Candy Blog

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

Ah, after Christmas sales. It’s the best part of Candy Season - the Post Season Sales. After all, the candy is just as good two weeks after the holiday as it was two weeks before.

I checked through plenty of stores and found Walgreen’s had the best selection by the time the 75% off discount came around. This is when I jump on items I only eye at full price and then hem and haw over at half off. One was this Ghirardelli Squares Limited Edition Holiday Chocolate Assortment. Full price was $8.99, so $2.24 for over nine ounces of chocolate sounded like a great deal even if it was seasonally themed.

The assortment includes Peppermint Bark, Egg Nog and Chocolate Pecan Pie.

Ghirardelli, I think, is known for their Peppermint Bark. It’s one of the few brands that dependably makes the stuff and actually uses cocoa butter for their white chocolate.

The construction of the square is pretty simple. A milk chocolate base layer is covered with a minted white chocolate studded with little crunchies.

The scent isn’t overpoweringly minty, which probably saves the other chocolates in the bag from tasting like mint, too.

The texture of the chocolates is smooth and silky, very sweet but not achingly so. The little crunchies in the white chocolate aren’t crushed candy canes though, they’re corn flake bits (colored red). The crunch is a bit more cereal than hard candy but still puffy.

It’s kind of odd that this sort of confection isn’t available year round, but since Ghirardelli has been bringing it back faithfully each winter, I shouldn’t complain.

Of the three flavors in the bag, this was the one that sold me on it: Egg Nog.

It’s just extra vanilla-y white chocolate (with real cocoa butter) and a visible dash of nutmeg.

I love the flavors of egg nog, but never really cared for sweet or thick drinks so the idea of a solid, melt-in-your-mouth version of it is ideal for me.

The square is a creamy yellow color and smells like nutmeg.

The white confection is sweet but pretty smooth and has the woodsy blast of nutmeg and tastes, like, well, Egg Nog. It could use a little more vanilla and maybe a slight hit of rum.

A real winner, if only because no one else makes a plain old white chocolate with nutmeg bar. Truffles, yeah, but not just a block of white chocolate. Great idea, well done, bring it back next year and I’ll probably buy it before it goes on clearance.

One of the reasons I thought that this review, even at this late date, would still be of value is that the Chocolate Pecan Pie is not a limited edition item. It’s available now as an individual bar or in single-flavor bags of the Squares. (Also, I don’t think Pecan Pie has a season.)

This little milk chocolate square smells wonderful, like maple, hot chocolate and caramel.

The milk chocolate is smooth, though plenty sweet. Mixed in is a light crunch of toffee coated pecan bits. They have a little salty hit and of course the caramelized & buttery crunch of pecans.

(The photos make it look like the chocolate is bloomed, I don’t think it was, I think it was the fatty pecans messing with the sheen of the chocolate. Mmm, fatty pecans.)

Overall, the array is fun and something I feel comfortable eating out of season at the moment. Especially because I love individually wrapped squares. A bonus is that a sandwich of the Egg Nog & Chocolate Pecan Pie actually go pretty well together. (But the Peppermint Bark doesn’t work with either.)

The only thing that really bugged me was that the ingredients weren’t listed separately for each of the squares. I was able to get the ingredients for the Peppermint Bark because it’s sold separately, but I really like to know what’s in items that I’m able to choose from a dish.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses
2. Ghirardelli Intense Dark
3. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts
4. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
5. Green and Black’s White Chocolate
6. Ghirardelli Squares

It’s fun to wake up on a long holiday weekend, the air brisk and chilly, and have a cup of hot coffee.

It’s also fun to carry around a little candy in your pocket that emulates that feeling.

I’ve been eating Coffee Rio since I can remember developing a taste for coffee sometime around the age of ten or so.

I think the first time I had one, I thought they were coffee flavored Tootsie Rolls and was a little startled to find a hard caramel (much like Pearson’s Coffee Nips).

Coffee Rio are made by Adams & Brooks, which is based right here in my home city, Los Angeles, California. While they may be hard to find elsewhere in the country, I see them just about everywhere around here.

The candy is pretty simple. A hardened caramel flavored with real coffee. Though it contains quite a bit of milk products, it tastes more like black coffee with a bit of sugar than coffee & cream (which is what Pearson’s Nips are like - but they’re also Kosher and Coffee Rio isn’t).

The little rods are wrapped in a simple twisted mylar. I got this jumbo bag at Trader Joe’s for $2.69 for the bag, which I thought was a pretty good deal. They boast on the package that there are no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. (But there is some lightly hydrogenated soybean oil rather low on the list of ingredients.)

The texture is very smooth. They dissolve nicely and soften a bit as well (yes, you can chew them at some point, but also risk cementing your teeth together). The flavor is rich and like a mellow mocha java. At the start sometimes there’s a hint or charcoal and bitterness, but that fades away as the other woodsy coffee flavors come in.

Rating: 8 out of 10

I have been to the Island of Hawaii (the Big Island) and toured some of the Kona Coast’s coffee roasters. The stuff was fabulous, but you know drinking a cup of coffee from beans that were just roasted is bound to be better than the stuff you get at home.

One of the things I noticed about Kona coffee was its extreme dark acidic punch, even when not given the Italian roast treatment.

As Kona coffee is extremely expensive, most is sold as a blend. In the case of the Kona Blend Coffee Rio it’s only 10% Kona coffee.

These seems to capture that molasses & tangy bite really well. It’s not as sweet but no more bitter than the original Coffee Rio.

I also noticed that these were a bit softer, so much so that I was able to chew them after warming them. I love that! Even better, I got the bag at the 99 Cent Only store for a buck.

Rating: 9 out of 10

With my tendency to chew things, even if they’re not supposed to be chewed I was pretty excited to see that there is now a Coffee Rio Chew Coffee Caramel.

There’s pillowy cloud on the front of the package that reinforces that these are soft.

The ingredients, oddly enough, are identical to the other Coffee Rio, so it must be all in the process to create this softer version.

The package outside looks similar, but once I dumped out the pieces I realized that these are a bit different.

First, they’re bigger. They’re the same length, but have a greater girth than their hard brethren.

Second, they’re wrapped in foiled paper. I’m guessing this is to keep them well sealed from moisture.

They have a wonderful sweet & woodsy scent, less milky than the others.

The chew is very soft, softer than a Tootsie Roll, more like a chewy fudge. It’s a little bit grainy and I realized that this is a “short caramel” instead of being a “wet caramel.” Short caramel is slightly grainy, crystals have been allowed to form. It keeps its shape really well and provides an easy “bite”. A wet caramel is stringy and smooth and lacks the crystallization and can be very sticky and possibly runny.

I’d hoped this was a slightly softer Kona Blend.

The chew is soft and pleasant, but the light grain to it interrupted the creamy notes from the milk products. The coffee flavor was slightly acidic and tangy and lacking the coffee punch of the other hard varieties. I give it a pass.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Now I realize that I’d really like Tootsie to make Coffee Sugar Babies with chewy centers like the Kona Blend Coffee Rio.

I don’t know if these have caffeine in them or how much, but I suspect so, since they used to offer a decaf version. I can’t imagine it’s very much though. I sent an email to Adams-Brooks asking about it and I’ll update if I find out.

Related Candies

1. Nips: Caramel & Dulce de Leche
2. Cafe Select Chocolate Coffee Trios
3. Werther’s Caramel Coffee Hard Candies
4. Pocket Coffee
5. Coffee Beat
6. Bali’s Best Coffee & United Coffee Candy

I picked up this Moser-Roth Premium Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa on my last trip to Ohio.

I discovered for myself then what all the buzz about Aldi markets was about. Like Trader Joe’s (owned by the same family), Aldi has “house brands” of confections. I sampled quite a bit of their Choceur (Luxury Mini Chocolate Bars and Coffee & Cream) already so when my mother offered to send me some more, I took her up on the offer.

Moser-Roth is a German chocolate company, and I couldn’t find much on them except that they’ve been around since 1902 and most recently were bought up by Storck (who make Werther’s, Toffeefay, Riesen and Mambas) in 2007 - well, that’s what the German Wikipedia says, the Storck website makes no mention of it. I’ve never seen them anywhere but Aldi here in the United States. (Maybe someone who knows German better can help out with that, even the translators don’t make it much clearer whether Aldi just has them under contract or bought them.)

The package doesn’t give much information about the company, but does say a little about the chocolate itself: The chocolate is made from the finest quality ingredients, carefully prepared according to a classic recipe. Chocolate lovers will savor the strong aroma of dark chocolate blended with the best South American cocoas.

The packaging is one of my favorite styles. It’s a paperboard box/sleeve that holds a hefty 4.4 ounces but packaged in five smaller single portion bars.

Each little bar is wrapped in a light paper-backed foil. It doesn’t say much on it, not even what kind of bar it is, just Privat Chocolatiers and then on the side it has a little warning: may contain traces of nuts and/or dairy products.

The little bars are the perfect weight, as far as I’m concerned, each is .88 ounces and about 145 calories.

The scent is a light woodsy and coffee aroma. The color was a little dead, a little on the gray side of brown instead of red. It has a distinctive snap and crunch, I was concerned it would be chalky. But it melts nicely. It’s a little tangy but not fruity and buttery - kind of like cashews or pistachios.

As a little indulgence they’re extremely satisfying. I didn’t feel the need to start another bar after the first one for several days.

Price: $1.89
Weight: 4.4 ounces
Calories per Ounce: 164
Rating: 7 out of 10

When my mother sent along some more of Aldi’s confections, this milk chocolate Toffee Crunch set of bars was in the box.

Like the dark, this little sleeve holds five .88 ounce individually wrapped bars. Part of the description goes like this: In this variety, bits of buttery golden toffee are encased in fine milk chocolate made from select cocoa varieties. This extraordinary combination gives the smooth chocolate its refined crisp, making it pure enjoyment for chocolate lovers.

Like most milk chocolates, this had a much softer snap than the dark chocolate.

The bar was pristine, nicely tempered and glossy smooth. The little nuggets of toffee were pretty easy to spot even before I took a bite.

It smells rather sweet and milky. The bite is soft and immediately sweet and creamy with a strong dairy flavor. The toffee crunches are exactly that, crunches with a distinct buttery flavor that made me think they were butterscotch flavor for a while it was so strong.

The velvety milk chocolate was a bit sweet for me, though I liked the slightly salty crunch, I would have prefered just a little less sugar here.

This bar is rather similar to the Dove Peanut Toffee Crunch (though obviously no peanuts here). But it’s also a bit of a better deal if the price on these is the same as the dark one.

Price: unknown
Weight: 4.4 ounces
Calories per Ounce: 135
Rating: 8 out of 10

But the true treasure in this parcel I received (well, for this post anyway) is this octagonal box of Moser Roth Fine Truffles - Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa.

The box is nicely made but perhaps a little downscale for what’s actually inside.

The photo doesn’t give a good sense of the scale here. The box is 4.5” across and 2.5” tall.

The height made more sense once I opened it. Inside each little truffle is wrapped in foil & tissue, with a little gather at the top. It reminded me of some Caffarel Eggs I got from Williams-Sonoma after Easter last year (never reviewed, just photographed & eaten).

The little eggs are, well, little. They’re molded with the name Moser-Roth on one side and little squirlies all over. They’re about 1.25” tall. The wrappings protected every last one of them.

Ingredients:

Chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanillin), vegetable fat (coconut & palm oil), sugar, skimmed milk powder, high fat milk powder, fat reduced cocoa powder, butterfat, soy lecithin, vanillin

This is pretty much the same as the Lindt Lindor 60% Extra Dark

I’ve never seen high fat milk powder, but it sounds awesome.

It was easy for me to bite them gently along the seam to cleave them in twain. Inside there’s a chocolate creme.

The outer shell is a nicely smooth very dark chocolate with a distinct bitter edge to it. The cream filling is less flavorful but achingly silky. Like the Lindor 60% Dark Truffles and some other vegetable oil based truffles, they’re a little “empty” tasting. But in the case of these the proportions are more equal with the chocolate shell and filling, so I got more flavor from them.

As a little indulgence they’re also pretty low in calories - only 52 each versus the 70 for a Lindor ... simply because of the size.

If there’s an Aldi near you, these are a great Valentine’s or Easter treat. (I don’t know if they were a Christmas item or an every day one.)

Price: unknown
Weight: 4.6 ounces
Calories per Ounce: 170
Rating: 8 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s French Truffles
2. Nestle Treasures 50% Cacao Dark Chocolate Truffle
3. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
4. Ice Cubes
5. Ritter Schokowurfel
6. Crown Jewels Chocolate Orange Truffles

I thought I got a huge score at the 99 Cent Only Store a few weeks before Christmas when I found Terry’s Dark Chocolate Oranges for only 99 Cents. They even said they were good until February 2009.

I was still dubious and bought only one to try it out.

Sadly it was bloomed, though only slightly. Blooming is when the cocoa butter in chocolate migrates to the surface. As this was only the slightest haze, I figured a recipe where it was melted would at least mean I didn’t waste that buck. There are 20 orange slices in a Terry’s Chocolate Orange.

So after a few tries at proportions, I made some quite passable hot chocolate with it.

Recipe for One 12 ounce Cup of Hot Orange Chocolate (double or triple as necessary)

Pour milk into a saucepan and add chopped chocolate. Whisk over medium heat then add cocoa and continue to whisk until hot. Don’t boil.

It’s sweet, creamy and with a slight hint of orange, it’s a nice change from overly sweet pre-made mixes. Add another slice if you want really rich hot chocolate.

Next I might try making some chocolate pudding.

Related Candies

1. The Easiest Chocolate Pudding (not quite from scratch)
2. Grandma’s Caramels
3. Chocolate Hellfire Chip Cookies
4. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection
5. 33 Uses for Leftover Candy Canes
6. Malted Crisped Rice Squares
7. Terry’s Chocolate Orange