ZOMG, Candy!

Today brings us reviews of two more chocolates from Starbucks, their Caramel Macchiato and Caffe Mocha truffles. I gave the Chai Truffles a meh review last time, but I had coupons, so I went ahead and bought more to try.

The truffles are billed as “marvelous milk chocolate [enveloping] caramel centers infused with our Espresso Roast coffee.” Out of the box, they smelled overwhelmingly sweet and looked perfectly molded. A cross section reveals a fairly thick milk chocolate coating covering a smooth truffle center.

The smooth truffle center was cloyingly sweet, and I didn’t get any caramel notes because the sweetness was so overwhelming. The milk chocolate coating also overwhelmed the truffle filling. There was a slight bitterness to the finish - I guess that was the coffee part? An O.

I liked the Caffe Mocha truffles, “lucious milk chocolate [embracing] creamy mocha centers infused with our rich Espresso Roast coffee”, much more. The molding was prettier here, with two coffee beans stamped on the top. I thought they covered an actual espresso bean, but alas, they were made of chocolate. Boo. I guess it would’ve been too expensive to make the effort of putting real beans on the truffles.

The center, like that of the caramel macchiato truffle, was smooth and creamy. It had a strong, deep roasty coffee flavor that went well with the chocolate coating. The chocolate shell was thinner in this truffle, so it was far better balanced. It was like eating a smooth chocolate-covered espresso bean. Highly enjoyable and worth an OMG.

When I was a kid, I didn’t play with Barbies much. It wasn’t because my parents were afraid that she’d give me body image issues or anything like that (though if I had a daughter of my own, I probably wouldn’t give her Barbies for that reason) - it’s because we were too po’. My parents immigrated from China just before I was born. When I was young, we lived off my father’s tiny grad student stipend, which left little room in the family budget for Barbies. Now that we’re financially comfortable (though that financial comfort will disappear once I graduate from college and attempt to be financially independent), I’m too old for Barbies.

Or so I thought. When Mattel approached me about doing a giveaway of their new limited/collectors’ edition Hershey’s Barbie Doll, my first thought was, “I want one!” And because Mattel is so nice, I got one!

She’s “adorned with a fun and flirtatious cocktail dress in a rich milk chocolate brown, accented with twinkles of silver,” just as the press release promised. And killer shoes, which weren’t touted in the fact sheet that I got. Yes, I’ll never be able to walk en point in heels, and I’ll never have Barbie’s impossible figure, but I’m old enough to accept that and enjoy my Hershey’s Barbie for what she is - a neat collaboration between two old and beloved American institutions.

And, thanks to Mattel, I’m running a giveaway for a second doll, so that one of you can have one to enjoy as well! One randomly selected reader (U.S. only, please, unless you’re willing to pay your own shipping) will win a Hershey’s Barbie. To enter, leave a Barbie or Hershey’s related comment on this post with a valid email address by midnight on Friday, April 17th.

Good luck! And if you don’t win, you can still buy your own at Toys R Us, Hershey’s stores, select U.S. retailers, and at BarbieCollector.com .

After Monday’s review, a Heath vs Skor showdown, I thought I’d continue the theme of chocolate + toffee with a review of Hershey’s Symphony of the Almonds and Toffee Chips persuasion. I think Hershey’s Symphony is a funny line - it doesn’t get much recognition or advertising, so it’s not especially distinctive, yet it’s been around for nearly as long as I’ve been alive (since 1989) and is pretty easy to find. There must be something redeeming about it to keep it around. Meanwhile, Joseph Schmidt’s line of truffles gets the axe. Sigh…

I think the Symphony line is supposed to be notable for the creaminess of the milk chocolate. I don’t quite get the name, especially since they make a plain milk chocolate Symphony, and the word Symphony conjures up images of complexity, but I do appreciate the effort of the packaging, with horizontal lines are probably meant to evoke the lines of a music staff. I wonder if the word Symphony could have been rejiggered to have a treble cleff as the S.

Underneath the wrapper, the bar has the big, traditional HERSHEY’S block logo on it, with what I consider to be the classic Hershey’s Almond bar shape - the rectangle with the arched curve to it. You can see the bits of almond and toffee in the cross section.

The bar was extremely nutty smelling thanks to the almonds. Unlike the Skor and Heath bars, which are toffee with chocolate, this was chocolate with toffee. And nice chocolate, too! The chocolate was creamy with a thick melt and a fruity finish, definitely different and superior to regular Hershey’s milk chocolate.

The almonds were in pretty big chunks and few and far between, so I didn’t come across them too often. The toffee added a bit of flavor but contributed more in texture, with a nice, cleaving crunch. Overall, it was a pleasant combination of tastes and textures. I’d give the bar an OM, and I wonder why the Symphony line doesn’t get more cred.

Back when I reviewed the Daim bar, I wondered what the difference was (or if there was a difference) between Skor bars and Heath bars. Ostensibly, they seem identical: both are chocolate covered crunchy toffee bars, and both are made by Hershey’s. But since it doesn’t make sense for Hershey to make two identical products, there must be something that sets them apart. Let’s find out, shall we?

They’re somewhat differently described on their wrappers: Skor is “delicious milk chocolate/crisp butter toffee” while Heath is a “milk chocolate English toffee bar.” I already kind of take issue with the Heath description, as English toffee is chewy like caramel, but whatever.

Cross sectionally, the bars look somewhat different. I’m 95% sure that the Heath is on the left and the Skor is on the right (this review backs me up), but I took the picture so long ago that I’m no longer positive. As you can see, both have the same rippled chocolate coating, but one’s toffee is more yellow/gold (left; Heath?), while the other’s is more dark brown.

Tastewise, they differ as well. Skor’s darker colored toffee also tasted darker. It was sweet with a touch of duskiness. The Heath bar had a brighter sweetness that was unpleasantly cloying, and its toffee tasted more buttery, with a super sweet finish.

I’d give the Skor the edge in the match-up, so it gets an OM while Heath gets an O. Skor may benefit from reference effects, however. Who knows; I could’ve given it an O if I’d just tasted it alone.

On Monday, I reviewed the Butterfinger. Today’s review is of the 5th Avenue, a highly similar but less well known peanut butter bar made by Hershey’s.

The 5th Avenue is “crunchy peanut butter in a rich, chocolatey coating”. If you’re new to the candy blogging world, you should know that “chocolatey” is candy marketing speak for “not made of real chocolate”. Yum… Still, it fared better than most mockolate bars did.

The peanut butter layers of the 5th Avenue were nice, crisp, and peanut buttery. As a bonus, they didn’t get lost in the nooks and crannies of my teeth like the Butterfinger’s did. And the chocolately coating was super sweet but actually wasn’t that bad, especially compared to that of the Butterfinger. At least the 5th Avenue’s coating had some cocoa flavors to it.

All and all, the 5th Avenue turned out to be a nice combination of salty and sweet, though I personally would’ve tempered the sweet just a bit. I give it an OM, though it may have the advantage of framing effects, as I tasted it alongside the Butterfinger.

And if you want a second opinion, here’s Cybele’s take on a head-to-head match-up of the two.

Reese’s is awesome at churning out limited edition stuff. The newest iteration is their Limited Edition Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups, which I picked up as an impulse buy at the counter of my local Walgreen’s. Hooray marketing!

My friend Steve just asked what makes it crunchy. Just like peanut butter, the peanut butter cups are crunchified by the presence of peanuts. The peanut butter cup doesn’t look any different on the outside, but the peanut bits are visible in the pb cup cross section.

The peanut bits add a nice textural component to the cup and contributes a strong peanut scent, though I don’t have a regular pb cup to compare it to. Even without a regular pb cup handy, I can tell that the peanut butter filling in the crunchy cup is sweeter and less salty than its non-limited edition counterpart.

I think the crunchy is an improvement on peanut butter cups. The peanuts aren’t too intrusive and don’t get stuck in your teeth, and the peanut butter cup texture is more exciting. I do wish the nuts were roastier but still give this limited edition a solid OMG.

Starbucks came out with its own line of chocolates (made by Hershey’s) to be sold in grocery stores a year or so ago. They’d actually been selling chocolates in their coffee shops for years - my first chocolate covered espresso bean was from Starbucks - so the chocolate line is less of a departure than you’d think. My mother somehow ended up with a coupon for either 2 free truffles or $1 off a bag of truffles. I stole her coupon and decided to try the chai truffles because I loved Theo’s 3400 Phinney Chai Tea Milk Chocolate bar.

The two truffles come in a neat little box. Sorry for the blurriness. The description reads, “creamy milk chocolate invitations to linger with sweetly spiced Tazo Chai black tea.”  Sounds lovely! And the truffles themselves are cute little cup shaped deals, in fine imitation of more high-end truffles that do the same thing. But how is the execution?

Meh. The chocolate and its filling was thick and creamy, but scentwise and flavorwise, it was all clove and nothing else. I know clove is an important component to chai spice, but it would have been nice to taste other things, like tea and cinnamon and chocolate. Theo did it better, with more nuance and less whomping you over the head with SPICE! Just an O.

Dagoba was my introduction to upscale chocolate. It was a big part of my first chocolate tasting party, when I first really tasted chocolate, which is why I have reviewed as many Dagoba bars as I have. That and they’re sold at the campus convenience store, where I used to have $150 to spend there as part of my meal plan, back when I was on a meal plan. And they come in a ton of flavor varieties, so there are several types to review. Here are two more.

The Mon Cheri was a 72% dark chocolate with berries and vanilla. It was a smooth bar with a creamy melt, which is surprising for a 72%. I was also a little curious about the 72% part - if I remember correctly, most of Dagoba’s super dark bars are 74%. 72% would mean they have a second dark base?

The berries are tiny bits that stud the bar. Based on the color of the bits and the name of the bar, I’m going to guess that cherry was the predominant berry present. Chocolate and berry is a nice flavor combination, though the addition of fruit tends to overwhelm the natural notes of the chocolate. An OM.

The Super Fruit bar I disliked on principle. Just take a look at the wrapper, and see if you can guess why.

Any ideas? It’s a 74% dark bar with acai, goji berries, and currants. In other words, it jumps on every hype train! All it’s missing is pomegranate seeds and giant boasts about antioxidants splashed across its wrapper. For the record, I don’t buy into the “dark chocolate is better for you because it has more antioxidants” hype. You’d need to eat a ton of it to get any real effect, and eating a ton of any kind of chocolate is bad for you.

All the hype aside, this bar isn’t bad. It tastes a lot like the Mon Cheri - like dried fruit plus good quality chocolate. I thought I noticed a slight saltiness around the dried fruit bits, but it was so faint that I couldn’t be sure. Another OM.

Basically, Dagoba makes good, solid bars. I don’t give them Os because they’re so much better than your standard Hershey’s bars (even though Hershey’s owns Dagoba), but they also don’t stand out enough to warrant higher ratings. The way I see it, they’re great to taste your way through, but I’ve yet to find one that I’ve become attached to enough to buy a second time.

I’ve previously written about Hershey’s Cacao Reserve line, their attempt to make better chocolate than their low quality, increasingly vegetable oil laced everyday fare. Their Single Origin Collection is a blatantly obvious but still smart attempt to jump on the single origin bandwagon. Like the word “Belgium,” the “single origin” moniker can lend cachet but doesn’t always deliver. Hershey’s, however, does a pretty nice job of making single origin chocolate accessible to the non-foodie snob.

The collection contains three chocolates of three origins and three cacao percentages. There’s Java, which is a 37% milk, Arriba, a 50% billed as dark milk, and Sao Tome, a 70% dark. They come individually wrapped with cute little locale pictures and different colors depending on the percentage. And they were perfectly sized for a two-bite tasting.

The Java is a creamy milk chocolate with strong caramel undertones. It wasn’t as thick on the tongue as I would’ve expected a 37% to be, which left me slightly disappointed. Arriba also carries a creamy melt with an undertone that I had some trouble placing. I finally decided that it tasted like butter.

Unsurprisingly (because I prefer dark to milk chocolate), the Sao Tome was my favorite of the bunch. It had a super sharp snap to it, with strong cocoa notes and a slight sour berry fruitiness. While the Sao Tome made a nice impression, the overall collection isn’t that exciting, so it only gets an O.

You can taste some of the cacao nuances, but other, more expensive bars do that better. Still, it’s a great way to ease yourself into chocolate tasting and an affordable way to host a little chocolate tasting party. For that, Hershey’s gets an A for effort.

Chocolate and mint is a classically delicious combination. I bet the Girl Scouts owe their continued existence to the continued financial support of Thin Mint sales. I’ve already reviewed quite a few chocolate and mint candies on the site. Here are three more.

Hershey’s Mint Truffle Kisses

Yet another variety of Kiss from Hershey’s (excellent photos of the lineup here), this time a molded chocolate shell with a mint truffle filling. The mint filling was soft and only lightly minty. There’s not much of a mint finish, but it’s there. I’d prefer more mintiness, so an O.

Andes Mints

In my mind, Andes mints are the classic chocolate mint. As a kid, the shiny foil wrappers made them seem super fancy, and the mints within were such a treat. Now that I’ve revisited them as an older candy eater, I was surprised at how light the mintiness was. I guess it seemed stronger while I was a kid. They were duskier than the Mint Truffle Kisses and had a crisp snap. An O.

Zachary’s Thick Mints

I’d never heard of Zachary Thick Mints until I stole this one from my friend’s I-banking gift basket. The wrapper says it’s “real chocolate and cool, creamy peppermint.” It’s quite similar to a York Peppermint Patty, only smaller and thicker.

The mint paste inside was thick and only minty in the finish. I also found it rather salty. An O, as it’s too weak in mintiness for my sake.

Basically, all three of these chocolate/mint combinations were too tepid for my taste. Give me richer chocolate and more powerful mint flavors, and then we’ll talk.