Candy Blog

One of the new items that’s getting a bit of buzz this year is the Cholive which is called the chic drink accessory.

It’s simply an olive shaped chocolate truffle, packaged with a cocktail pick so that it can be served in a drink.

I think I’d probably be floored if I ordered a cocktail and ended up with a fancy 55% dark chocolate truffle with a real Vermont cream ganache. (Of course there are some restaurants where I order coffee just because it comes with a little dish of chocolate chips, so I’m easily enchanted.)

I acquired my sample packages (that contain two Cholives with picks - the regular package is a little tin or jar) at Food Fete, which is a media event for food, beverage and lifestyle writers. It was held on one evening during the Fancy Food Show, and provided an opportunity to really connect with the food makers (and they weren’t concerned with missing a sale because they were talking to a reporter or blogger).

They olive styling is so complete, there’s even a little dimple where a pitted olive would have a hole. This is the recommended spot for inserting the cocktail skewer (and don’t go all the way through to the other side, a half an inch will do).

The truffle has a pleasant fruity & woodsy chocolate aroma. The bite of shell is crisp (I didn’t dip mine in alcohol). The ganache center is light and buttery, like a supercream frosting - a little bit sweeter than the shell, but still quite rich.

As a decadent little accompaniment for a drink, they’re nice. A great size and a fun method for serving. I appreciate that they’re good quality as well. Their info says that each one is about 35 calories (which I didn’t think was bad for a real chocolate treat).

At first I thought these were just skinny Lindt Lindor truffles, but they were much better than that. Though it made me wonder if folks skewer those & serve them with drinks, too. (The Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs would probably be perfect for that! So consider squirreling some of those away after Easter this year for that purpose.)

I can’t see using these for ordinary drinks. They’re suited for more cream-based cocktails or at least sweet ones. At 50 cents to a dollar per Cholive, they sound a bit steep. But if you’ve got a mind to economize but still want to indulge, perhaps inviting a few friends over for some upscale cocktails instead of dinner & dessert, you can splurge on a tin of these. (The really clever thing is that they sell in bulk, so you can buy a tin or jar, and if you love them you can buy a bulk bag &  keep refilling it so it looks nice on your bar - and of course feel free to pop one every once in a while.) Their website also features some tantalizing drink recipes to get you started.

Don’t be surprised either if these start turning up at bars and events like weddings.

Here are some other reviews: Denise from On Motivation & Chocolate, Drinkhacker and Rachel of Chocolate Snob.

Note that they do not hold up in hot drinks ... not that they’re bad that way, but it’s just a different experience to fish a melted truffle out of the bottom of cup of hot coffee.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s French Truffles
2. Starbucks Truffles
3. Soubeyran Array
4. Lindt: 60% Extra Dark Truffles
5. MarieBelle Chocolates
6. Choxie Champagne Truffles
7. Candy Cocktails for a Sweet New Year

One of my favorite booths to visit at any food show is Melville Candy Company. Not only is their candy pretty, the guys that run the company are always really enthusiastic and seem to really love the products they make. (Which is what we all expect from folks who work in candy, but you’d be surprised at some attitudes I’ve run across.)

There’s always someone at the aisle handing out Honey Spoons (so I always have a stash at home). The spoon line at Melville’s is expanding. They have their honey varieties, and the flavored spoons and now they’re making actual tea spoons.

This spoon is a mix of tea and sugar and, I think, honey.

It can be eaten as is or mulled in some hot water to create a beverage! Instead of being an “instant tea” though, there are actual tea leaves in there.

Even though it looks a little weird, I found this to be a really tasty combination. Like a cup of sweet tea. The dark brewed flavors & tannins were there along with the light malty taste of honey.

The second variety I picked up was the Jasmine Green Tea Spoon. This opaque spoon is dark green with a strong freshly mowed lawn scent.

Though I prefer eating my candy, I decided to see what it would be like to make this into a beverage, as it’s actually designed to do. So I made up a cup of hot water and popped in the Jasmine Green Tea Spoon.

(Well, actually, I tasted the spoon first. It was sweet, terribly bitter and very grassy tasting, just like matcha powder.)

I let it melt for a while and then pulled out the spoon. It’d gotten stuck to the bottom of the cup and made a long, soft string of hard candy. It was fun to bend around and then stir into the hot water. It turned the water green pretty quickly, too.

I left it alone for five minutes and then stirred well again to get the pictured version here.

It smells quite grassy, a lot like henna or wet hay.

I found the beverage was far too sweet for me, but I’m also not a fan of sweetening my tea or chai lattes.

As a lollipop though it was a quite a refreshing change from the normal lemon & cherry variety.

They’re not featured on the Melville website just yet. But there are some other fun items that I saw at the show but haven’t tried yet that I thought I’d mention:

Melville’s has really been thinking outside the box lately. Though their honey spoons collections are expensive, they are unique and come in a huge variety of honey types & with added flavorings.

Their other new products include tea spoons made with real cinnamon sticks, for extra flavor.

The most innovative (and perhaps silliest) is their line of Cereal Flavoring Spoons. They come in Apple Cinnamon and Cinnamon & Sugar. I’m guessing if you’re not eating already-sweetened cereal, this is no worse than spoonfuls of sugar or honey. (I do like a heaping pile of lumps of brown sugar in my hot cereal.) Eating from a spoon made of sugar would mean sweetness & flavor in every bite, especially with a real cinnamon stick for a handle.

They’re still a bit expensive, but small batch candy often is. They’re not the kind of treat I’d buy often, but definitely a fun thing for guests or when you travel.

Related Candies

1. Bit-O-Honey
2. Jelly Belly: Lollibeans
3. Charleston Pralines
4. Hanahiyori - Green Tea White Chocolates
5. Hard Candy: Juntsuyu
6. Artisan Marshmallows: Plush Puffs

Continuing with my theme this week of “Drinks & Chocolate” I have two boxes of Doulton’s Liqueur Chocolates.

I picked them up at the Fancy Food Show in the final hour, which is usually a chaotic grab as the vendors tear down their booths and opportunists & vultures grab at anything and everything that isn’t hot-glued down. Some companies also abandon their booths and leave piles and piles of merchandise for whomever wants it. I wanted these. I took three boxes: two of the Cointreau and one of the Teacher’s Scotch Whisky.

I rarely see these kinds of chocolate except around the holidays at stores like Trader Joe’s (which has a “brandy bean” each year) and Cost Plus World Market.

The box isn’t upscale or fancy, it reminds me of the kind of box you might get a pair of gloves in or a new tie. Inside is a plastic tray that holds the little beans. Four beans wide and six beans long, they’re an impressive sight.

The ingredients aren’t fancy, in fact, some are downright cheap. It goes like this: glucose-fructose syrup, cocoa liquor, sugar, lactose, Cointreau, cocoa butter (contains milk), rectified spirit, milky, soy lecithin & polyglycerol polyricinoleat [PGPR], flavouring.

I started with the Cointreau Liqueur Chocolates because I think that orange and chocolate are a great combination. Cointreau is made by Remy Cointreau in France. The spirit is made from sugar beets and flavored with a proprietary blend of sweet & bitter orange peels.

The little beans are cute, maybe a bit banana shaped.

The insides are quite syrupy. I liked biting off an end and then sipping the liquor, but eating the thing whole was fun, too.

The chocolate isn’t quite dark, not quite milk. It’s sweet and a little grainy. Though Cointreau has a substantial orange flavor by itself, it was a bit lost in the sweetness and chocolate flavors. Still, there was a little orange essence that lingered after it was all gone.

The second variety (not photographed) is Teacher’s Scotch Whisky. My experience with whisky is a bit more limited than my experience with aperitifs. Whisky is a dark and mysterious liquid, usually very strong with charcoal, tobacco, oak and peat and has a companion flavor called throat searing.

This particular variety, Teacher’s Highland Cream Scotch Whisky, is completely new to me.

The chocolate is rather unappealing, bland and sweet. The liquor center is sweet but definitely alcoholic. There’s a mild burn and some woodsy dark flavors do accompany it, a highlight in the flavor department here, because the chocolate itself wasn’t doing much.

I liked this combination, but the novelty wore off after about three of them, so then the package sat around for a few weeks before I polished them off for this review. I prefer them to the wine ones that I reviewed yesterday, but didn’t really care for the packaging or the ingredients, though they’re a much better value.

A cautionary note to anyone who buys any kind of alcohol infused chocolate - eat it quickly after opening. Alcohol evaporates, even through the chocolate shell and any plastic wrap. They’re best consumed fresh. As the weeks went by, these weren’t nearly as potent as when I opened them.

I haven’t seen this particular brand for sale (though I suspect that the same manufacturer may produce house brands. I believe these retail for about $3 to $4 a box. So they’re not that expensive and kind of a kick in the mouth. They come in other varieties as well: Irish Whiskey & Cream and Grappa. They do have some alcohol in them, so consuming the whole box may give you a buzz (they’re probably 3-5% alcohol).

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Irish Cream Chocolates
2. Rum Cordials
3. Anthon Berg Filled Chocolates
4. Jim Beam Fudge
5. K Chocolatier

This week I’m going to try out the theme of “drinks & candy.”

I actually ordered this set of four boxes of Wine Filled Chocolates made by Bouquet of Fruits Vineyard from Wine Woot! I’ve seen them for sale before, way back around Christmas 2007.

I was a little grumbly because it took so long for them to arrive. I ordered them at the end of January, and though they said that they’d arrive by Valentines, I assumed they’d be shipped out within five days or so (like other items I’d ordered from Woot!). Instead they arrived on Thursday last week. My hope is that they were being made to order, so they’d be extra fresh.

The set is four boxes of 9 pieces each, 4.5 ounces. The flavor array is Champagne (Pink), Chardonnay (Brown), Cabernet (Magenta) & Port (Black). Each little sphere or chocolate is advertised to be filled with wine. All for $29.99 plus $5 delivery.

Champagne

The boxes are rather large for the amount of chocolate inside, however, since these are liquid filled, a bit of cushion is a good thing. Each chocolate is in a fluted cup, inside a slot in a plastic tray. The sides of the box have a bit of space around them and the whole thing is topped off with one of those cushioned waxed paper pieces. It’s all sealed in shrinkwrap, then a ribbon.

The ingredients are admirable. Chocolate, wine and vanilla. This really didn’t make sense to me, because the wine in the center always seemed very sweet & syrupy ... but I guess that’s the magic of wine filled chocolate.

The chocolate look rustic & hand rolled.

The chocolate shell is very sweet and melts readily, not quite oily but quite soft… but then there’s another shell underneath, a perfectly formed sphere that seems to have a seam. Aha!

That shell doesn’t taste quite the same as the outer shell, maybe a little darker.

Inside though is a syrup of white wine. I wouldn’t call it champagne, as I would assume that it’s not true champagne (from France) and it has no bubbles. It’s a sweet mixture, a lot like a dessert wine. Not quite to my liking, but I ate a few of them.

Chardonnay

Chardonnay is a rather varied white wine that can be bold or delicate and it can be pretty confusing because it’s such a common wine but can take on so many different profiles.

Let me just say before I go too much further that I am an excellent wine taster, but I don’t consider myself a wine aficionado. I can enjoy it and drink it several times a week but if I never had it again, I don’t think I’d miss it much. (On the whole I prefer spirits with botanicals or aromatic elements like Gin, Ouzo or Pastis, though again, I don’t really drink that often but when I do, that’s where I go.) So if you want to add to the info here that I’ve mentioned about each of these wines, feel free.

The Chardonnay filled Chocolates were the only white chocolate over the bunch, which was over the functional milk chocolate shell. The ingredients on these were wrong, it made no mention of the white chocolate, which caused me to doubt the accuracy of all of them. (I also started to suspect that perhaps the sugar from the chocolate shell leaches in, to form this syrup.)

These smelled quite milky and a little yeasty (in a good way). The wine center was tangy and fresh tasting like grapes - not quite snappy though.

Cabernet

Cabernet Sauvignon, as a red wine, has a lot tannins in it. So it can be quite striking and sometimes bitter, tart or dry (or all three) and takes on some wonderful oak & tobacco flavors. However, a lot of the bitterness of the tannins can be mellowed by fats when pairing with meals. So pairing it with a good dark chocolate actually makes a lot of sense.

As I went along in this process, I learned that the big charge here is either biting into the sphere and getting a burst of light, wine flavor or letting the whole thing melt until it’s an oozy puddle.

After a few of these I was starting to feel a bit full though (so I did this review over three sessions). I was comforted to see that each piece is about 107 calories - about 110 calories per ounce, which is much lower than most other boxed chocolates.

I was letting the chocolate melt for my tastings of the Cab, there was a definite “butter” taste for the Cabernet. The wine center was fruity but lacking a sort of dry bite that red wine offers when paired with chocolate. Of the three so far, this was definitely winning out.

Port

Port is a sweet, fortified red wine. While at first that sounds dreadful, it’s quite mellow and rich (usually fortified with brandy, not just any old distilled spirit like the long gone Ripple was). It’s sweeter than most wine’s but not quite as rich and complex (or alcohol laden) as something like brandy. It’s usually sipped from a snifter as a dessert wine.

Since Port contains more alcohol (about 19-20%), these actually carried more of the wine scent when I opened the box. (The others just smelled like chocolate.)

This was the most successful for me. The port was much more intense. There were dark brandy notes, woodsy flavors, a hit of alcohol of course and then the subtle notes of the mediocre chocolate shell.

The boxes are color coded, though there’s no actual key. The only place that the variety is indicated is on the little tag on the ribbon. Once you take the ribbon off it’s a guessing game. (The champagne & port were pretty easy to guess by color, but I kept getting the Chardonnay & Cabernet confused, especially since the Cabernet label never actually says Cab on it. )

Overall, the package was still a decent value. It’s over a pound of chocolates (18 ounces) delivered for $35. However, it’s Woot! so you never know when they’ll offer it again. (This is the second time I’ve seen it on there, which is why I ordered it. Thinking this review might be of value to someone in the future.)

It’s certainly a unique product, I’ve seen plenty of liquor filled chocolates and some ganaches flavored with wine, but I’ve never had another wine filled chocolate. I don’t think I’d want a whole box of them, but it might be fun as something to serve with a dessert cheese plate.

Related Candies

1. Michel Cluizel 99%
2. CocoaVino
3. Chuao Chocolatier
4. Choxie Champagne Truffles
5. Wine Gums

I have more candy than I will ever be able to review at my pace of 5-7 products a week. Here are a few items I’ve tasted recently and some notes on them (most gratuitous photos). So here are some small bites of a whole week’s worth of candy. Get ready to scroll!

I visited with Anne Hickey and the Plush Puffs’ crew when I was at the Fancy Food Show. At closing time they gave me a box of their Vanilla Bean Marshmallows. It’s new packaging for them, which I really like. It’s still spare and highlights the product well.

But what I liked best is that they’ve made the marshmallows a bit smaller. Now they’re 1” cubes instead of the larger version I tried several years ago. This means that when toasted the center gets molten before the outside catches on fire. (There are important physical laws that even marshmallows must obey.)

The box has been sitting next to my stove top and some evenings I’ll toast up two or three for dessert on the gas burner. It makes the house smell wonderful.

(Original review.)

I visited a few times with Seth Ellis Chocolatier while at the Fancy Food Show. They had a lovely array of samples, but for some reason I eschewed their truffles and became obsessed with their Candied Lemons.

It’ might be because they’re so beautiful.

Perhaps it’s because of this little nugget from their website, “We candy the freshest organic lemon slices slowly, over twenty-five days, using a traditional European method to preserve the intense lemon flavors.”

The box contains one full lemon slice plus and extra quarter. Special bonus, the packaging is made with wind power (well, that and some tree pulp).

The candying doesn’t make the peel as soft as some others, but then again, sometimes that makes them gummy and flavorless. This definitely has a bitter bite and because the pulp is also still there, it’s quite tangy. The dark chocolate is creamy and also has a woodsy bite to it.

(Website.)

I must have been obsessed with lemon and lemongrass at the Fancy Food Expo because the other item I knew I had to bring home was L’Estasi Dolce Sweet Ecstasy Lemongrass Ginger Truffles.

Lemongrass is a bit of a strange flavor. I love it in Thai cooking (hot & sour soup especially). It imparts the zesty notes of lemon peel, but it has a soft side to it as well, that I can only compare to bubble gum.

These nicely sized truffles are a real ganache made with lots of real cream.

The center is soft and silky with an immediate soft flavor of lemongrass. Then there’s the warming power of the ginger. The woodsy ginger flavors never come forward, it’s just that little burn in the background. This all combines well with the slight dairy flavor of the cream and the mellow dark chocolate.

One of the Fancy Food Show items I mentioned in my show notes was Rubicon Bakery.

They not only make all natural, wholesome products right here in the United States, their mission is to help people in need by giving job training, jobs placement assistance to work their way out of poverty.

The package pictured here is a mock up used for the distribution of the samples, the real thing is much nicer.

Their Strawberry CocoaBerries may put them on the map even without the amazing backstory.

They’re little meringue kisses, a little larger than a Hershey’s Kiss. The center is a crunchy fluffed egg white made flavorful by the addition of gobs of real freeze dried strawberries. To seal in the crispness, they’re dipped in bittersweet Guittard chocolate.

The freaky part about the whole combination is that it’s so tasty & satisfying yet so low in calories. They say that a serving of five is only 90 calories (about 100 calories per ounce, amazing for a chocolate product). So even if you ate a whole box of 15 bites, you’re still under the 300 mark of most king sized candy bars.

SFGate wrote about them last week too, those lucky dogs, it’s a local company for them.

Lest you think that everything is a rave and everything is from the Fancy Food Show, I thought I’d mention the Limited Edition Andes Mocha Mint Indulgence.

These candies have single-handedly caused me to swear off of all Andes products except for the original Creme de Menthe.

While I rail against mockolate, I recognize it has its place and there are a few products that I like and still eat that have it. (Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews & Hershey’s 5 Avenue.)

The Mocha Mint Indulgence is a freak product. I don’t even know what it is. The pieces are ugly (sorry, no photo of the interior, this is supposed to be a tantalizing post). Putty brown mockolate over a layer of mint green confection like the center of the regular Andes.

It smells like minted cardboard. The texture is like grainy wax. The flavor is like musty Christmas candles found in a drawer at an estate sale.

To close is something to restore our confidence in nuts: Ococoa Nut Butter Cups made right here in Los Angeles by Diana Malouf. I picked them up from her in person before Christmas but never go around to posting the review.

More than just gourmet peanut butter cups, these are tall cups filled with exotic nut butters & fruits. The flavor array is: Classic Peanut Butter, Pistachio Date, Sesame Fig, Hazelnut Chocolate, Almond Cherry, Cashew Apricot, Marzipan Truffle, Macadamia Guava, and Sunflower Honey.

The box is elegant and substantial.

The cups are about an inch high with a cute ruffle of chocolate around the collar and an inch in diameter at the top.

They were a bugger to photograph the interior, luckily their website has the fantastic and accurate cross sections that you can peruse. This one is Guava jam & macadamia nut butter. Probably the best experience I’ve had with macadamias & guava, which aren’t really my fave, but done very well here.

I was attracted most to the Sesame Fig, which I gobbled up after taking a photo. The sesame paste is combined with chocolate to create a sesame Nutella of sorts, though quite firm. Inside the center was a reservoir of fig jam. The toasted & grassy flavors of the sesame went well with the fresh & slightly tangy notes of the fig. Sunflower Honey was next on my hit list. Sunflower seeds have such a distinctive taste. This center was like a creamed honey with sunflower flavors.

Cashew Apricot was really decadent, as the apricot’s pine-notes were offset by the deep toasted butter flavors of the cashews. The hazelnut was also stellar, the freshness of the nut butter was so different from many other guianduias I have regularly. (I shared some others and didn’t take complete notes on the rest.)

Unlike many nut creations that rely on salt to bring the nut flavors forward, Ococoa lets the sweetness of the nuts come through. The only problem I had with these, if it could be called that, was the construction. The chocolate cap on the top was very thick, so biting the pieces in half wasn’t very easy. While I don’t think it’s imperative that all chocolates be dissected, it meant that there was always a larger reservoir of chocolate at the end when sometimes I really wanted to end on a nut note.

They’ll set you back $22 for a 9 piece box.

Candy Addict also had an excellent write up on these back in December.

Related Candies

1. Fling: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut
2. Andes Fall Harvest Mix
3. Candy Dump 2008 part 2
4. Caffarel Figs & Chestnuts (Fico & Castagna)
5. CocoaBella “World’s Best Box”
6. Jacques Torres
7. Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops