ZOMG, Candy!

Here’s another Ritter Sport bar that I picked up in Europe: the Ciocco-Duo. Aka chocolate duo (my personal guessed-at translation, thank you very much).

The wrapper also claims, “delizioso cioccolato al latte extra e squisito cioccolato bianco.”

My guess at that translation? Delicious extra milk chocolate and exquisite white chocolate. But that’s just a guess. Probably close enough?

The bar was beautiful – 16 two-toned squares of a logo-stamped white chocolate top on a milk chocolate base. When I first opened it, the chocolate had an okay snap. Then a heat wave hit, and it softened some but managed to retain its shape.

The white chocolate portion had a creamy, thick melt. It tasted lightly floral with strong vanilla flavors. It was a tasty white chocolate, reminiscent of a nice vanilla frosting.

The milk chocolate base had a similarly thick and creamy melt. It tasted of caramel and cocoa with a light sweetness and some coffee notes to the finish.

I found this bar to be a well-made, tasty, and attractive addition to the Ritter Sport line-up. There’s nothing exotic about it, but it’s well-made and well-flavored. An OM.

I bought this Ritter Sport Olympia bar when I was in Italy. It’s been fairly recently featured on Candy Blog and Jim’s Chocolate Mission, so I thought I’d throw my two cents.

The wrapper notes that it contains “joghurt, honig, nuss, and traubenzucker”.

What, that’s not immediately self-explanatory? Thankfully, Cybele has revealed that it’s yogurt, honey, hazelnut, and grape sugar. I’ll admit – the grape sugar component still leaves me confused.

The milk chocolate coating was sweet and thick with a slightly sour tang that was probably helped along by the yogurt.

The filling was chock full of tiny bits of hazelnuts and what I initially thought was toffee. After reading the translation of the components, I think the toffee was actually bits of honeycomb crisps.

The nuts and crisps were similarly sized and colored. They made the bar as a whole sweet and interesting.

The yogurt brought a seriously sour tang that added to the richness of the bar. I love yogurt in my chocolate, and I enjoyed this Olympia quite a bit.

One caveat: it was maybe a tad too busy. I could’ve been just as happy, if not happier, without the hazelnuts. Sometimes simpler can be better. Just ask Coco Chanel! Still, it was a uniquely fun and tasty mix. An OM.

I got this Twix Java in my Sweets and Snacks Expo press pack. It’s not a new bar; instead, it’s been on and off the market as a limited edition since at least 2007.

I, unfortunately, had never been lucky enough to catch it in the wild in any of its previous incarnations, so this was my first time trying it. My packaging made no mention of limited-edition-ness. Perhaps that means it’s here to stay?

The wrapper describes it as “chocolate cookies bars; coffee caramel; milk chocolate.” The back of the wrapper proudly proclaims it to be made with Mars’s real chocolate.

It’s like a regular Twix bar, only the cookie is chocolate and the caramel is coffee tinged. If you’re not familiar with Twix, they come in “fingers”, with a bottom layer of cookie and a top layer of caramel, with the whole thing covered in milk chocolate.

The caramel was sticky yet smooth with a candied coffee flavor. It had a beautiful pull.

The coffee flavor was dry and roasty, with burnt caramel and cocoa notes. As the flavor progressed, it got darker. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the coffee flavor.

The chocolate cookie was soft and dry, and it crumbled rather than crunched. The milk chocolate coating was just so-so, sweet without any distinction.

I give this an OM. I wish the cookie were just a tad crunchier, but otherwise, I thought it was a great mix of flavors and textures. In fact, I like it better than regular Twix, as it’s less sweet and more interesting.

Today’s review is a continuation of Wednesday’s review of the second set of mini Ritter Sport bars that I bought in Italy.

To recap, the set of seven contained Marzipan, Knusperkeks (butter biscuit), Knusperflakes (cornflakes), Vollmilch 30% Kakao (milk chocolate, 30% cacao), Joghurt (yogurt), Haselnuss (hazelnut), and Nugat (nougat). I’ll be reviewing the final two today.

Haselnuss had tiny bits of hazelnuts sprinkled throughout the milk chocolate squares. They brought a pleasant crunch and nuttiness.

I think the milk chocolate base was the same as the plain 30% bar. It tasted thick and full of caramel notes.

I appreciated that it was nicely sweet without being cloying and was clearly made with good quality ingredients. Still, it wasn’t terribly exciting and not my favorite from the Ritter Sport line, so an O.

Nugat was a soft hazelnut praline. If you look carefully in the below photo, you can just make out the change in color as the praline filling shifts to milk chocolate coating.

Though the difference was visible, it was difficult to discern by mouthfeel. Everything just melted together in my mouth into one deliciously sweet, nutty, thick, and gooey blob. Believe me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

An OM. I am so jealous of the Germans. Their default chocolate line ranges from pretty good to spectacular.

I’ve now tasted my way through a wide array of Ritter Sport bars, and I’ve yet to find a dud. Guess that means I’ll have to keep trying by eating more Ritter Sports!

My friend, the newly minted Dr. Neil (congratulations, Neil!), is soon moving from Rochester to the Netherlands for a post-doc position. This makes me very sad because Neil is one of my favorite people, and I will miss him lots when he’s gone.

Neil is one of my favorite people because he’s now gone to the Netherlands twice, and both times, he brought me back Dutch candy. I should note that it’s not the candy-bringing itself that makes Neil endearing (I’d like to think that my affections are not so easily purchased); it’s that the candy-bringing is just one example of how Neil is a kind and thoughtful friend.

On his last trip, he brought me back a Nestle Bros bar. I had never heard of the Bros bar before and was initially confused at Neil’s email with the subject line, “Delivery” and the body, “Bros.” Was Neil going to bring me Dutch frat boys?

Nope. Turns out that the Bros bar is an aerated chocolate bar, pseudo-separated into six segments, each with a cute little bubble imprint on the top.

The wrapper touts the bars relatively low calorie count (131). This was both unsurprising – aerated chocolate is full of air, hence the lower caloric density – and surprising – low cal doesn’t quite fit my mental image of a Bro (FYI, Keystone Light is not actually lite). Though now that I think about it, I think the calorie count marking is just a difference in European nutrition/packaging laws.

The chocolate has a beautifully bubbled interior. I love the look of aerated chocolate so much! And I love the way it feels against the tongue, when the bubbles smoosh away and dissolve in the mouth.

It tasted thick and sweet, brightly fruity, with dusky cocoa notes. I wouldn’t call it dark or milk; instead, it fits the semisweet bill. In fact, it reminded me of semisweet Nestle Tollhouse chips.

I managed to eat the whole thing in one sitting. Fortunately, the aerated factor meant that I felt no guilt for scarfing a whole candy bar in one quick go. An OM, and my repeated wish that aerated chocolate was more bountiful in the U.S.

Here’s the continuation of Monday’s review of Ritter Sport’s Schokowurfel. Monday, I reviewed the Creme Coco, the Mandel Split, and the Caramel Crisp.

Today, I’ll review the rest of the set: Crocant, Cappuccino, and Edelnugat.

I’m not exactly sure what Crocant means in German, but the onomatopoeia made me think of crunchiness. And I was right!

Crocant turned out to be a solid milk chocolate square with toasted rice crisps. It was basically like an uber Nestle Crunch bar, but it distinguished itself with a bit of extra sweetness to the crisps’ finish, like the crisps had been candied or caramelized. So it gets an OM.

Cappuccino was pretty self-explanatory. I appreciated that its outer wrapper was a beautiful cafe au lait color.

It was a milk chocolate bar with a creamy, lighter brown ganache inside. The square was very, very soft and very, very thick when melting in the mouth.

The cappuccino flavor did capture the essence of coffee, but I found it far too sweet, more Starbucks Frappuccino than Italian espresso. It could’ve been a great bite of chocolate had it not been so cloying. An O.

Edelnougat is the last of the set. I know what nougat is, and I know what edelweiss is, but I didn’t know what Edelnougat could mean.

It turned out to be a thick hazelnut ganache inside a milk chocolate shell. Like a good praline, this was mouth-coatingly thick and wonderfully nutty – a classic done well. An OM.

All in all, I was pretty impressed by the quality of this set. When I taste candy for reviews, I often limit my tasting to just a few bites, so this set was perfect for my needs. And I had enough leftover to share with friends, making this a highly recommended souvenir.

My May trip to Italy meant a layover in Frankfurt, which in turn meant that I got to buy lots of Duty Free Ritter Sport. In fact, I managed to leave Europe with not one but two sets of mini Ritter Sport assortments.

The below Schokowurfel set had 6 varieties (Sorten?): Creme Coco, Mandel Split, Caramel Crisp, Crocant, Cappuccino, and Edelnougat. I’ll cover the first three today and hit the next three on Wednesday.

These tiny Ritter Sports were individually wrapped and each just one square big. They’re slightly larger than the square segments of a regular Ritter Sport bar. The size difference is especially noticeable in their height.

It wasn’t until after I’d eaten them all that I realized that I photographed one upside down. Oops.

Creme Coco came in a white wrapper. It was milk chocolate with a white coconut cream filling. The filling contained dried flakes of coconut that were crisp and just shy of crunchy.

The chocolate was soft and sweet and nutty. The two flavors played off each other beautifully, with the dusky sweet balancing out the crispy nutty coconut. I thought it was a lovely mix of flavor and texture. An OM.

It was pretty easy to guess at a translation for Creme Coco. Mandel Split left me lost with no clue what to expect.

It turned out to be milk chocolate on the outside with a white chocolate filling with a few peanut bits mixed in. The peanuts were quite flavorful, but I’ve never been a big fan of peanuts.

I respected the high quality of the ingredients that went into the Mandel Split, but I didn’t find it very exciting or special. To me, it just tasted like nice chocolate and peanuts. An O.

Finally for today, Caramel Crisp was easily comprehensible. It was milk chocolate with golden brown caramel-flavored filling.

At first I thought the filling contained rice crisps, but careful excavation revealed them to be thin flakes of unidentified crispiness. They had a nice complexity that made me think they could be honeycomb, or at least honeycomb flavored.

I really enjoyed the filling to this chocolate. It had nice caramelized/burnt sugar notes that I love in real caramel, but it had the solid texture of a grainy ganache. That plus the intriguingly delicious crisps earned this an OM.

Cybele reviewed this set several years ago on Candy Blog. Looks like the assortment has changed a little since then. Come back on Wednesday for the other half!

These Meiji Pupurun Grape Gummis came in my generous free sample box from Tsunami.hk. They came in a conveniently resealable bag with a cute mascot and an intriguing rendering of the gummi’s cross-section.

Each gummi was the size of a gum drop but with a rounder domed shape. They had a stiff outer shell that was thickest at the top. The center was a softer gummi that was just shy of an oozy goo in texture.

They tasted sweet and juicy with a nice floral flavor that I thought was more strawberry than grape. The finish, however, had a noticeable grape taste that tasted quite genuine and was not at all medicinal.

While there was nothing revolutionary about the flavor of the gummis, I absolutely loved the texture. The solid flavor combined with their unique texture earned these an OM.

Not Just Cereal is “the first chocolate-coated cereal snack…that combines the flavor and crunch of your favorite cereal covered with a smooth, milk chocolate layer.” They’re currently available at Walmart; I got mine as free samples from their PR people.

They come in four flavors: Fruity O’s, Honey Toasted O’s, Toasted Rice, and Cinnamon Crunch.

The Fruity O’s are off-brand Froot Loops covered in a mix of milk chocolate and mockolate (the ingredients list both milk chocolate and milk chocolate flavored coating). I didn’t think I’d like them, as I’m usually pretty picky about my fruit and chocolate combinations.

The coating was shiny and soft and tasted like a mix of cocoa and artificial sweetness. Surprisingly enough, the fake Froot Loops worked well with the chocolate/mockolate combination.

The cereal brought a nice crunch and an artificial fruitiness that conveniently masked the slightly not-quite-right-ness of the chocolate coating.

Since the Fruity O’s were good, I figured the Honey Toasted O’s would be even better. These are off brand Honey Nut Cheerios coated in the same chocolate-ish coating.

I don’t know if I got an off box or what, but mine tasted slightly stale. I didn’t particularly care for the vague corniness of the cereal, or its fake honey tinge.

The Toasted Rice was off brand Rice Chex. The blandly crispy rice worked well with the chocolate/mockolate coating by tempering the chocolate’s over-sweetness.

I really enjoyed flattening the little cereal pillows against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. After a few too many, however, the chocolate got cloying.

I should point out, though, that this is the first of the Not Just Cereals that I enjoyed enough to eat so much that I got that cloying feeling.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch is one of my favorite snacking cereals, so I was excited about the milk chocolate flavored Cinnamon Crunch. It wasn’t as airy as the Toasted Rice, but it still brought a nice crunch.

I loved the combination of the crunchy, chocolatey, cinnamony cereal (how’s that for alliteration?). But for some reason, there was an odd, faint mintiness to the finish. It wasn’t off-putting, exactly, but I could’ve done without it.

Still, the Cinnamon Crunch were my favorite of the bunch, and I managed to eventually eat the whole box, so they get an OM. They’re followed by the Toasted Rice and the Fruity O’s (Os), and finally the Honey Toasted O’s (–).

I might buy the Cinnamon Crunch again (hence the OM), but I think I’d prefer to make my own, where I could control the quality of the chocolate. Realistically, though I may just stick with making puppy chow.

These gummi butterflies from Albanese are a relatively new addition to the bulk bins of my local Wegmans. They’re beautifully translucent and look like those gel window sticker things.

They came in six colors/flavors and were generously sized. Tip to tip, I’d say the wingspan was about the length of my index finger.

The texture was a joy. They were soft with the perfect balance of stiffness and bounce, so they were easy to tear with my teeth. They were also smooth and had a pleasant mouthfeel when I had the patience to let them melt in my mouth.

Dark red was cherry. It tasted deeply dark with nicely complex red fruit notes.

Lime green was supposed to be apple. I found it sweet with a vague tinge of citrus.

Orange was one of my favorites. It was vibrantly sweet and citrusy. A nice orange zestiness develops across the gummi’s flavor profile and shines through.

Based on just taste, I couldn’t figure out what flavor aqua was. Based on the website, I think it’s supposed to be blue raspberry. It was my least favorite because it carried an inexplicable plasticky, petrol note.

I thought pink was strawberry, but the website says that it’s watermelon. I thought it had a nicely floral finish with strawberry highlights.

Finally, purple was grape. It was well-balanced and managed to avoid that medicinal grape nastiness.

With the exception of the aqua, I found these to be a pleasure to play with and eat (I was enjoying biting them in half and making hybrid butterflies). Aqua gets a –; the rest gets OMs.