ZOMG, Candy!

Today’s post is super long, but hey, you’ve got the whole weekend to read it. I start with a mini wrap-up of my tour of Taza’s chocolate factory and finish with a review of their four Mexicano disks.

Coincidentally enough, on the day that my written-weeks-ahead news post about a virtual tour of Taza posted, I was taking my own in-person tour of the Taza factory. Aaron, their director of marketing, was kind enough to show my boyfriend and me the works while stuffing us full of yummy samples (dude’s also a whoa-legit foodie - he’s got a pig’s butchers’ guide tattooed on one arm and a carrot on the other).

I already knew quite a bit about the company from their website and from the good publicity they’ve been getting, but Aaron still left me with plenty of additional tidbits. Their organic Domincan Republican beans are bought directly from the farmers at an above fair trade price, thus ensuring quality control while also helping their farmers maximize profits (similar to how Kallari runs things). The photo above is of their raw beans, waiting to be roasted in Taza’s retro-looking mid-century machines.

All of Taza’s ingredients are organic, and their vanilla pods and cinnamon sticks are also biodynamic. They buy their cane sugar from Green Cane, which uses the leftover cane fibers to power the cane sugar factory and the surrounding village.

Taza’s castoff cacao shells are used to flavor tea or beer or turned into compost. In a nice touch of cyclical, sustainable agriculture, the farmer who grows chilies for Taza uses their cocoa mulch fertilizer. Most of Taza’s employees bike to work, and they even bike their bars to local farmers’ markets in a specially outfitted tricycle from Mexico. Now that’s commitment to being eco-friendly!

Taza chocolates are unique because their cacao is ground with two doughnut-shaped, hand-chiseled Mexican granite millstones called molinos (background of above photo, covered in ground cacao and cane sugar). They give Taza its unique, slightly gritty, natural-tasting texture.

Aaron guesstimated their chocolate to be around 80 microns. Most chocolatiers aim for about 20. The minimal processing really makes Taza’s flavors zing. Their chocolate is unmistakably bright and fruity, and you know you’re getting good quality stuff.

I’ve had three bars before in past tasting parties - they make 60%, 70%, and 80% bars - but I’d never seen their Mexicano disks before I visited their factory. They currently come in four flavors: cinnamon, Guajillo chili, salted almond, and vanilla. Each hand-wrapped 2.7 oz package contains two disks of 8 wedges each.

The Cinnamon Mexicano is made with real Ceylon cinnamon, not the Cassia stuff that most people keep in their pantries. Ceylon cinnamon is sweeter than Cassia, with a more delicate flavor that’s more reminiscent of cinnamon oil than what you’d sprinkle on your oatmeal. The difference is even noticeable in the smell of the Mexicano: it smells and tastes like chocolate and red hots.

The cinnamon flavor plays under the fruitiness of the chocolate. There’s a slightly bitter and astringent finish to the Taza that I countered by popping another wedge. For me, at least, this Mexicano needs a chaser, but I don’t mind. An OM.

Taza’s Guajillo Chili is like chili chocolate to the umpteenth power. It initially tastes just like a standard Taza chocolate bar. Then woo baby! the burn comes through. It’s just on the bearable edge of tongue and throat burning pain. The tingle lingers for a bit, but it does subside on its own after a few seconds. It’s definitely not for the faint of tastebud, but I relished the taste experience. An OMG.

Salted Almond isn’t quite what you’d expect from a chocolate and nut bar. The roasted almonds (roasted in the same roaster used for the cacao beans) are ground right along with the cacao beans, so that the whole disk is evenly textured. I’m guessing the fatty nut addition is what makes this disk’s crumble a bit softer than that of the other Mexicanos. Unlike the previous two Mexicanos, organic cane sugar is the first ingredient listed, making the salted almond a bit sweeter than other Tazas.

The sweet characteristic Taza frutiness gives way to a roasted nuttiness, which then yields to a sharp salty finish that’s quite intriguing. It’s nicely balanced, but I actually prefer Taza’s chocolate-covered almonds to this Mexicano - the flavors are the same, but the chocolate-covered almonds have more nuttiness and a more addictive textural contrast. An OM.

Vanilla also has cane sugar listed as the first ingredient, and it’s noticeably sweeter than all the other Mexicanos. That extra boost of sugar makes this taste especially round. The vanilla flavor comes through in the finish. Taza uses real vanilla beans, and the difference is definitely noticeable. If you’re used to vanilla extract and have never had the pleasure of smelling a real vanilla bean, you’re in for a treat. Another OM.

Taza is quite unlike anything out there in the U.S. chocolate market. Instead of showing off with flashy flavor combos and pretty designs, Taza impresses with high quality ingredients and a rustic feel that I adore. Lucky for y’all, they’re doing quite well and appearing in more and more stores across the country. And if you’re ever in the Boston area, swing by their factory, where you can buy their products at a price that’s lower than what you’d pay elsewhere.

I’ve wanted to try Albanese Krunchy Bears ever since I read Cybele’s review of them. While they’re pretty cheap on the Albanese website, the shipping costs negate those savings (though now that I know they’re on Amazon, may add a bag or two to my next order, as they qualify for free shipping), so I just kept my eyes peeled, hoping to stumble across them in person someday.

I finally found them in the bulk bin of a candy store in Myrtle Beach and immediately snatched up a bag. I also learned that the deliciously and prodigiously flavored non-krunchy gummi bears of our campus convenience store were made by Albanese. Right before I was due to graduate and move away, of course.

These vibrant and whimsical bears are a treat for the eyes and the tongue. They come in six flavors of nonpareil-coated gummi bear. From left to right:

Pink is a lovely floral strawberry. I usually don’t care for red fruit candies, finding them blah, but this was refreshingly enjoyable.

Red is cherry, of the black cherry flavor persuasion. The deep tones of the super concentrated cherry flavor carry a slight medicinal tinge, but it’s still pleasant.

Orange is orange. It’s extremely bright and citrusy, with a zesty finish, placing it more on the tangerine end of the orange flavor spectrum.

Yellow is an even zestier lemon flavor. Acidic high notes give way to a tinge of bitter finish, making this a genuine, enjoyable citrus treat.

Green is a mellow apple. Instead of tasting like a sour green Granny Smith, I find this to be more apple juice/Fuji flavored.

Blue is either blue raspberry or blueberry. It tastes of berry, with round, mellow notes and no seediness. I’m leaning towards blue raspberry.

The texture of these bears is certainly unique. At first, it seems strangely gritty and chewy at the same time, and I wonder how necessary the nonpareils are. Maybe they serve some sort of flavor enhancing or trapping function? The Krunchy Bears, when compared to my memory of the regular Albanese bears, seem to have much stronger and much more concentrated fruity flavors, making the Krunchy bears much more flavorful.

The great density of flavor makes these much more satisfying as well. Instead of mindlessly chomping through them, I wanted to savor them, so a little went a long way. The citrus fruits get an OMG, while the others get an OM. I’d buy a mixed bag of them anyday, but if I saw them in a bulk bin, I’d disproportionately pick out the citrus flavors.

Europe had more varieties of Haribo than we get here in the states. There was a flier for a Haribo Factory in the tourism office of Avignon, but alas, you needed a car to get there, and we had none. Still, I managed to purchase/eat a variety of Haribo treats from grocery and convenience stores, including these Haribo Super Mini Frites.

My bag of Mini Frites was a mini bag with around a dozen or so frite gummies (French for fries). They’re sugar-coated rectangular fry shaped gummies with a sproingy chew that cleaves rather than sticks.  Each fry is about the size of the first two joints of my pinky nail, so they can be dispatched in one bite or two.

There are four flavors of frites: green is lime, orange is orange, yellow is lemon, and red is strawberry. Lime is zesty, orange is bright and citrusy, lemon is a rounder citrus flavor, with a light lemony finish, and strawberry is mellow in its fruitiness. They tasted like Sour Patch Kids, but brighter and more fun to chew (thanks to the sproinginess). If these were offered in the U.S., I’d go for them over Sour Patch Kids any day. An OMG.

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!

I’m hopping a plane to Paris today, so I thought it fitting to trot out a review of a French candy bar that I ate last summer. I found these two Balisto bars in Le Gros Franck, the same Cambridge cafe where I found the Carambars I reviewed a while back. I’ll review the Muesli-Mix bar today and the Honey-Almond-Mix on Monday.

Muesli is a breakfast cereal made with oats, dried fruits, and nuts. It’s fairly popular in the UK. The ingredients in this Muesli Mix bar are: biscuit à la farine complète, crème au lait (16%), raisins et noisettes, enrobe de chocolat au lait (39%).

Thinking back to my high school and freshmen year French, I believe that means a whole-wheat cookie, cream, raisins, and hazelnuts, enrobed in milk chocolate.

The bulk of the bar was a fine-grained but grittily textured cookie that tasted wholesomely yummy. A thin layer of white cream topped the chocolate. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was - it reminded me of the fake milk stuff in General Mill’s Milk and Cereal bars.

Whole raisins randomly studded the top under the milk chocolate enrobing. The hazelnuts must have been quite finely chopped, as I didn’t notice any hazelnut pieces, but the whole bar had a nicely nutty tinge. I liked the Muesli-Mix bar. It tasted wholesome but was still a nice treat. An OMG.

I cannot believe that I haven’t reviewed Walkers’ Nonsuch Toffee here yet. Walkers’ and licorice pencils were my mondo UK candy loves, and when I ordered my London-raised boyfriend several boxes of his favorite UK cereal as a special treat, I made sure to slip a few slabs of Walkers’ into my order. It’s bloody difficult to find in the U.S.

Walkers’ Nonsuch Toffee is usually sold in two ways - as individually wrapped pieces or as one big slab that you could theoretically break apart to eat. I say theoretically because it’s easier said than done. If the toffee is too soft, you can pull and pull and it just gets sticky and stringy and messy, like taffy or caramel. If it was too hard (I usually chilled it in the fridge), you could whack it against another hard surface and make it shatter, but that could also make a mess by leaving little shards of toffee everywhere, which would then melt… everywhere.

Only when you got lucky did the pieces actually tear. I usually ended up just picking up the whole slab and gnawing on it - terrible manners that usually led to overindulgence, but so, soooo good. Consequently, for me, the better choice was to buy the individually wrapped pieces. As an added bonus, those came in more flavors.

I preferred the treacle toffee to the regular. It had a darkness to the sweetness, a just-short-of bitter, medicinal tinge. Think molasses - gloriously complex, deep, and delicious. And chewy - sticks to your teeth, gets caught in every nook and cranny chewy. An OMG.

The Chocolate Toffee was only so-so. It had a more manageable chew and was basically like a super creamy Tootsie Roll. I wish I had one handy now for comparative purposes - I bet it would taste an awful lot like my calcium chew supplements. An O.

The milk chocolate eclair was basically nice standard Walkers’ toffee with a bit of mockolate in the middle. It was an interesting contrast from the chewy toffee to the soft, almost frosting-like innards, but flavor-wise it wasn’t spectacular, so also an O. Walkers’ also makes a mint chocolate eclair, which I ate and photographed but didn’t take notes on, and a banana split eclair which I remember being super banana-y and not my thing.

The treacle toffee is hands down my favorite, and the regular toffee is pretty darn good too. I wish they were available in the U.S. The others are okay for eating - the next time I’m in England, I’d gladly snatch up another mixed bag or two of them - but I like the treacle and plain better. I’ve also got a couple of slabs of hazelnut toffee that I’ve been saving for a special occassion. Mmm!

A continuation of Monday’s review, the next five chocolates in my Schocolat box.

First up at the top, a salted caramel that wasn’t in their chocolate guide, I guess because they’re usually sold in boxes of all caramels. As with the bunny chew from Monday, it’s a stiff caramel that really gets in your teeth. The salt offsets the brown butter flavor nicely, though I wish the flavor developed a bit more as you chew it. Still, a lovely treat and OM-worthy.

Moving clockwise is what I think is a Gianduja, “layers of hazelnut flavored milk and dark chocolate dipped in milk chocolate finished with a candied hazelnut.” I say think because it tasted more like peanut butter than Nutella to me and my friends. Sadly, the nut topping was so candied that I couldn’t tell what kind of nut it was.

The dark and milk layers were visible in the super stiff ganache, and the whole thing had a roasty nuttiness with a creamy chocolate finish. An OM, regardless of my nut uncertainty.

Next is the round rolled-then-enrobed truffle, the only one in the box that wasn’t molded and another one that was off the guide. My friend Rita bit into it first and made a blech face. Surprise! It’s banana, which Rita is allergic to.

Specifically, it’s a white chocolate ganache. It has a strong banana flavor with a sweet, white chocolate finish. The dark chocolate coating was studded with bits of candied almonds. Nice, but not for me (or Rita), so an O.

The skinny gold ingot shaped chocolate is the Golden Cinnamon, “milk chocolate ganache flavored with gold-schlager cinnamon liquor surrounded in dark chocolate and gold flecks.”

The creamy ganache had a light, barely noticeable cinnamon spice and heat to it, with more cinnamon in the finish. A lovely, perfectly balanced blend that gets an OMG.

And last for today, the dark and milk domed truffle that’s also off guide. It’s definitely peanut butter with a super roasty finish. An O, not because it’s bad, but because I’m not that big on peanut butter.

It also makes me more sure that we correctly identified the Gianduja. I think the Gianduja didn’t taste hazelnutty enough because it was made with actual hazelnut butter, thus the more-subtle-than-Nutella flavor.

So - back on Friday for the rest of the box. It gets even better!

Today brings us reviews of two more chocolates from Starbucks, their Caramel Macchiato and Caffe Mocha truffles. I gave the Chai Truffles a meh review last time, but I had coupons, so I went ahead and bought more to try.

The truffles are billed as “marvelous milk chocolate [enveloping] caramel centers infused with our Espresso Roast coffee.” Out of the box, they smelled overwhelmingly sweet and looked perfectly molded. A cross section reveals a fairly thick milk chocolate coating covering a smooth truffle center.

The smooth truffle center was cloyingly sweet, and I didn’t get any caramel notes because the sweetness was so overwhelming. The milk chocolate coating also overwhelmed the truffle filling. There was a slight bitterness to the finish - I guess that was the coffee part? An O.

I liked the Caffe Mocha truffles, “lucious milk chocolate [embracing] creamy mocha centers infused with our rich Espresso Roast coffee”, much more. The molding was prettier here, with two coffee beans stamped on the top. I thought they covered an actual espresso bean, but alas, they were made of chocolate. Boo. I guess it would’ve been too expensive to make the effort of putting real beans on the truffles.

The center, like that of the caramel macchiato truffle, was smooth and creamy. It had a strong, deep roasty coffee flavor that went well with the chocolate coating. The chocolate shell was thinner in this truffle, so it was far better balanced. It was like eating a smooth chocolate-covered espresso bean. Highly enjoyable and worth an OMG.

When my friend Cassie went to Japan for a fun trip with her boyfriend (so jealous, by the way), she offered to bring me back candy. I eagerly requested Kit Kats. Why Kit Kats, a run-of-the-mill candy that’s all over the U.S.? Because the Japanese make about a zillion Kit Kats in strange flavors, and I wanted in. Cassie obliged, for which I am grateful. I’ll review the two normal ones today and make y’all wait until Monday for the weird ones.

Based on the packaging, this bar was either strawberry or strawberries and cream flavored, both pretty standard flavor combinations that go well with chocolate. I’m guessing that it’s strawberries and cream, based on the bar’s lovely, creamy shade of pink. All the boxed Kit Kats Cassie bought came in packs of four fingers separated into two individually sealed packs of pairs. Good for freshness; bad for the environment.

Like all Kit Kats, this was chocolate over crisp wafers. The strawberry was white chocolate that smelled lovely and floral. The strawberry flavor was sweet and genuine, which I appreciated, even though I found it overly sweet. An O from me, but I think others would like it more.

The Kit Kat Cookies that Cassie brought me was just one long, slightly larger finger. After I tasted it, I wished that I had a four pack of them. It was my favorite of the bunch, basically a normal Kit Kat with an extra layer of chocolate cookie.

The milk chocolate was nice and dusky, making me think that Nestle treats the Japanese better by selling them nicer chocolate. While the cookie layer doesn’t add much to the texture, it really deepens the cocoa flavor of the bar. Highly enjoyable and OMG-worthy.

Have a nice weekend, and come back on Monday for the weird flavors!

I threw a chocolate tasting party ages ago and have been sitting on these tasting notes since then. Today, some quick hits for the last Friday (alas!) of my spring break. Part II will come Monday, when I’m back (boo!) in class.

Ghirardelli Duet, from their new line of Luxe Milk chocolates, pairs “creamy milk chocolate” with “rich dark chocolate”. It’s divided along it’s heighth axis so that it looks like a milk chocolate bar with a thin dark chocolate backing.

It had a woodsy smell with some tobacco notes to it. I found it surprisingly smoky. Its thick and creamy melt combined with its complex flavor earned it high praise at my party and from me. An OMG.

Lindt Madagascar is a single-origin 65% dark chocolate bar from their Excellence line. It has a cool melt with a fatty feel to it. The finish was quite enjoyably fruity. Another party favorite; another OMG.

The Cafe Tasse 77% was a holiday gift from my friend Steve. It’s a higher cacao percentage than the 60% noir bar I previously reviewed. It had a sharp snap and was unusually thick - in this case, a reference to its physical dimensions, not its melt - with an arid finish. An O.

More quick hits to come on Monday. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to eke out one last weekend of fun in Albany as our men’s hockey team takes on the ECAC championship playoffs.