I stared and stared at these at the Target a couple of weeks ago and thought, “I have these eggs, that’s enough Lindt for one Easter.”

But then I was back in Target again last week and there they were, further on sale (only $1.33 for the package instead of $1.66 on sale). It was the fact that they were hazelnut that got me. Or maybe that they were carrot-shaped. Or maybe that I only had one item and I’d already walked about 2.3 miles around the circumference of the new Harbor City store and that negates any calories in my basket, right?

The little box holds four of the carrots. They’re billed on the box as, “Solid Milk Chocolate blended with Hazelnut.” That sounds like guanduia!

Honestly, I was thinking it would be a hazelnut paste filling, not a whole stick of guanduia, but I’m not saying I’m disappointed.

Out of the foil the little confections stop looking like carrots and now look like folded umbrellas completely with a hooked handle. Very springy! They’re about 5.25” tall, with the chocolate portion at about 2.75” high. Each portion of chocolate is rather small, about .4 ounces or so (rather like the little traditional Piedmontese hats).

The chocolate is less milky tasting than the regular Lindt variety, instead it has some dark roasted nut notes and of course that rib-sticking hazelnut satisfaction.

They’re a cute little novelty, and at that price and with no artificial ingredients, it’s hard to beat. Unless you want some pretty foil-wrapped mockolate. I’m sure there’s something you can do with the leftover little sticks too, maybe something for Barbie or GI Joe. Definitely an item to pick up on clearance.

Made in Austria.

Related Candies

1. Milka Alpenmilch
2. Caffarel Gianduias
3. Caffarel Chocolate Truffle Mushrooms
4. Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs
5. Caffarel Gianduia 1865

Ferrero always does a nice job of packaging their chocolates. They’re best known for their clear plastic boxes, which show off the lovely foil wrappings of their spheres of Rocher, Rondnoir and now the Ferrero Garden.

While most of what you’re paying for in these boxes is the box itself, for drug store or discounter fare, the Ferrero line is dependable and unique enough in its offerings that I’m often drawn to it.

Ferrero sent me a box of one of their special packages for Easter. This one is the Prestige assortment, which includes their trio of favorites weighing 4.8 ounces and shaped like an egg. There are five Rochers, four Rondnoir and four Garden (13 pieces total, I don’t know if that’s a comment on the Last Supper or not ... I’m doubting it).

I’ve reviewed the Rafaello and the Mon Cheri, but not the Garden. Honestly, I thought it was the Rafaello, just thrown inside some silver foil and given a new name. And it pretty much is.

There seems to be a lighter coconut coating, and instead of being completely spherical, these have a little flat bottom. The top has a little dollop & drizzle of a white confection (they call it meringue, but really it’s more like a white chocolate).

Inside is a milky tasting cream and a little sliver of almond. It’s all very sweet but has a nice touch of coconut and the crisp of the wafer cookie sphere balances it all well.

The assortment here has a good balance between the very sweet, mild & nutty and dark intense chocolate. The plastic tray can be popped out and the domed egg container can be reused. (There are no stickers to take off or anything.) The only drawback is that the plastic box doesn’t stay closed very well when tipped up on its side, so it’s more of a display box than a utility one.

They also come in other shapes, like bunnies and a stand-up egg. These should retail for about $5.50. (The non-holiday version of this is $6.99 on the Walgreen’s website for 5.5 ounces.)

Related Candies

1. Kisses Coconut Creme
2. Godiva Easter Eggs
3. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
4. Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs

New Orleans is known for food, from the Creole and Cajun traditions to confections based on the locally grown pecans and of course the abundant sugar that comes through the port.

What New Orleans may have been lacking was a European-style chocolatier. That changed when Joel Dondis (who already has two restaurants in NOLA) opened Sucre late last year. By the way, I think that’s the perfect proportion - one sweet shop for every two restaurants.  Some cities may approach that, but Los Angeles is certainly woefully under-sweeted. (No, I don’t count frozen yogurt.)

Blake Killian and has been sending samples out to many of the candy, chocolate and food bloggers. (So if you haven’t already seen these reviews, be prepared for others to come.)

Torrone - Double cream milk chocolate ganache paired with a sweet hazelnut wafer crunch

Crispy little hazelnut crunch bits (kind of like corn flakes), sweet and creamy chocolate.

Avery - Caramel and milk chocolate ganache enhanced by salt from the Avery Mines, presented in the shape of a Fleur de Lis

Mine didn’t look quite like a Fleur de Lis, but still, it had some nice burnt sugar notes in a ganache center.

Sucre Dark - Our signature, showcasing our single bean chocolate from the Maracaibo region of Venezuela

Tangy, a bit dry and very dark with some berry and nutty butter notes

Blange - Inspired by Paul Blange’s Bananas Foster, this white chocolate ganache is finished with fresh banana and a hint of rum

A light banana flavor, kind of green with a hint of nutmeg and pudding. Not quite enough bananas or foster for me ... this was the one I was really looking forward to.

The Lavender one ... I couldn’t find a description for this, but basically it felt like a nice dark chocolate ganache with a light violet essence to it. But I could have just been tasting the purple. Later I thought maybe it was jasmine, which is something that I associate with the deep south.

Meunierre - A New Orleans classic made sweeter, a brown butter and toasted almond infused white chocolate ganache (Molded Fleur de Lis)

Nice salty and creamy center with just a little darker undertone

Lemon Confit - A zesty ganache of dark chocolate and lemon

An interesting little cigarette shaped chocolate. The chocolate isn’t the star here, it’s the lemon zest, with a light tang of lemon juice as well. I could have used a bit more chocolate, a bit more creaminess. Really, I didn’t like this one.

Magnolia - Pecan ganache finished with a southern pecan half

Sweet and soft filling, nutty notes of pecan that mixes well with the chocolate shell

Sicillian Pistachio cinnamon & vanilla complement the silky white chocolate ganache

Grassy and floral, the white chocolate seems to stand up well to the cinnamon.

I liked the variations in the flavors, the chocolate was well tempered and each piece was lovely. The ingredients tasted fresh and the chocolate was very high quality. I really liked the variations in the shapes of the pieces. There’s nothing wrong with everything being little squares, but in this case I found that the shapes really provided an additional dimension to each tiny experience.

The shop also sells French-style macarons, panned nuts, muscadines, pate de fruits and the cafe experience in the store promises much more from their dessert case.

The box was well packaged for shipping, which I note because of some of my bad experiences lately.

I’m not sure if I would order these up special, but I definitely have them on my list of places to stop at when I’m in New Orleans or check out if I see in another shop. It’s pricey stuff though, so it’s probably reserved for very special ocassions or people with large amounts of disposable income.

Related Candies

1. BonBonBars: Malt Ganache & Scotch
2. L’Artisan du Chocolat
3. Theo Confections
4. Charles Chocolates
5. CocoaBella “World’s Best Box”
6. Recchiuti

Since I’m still down with this aggravating illness, I thought I’d do some short & sweet briefs on a few things that I’ve been eating. Mostly it’s stuff that I’ve reviewed but in different flavors & varieties ... so they don’t warrant a full write-up on their own.

I took a little jaunt to Little Tokyo three weeks ago because I was craving the Gummy Choco I had last year. Mitsuwa Marketplace (3rd & Alameda) has an awesome selection, including single flavor packs of Muscat and Strawberry. I opted for the Strawberry Gummy Choco. (Oh, and I got another tube of the mixed fruits.) However, the price seemed to be better at Nijiya Market in Little Tokyo Village at only $1.49 instead of $2.49 ... but of course parking is a little more difficult over there at times.

They have a milk chocolate coating with an innner coating of real white chocolate. The gummy center is a rich and jammy strawberry. Ultra-soft and combines well with the creamy chocolate.

They’re still a satisfying candy to eat when you have no sense of smell, the combination of textures and the zap of the tart berry center keeps me amused.

Rating: 9 out of 10

I picked up another brand of Wheat Chocolate at Mitsuwa. This bag was a little smaller, but basically the same price per ounce and had the same decent quality chocolate coating.

It’s as simple as can be, just puffed wheat (I think puffed barley, actually) that’s covered in a shiny & thin coat of milk chocolate.

It’s sweet and kind of earthy and freakishly addictive. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but I think I prefer the Japan Confectionery brand, if only because each kernel was separate from the others. It seemed like more of these were stuck together. ($1.69 for 4 ounces ... which doesn’t sound like much, but there’s a lot of air in there.)

This stuff should be sold in movie theaters ... it’s an ideal movie candy.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Back in November I visited with Chuck Siegel at Charles Chocolates and saw all the new stuff, including a preview of one of his new bars that sounded right up my alley: Candied Hazelnut in Dark Chocolate.

What has me so excited (besides the prospect of creamy dark chocolate with perfectly roasted hazelnuts) was that it might be an easier to find version of that wonderful Spanish bar I had last summer: Avellana Caramelizada Chocolate by Mallorca.

Instead of whole hazelnuts encased in a crunchy sugar glaze, these were bits of hazelnuts. The bits were crunchy and fresh, but didn’t have quite the burnt sugary crust that I was aching for. (But how was Chuck to know that’s what my expectation was?)

It’s still a great bar, I love his 65% dark chocolate blend. It has an excellent soft and silky melt, it’s a little tangy with mostly mellow flavors that let the other inclusions shine. I would have liked slightly bigger crunchy bits.

The packaging has changed slightly with the Charles Chocolates bars as well. When I first tried them each bar was wrapped in a microthin piece of foil. Now they’re a metallic airtight pack inside the box. Probably a much better way to keep the chocolate fresh in the stores, but not as easy to reseal if you tear the bag when opening.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The last item is kind of a fun thing that I picked up last summer. I noticed that there were two different designs for the same roll of Cryst-O-Mint Lifesavers on the shelves at Walgreen’s, so I picked them up.

Over the years Lifesavers has changed more than their packaging. The only thing that has remained the same is the shape of their product. The familiar donut shape is here to stay, even if they’re made in Canada now.

The Cryst-O-Mint is unlike the other mint Lifesavers in that it’s a boiled sugar sweet, not a compressed dextrose candy.

It’s not an intense mint like an Altoid, just a soft and clean peppermint flavor. The production of the candy is good, the pieces were all intact and didn’t have any voids or sharp spots like some of those Brach’s Ice Blue mints.

Also a plus, there are no artificial colors in there, because they’re colorless. If they’d just left out the High Fructose Corn Sweetener, they’d actually be an all-natural candy.

You can read more about the Lifesavers redesign here.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Related Candies

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2. Candy Dump 2008 part 2
3. The Candy Dump 2008
4. Welcome to the Candy Dump
5. Charles Chocolates Bars
6. Lifesaver Musk

Last year I ordered some wonderful products from Artisan Sweets which included this Nougat aux Figues: Cuit au Chaudron. I promptly took a photo of the product and then ate it.

Made by Suprem’ Nougat G. Savin in Montelimar, France it is much like the Arnaud Soubeyran Montelimar Nougat  that I’ve had previously, meaning it has wonderful lavender honey in it along with a generous embed of almonds. Of course it also has bits of figs in there too, as you might have guessed from the picture and name.

The figs gave the nougat a bit of texture, with the crunchy little seeds and combined well with the musky notes of the lavender honey. It seemed to make the whole thing a little sweeter, but it was a fresh taste. It’s expensive stuff, so it’s a sometimes-indulgence for me. ($8.00 for 3.52 ounces.)

I picked up these nice sized samples at the Fancy Food Show from K.L. Keller Imports. She also handles the excellent G. Savin nougats

This particular nougat has full macadamias in it. It’s a light nougat, it actually felt lighter than many nougats in the hand. The scent was a light vanilla, almost like toasted marshmallows. Wow, the marshmallow comparison was evident once I bit into it. The nougat is fluffy and completely smooth ... there’s no hint of sugary grain to it at all.

While I was completely missing any honey notes and macadamias aren’t my favorite nut, this was fantastic. Sweet without being sticky or cloying and just the right balance with the neutrality of the macadamias.

Walters is a South African company (which explains the macadamias) and besides these samples and a store I found in the UK online, I don’t know where else to get this. I guess I’ll just have to keep hitting Keller’s booth at the trade shows. Here’s a review from Our Adventures in Japan of the Almond variety.

I’ve been on the prowl for good sources of Caffarel in the United States. Besides picking up those few pieces at The Candy Store in San Francisco and seeing them at trade shows, I’m completely at an impasse on how to find them besides hyping them on Candy Blog in hopes that more shops will carry them.

And why? Their products are good quality and in most cases so freaking cute I want to put a leash on them and buy them squeaky toys.

Above is one of the new items they were showing called Conetto, which is like a teensy Drumstick Ice Cream Cone (warning, sound on that site).

The little confection is about 3 1/2” tall. The waffle cone holds a firm guanduia that is then rolled in little toasted cereal “nuts” with a few little chocolate chips tossed in there. The hazelnut paste is soft enough to bite like ice cream with the added bonus that it doesn’t melt. So take your time.

It only weighs .9 ounces, so it’s probably not a show-stopper when it comes to calories and since indulgence is partially about appearance, this might be an excellent calorie controlled treat. (Of course the wrapper doesn’t say how many calories, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s not more than 150.) Now the only things holding me back are where to get them and how much do they cost?

Another little sample from another hard-to-find Italian chocolatier.

BruCo makes wonderful flavored chocolate bars. I’ve had their orange one and rum one and thought they were quite nice with an attractive package. Last year at the Fancy Food Show I also tried their spiced chocolate and found it far too spicy for me. This year that had some other items that were definitely to my liking: BruCo Salt Tasting Chocolate, Ciocc’Olio & Cabosse.

Ciocc’Olio: The firm white chocolate center has a quick buttery melt. The taste is not strongly of olives. I was expecting a sort of grassy quality to it, but instead it was more nutty. It was definitely smooth and set off by the equally smooth and slippery melt of the dark chocolate shell.

Cabosse: I wasn’t quite sure what this was supposed to be. At first I thought it was a dark chocolate guanduia, but later I thought it was simply a firm ganache with cacao nibs in it. Strong and fruity, this was a nice piece, the perfect size and really attractive.

I also tried a Salt Tasting Chocolate set. I’ll probably have a full review of that at a later date. Basically it’s two different versions of a salted chocolate in one package. Hooray for variety.

One of the other companies that I see at the trade show a lot is Marich. They’re known for their fine panned chocolates, especially their Holland Mints and produced the first gourmet malted milk balls in flavors like Espresso and Peanut Butter.

They’re based in Hollister, California (which seems to be a hotbed of panning with other confectioners like Jelly Belly, Sconza and Gimbal’s nearby) but seem rather hard to find. Part of it is that they sell in bulk to many shops that repackage the product without reference to the supplier or they end up in bulk bins. In this case I found this little package of their Triple Chocolate Toffee at Ralph’s in Glendale after trying them at the All Candy Expo.

They were absurdly expensive considering everything else in that aisle, $2.89 for that handful pictured above. But they are lovely to look at. They smell great too, like burnt sugar.

I didn’t know at first if the triple was referring to how much chocolate was on the outside or the fact that there were three different kinds. But suffice to say that either title works, because there is a lot of chocolate on each of these ... a pretty precise proportion that matches well with the chunk of butter toffee at the center. The toffee itself is wonderfully crisp and has that great cleave that very buttery toffee has. A little salty, it balances well with the not-so-dark but also not-too-sweet chocolates.

I’d probably pick these up again, but not at this price. Luckily Marich has a webstore.

Everything here gets an 8 out of 10 but no further specs as I don’t know retail prices (unless otherwise noted), calorie profile and often not even the ingredients.

Related Candies

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2. Marich Chocolate Sea Salt Cashews
3. Laica & Caffarel Chocolate Eggs
4. Caffarel Figs & Chestnuts (Fico & Castagna)
5. Nougat de Montelimar

I admit that they look more like hockey pucks than decadent candy. I’ve probably even seen them before, but walked right by them. But this year for the Fancy Food Show, because I had so little time on the floor, I prepared a hit list by clicking through to every website of any company that listed themselves in the confectionery category.

That’s when I found Colt’s Bolts. At first, by the name and photo of the product, I thought they were some sort of sports tie in. (Really, I had this whole story in my head that had formed about this southern Indiana hockey team - of course that makes no sense, Colts Bolts are made in Tennessee and have nothing to do with hockey or football.)

They’re gourmet peanut butter cups, with a little twist.

Instead of sitting in a fluted cup, these are a layered confection. A chocolate base, a peanut butter middle with crunchy whole almonds and then a chocolate layer to top it off.

(Oops, now that I’ve looked over their site again, they show the Colts Bolts flipped over with the small side on the top. How embarrassing!)

The Milk Chocolate variety is pretty hefty. They weigh in at 2 full ounces.

Inside the outer foil wrap the puck is wrapped in some plastic wrap ... and extra layer of protection.

After fumbling with that (it’s cling wrap ... it clings!) the scent of the peanut butter is quite strong. It’s a dark roasted smell, but the appearance of the peanut butter is rather light and has a hydrogenated vegetable oil in it as well as some actual butter. Biting into it, the peanut butter is smooth but not sticky. And then there are the almonds. I don’t think I took a single bite of this without getting an almond. They’re not huge almonds, but they’re crunchy and plentiful.

The chocolate is mild and melts well, giving a creamy and sweet counterpart to the otherwise “it’s all about the nuts” center.

I enjoy dark chocolate, but I’m never quite convinced that it’s the best choice for peanuts. The darker notes of chocolate seem to bring out the bitterness of peanuts and the more charcoal flavors.

In the Classic Dark Chocolate’s case it was true as well. This puck was much less sweet and more about the textures and powerful single notes. The flavor of the dark chocolate stood apart from the peanut butter. The textures though were amazing. The dark chocolate was quite buttery, actually slippery on the tongue which lubricated the stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth peanut butter, thus keeping it all swirling about.

This particular dark puck didn’t have quite as many almonds in it, but I’ll chalk that up to variations in a handmade product.

The peanut butter here is rather different from the crumbly & slightly crunchy version that Reese’s fans are accustomed to. This is truly a paste, very finely ground so it’s more about the flavor of the nuts than the texture.

They’re actually pretty well priced for an upscale treat at $29.00 for two pounds on their website (less than $1.00 per Bolt). I’ve never seen them in stores but if you do see them, they’re certainly worth $2 retail for a single.

Related Candies

1. See’s Egg Quartet
2. Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups
3. Choxies in Boxies
4. More Satisfying Snickers Almond?
5. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
6. Take 5 Peanut Butter

Years ago when I was in college I went to see Twelfth Night at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It’s a cool outdoor venue and in true Elizabethan style they had concessions (candies) available to eat right there at your seat. I bought a roll of licorice toffee, I believe by Callard & Bowser. I thought I was getting a roll of licorice medallions or a hard candy flavored with licorice or something.

Instead it was a roll of soft caramels ... licorice caramels. I quite liked them. I ate the whole roll. 

I bought them whenever I could find them, which wasn’t very often. And then I never saw them again. Turns out that Callard & Bowser, also known for their Altoids, is now owned by Wrigley’s and many of the traditional candies they used to make are gone.

There are other licorice taffies out there, and those are nice, but don’t have that mix of true cream and dark licorice that I love.

Then at the All Candy Expo I noticed that there were a few places that actually had licorice caramels. I was on a quest for the best. I found J. Morgan, already known in Utah for its excellent caramels. (Utah it seems is a hotbed of confection, owing I believe to the LDS prohibition on alcohol & caffeine.)

The glossy caramels wrapped in clear cellophane were quite appealing to behold. (The above tub actually has a mix of all of their products in it, not just the caramels.)

The Licorice Caramel is wonderfully creamy with a light anise touch that leaves a kind of cool effect on the tongue. The texture is exceptionally smooth, the chew is a bit stiff, but gives it up after warming in the mouth. (The short-caramel of the Callard & Bowser was grainy and not nearly as satisfying as these.)

The plain Butter Caramel is smooth, not a bit of grain to it and a nice well-toasted sugar flavor.

The other one I tried was a Pecan Caramel. The pecans weren’t big or plentiful but still added a nice buttery crunch and nutty maple flavor to them soft chew.

They make two lines of caramels, the ones profiled here are their Signature Caramels line called Old Fashioned Caramels and come in sealed cello. Their other line which is more affordable in the Heavenly Caramels line called Butter Caramels and are nice but have a slight grain to them, a less chewy chew and come in twisted cello pieces.

The ingredients for the Butter Caramels are: Sweetened Condensed Milk, Corn Syrup, Sugar, Cream, High Fructose Corn Sweetener, Palm Kernel Oil, Butter, Vanillin, Salt & Lecithin. So the majority of the sugar is from the sweetened condensed milk & corn syrup, but it looks like there’s a dash of HFCS. But all that condensed milk gives these 4% of your daily RDA of calcium in just 3 caramels!

They’re all tasty, but the Licorice Caramels are a standout of smooth creamy chew with that lovely woodsy hit of anise/licorice in it. (I do wish they’d sell a mixed tub though, so folks can sample.)

Related Candies

1. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
2. Russell Stover Organic Pecan Delight
3. Licorice Mentos
4. Bassett’s Licorice Allsorts
5. Green and Black Caramels

I haven’t written about Ritter Sport in a while, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been eating them. There’s a wonderful feature for the All Candy Expo attendees, it’s a candy room where they give you a little bag and you can fill it to the top with candy in a huge room of bins and barrels of the stuff. I found a tub of Ritter Sport Minis and took home about two pounds of the tiny buggers.

But I also stopped at the booth for the Ritter importer to see what was new and found a few bars I’ve never reviewed, including this hefty White Chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts bar.

I’ve hung onto this bar for a while because I really need to be in the “mood” for white chocolate. It was 43 degrees this morning in Los Angeles when I got in my car to go to work; brisk weather usually helps to push me over into the white chocolate territory.

The wrapper says whole hazelnuts and they’re not kidding. Just look at that first bite I got! The bar itself is a lovely creamy ivory color, a little on the yellow side.

What the front label leaves off that the back mentions is the whole description for this bar: white chocolate with hazelnuts & crispy rice. (Turn it over and the hazelnuts are quite evident sticking out as are the little nibs of rice.)

The bar smells like hazelnuts and milk with a light touch of vanilla. It’s not until I bit into it that I got the malty notes of the crisped rice (hey, barley malt is actually listed on the ingredients).

Most of the hazelnuts are large and nicely toasted to bring out their flavor. The crisped rice adds a texture to the bar as well, keeping the pure white chocolate (made with sugar, cocoa butter, cream, skim milk, whey, lactose and vanillin) from feeling too sticky or cloying. I think it could use a smidge more salt (there’s a little in the crisped rice) but for non-white-chocolate consumers, this could be a gateway drug (well, the real gateway drug for white chocolate would be Green & Black’s White Chocolate bar).

It’s a very pleasant bar and I had no trouble finishing the whole thing.

Related Candies

1. Frey Supreme: White, Lemon & Lime and Citron & Poivre
2. Peruvian Candies
3. Ritter Darks
4. Green and Black’s White Chocolate
5. Ritter Sport Capuccino and Rum Trauben Nuss