ZOMG, Candy!

I received several fun-sized bags of Caramel Apple Sugar Babies last Halloween in my NCA goodie bag. I thought they were a new product, but apparently they’ve been around for a while, as Candy Blog and Candy Addict both reviewed them back in 2007.

The wrapper called them “milk caramels with apple candy coating.” To me, they were like a chewy version of caramel apple lollipops (which I love).

They had a shiny panned shell in a cheerful shade of bright green. The shell was slightly crumbly, like that of jelly beans. It tasted of sweetly tart green apples, with a lovely brightness.

The caramel centers tasted of burnt brown sugar. They developed a grainy chewiness at the end as they melted away. At first, the caramel melded nicely with the apple coating, but as soon as the apple coating disappeared, the sweetness of the caramel became totally dominant.

They’re far from gourmet treats, and after a hand/fun pack-ful, the sweetness becomes overpowering, but I found them tastily addictive. An OM.

Lindt’s “A Touch of Sea Salt” bar has been on the market for a while: Chocablog covered it way back in August 2008, and Cybele wrote about it last October. I finally picked one up last week because it was on sale at good old Wegmans.

The package design is simple - a balanced Lindt square with a visible sprinkle of coarse salt and the curiously (carelessly?) capitalized note, “with Fleur de sel Sea salt crystals”. I love the blaze of blue in the background. A bit reminiscent of a PowerPoint slide, yes, but also pretty!

The chocolate itself looks like standard dark Lindt squares, with Lindt Excellence’s characteristic deep sheen and sharp snap. Unlike in the Salazon bars, there were no visible grains of salt. Unsurprisingly, the taste of salt was also far more mild in the Lindt bar.

The chocolate had a dark, thick, and glossy melt. It tasted deeply of cocoa but was sweeter than I remembered dark Lindt bars being. A glance at the back of the package showed that it had just a minimum of 47% cocoa solids, which put the relative sweetness in context.

The salt really was just a touch - a few grains here and there. When the fleur de sel did flash on my palate, it brought out a nice sweet and sourness to the chocolate (in a fruity way rather than a cheap Chinese takeout way).

I think this is a fine addition to the Lindt line and a great bar for everyday snacking. It wasn’t as complex as the Salazon line, but I found it quite admirable for a mass market bar. An OM.

According to its entry on Hershey’s website, the Zagnut has been around for ~80 years now (I think Hershey’s needs to update their mathing). Wikipedia says that it used to be owned by the Clark Company, though how Hershey’s ended up with Zagnut and Necco ended up with the Clark Bar, I don’t know. Cybele didn’t know either.

I do know that I found it tasty, and like the Clark Bar, it made me wonder how I’d never had one before. Mine came in a gifted sample box from Munchies Sweets and Treats, but I do believe I’ve seem then in Wegmans, housed in the retro candy display.

The bar was described as “crunchy peanut butter - toasted coconut.” It had the flaky layered center of a Clark Bar, plus an outer layer of what looked like compressed nuts.

The golden bar was super crisp. As I bit into it, there was a lovely crunch, and flakes well, flaked off. I also noticed tiny bits of peanuts in the texture.

It tasted mostly of peanuts/peanut butter with a touch of coconut to the finish. Some of it got lodged in my molars a tad, like brittle, but it wasn’t nearly as bad a teeth situation as you get with Butterfingers.

I loved the texture, with its mix of flaky and crispy, and the nutty/coconutty flavors were nice as well. I’m definitely a newly converted Zagnut fan. An OM.

Charles Chocolates’s Teance Tea Collection, another free sample that I received, was absolutely gorgeous - little square tiles of slate grey adorned with traditional Chinese calligraphy. I have no idea how they did it, but I love the look. I also wish I knew more of the characters; second from the right is “cha” or tea, but that’s the only one I recognized.

I was a bit nervous about the tea aspect. I’ve had Asian tea-flavored chocolates in the past and was not a fan. Fortunately, these were nothing like matcha chocolate - they were far better.

Each tile had a super thin outer layer of chocolate that crunched when I bit into it. It made me think of crunching footsteps in the snow - an instant and satisfying give. The ganache within was cool and creamy with a flawless texture and well-infused flavors.

Formosa Baochong was described as “a premium Taiwanese tea with strong flavors that contrast well with chocolate.” It tasted dark and deep with notes of clove and nutmeg. The spice flavors came across nicely but weren’t overwhelming, making for a well-balanced truffle.

Special Jasmine was billed as “a delicately fragrant floral tea.” It was the only one of the set that actually tasted like my conception of how tea tastes.

It tasted just like jasmine tea, with a lightly bitter and almost astringent bite, and made me think of going out to dim sum with my parents. The finish was a little sweet for my taste - my throat burned a bit - but it was still enjoyable.

Osmanthus is apparently “a floral tea often used in Asian pastries with a very distinctive flavor.” In truffle form, it starts out tasting of chocolate and then gives way to a unique fruity flavor.

I get citrus and banana notes, but it doesn’t taste exactly like either. I can’t quite put my finger on what it tastes of. It’s definitely distinctive and quite intriguing.

Lichee was described as “a traditional Asian fruit with flavors greatly enhanced by chocolate.” The lichee (or lychee, as I’m used to spelling it) flavor was spot on, with all of the fruit’s soft floral flavors. I don’t think the lichee flavor is exactly enhanced by the chocolate or that the two are destined flavor match, but the flavor combo is nice enough.

Charcoal Fired Oolong was “custom roasted Taiwan oolong over traditional bamboo baskets over a charcoal fire to medium dark.” It tasted brightly sweet and fruity at first before it took a darker turn, with a hint of smoky undertone. The brightness was present throughout, including in the finish, which was just wonderful.

Generally, I find drinking fancy teas unsatisfying because the tea always smells so much better than it tastes. Charles Chocolates managed to make tea truffles that taste like tea smells. The oolong, osmanthus, and baochong were my favorites, but I enjoyed all of them. An OM.

I bought a bag of Wonka Sour Puckerooms Gummies on sale for just a dollar (along with a $1 bag of their new Sluggles Gummies, which shall be reviewed in the future). I hope the Puckerooms’ on-sale-ness doesn’t mean that they’re on the way out! I found them adorable, creative, and most importantly, tasty!

I love the bright, colorful, slightly psychedelic-hippy-ish packaging on these babies. And I love that, when Wonka chose to make a sour gummy, they thought outside of the cutesy animal box and went with cutesy fungi instead.

The mushrooms come in three shapes and three flavors, but the shapes don’t correspond to a specific flavor. In other words, all three flavors come in all three shapes: a pointy mushroom, and bulbous mushroom, and a mushroom-cloud-y mushroom (aka a bulbous mushroom with a little stretch to the stem).

The Puckerooms are really more sour than sweet - the white sour coating is basically sugar. The chew is soft but also quite sproingy, making them fun to chomp on.

Red is cherry. I expected the somewhat medicinal flavor of artificial cherry. Instead, I found it more reminiscent of Hawaiian Punch.

Purple is grape and tastes of deep purple or black grapes. It’s like grape juice concentrate. I’m usually not a purple-grape candy person, but these were actually enjoyable for me.

Yellow-and-orange is lemon-orange and is by far my favorite. The colors are pretty, and its clear citrus zesty notes brightly sing on the tongue.

You can really only go so far with mass-produced gummies, and I think Wonka’s made it to the pinnacle with their Puckerooms. The shapes are fun and the texture is spot on. My only critique is that I wish there were more flavors. Please? An OM.

I have awesome timing - I just recycled my empty box of Trader Joe’s “The Art of Chocolate” truffles last weekend, and I’m noticing now, as I write this review, that I forgot to photograph the box. Oops. Photos of the box can be found on other sites here and here.

At least I nabbed photos of all the truffles! They come 9 to a box, and though they’re small, the whole box is just $1.99.

Three of the nine were filled with “praline, nougat”. One was covered in all milk (above); the other two had shells that were part milk and part white. The praline was slightly dry and gritty and tasted of sweet chocolate with a light undertone of nuttiness. It worked well with the milk chocolate, which had a nice cocoa finish, but it was too sweet when paired with the white.

Another two had a mocha praline truffle filling. One was coated in dark chocolate while the other had a dark chocolate base and a white chocolate top (above). The mocha praline had a pleasantly bitter coffee undertone that was lovely with the dark chocolate but again, too sweet with the white.

A milk chocolate covered cream and vanilla truffle (above; looks far lighter in this shot) had a thick milk chocolate shell with an overly sweet vanilla cream filling. The cloying sweetness made my throat itch.

Crisp hazelnutpaste (sic) had my favorite molding, a pretty little triangle of a hazelnut, complete with veiny leaves. Its filling had a light, fine grit of ground up hazelnuts that I could hear against my teeth more than I could actually feel on my tongue. It was thick and nutty. It was also super sweet, but I could handle the sweetness here because it was tempered by the nuttiness.

Cream and pistachio was an interesting and unexpected flavor combination for such a generic box. The dark chocolate shell was nice, and its filling was a dry white ganache flecked with light green. Despite the pistachio colors, I didn’t get any pistachio nut flavors. It did at least have a nice dusky caramel finish.

And finally, the crisp chocolate truffle cream was a pyramid of deliciousness - a caramel colored upper layer topping a crisp chocolate truffle bottom that tasted like milk chocolate buttery toffee notes.

The Art of Chocolate was all about permutations: three types of chocolate (milk, dark, and white) and six different fillings, mixed and matched. Sounds like a candy math problem for Carl at Candy Dish Blog!

While not all of the combinations were stellar, this little box was a fantastic deal at just $1.99 (nice truffles can cost that much for just a single one!). The truffles are one bite indulgences that, at 3 truffles per 100 calories, are reasonable for the wallet and the waistline.

They get an OM, not because they were especially tasty in general but because they were especially tasty at the price point of 33 cents each. I’d buy them again to satisfy a sweet tooth craving or for just-because gifts.

Around Thanksgiving-ish, I did a candy exchange with Saskia, a ZOMG, Candy! reader from New Zealand. Quick tip - if you ship internationally via USPS, hang onto the customs form that they give you. That way, if the package you shipped in November still hasn’t arrived by late January, USPS can try to look it up for you. If you threw out the customs form thinking you’d never need it again (like I did), you’re out of luck, even if you have a sales receipt.

Luckily, the package finally turned up at the end of January, right as I was planning to pack and mail another box. Candy exchanges are fun, but international shipping ain’t cheap!

Anywho, Saskia sent me a lovely assortment of locally made Kiwi goodies. Enough goodies, in fact, to make this week all New Zealand reviews! First up is a Peanut Chili (they spell it Chilli) Cluster from Schoc. Check out the firecrackery tag!

They’re straightforwardly described on the website as “peanuts gathered in a dark chili chocolate”. I love the use of the verb “gathered” there. That’s basically what they are, but the simple description belies the complexity of the treat.

The dark chocolate was high quality, with a thick-ish melt and pleasant cocoa flavors. There was a nice initial crunch and strong peanuttiness from, you guessed it, the peanuts. But where was the chili?

Wait for it… There! After the chocolate melted away, the chili punched through with a tingly back of the throat burn. As I took more bites, the burn built up and melded with the chocolate and peanut flavors, as I couldn’t wait for the heat to fully dissipate before chomping up more peanut chili cluster.

A fun twist on my favorite combination of chili and chocolate. An OM.

Quick tip number two: if any of you readers would like to do a candy swap of our own, I suggest y’all check out Cybele’s forum on candy swaps to find a buddy. As much as I’d love to trade candy with you all, it’s too expensive for me to do often.

When Q.bel debuted, I got a chance to review their line-up of wafer bars and wafer rolls. They’ve recently added a Double Dark Chocolate and a Dark Chocolate Mint to their selection of wafer bars, and I got free samples to try!

Like all of their line, these new wafer bars are all natural. The Double Dark Chocolate wafer bars are made with 70% dark chocolate, and they’re vegan to boot.

They’re dark chocolate cream sandwiched between airy, crispy, and crunchy wafer cookies, all covered in dark chocolate. Each pack has two bars.

The wafers have a nice toasty note, and the texture is just awesome. The dark chocolate is on the sweet and fruity side. It was a tad sweeter than what I prefer, but the wafers helped mediate that sweetness.

The Mint wafer bars came in a brightly cheery green wrapper. They smelled nicely pepperminty, and they tasted that way too. The mintiness was mild rather than assertive, but the dark chocolate and mint flavors melded well, with the mint mostly coming through in the finish.

The wafers in this bar lacked the burnt, toasty notes of the double dark wafer bars, but they still brought a wonderful light crunch. The wafer-chocolate-cream combination was another win in both texture and flavor.

These guys were great, and I’m sorry to admit that I polished off my samples within a few days. An OM, and a plea for Q.bel to come out with mint wafer rolls, please?

After I noted TCHO’s off packaging, they sent me fresh samples with their new packaging. In the months since my roommate bought the pack that I first tasted, TCHO had switched from an inner paper liner (which probably contributed the nasty paper flavor) to an inner foil liner.

It seems like they’ve also reformulated the chocolate a tad as well. This time, only the Chocolatey was 70%. Citrus was 67%, Nutty was 65%, and Fruity 2.0 was 68%. The latter three are made from organic beans, and “Nutty” and “Fruity 2.0″ are fair trade as well.

The etchings on the mold have changed too - I much prefer the current line graph markings.

“Citrus” tasted dusky at first, then became brightly sweet and fruity/citrusy. It totally hit its mark.

“Fruity 2.0″ had a darker sweetness to it. It tasted of cherries and strawberries and carried a brightly fruity finish. There was no duskiness, and the bar had a thin melt.

“Chocolatey” was by far my favorite. It was initially sweet, then gave way to a strong nuttiness with a fruity undertone. It had a thicker melt and mouthfeel than the other bars.

Nutty had a darker nuttiness than the Chocolatey did - more reminiscent of hazelnuts, I think. It had a strong, jammy sweetness that lingered in the finish.

I greatly enjoyed this set of TCHO bars. A little packaging change made a huge difference! I’m impressed at how well the bars hit their flavor marks. These would be great bars to use for a chocolate tasting party. They’re all similar percentages, yet their flavor profiles are distinct and easily discernible. Chocolatey gets an OMG, while the others get OM.

Today’s review is more from Hedonist’s constantly changing truffle line-up: their current Spice Collection. It consists of peanut butter cayenne, raspberry wasabi, orange chipotle, lemon pepper, and coconut curry - clearly a very spicy Spice Collection. I was fortunate enough to receive a free sample box to review from the kind ladies at Hedonist.

I actually reviewed the Peanut Butter Cayenne over 9 months ago when I first visited the shop, but I didn’t realize it until I sat down to write this review (apparently I’d also had some version of their Ginger Molasses from the Holiday Collection on my first visit). I’m glad to see that my peanut butter cayenne tasting notes held up (ginger molasses varied a bit).

Here’s the peanut butter cayenne description based on the notes I took this time around: This dark chocolate truffle smells strongly of peanut butter, and for good reason, as its filling is a dry and gritty peanut butter.

The cayenne is barely perceptible at first, just a hint of heat to the finish, but the burn builds and builds even after the chocolate is gone, which is a neat effect. The heat never gets overwhelming; a plus for me.

Rasberry Wasabi was a dark chocolate in a heart-shaped mold. It smells quite fruity. I can see actual raspberry seeds inside the filling, so it’s no wonder that the flavor is of genuine raspberry.

The wasabi component is barely there as a horseradish-y finish. I like its subtlety and novelty, as I’ve never seen this flavor combination before.

Orange Chipotle is identifiable by a little orange dot against its dark chocolate coating. It smells lightly of fruit, though I don’t quite get citrus from the scent.

It first tastes of chocolate and smokiness that gives way to a gentle hint of orange oil before the chipotle burn powers through and wallops your tastebuds. This one is not for the faint of tongue, and I found this truffle’s heat to be more painful than enjoyable.

Lemon Pepper is a square dark chocolate shell with a white chocolate ganache. It tastes strongly of cracked black pepper with lemon undertones. The lemon and pepper pair nicely - they are, after all, a classic savory combination - but I didn’t care for how the duo went with chocolate.

The Coconut Curry was a dark chocolate shell sprinkled with yellow curried and plain white shredded coconut, plus a dusting of yellow curry. Unsurprisingly enough, it smelled super strongly of curry/cumin. But SURPRISE! It looked like this inside:

The bright yellow ganache was a bit of a shock. Mixed in were more bits of shredded coconut. The flavor profile begins with curry before the coconut flavor comes in. It’s actually a tad savory, despite the fact one would expect a chocolate truffle to be sweet. The inventive combination worked well for me.

Hedonist’s Spice Collection is full of creative flavor combinations. Coconut curry is a standout for its unusual nature and strikingness. I enjoyed the raspberry wasabi and peanut butter cayenne, while orange chipotle and lemon pepper weren’t to my tastes.

This collection would be a great gift for those with adventurous palates. As a whole, an OM. As stand-alones, peanut butter cayenne would get an extra G for its deliciousness, and coconut curry would merit that same bonus for sheer wow factor.