ZOMG, Candy!

Maoam is a German candy brand that’s been owned by Haribo since the late 1980s. They’re sold under the Maoam name, but the packaging is quite Haribo-esque, and the Haribo name and website are on the back.

I first came across Maoam in England in the form of taffy, and they were also in a selection of Swedish “Saturday candies” that my college’s associate master gave me. This bag of Maoam Happy Chews was purchased in France, but I also saw them in Spain, further (highly unscientific) evidence that Haribo is king of non-chocolate candy in Europe.

Each Happy Chew is about the size of my first thumb joint. They’re shiny and colorful, and I like how the color is kind of sparse in places, so that the white under layer peeks through.

Happy Chews are kind of like giant, cylindrical Skittles. They’re covered with a hard sugar shell, and inside is a sweet, grainy, flavored chew. Like Skittles, the candies take a while to completely dissolve.

They come in six flavors. Orange is orange, which tastes like sweet orange juice with just a tinge of tartness. Yellow is lemon. It starts off dryly tart, then mellows out into sweet and natural lemony flavor.

I’m pretty sure green is apple, except it doesn’t really taste like apples. It is reminiscent of apple-flavored bon-bons, in that it’s so sweetly, generically fruity that it burns the back of my throat, but there’s nothing about it that recalls actual apples.

Pink is raspberry. I usually dislike raspberry flavored stuff, as I hate the seedy flavors, but this candy manages to make those characteristically seedy raspberry notes pleasant and plummy, making it not at all upsetting to my olfactory system.

Red (not pictured) is cherry. It packs quite a cherry bite and has an evolving flavor profile. It starts off sweet, then goes to tart, and finally the deep almost-but-not-quite medicinal cherry flavors come through.

Last, but certainly not least (as it was my favorite) is brown, which is cola flavored. It’s wonderfully complex and captures all the nuance of real soda. It starts of generically sweet, then melds into a bright and fruity cola flavor with just a twinge of bitterness and a lemony finish. It’s like Haribo cola gummies to the umpteenth power.

Overall, these guys are pretty good but only in moderation. While their sweetness isn’t cloying, they are throat-burningly sweet after a while. After eating six in a row for tasting, I felt oversugared. While I wouldn’t turn them down if a friend offered me one from his or her bag, I wouldn’t buy them again. An O.

The Provencal city of Avignon was stop number two in my recent jaunt through France. The Michelin guide in the Avignon tourist office recommended two places that piqued my candy-blogger interest: a confiserie and a chocolaterie. While we never managed to find the confiserie (despite the best efforts of the kind locals we asked for directions), we did make it to the Chocolaterie de Puyricard.

The beautiful shop was quite classy, with glass cases filled with a wide variety of gorgeous truffles. Unfortunately, they didn’t label anything, and though the saleslady patiently answered all of my questions, I did feel bad pointing to everything and asking, “qu’est-ce que c’est?”(my pidgin way of asking “What is it?”)

I only nabbed one picture of the chocolates, as it was hottt at the time, and the chocolates were pretty melty by the time we biked back to our hotel room (by the way, if you ever visit Avignon, I highly recommend Sun Valley. We paid 42 euro/night for a studio double, complete with private bath and mini kitchen and fridge.), so I had to eat them quickly. We’ll go clockwise, starting from the left.

The two-toned chocolate was their praline. It turned out to be a nutty, creamy praline that was prettily piped into a thin-shelled dark chocolate trough (so there’s more praline than meets the eye; what you can see is only about half of what you get). The praline was soft, with the texture of a thick creamy frosting, and it tasted strongly of hazelnuts and chocolate. The dark chocolate trough had a nice snap, but its flavor was pretty thoroughly dominated by the praline.

The scalloped triangle was their praline fort - a strong praline. It was thicker, heavier, and nuttier than it’s weaker counterpart, like uber-concentrated Nutella on steroids. Lip-smackingly good.

The cylinder was a dark chocolate honey. The dark chocolate shell was so snappy that it crunched, revealing a sweet, flowy center. While the textural contrast was nice, the honey innards were throat-burningly sweet, too much for me to handle.

And finally, the poor crushed chestnut-shaped chocolate was chestnut and rum. The flowy, translucent ganache had the mild nuttiness of chestnut paste, followed by a whoa! boozy kick. The rum component is a strong tastebud wallop that really catches you by surprise.

If I ever make it back to Avignon, the Chocolaterie de Puyricard is definitely on my revist list, as is the praline fort. It gets an OM while the rest get an O. I wanted to try more of Puyricard’s flavors, and at approximately 1 euro per truffle, they’re an affordable indulgence. It’s really too bad we weren’t in Avignon longer; I could’ve happily tasted my way through them all, one day at a time.

I recently spent several days visiting my boyfriend’s home in Boston. While I was there, his mother was kind enough to take me on an excursion to Nichols Candies, a homegrown chocolate store in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It reminded me a lot of See’s and Haven’s: solid and tasty, if not frou-frou fancy, treats made with care and at a reasonable price (around $18 a pound at Nichols, if I remember correctly).

The store is filled with tables covered in trays and trays of a huge variety of chocolate treats. It was hard to pick just a few to try! I especially appreciated the creativity of their tulips, Brazil nuts wrapped in petals of caramel and dipped in chocolate. I didn’t actually buy any because I don’t particularly like Brazil nuts, but I thought I’d share the photo anyway.

Instead, I picked out a dark chocolate-covered ginger, a dark chocolate molasses chip, a dark chocolate-covered pineapple jelly, and a walnut whip (much lauded on their Yelp page). The molasses chip turned out to be an iteration of the dark sponge that I love so much (I was expecting something like See’s chocolate-covered toffee version). That disappeared into my belly before I got a chance to photograph it (oops), but I do have proper reviews of the rest!

The dark ginger is a disk of crystallized ginger covered in dark chocolate. The flavor of the ginger was pretty mild, making it enjoyable for a ginger novice like myself. It’s got a tad more bite than ginger ale but falls far short of the pickled ginger that comes with sushi. The ginger’s texture is firm but toothy. The coating was on the sweet side for dark chocolate. It had a cocoa-y tinge with a nice snap and a thin melt. An OM for the fine balance of ginger bite and chocolate melt.

I was excited to try the pineapple jelly. I guessed that it would be pineapple fruit pate covered in dark chocolate, and it was, but only sort of, thus falling short of my expectations. The jelly was smooth with just enough gelatin to give it some texture, which was nice, but it lacked the graininess of true fruit pate. The flavor was lacking as well. Good fruit pate is vibrant and bursting with flavor. In this, I got no pineapple flavor, just a generic sweetness, so it gets an O.

And finally, the much lauded walnut whip. It looked like a square of chocolate fudge with walnuts, but the texture was different. Instead of thick and grainy fudge, it was smooth, rich, creamy, fatty chocolate that melted thickly in the mouth. The chocolate had buttery caramel notes, and while the walnuts, being a mild nut, didn’t add much in terms of flavor, they did provide a bit of a textural contrast. I give it an OM, with the caveat that it’s too rich for frequent consumption. But that richness is what makes it so good!

Overall, Nichols is worth a visit if you’re passing by, and I’d happily stop there again to try more of their wide selection of chocolate goodies. And to stock up on their molasses chips (which get a biased ZOMG! because they’re one of my favorite candies).

Most people are pretty familiar with Ferrero’s Kinder Surprise eggs. They’re banned in the U.S. and some other countries because they mix edibles and toys with tiny parts, which is a no-no. Kinder Joy, which I came across for the first time in Europe, is a newer addition to the Kinder egg line. It too, mixes edibles and toys, so it’s also not allowed in the U.S.

The two halves of Joy egg are split. One half contains a toy (in my case, a lame Ice Age 3 - yes, they apparently made an Ice Age 3 - badge), while the other half is a creamy spread studded with two chocolate cookie balls. Each half is individually sealed so that the spread doesn’t get on the toy (and vice-versa, I suppose). Finally, a flat plastic “spoon” is included to scoop up the spread.

The spread is a layer of white chocolate on hazelnut chocolate. It has the viscosity of Nutella - smooth and thick and glossy, but just short of the runniness of honey. Inside the spread are two chocolate balls comprised of chocolate ganache surrounded by a thin wafer shell covered in chocolate and crunchy chocolate sprinkles. They’re similar to Rocher balls, but smaller and without hazelnuts.

If you try to pry the balls out of the spread, a half shell of chocolate and sprinkles gets left behind, which imparts a nice crunch to the spread. Overall, I found this treat too sweet to eat on its own. The balls are managable, as their wafer shells help cut the cloy, but eating the spread is akin to eating straight frosting: okay for a lick or two, but too much beyond that. It did go nicely on bread, however.

All in all, a nice treat, but I’d rather buy a normal Kinder chocolate treat, like a Happy Hippo, Bueno, Rocher, or Duplo, and just put Nutella on my bread. The Joy gets an O, with the caveat that it would be great for gift-giving as soon as they stop coming with lame-O Ice Age 3 toys.

As promised, today begins a series of reviews of the goodies I picked up on my recent trip to Europe. First up is four chocolates from Jadis et Gourmande in Paris.

Jadis et Gourmande seems to be best known for their molded chocolate bars in the shapes of letters or objects (like ties), but I wanted to try their chocolates and truffles. I picked out four that looked good and promptly forgot what they were. Oops.

First up is the milk chocolate square covered in bits. The bits turned out to be crunchy balls of rice praline. Not just plain old puffed rice; rice praline, meaning that it was bits of puffed rice coated in a sugar glaze, a wonderful touch! The smooth filling inside was fresh hazelnut, making it more peanutty in flavor than the more familiar Nutella. An OM.

The leaf was a lovely molded truffle. It turned out to be a dark chocolate coating around a lighter ganache filling, which, as you can see from the below photo, was neither smooth nor creamy. It had a fruity tinge to it, but was otherwise meh. An O.

The two squares were both pretty great. One was a chewy, non-sticky caramel coated with dark chocolate. The caramel filling had great, deep complexity that made me wish for more. An OMG.

Last, but certainly not least, the second square, also a caramel-filling covered in dark chocolate. The caramel in this one, however, was soft and smooth and more reminiscent of a ganache in texture. It sat atop a thin layer of nut brittle that was crisp, nutty, and delectable - a crunchy sweet surprise. The combination of flavors and texture in this truffle was just impeccable and thus earns this chocolate a ZOMG!

There you have it - a selection of chocolates that nearly runs the gamut of my ratings. If you ever visit Paris, or if you’re fortunate enough to live there, I highly recommend swinging by Jadis et Gourmande for a sampling of their chocolates. If only they had an outpost in the states!

Starburst Choozers are “fruit flavoured chews with liquid centre made with real fruit juices.” Did you catch those UK spellings? Yup - these guys are, at least for now, only available abroad.

My pack had 10 Choozers unevenly distributed amongst 3 flavors: 6 pineapple & orange, 3 orange & mango, and 1 raspberry & orange. Though the unbalanced flavor distribution was a tad annoying, the pineapple & orange were my favorite, so that worked out well for me.

Starburst Choozers are basically like Gushers, just with a Starburst chew outside. The chew was slightly stiffer than that of regular Starbursts, while the liquid centers were a cool, non-oozy goo.

Pineapple & orange had a nicely pineapple-astringent chew. It was hard to get a feel or taste for the liquid center in this chew. Still, I enjoyed this one the most, and it made me wish that Starburst fruit chews came in pineapple.

In orange & mango, both flavors were distinguishable. Mango overpowers at first, then gives way to a tart orange. In raspberry & orange, it’s all the taste of seedy raspberry, with a slightly plasticy aftertaste.

I wish I could buy a pack of all pineapple chews (I guess they do make a pineapple Hi-Chew for that). The pineapple & orange get an OM, the orange & mango gets an O, and the raspberry & orange gets a –. Overall, I give the pack an O, as I doubt all packs are as favorably flavor imbalanced as mine was.

I receive press release emails fairly frequently. The one that I got from Das foods was more eye-catching then most. Read for yourself:

“What’s your flava?  Man Bait, Naughty Ginger, Fab-O-Pom or Caramel Me Happy? They may sound like names you’d have if you worked for an “escort” service, but they are not. Instead, they’re the inspired flavors of Das Foods’ chic and unique new brand of delicious lollipops that will launch nationally next week at the All Candy Expo in Chicago, May 19-21.”

I gave these babies a test drive on my drive from New Haven to Rochester. They definitely helped keep me awake with their extreme lollipop flavor novelty. That’s also why the remaining photos are courtesy of Das, as I couldn’t photograph them while on the road. As an added bonus, I tasted them without access to the press release materials (quoted below in italics), so I didn’t know what I was eating while I ate it.

Fab-O-Pom: “A pomegranate and orange lolli that’s good and good for you.  It’s a sweet and tangy fusion of heart-healthy real pomegranate extract and fragrant orange oil with tiny pieces of orange zest.”

The lolli is a pale, translucent salmon flecked with bits of brown. It smells strongly of orange. The flavor is deep citrus, like a blood orange, while the finish has a bit of a bite to it, probably due to the pomegranate component. The brown flecks eventually wind up studding the surface as the lolli melts. They taste like bits of fruit leather or candied orange peel. I like this, despite the two air bubbles it contained. An OM.

Caramel Me Happy: “A caramel and lavender lolli made with caramelized cane sugar and indulgent chewy Das Salty Caramel mixed with real lavender extract and tiny crystals of Fleur De Sel sea salt for a trendy, delicious sweet and salty treat.”

This smells just like a salted caramel. It’s reminiscent of a deeper, more complex butterscotch candy with burnt sugar notes. The lollipop itself is not perfectly smooth; rather, it’s very finely textured. I enjoy the salted caramel flavor, but I’m a bit thrown by the mismatch between texture and taste. I wish I could chew this lollipop! I’d much rather have a Das salted caramel, so an O.

Naughty Ginger: “A ginger and lemon lolli that’s sweet, tangy and tantalizingly spicy all at once.  Small bits of wickedly spicy candied ginger are complemented by all-natural lemon extract.  And the ginger works double time; it tastes great AND soothes an upset stomach!”

Whoo boy is the ginger smell strong! This lolli is super, super gingery and super, super spicy. I got in a few licks, just enough to note the strong ginger flavor with a very light, sweet undertone of lemon, but couldn’t keep eating it because it was just too spicy for me. It left my mouth tingling. I’m a ginger wuss, so this guy wasn’t for me, but I bet ginger enthusiasts would appreciate it. A –.

Man Bait: “A maple bacon lolli that’s a fiercely delicious combination of real smoky bacon bits and delicious maple syrup providing an all-at-once savory and sweet sensation.”

Like the Naughty Ginger, this lollipop was too much flavor for me to handle. It smells like maple syrup with a hint of meat undertone. That’s pretty much how it tastes as well. It’s pretty sweet from the strong maple sugar flavor, and that plus the smoky meatiness from the bacon bits and the lollipop nature/hard candy texture does not compute in my brain. I felt a bit ill and couldn’t keep eating it. A – from me.

Out of all four lollipops, Fab-O-Pom is the only one that I would want to eat again. They are all, however, a fine flavor effort. They taste exactly as promised, and the flavors are strong, vibrant, and concentrated. While the ginger and bacon pops weren’t for me, ginger and bacon enthusiasts would enjoy them, making those the pops a great novelty gift. And at $0.50 a pop (har har), they’re an affordable gift as well.

Here’s the second of the two Balisto bars I bought in Cambridge. In case you missed it, the other Balisto that I bought, a Muesli-Mix bar, was reviewed last Friday.

The ingredients for this bar are biscuit à la farine complete, crème au miel et amandes, enrobe de chocolat au lait (39%). I believe that translates to a whole-wheat cookie, cream of honey, and almonds enrobed in milk chocolate.

The composition of this bar was similar to that of the Muesli-Mix, and it was the same wholesome-tasting cookie with a similar fake-milk-cream thing, all covered in milk chocolate. I didn’t notice any almonds or almond bits, perhaps because the fake-milk-cream thing had a honeyed tinge that was pretty overpowering.

I thought the cross-section of this bar looked better than that of the Muesli-Mix, but unfortunately, it didn’t really taste better. The honey cream give the bar a strange finish that really doesn’t work for me. I finished the two bars, but that’s enough for me. An O.

So the honey-almond-mix wasn’t quite right. Still, after two bars, I’m going to keep my eye out for the rest of the line while I’m in Europe, as I’d love to try more variations.

Back before I started candy blogging in earnest, I thought Godiva was the pinnacle of chocolates. How could they not be, with their beautiful, shiny, golden ballotins? When I was in middle school, my family got bumped up to first class for a Shanghai to Tokyo flight. They served Godivas for dessert, which only bolstered my vaunted view of the brand.

Now that I’ve tasted my way through hundreds and hundreds of sweets, I know that there are far better chocolates out there, and I’ll probably never buy Godivas myself. Still, I wouldn’t turn them down if they were offered to me for free, like at a Times Talk I attended as part of last year’s New York City Wine and Food Festival.

Our tickets for that talk did not come cheap, so I was pleased by my free box of Godivas (and the chance to meet Ferran Adria and Anthony Bourdain). The eight truffles within were (from left to right, then top to bottom in the below photo): milk chocolate, hazelnut praline, dark chocolate, smooth coconut, French vanilla, roasted almond, extra dark chocolate, and double chocolate raspberry.

Milk chocolate was a milk chocolate shell around a creamy, sweet, and fatty milk chocolate ganache. Godiva calls this one “the classic.” The dark chocolate was a dark version of the milk (duh) that I found to be overly sweet, though its fruity finish was nice.

I liked the extra dark chocolate somewhat more. Its ganache was thicker and less flowy than those of the milk and dark, but it still managed to be unpleasantly greasy. It had a deep cocoa flavor but not much flavor nuance otherwise.

The hazelnut praline (above), dubbed a “nutty reverie” by Godiva, was a milk-chocolate enrobed truffle covered in tiny bits of chopped and candied hazelnuts.  The nut bits had a light crunch and a sweet crisp, and the truffle itself had a yummy, honeycombed nuttiness to it, making it my favorite in the box.

Double chocolate raspberry (aka “berry tempting” in Godiva-speak) had a strangely wet ganache enrobed in dark chocolate. It had a seedy raspberry sweet finish, and the whole truffle had a nice brightness to it.

Coconut (below) was a white ganache with a milk chocolate coating. It was nicely nutty, with a slight grain and grit to the filling. The finish was sweet and tasted strongly of coconut, and the whole thing was a tad too sweet for me.

French vanilla was dark chocolate around a creamy, white filling. I didn’t get much genuine vanilla flavor from this. Instead, I mostly tasted its saccharine finish.

Finally, roasted almond was my second favorite after the hazelnut praline. Its ganache was thick and creamy with a wonderful roasty nuttiness. I found it pleasant to eat but also a bit overly sweet. Perhaps it would have been better in a dark enrobing?

The box as a whole gets an O, while the hazelnut praline and the roasted almond get OMs. If I had paid for it (looks like retail price is ~$16.50), I would have been disappointed. Godiva truffles just aren’t that great - I think they’re over-greasified and under-flavored. Skip these guys and head to your local chocolatier instead. They’ll probably have stuff that’s far better - handmade and fresh! - for a comparable price.

I got these Life Savers Gummies as free samples from Wrigley (they came with the Orbit Mist). The Island Fruits lineup is new to the Life Savers Gummies family and features the following flavors: pineapple, fruit punch, strawberry kiwi, and mango melon.

I’ve always enjoyed Life Savers Gummies, but I rarely buy them. I guess it’s because I associate Life Savers with hard candy, and when I have gummi cravings, I think Haribo or Trolli. The rolls contain a lucky 13 ring-shaped gummies that are slightly greasy to the touch and that have a fairly stiff/sproingy chew.

Pineapple (bottom left) had a genuine fruit flavor with just a tinge of the essence of a pineapple’s core. Fruit punch (top right) was pretty basic, like Hawaiian punch in gummi form.

Strawberry kiwi (top left) was lightly flavored and reminded me of a Snapple juice drink. I wouldn’t have identified this flavor without knowing which flavors the assortment contained. Finally, mango melon (bottom right) was sweetly fruity with a round canteloupe finish. I didn’t pick up any mango notes, but I guess just calling it melon loses the alliterative effect.

Overall, these were rather enjoyable - I finished both sample rolls on my own - but I probably wouldn’t buy them again. I wish they had a little more oomph to them, so they get an O. Surf Sweet’s Super Sour Worms are still my go-to gummi for now, as their fruit flavors are far brighter and far more genuine.