ZOMG, Candy!

I bought this bag of Brookside Dark Chocolate Goji with Raspberry at a Bed Bath & Beyond because I needed a few more dollars to use my coupon. It turned out to be a great unplanned addition to my shopping list.

The bag described them as “smooth dark chocolate surrounding a sweetened real fruit juice piece, made from a blend of goji berry juice, raspberry juice and other select fruit juices.” They were shiny chocolate balls with these little flat jelly candy centers.

The jelly centers were comprised of two little discs. The discs were pressed flat side to flat side, then surrounded by chocolate.

The discs had a slight graininess to them. Some of them yielded instantly when bitten, while others were a little chewier. They were like a cross between a gummi worm and a fruit gem.

The fruity flavor of the discs was quite bright and intense. I’d place it as a mix of strawberry jam and cranberry juice. The flavor intensified as the chew went on.

The chocolate coating was nice but nothing to write home amount. It was slightly grainy with deep cocoa flavors. The melt could have been smoother, but it was an otherwise fine foil for the fruity centers.

These were winners solely based on the intense and tasty fruity flavor of the centers. I’d really like to try more of their line. An OM.

A Belgian friend of mine in Rochester was kind enough to remember me on his latest trip back to his homeland. He brought me back a box of Belgian Pates de Fruits from Duc d’O (also available online!)

Pates de fruits, also known as fruit jellies and fruit pate, are much better than gummi candies. They’re usually made from no more than pureed fruit, sugar, and gelatin. The real fruit part is what makes them special.

The entirety of this box was made from pureed apricots plus “flavours” and “colouring”. Interestingly enough, none of these were apricot flavored. Instead, they were, from left to right in the below photo, raspberry, pear, orange, strawberry, and grape.

All of the fruit pieces were made of two half jellies stuck together and rolled in granulated sugar. The pates had a soft, immediate give, while the sugar sand added a hearty grit and crunch.

Pear was golden and pear shaped. It had a great seediness and tasted quite genuinely of Bartlett pear flavor with a slightly sweet and sour finish.

Strawberry was a little red triangle. It was mild and sweet with a lightly floral flavor and reminded me of strawberry preserves.

Raspberry was hard to distinguish from the strawberry. It was slightly darker and had a more mottled surface. It lacked any seedy astringency, though it had deeper red fruit notes than the strawberry did.

Grape looked like a golden version of raspberry. It tasted more like raspberry than the raspberry did, as it had a seedy finish. It tasted of raisins with a vibrant, fruity, slightly sour finish.

Finally, orange was a golden, puckered ball. It started with an initial hit of zesty citrus almost sourness but then mellowed out into a milder, muted orange marmalade flavor.

I wish pates de fruits were more prevalent in the U.S. They’re great, concentrated bites of real fruit flavor, a refreshing departure from the usual fare of artificially flavored and sweetened gummi bears and worms. An OM.

I received a bag of Surf Sweets Fruity Hearts as free samples from the manufacturer. The press release said that they were launched in time for Valentine’s Day, though it was never explicit about whether these were a limited holiday edition or not.

They were, however, explicit about touting all the benefits to the Surf Sweets line. These are organic, gluten-free, and vegan. No big surprise: they’re available at Whole Foods.

The Fruity Hearts were watermelon and cherry flavored. They were difficult to visually distinguish. Both were pink though my lighting made them look red in the photo; the watermelon was a slightly lighter shade.

The texture reminded me of fruit gems. They were soft enough for me to easily bite right through, exposing slick and shiny surfaces.

There was a slight sproinginess when I chewed them. The surface was covered with a crunchy granulated sugar that added a nice textural contrast.

Watermelon was sweet and floral with a brightly fruity finish. It reminded me of a mellow, more natural version of a watermelon Jolly Rancher.

Cherry was also brightly fruity but had a darker edge with plummy notes. It reminded me of cherry Popsicles.

I enjoyed the texture and flavor intensity of these. Watermelon and cherry aren’t my favorite candy flavors in general, but these are seasonally appropriate choices.

It’s nice that Surf Sweets takes extra care with their ingredients, but it’s even better that their organicness and wholesomeness doesn’t come at the expense of deliciousness. An OM.

Happy Friday the 13th! Great time to wrap up a week of See’s reviews (see Monday and Wednesday for previous reviews this See’s week).

I got today’s candies the best possible way: the mall See’s stand had a little basket of individually wrapped candies by the register, and the owner told me to help myself to as many as I wanted. I nabbed a Cafe Latte Krispy and Mint Krispy, along with a Butterscotch Square and Dark Butterchew.

Both pieces were squares of flavored toffee covered with a thin layer of chocolate. The Cafe Latte Krispy was a golden brown coffee toffee hidden in milk chocolate.

The toffee chip cleaved into shards with a great crunch. It had a bit of a tendency to gather as grit in my molars but mostly melted on my tongue.

The thin milk chocolate coating melted thickly and tasted of malt and caramel. The toffee had a nice coffee flavor without any bitterness. Combined with the chocolate, it had a nice mocha frappucino effect.

The toffee crispness kept the whole treat feeling light. It was a nice mix of texture and flavor and OM-worthy.

The Mint Krispy was a white mint toffee covered in dark chocolate. The texture of the mint toffee was the same as that of the Cafe Latte: light and crisp.

The minty center was powerful in flavor and scent. It tasted strongly of peppermint oil and was nearly spicy in how it set my mouth a-tingling, with just a hint of bitterness to the finish.

The strength of that mintiness overpowered the dark chocolate, which came through as just a hint of cocoa flavor undertone. I enjoyed the treat but it was too minty. An O.

See’s has long been one of my favorite confectioners for good reason. They make delicious treats at reasonable price points, and they may be enough impetus to get me back to the mall more than once every six months.

I am no longer the mall shopping machine that I was when I was in middle school and high school. These days, I just don’t have the patience anymore and mostly shop online.

Thus, I had lived in Durham for nearly six months before I finally set foot in a mall for an Apple store errand. Lo and behold, the mall had a See’s stand! I picked up enough treats to make this week another See’s week.

The See’s Awesome Peanut Brittle Bar was a 1 oz. bar that they described as “crunchy peanut brittle drenched in milk chocolate.” It was a beautifully enrobed slab.

The brittle cleaved cleanly and was full of peanuts, some whole and some in pieces. When chewed, some of the brittle shards came together and got a bit stuck in my molars, but it was mostly a clean chomp.

It was salty and buttery with a hearty nuttiness thanks to the roasted peanuts. The milk chocolate added a light duskiness that was a great pairing with the salty sweet brittle.

I’m generally meh about peanuts, but I really enjoyed this treat. I love toffee that cleaves like this brittle did, and the flavors were great – predominantly that of roasted peanuts with a nice balance of salty and sweet. An OM.

If you want other opinions, Cybele and Sera both reviewed this on their sites long before I did. In my defense, I’ve never lived in a city with any sort of See’s shop before!

Today I’m reviewing the rest of my free samples of sweetriot‘s new riotBar line: the pure 70% and pure 85% dark chocolate bars. I covered the 60% dark chocolate with crunchy cacao nibs on Wednesday.

Like the 60%, both of these bars were too lightly scored to be useful for clean snapping. The 70% (top) had a sharp initial snap but softened as it was chewed.

The melt was smooth and matte. It started off lightly sweet before developing a hint of bitterness, then finishing with a brighter, fruitier sweetness than the start.

There was a bit of astringency to the end that made me want a drink of water afterwards, but it was mild enough to not be off-putting. An OM.

The 85% was even snappier. The melt wasn’t much fun, as it was very dry and astringent.

The flavor profile began with a sharply bright fruitiness that was quite vibrant. The finish, however, was quite astringent and left a lingering bitterness that I didn’t care for. An O for the strong start, at least.

sweetriot recently sent me free samples of their new line of chocolate riotBars. Before the riotBar additions, they sold chocolate in unBars, which were in thick, unwieldy blocks. I have an unBar that’s been kicking around my stash for a while. I’ve yet to open it because it seemed so cumbersome to eat.

sweetriot is also known for their cacao nibs, which I reviewed ages ago. It’s nice to see that a chocolate company committed to using fair trade cacao has prospered over the years.

Today, I’m reviewing the pure 60% dark chocolate with crunchy cacao nibs. Friday I’ll review the pure 70% and pure 85% dark chocolate bars.

The 100g bar was lightly scored into a 10 x 3 grid. Each rectangle of chocolate had 20 calories, which is a nice nod to portion control, except the scoring was too shallow to be that helpful for clean breaking.

The chocolate had a thick, sharp snap. If you look closely, you can see a nib in the break line. Those nibs added a nice, dry crunch with minimal grittiness and astringency. The chocolate had a lovely, matte melt around the nibs.

The chocolate was sweet and fruity with middle cherry notes and a vibrant cocoa finish. I appreciated the distinct and assertive flavor complexity.

I really enjoyed the texture of the nibs mixed with the chocolate. It made from fun chomping and yielded great, varying chocolate flavors. An OM.

These 1890′s Sweets/Drop Candy Berry Mix from Public Displays of Confection were a free sample, along with the Thanksgiving Mix I reviewed a week ago and a couple of fat candy canes.

The website describes them as “blueberry, blackberry and raspberry pressed into shape on our 150 year old drop roller press. These are called fruit drops, because the machine produces sheets of candy that are “dropped” onto a hard surface to break them into pieces.”

The candies were cute and distinctively shaped. All had a perfectly smooth melt that felt glossy against the tongue.

Raspberry was a red circle dappled with little round bumps. It was sweet with a concentrated fruitiness and a hint of tartness. I wouldn’t have placed it as raspberry based on its flavor, as it lacked the artificial seediness raspberry candies usually have.

Blueberry was a knobbly, artificially bright blue sphere. It tasted darker than the raspberry, with a purple, grapey flavor.

Blackberry had the same shape as the raspberry but was a deep purple in color. It had the deep darkness of the blueberry but with bright, fruity overtones that made it taste positively juicy.

This was a fun, tasty assortment. I liked how amped up all the flavors were, and the polished mouthfeel was great. An OM.

When I left Rochester, NY, I was sad to leave behind a great local chocolatier in Hedonist Artisan Chocolates. Fortunately, when you’re a candy blogger, candy can follow you around in the form of free samples!

Hedonist sent me a bag of their holiday Candy Cane Bark, along with some holiday truffles (previously reviewed here), salted caramels (review to come on Friday), and drinking chocolate (review TBA; it’s still too warm in North Carolina for hot chocolate).

The Candy Cane Bark was made of “shards of semi-sweet chocolate (55%) swirled with white chocolate and sprinkled with crushed candy canes.” It was festively pretty to behold, with the swirl of semi-sweet and white chocolate evoking the candy cane’s red and white twist.

The bark was thin, no more than a centimeter at its thickest and thinner in some slabs. That made it easy to break apart with a sharp snap.

I didn’t find the candy cane’s mintiness apparent in the scent, but its flavor was lightly present in the finish of the bar. The crushed candy cane bits added just the right hint of airy mintiness to meld perfectly with the smooth, dusky pure cocoa flavor of the chocolate.

The white chocolate swirl added just a hint of vanilla and a slight fatty overtone. The cool melt of the chocolate mixed with the slight grittiness of the candy cane bits, which dissolved quickly.

Hedonist excels in its ability to find a great balance in its flavors. It would have been easy for the peppermint to get heavy handed in a treat like this, but Hedonist treated the mint with restraint and really used it to bring out the best of the chocolate and the mint. An OM.

Over the weekend, I went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on pumpkin butter. While there, I couldn’t help nabbing some of their store brand candies. This week will be a week of Trader Joe’s reviews, starting with their Milk Chocolate Covered Toffee Popcorn.

The fat nuggets of popcorn looked so tantalizing, tumbling out of the bag with their slight sheen. Their outer coating was a thin layer of milk chocolate. Beneath that was a thin layer of toffee glaze, and then the fattest, fluffiest popcorn I’ve ever seen.

I wonder if Trader Joe’s is starting with some seriously genetically modified corn or something. Every piece was nearly all lovely puffy popped part and barely any noticeable gets-stuck-in-your-teeth kernel part.

The milk chocolate was malty and sugary sweet. The toffee added a bit of crunch and a light buttery scorchiness, and the popcorn fluffiness capped it all off as a light, neutral foil.

This treat was a great synthesis of flavors and textures. Chocolate-covered popcorn style treats tend to be pricy (looking at you, Moose Munch), but this was only $2.99 for the 8 oz bag. Sold!

My only complaint is that it got a tad too sweet in the finish after a few pieces in a row so it gets a slight downgrade for that. An OM.