ZOMG, Candy!

Galaxy chocolate is the UK equivalent of Dove chocolates. I picked up a couple of imported cookie-themed Galaxy bars at my last trip to Cost Plus World Market, the Cookie Crumble and the Orange and Shortcake.

Both bars were wavily segmented into 6 imprinted rectangles that broke easily around their bounds. They had a thickly creamy milk chocolate base that was sweet with just a bit of a throat-burning sour tinge at the finish.

Cookie Crumble had gritty nuggets of chocolate cookie that added a slight gritty crunch. The cookie bits were basically black in color, like Oreos, and they basically tasted like the cookie parts of Oreos.

It reminded me of a slightly nicer version of Hershey’s Cookies ‘n Milk Chocolate bar, as the Galaxy chocolate base had a much more luxurious mouthfeel and was just higher quality in general. Still, it also gets an O because I found it to be a tad too sweet in the finish.

Orange and Shortcake had larger cookie bits of pale shortbread that visually stood out against the milky brown chocolate. They added a bit of crunch and grit, but not much flavor, as I mostly tasted the orange flavor in the chocolate.

There were bits of candied orange rind in the bar, which brought a nicely sweet, brightly fruit burst of flavor to the chocolate. They were my favorite part of the bar – an unusual and tasty twist that elevated it to an OM.

Just when I thought the “just add bacon” trend was running its course, I got these free samples of Marich Premium Chocolates‘ newest bacon treats: Double Chocolate Bacon Pretzels and Milk Chocolate Bacon Toffee.

The Double Chocolate Bacon Pretzels were little balls about a half inch in diameter that smelled strongly of smoky meat. Each candy’s center was a crunchy pretzel ball, covered with a thin layer of dark chocolate and a thicker layer of white chocolate.

The chocolate coatings were sweet and creamy with a smoky, meaty undertone. The pretzel center added a great salty, starchy crunch that balanced out the melting sweet chocolate.

I’m torn on how much I liked these. On the one hand, sweet and salty and melting and crunchy always makes for a great taste experience.

On the other hand, the bacon aspect added a meaty aftertaste that was sort of odd. I think I may have liked this better without the bacon aspect. An O.

The Milk Chocolate Bacon Toffee pieces were rounded, flattened cubes that were slightly larger than the Bacon Pretzels. The toffee centers were crunchy and cleaved cleanly

Tiny bits of bacon were distributed throughout the toffee and gave it a bacon-bitty flavor. Those bacon bits could be seen and tasted but didn’t change the texture of the toffee.

The milk chocolate layer was quite thick with a sweet flavor and a creamy melt. It contrasted nicely with the crunchy and salty toffee center.

In this case, I think the bacon gave the chocolate and toffee an extra dimension that elevated the overall experience. An OM.

I rarely buy candy just for snacking since I have a ridiculous stockpile. Florida’s Natural Au’some Organic Nuggets (which used to be just Fruit Nuggets; the organic part is a relatively new addition) are one of the few candies that I will buy to snack on, so I happily accepted free samples of them at Sweets and Snacks.

They came in three different mixes: Orchard Sours were apple and lemon; Berrilicious were cherry, blueberry, and strawberry; and Fruit Grove was strawberry, banana, and orange.

The nuggets were all irregularly shaped, though they were generally rectangular and about the size of my pinky nail. They were chewy and lightly grainy and melted with a slight pasty feeling.

All the nuggets within each bag looked the same, though the Berrilicious mix was a little darker than the other two and had a less mottled surface (they’re the ones on the left). They all tasted fruity and sweet with a slightly wheaty finish.

The Berrilicious nuggets were sweet and brightly fruity and tasted like blueberry and strawberry jam. The flavors were deep and mellow.

The Orchard Sours started off tasting like a mild and sweet lemon drop before developing biting notes of pear and finishing with fuji apple sweetness. For some reason pear was the first ingredient in the fruit puree ingredient list – maybe because they’re cheaper?

Fruit Grove nuggets were sweet and had airy overtones of banana and applesauce. They finished by tasting like sweet orange juice.

I like these for snacking because their fruity flavors are so intense and powerful. That intensity makes them overwhelming if you eat too many at once (like I did while trying to figure out if each nugget was one fruit flavor or many), so moderation is cautioned. An OM.

Truffles by Coquette is a new online chocolate boutique/small business. They sent me a free box of their classic truffles for review.

The truffles came in a classy looking box with a gilded Coquette logo in the center. Inside were 12 spherical truffles, 4 each of the Colette, Annie, and Katherine.

Colette was described as “traditional French caramels with a touch of Fleur de sel de Guerande, enrobed in dark 55% cacao.” It was a snappy dark chocolate shell surrounding a limpid, liquid caramel.

The caramel was not sticky or chewy, but it also didn’t flow. Instead, it held its shape until it hit my tongue, after which it melted away in a sweetly golden pool of buttery deliciousness.

Each Colette was topped with a sprinkle of sea salt, which provided a nice flash of saltiness against the sweetness of the truffles. The dark chocolate was dusky with awesome cocoa depth and a lightly bittersweet finish that allowed the chocolate to linger.

Annie was “inspired by… the s’more. A gooey marshmallow filling is dipped in milk chocolate and topped with a miniature marshmallow.” I thought it was fun departure from the usual “classic” truffle mix.

The milk chocolate had a thick and creamy melt and tasted of sweet caramel with a dusky finish. While the mini marshmallow topper was textured, the marshmallow filling reminded me of marshmallow fluff: puffy and sweet with no chew.

Instead, it dissolved into the spot-on flavor of jet-puffed marshmallows. Overall, Annie was close to being too sweet for my taste, but I forgave it because it was so unique.

Katherine was ”filled with creamy dark chocolate ganache and then dipped in E. Guittard couverture.” Its ganache was thick with no flow, a smooth and cool, almost fatty melt with just a bit of heaviness on my tongue.

The chocolate base that made this chocolate was great. It carried a bright, cocoa fruitiness with a lingering finish of bittersweet cocoa depth.

The Colette was my favorite of the bunch. I’m a sucker for salted caramel, so it gets an OMG. Annie gets an OM for taste and inventiveness, and Katherine gets an OM as well for being a well-executed classic.

These Mamba Duos were free samples that I snagged at Sweets and Snacks along with Monday’s Mamba Sours. From their Amazon listing, it looks like they were a limited edition Mamba flavor.

Fittingly enough, there were two flavors of Duos, and two flavors in each Duo. The wrappers were decorated with funny-looking Frankenstein fruits.

Like the regular Mambas, there were six individually wrapped candies per pack. The candies were softly chews that became quite sticky while being chewed.

Watermelon Apple was pink and yellow striped. It mostly tasted of that especially artificial Jolly Rancher candied watermelon flavor with a bit of apple juiciness to the finish.

Raspberry Peach was pink with a yellow swirl. It started off with a mild red fruit flavor and some raspberry seediness.

The flavor then evolved into the fuzzy sweet juiciness of a ripe peach. That peach flavor was delicious – it would make for a lovely Mamba flavor all on its own!

I enjoyed the texture and flavor intensity of these chews. The peach half of the raspberry-peach Duo was my favorite. An OM for the set.

One of my favorite things about Hedonist Artisan Chocolates is that they shake things up a lot and trot out different truffle flavors every season or so. I’ve been so busy reviewing all of their different truffle collections that I’m only now getting to reviewing their classic truffle collection. I no longer live in Rochester, so these were free samples that they sent me.

The five classic truffles flavors are Milk, Bittersweet, Hazelnut, Espresso, and White Mint. The first four were dipped, while the White Mint was rolled.

Milk is about as classic as it gets. Hedonist’s take was smooth and creamy all over. The soft milk chocolate ganache center had a thin melt, while its milk chocolate shell had a soft break and a thicker melt.

It tasted of sweet and dusky cocoa with a great chocolatey finish. Sometimes I find pure milk chocolate truffles to be too sweet, but this had a really well-balanced sweetness level that was not at all cloying.

Bittersweet was prettily decorated with a few green leaves. Its texture and flavor was drier than the milk version. The cocoa flavor ran deep with earthy tones.

This truly lived up to its name – it teased just a hint of bitterness, but then a light sweetness came and chased that hint away. Really well balanced!

Hazelnut was sprinkled with bits of hazelnuts and salt. It tasted of dry cocoa with a gianduja nuttiness.

Chocolate and hazelnut is a classic combination for a reason – the roasted nuttiness of hazelnuts paired well with chocolate here.

Espresso was topped with a roasted coffee bean. The ganache had a light grit and astringency from the ground coffee that was mixed into it.

Its coffee flavor was really powerful, and the truffle tasted like the scent of fresh roasted coffee beans. I enjoyed the interplay between sweet chocolate and slightly bitter coffee here. Some coffee + chocolate treats go too sweet, into Mocha Frappuccino mode, but this was nicely restrained.

My one complaint was the coffee bean topper. I found it super bitter and astringent to chomp into. I’m not a coffee drinker, so my taste buds were wiped out by eating a solid coffee bean.

Finally, White Mint was a white chocolate rolled truffle dipped in milk chocolate and then dusted with cocoa powder. Its ganache was smooth and creamy with a luxurious-feeling fatty melt.

The center ganache had the creamy vanilla undertones of white chocolate scented with mint. That mintiness was not effervescent (a la York Peppermint Patties). Instead, it reminded me more of mint leaves, with a slight herbal note.

I thought these were a solid set of classic flavors (though the white mint was a bit more out of the ordinary). Personally, I like Hedonists’s adventurous flavors more – part of why I love them so much is that they’re not afraid of unexpected truffle flavors, like goat cheese!

Still, these were quality truffles that were clearly made with care. An OM (and a great gift idea for your more culinarily unadventurous loved ones!).

I’ve reviewed a few Sanders treats on this blog already, including some of their individually wrapped Favorites that Duke’s hospital sells in its gift shop. I snagged what I believe is the rest of the line at Sweets and Snacks back in May and tasted them last November (hence the slight bloom on the dark chocolates).

Maple Pecan Butter Cream was the only milk chocolate of the five. That milk chocolate covered a maple-flavored buttercream that was full of chopped pecans.

I found it to be absurdly overly sweet. The sweetness tasted of maple syrup and brown sugar, and holy cow was it overpowering.

A few notes of caramel and cocoa from the chocolate and nuttiness from the pecan bits valiantly struggled to be noticed. If you like pecan (pronounced pee-can, of course, not puh-kahn) pie, you’d like this.

For me, way too sweet. It made my teeth itch.

Dark Chocolate Coconut Supreme was Sanders’ version of a Mounds. It had a thick dark chocolate shell around a dry coconut center.

I appreciated the greater amount of dark chocolate here (oodles more compared to Mounds), as that chocolate had a nicely mild cocoa finish, but I thought the coconut center could’ve used more oomph. It lacked nuttiness and had only a light coconut flavor.

Caramel Butterscotch was a chewy, sticky caramel inside a snappy dark chocolate shell. The caramel was sweet and buttery, and though I didn’t get the candied flavor of butterscotch, exactly, it was a still a nice mix of chocolate and caramel.

Cookies and Cream Cruncher was a disk of “ivory confectioners coating” full of little beads of chocolate cookie. It was certainly crunchy, thanks to the high density of the Oreo-flavored cookies.

The fake white chocolate was throat-burningly sweet. It tasted super artificial, like canned vanilla frosting, and was made of palm kernel oil. Thumbs down.

Finally, Mint Royale was the most strikingly colored of the bunch: a bright pastel green with a dark chocolate cocoa center. It snapped when I bit into it but also had a smooth and creamy melt.

The whole thing reminded me of mint nonpareils but with more chocolate flavor. The mintiness was mild with cocoa undertones – too mild, I thought. For something called a Mint Royale, it really needed to go for broke on the mintiness.

The Caramel Butterscotch is the only one of these that I’d want to buy and eat again, so it gets an OM. The rest were generally too sweet and/or not flavorful enough, so they get Os.

I’ve said many times on this blog that there aren’t enough grapefruit candies out in the world. There are, at least, Bissinger’s Gummy Pandas that come in pink grapefruit with grapeseed, which I bought at Whole Foods.

The bag makes all kinds of health claims: “made with organic sweeteners”, “natural sources of antioxidants” (from the grapeseed extract), and “great tasting and good for you”. Whole Foods in a nutshell, I’d say.

I’m always dubious about health claims made by highly processed foods. Do people really want their candy health-washed? Organic sugar is still sugar; it can still give you cavities and diabetes.

These were gummy pandas rather than gummi bears, but the panda part wasn’t so obvious. They had bigger eye spots, which just made them look surprised or myopic to me.

The deep pink pandas had a firm, bouncy chew, which is my favorite kind of gummi texture. They started off sweet with the underlying tanginess of a nicely ripe grapefruit.

Further chewing intensified the sweetness and added a mellow tartness. I missed grapefruit’s bitter edge of pithiness that Albanese’s version has, but these were still great in their own right.

I give them an OM, with the caveat that they are expensive gummies. Whole Foods premium!

Many of the free samples that I got at Sweets and Snacks were in “not for retail sale” packaging. Usually that just meant that they weren’t properly labeled with nutrition facts and ingredients, but in the case of these Clark Bites, the packaging was radically different from their final form.

The yellow Where’s Zipper packaging had a link to a website with the backstory for these Bites. The Squirrel Nut Zipper was mad at Clark Bars, so it tried to blow them up, which turned them into these 1-inch squarish bites.

I’ve previously reviewed and enjoyed regular Clark Bars. They’ve been reformulated since my last review; now they’re made with real milk chocolate, and the Clark Bites are too.

Most of my Clark Bites’ centers were this peanut butter toffee mixture that cleaved and crumbled and shattered when bitten into. I had one weird Bite that was entirely cleaning cleaving toffee (no shattering!), but I think that was an anomaly.

Those centers tasted lightly nutty with lots of brown sugar sweetness. The milk chocolate coating was quite thick, which amped up the sweetness of the chocolate to a level that was a bit too much for me and got cloying after a Bite or two.

I approve of the switch to real chocolate, though I think a milder, malty milk chocolate or a dark chocolate would’ve worked better for me. I still love that peanut butter/toffee center, though, and I enjoyed these when I ate them one at a time, so an OM.

Cybele of Candy Blog reviewed these in their current packaging and gave them an 8/10.

These Brookside Dark Chocolate candies were free samples that I picked up at Sweets and Snacks. I got mini bags of their Dark Chocolate Acai with Blueberry, Dark Chocolate Pomegranate, and Dark Chocolate Goji with Raspberry, which I’ve previously reviewed.

All of these were little discs of flat jelly candies coated in dark chocolate. Some of those jelly discs were placed back to back to make full spheres, while others were left as little half spheres.

Dark Chocolate Acai with Blueberry may be the same product as Trader Joe’s Powerberries, which I’ve also previously reviewed. If they are the same, I was wrong about the Powerberries being abnormally-shaped Brookside candies, as the Brookside candies were similarly variable in size.

The dark chocolate coating was slightly grainy with a mild sweetness. Their centers had a mellow blueberry flavor that was jammy, like blueberry preserves.

While the fruitiness was nicely light and sweet, it wasn’t bright enough to cut through the sweetness of the chocolate. This was my least favorite of the three Brookside products, so an O.

Dark Chocolate Pomegranate’s center tasted more of cranberry juice than pomegranate. Like the Goji with Raspberry, its bright fruity sweetness really nicely cut through the chocolate, making it a harmonious flavor pairing.

I think the Goji with Raspberry are my favorite Brookside flavor, but the Pomegranate ones come in a close second. They’re just a tad more tannic. An OM.