nabisco’s Pure Milk Chocolate Covered Mint Oreo Sandwich Cookies earlier this year. I found them in a little package at a drug store in Santa Monica while picking up some items for a beach picnic. I ate them in the car on the way there. It wasn’t until I was shopping at Target last week that I found them in a larger package.

This is a dangerous thing. I like them a bit too much.

The Oreos come in a tray with individual slots. There are 12 cookies in the box instead of 10 in the Joe Joe’s (but this box weighs only 7.5 ounces instead of 9.4). I don’t know the regular price on these, they were $2.50 on sale so were less per ounce than the Joe Joe’s.

As I expected the ingredients list wasn’t quite as wholesome, but I’ve got to give credit to Nabisco for not coloring the cream centers pink or green. The chocolate is real, but there’s palm oil in there and way down on the list is a bit of high fructose corn sweetener. All the other ingredients are pretty much the usual stuff.

The tray protected the individual cookies well, each one was glossy and had wonderful little ripples of milk chocolate on top.

These also smelled strongly of peppermint, and a little bit of milk.

The cookie crumble of the Oreo is spectacular. It’s a little sandy and releases immediate salty and smoky cocoa notes. The soft crunch is punctuated by the smooth milk chocolate, which isn’t as sweet as I would have expected (especially after having the Joe Joe’s). The cream center is grainy, lightly minted but without any greasiness to the fatty cream.

Each cookie is 90 calories and weighs about .65 ounces.

They’re stellar.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Related Candies

1. Mint Crisp M&Ms (Indiana Jones)
2. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
3. Asher’s Milk Chocolate Covered Things
4. KitKat Mint Dark Chocolate Minis
5. Hershey’s Cookies and Brownies
6. Best Regards: Craves
7. Head to Head: Cookie Joys vs Cookies n Mint

Years ago, before the current rage of putting carbonated popping candy into chocolate, there was a Wonka bar called the Exploder. It was released in 1999, though I don’t recall seeing it until the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie was released in theaters. And then poof, it was gone before I even got to try it.

Flash forward about four years and suddenly chocolate and pop rocks are all the rage. And finally Wonka (part of Nestle) has gotten back into the act. Earlier this year they released Wonka Tinglerz which they bill as Poppin’ Tinglin’ Chocolate Candy or Chocolattos que revientan en tu boca.

The package doesn’t hold much, just an ounce, but comes at a pretty dear price of a normal sized candy bar. (I got mine for $.69 at KMart.)

I honestly just figured that these were chocolate covered pop rocks, just like the ones made by the Pop Rocks folks themselves.

Nope, Nestle Wonka-fied these and the result is pretty surprising.

Instead of just chocolate covered unflavored pop rocks, it’s a combination of pop rocks and crisped rice. So biting into the bits, it was a gamble as to whether they were going to bite back.

The flavor isn’t as stellar as I’d like though. The chocolate is sweet and waxy and tastes more like powdered hot cocoa mix than rich chocolate. But the malty flavors of the crisped rice and of course the blend of textures sets this apart from other candies.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Above, on the left are Wonka Tinglerz. On the right are Nestle Buncha Crunch. Obviously Buncha Crunch are bigger nuggets (though some were the same size).

Pretty different, not just in size.

Buncha Crunch came along after I’d already made my crisped rice affections be known. As I’d already decided that I didn’t like Nestle Crunch much any longer, trying Nestle’s movie bite version seemed silly.

So at least I get to approach this with an open mind!

The movie box was a pretty good deal at only a dollar and filled with 3.2 ounces.

The idea behind the candy is pretty simple, globs of crisped rice covered in milk chocolate. They’re irregular, some as large as hazelnuts, some as small as peas.

They smell milky and sweet, a little malty.

Biting into them, they’re less than crunchy. There’s a lot of chocolate in most of them, which is a disappointment for someone who is expecting bunches of crunches.

The texture of the chocolate is decent. There’s a little waxy glaze on the bits but the chocolate flavor is mostly sweet, kind of musty and empty.

I was hoping the crunches would offset the sweetness or have a little salty kick. I can see these being a nice antidote to popcorn, but that’s about it.

Crispy M&Ms were far better at this game.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Nestle Treasures 50% Cacao Dark Chocolate Truffle
2. Christopher Elbow: No. 6 - Dark Rocks
3. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
4. Pop Rocks Milk Chocolate Bar
5. Pop Rocks and Shoogy Boom
6. K Chocolatier
7. Wonka Bar

While in Ohio popped into an Aldi’s market as my mother had scouted out their candy section for me. This international chain is kind of like Trader Joe’s or Fresh & Easy, offering low prices for standard and gourmet fare with most products under house brands and a rather warehouse-style shopping environment.

One of Aldi’s brands of confections is called Choceur and is priced so well that I was dubious that it could be any good at all. But they have a Double Quality Guarantee, which means if I don’t like it, they’ll give me another and my money back.

This box was called Choceur Luxury Mini Chocolate Bars and described on the front as Bittersweet chocolate bars with hazelnuts and rice crisps in a chocolate creme filling.

That sounded pretty much like a cross between Perugina Baci and Ferrero Rocher or maybe Ferrero Mon Cheri. This 7.05 ounce package was only $1.89.

Inside the box are 11 little bars, which are more like sticks. They’re about 3.5 inches long and .75 inches wide and .5 inches tall. Each is nicely molded with a simple design on top and made the trip from Ohio, through Pennsylvania and back to California without incident. Each little bar has 100 calories (and unlike the 100 Calorie Chocolate Bars I wrote about yesterday, the packaging here has the appropriate balance of protecting the product, advertising the contents and not taking up more space than it needs to).

The little sticks have a sweet hazelnut and chocolate aroma.

The bite is soft, the center is a buttery light chocolate cream with little crisped rice bits and crushed hazelnuts. The hazelnut flavor isn’t overwhelming, not quite as intense as Baci or a true gianduia, but amazingly satisfying.

The chocolate is silky and smooth, but doesn’t have a lot of pop to it. It doesn’t detract from the bar much, it just supports the texture and gives a small bittersweet background to the sweet creme center.

Overall, for the price these are amazing. They’re the perfect little treat for coffee or tea, an afternoon snack or something to tuck into a lunch without breaking the bank. Or a hostess gift or perhaps dump them out of the box and put them in Christmas stockings. Are there better versions of this out there? Sure, but even Ferrero Rocher or Perugina Baci costs about $6 for the same amount but most of that is packaging and you’re not likely to see commercials for these.

I have another Choceur bar that I bought at the same time that I’m quite eager to try ... especially since this box is almost gone.

Related Candies

1. Harry & David Chocolate Pinecones
2. Short & Sweet: Hazelnut Bites
3. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts
4. Ritter Schokowurfel
5. Milka Alpenmilch