ZOMG, Candy!

Last week, I did a 2-part (I and II) round-up of Schokowurfel, a set of 7 tiny Ritter Sports that I bought in Europe. Today and Friday, I’ll review the second set of somewhat larger mini Ritter Sport chocolates that I purchased on the same trip.

Unlike the single-squared Schokowurfel, these mini Ritter Sports were comprised of four connected squares. Basically, they were a quarter of the size of a regular 16-square Ritter Sport bar.

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’ve already reviewed the first three (hence the above links), so I’m only reviewing the latter four here. Vollmilch and Joghurt today; Haselnuss and Nugat on Friday.

Vollmilch turned out to have a nicely snappy break at the demarcated partitions, which was surprising for a 30% cacao milk chocolate. It had a tongue-coatingly thick melt, which I love in milk chocolate.

The flavor was rich with caramel notes and a sweet fruitiness to the finish. All in all, a solidly enjoyable milk chocolate. O.

I was excited about the Joghurt/yogurt bar. I gorged myself on the intoxicating tang of yogurt gelato while in Italy, and I loved the Milka Joghurt bar.

The Ritter Sport version did not disappoint. It had a soft break, and the sweet and creamy milk chocolate coating enveloped full pods of luscious yogurt filling.

The tangy yogurt was delicious, with a just-shy-of-sour finish, but I felt that it fell short of the Milka Joghurt bar’s exhilaratingly sour filling. Thus, the Ritter Sport version gets “just” an OMG.

Despite the comparatively lower rating, I still loved the bar and wish that it was readily available in the U.S. Can we make that happen? Please?

I got these Japanese peach gummis in my generous free sample box from Tsunami.hk. They’re solid proof that the Japanese are darn good at making gummis (along with creepy robots).

The gummis came in a resealable bag with a luscious white peach and a blue um… condom-like button promising 2600 mg of… something. The gummis themselves were an opaque mustard yellow and shaped like idealized Asian cartoon peaches.

I loved their soft, bouncy texture. It was a pleasure to feel them sproinging against my teeth. For me, that’s the ideal gummi texture.

They tasted sweet and floral, with a hint of citrus flavor. If I hadn’t known that they were supposed to be peach, I would have guessed that they were orange or fruit punch.

Either way, the flavor was refreshing and delicious. I liked that the sweetness wasn’t overpowering or artificial tasting. It was just sweet enough.

A great combination of flavor and texture earns these guys an OMG. My bag disappeared far too quickly.

This is the last of Ritter Sports’ 2010 summer flavors that I picked up in Europe. The other two, Peach-Passionfruit Yogurt and Wildberry Yogurt, were reviewed earlier in the week.

Stracciatella is a flavor of Italian gelato that’s analogous to chocolate chip ice cream. I have to admit I didn’t try stracciatella gelato while I was in Italy – I was too busy eating yogurt gelato!

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Gail Ambrosius (yes, that’s her real name) is a chocolatier with an eponymous shop in Madison, Wisconsin. There, she makes amazing chocolates (with amazing descriptions; her copy writer is definitely earning his/her keep), mostly with single-origin chocolates from South and Central America.

I was offered the chance to try some free samples, and boy was I glad that I took that offer! Today, I’ll cover the more normal ones from her Classic and Tea collections, and next Monday, we’ll hit up the Adventurous Collection.

Lucille’s Vanilla was the only unadorned chocolate of the bunch, a simple dark chocolate shell with a chocolate ganache inside. The truffle guide that came with the box said it would taste “like a rich spoonful of homemade chocolate pudding.”

The outer chocolate shell had a pleasantly sharp snap, while the ganache was creamy with a luscious, thick melt.

That ganache was the perfect embodiment of chocolate flavor. It was thick and rich and decadent, and it had a lingering finish of pure cocoa. Isn’t it amazing when something so simple can be so delicious?

Raspberry was topped with a sprinkle of cacao nibs. The guide says that it’s a combination of 36% milk chocolate, 65% dark chocolate, and raspberry puree.

The raspberry gave the ganache a sticky, pasty texture, while the cacao nib topping added a nice crunch. The filling tasted super bright and was bursting with fresh raspberry flavor that paired well with its chocolate shell. It was very sweet, but because it was a natural fruity sweet, it was desirable rather than off-putting.

Cognac wore a cap of candied ginger. It tasted of fruity booze with a spicy ginger finish. The ginger flavor is strong and easily identifiable, while remaining understated so as to be harmonious with the chocolate.

Cointreau was originally topped with candied orange peel, but mine fell off in transit, so mine looks like it has a couple of sprinkles of chunky sugar or something. What little was left of the candied peel added a slight grain to this truffle’s taste experience.

It tasted brightly of orange. Such a strong citrus presence would be overwhelming if paired with a lesser chocolate, but the strong dark chocolate shell tempers the citrus flavor quite nicely.

Earl Grey had a pretty little sprinkle of lavender buds on top. The actual Earl Grey tea flavor was mild and just brought a light floral/lavender undertone to the chocolate.

Caramel Sprinkled with Grey Salt was a square of caramel dipped in chocolate and topped with a few grains of fleur de sel. It’s a sweet that’s now made by many confectioners. I now know that Gail Ambrosius makes one of the best versions.

The caramel was wonderfully complex with deep molasses notes. It was smooth and buttery on the tongue if I let it melt and chewy but not teeth-sticky if I chomped it. The sea salt crunched a bit when I got a big grain, and it really set off the sweet complexity of the caramel.

Gail Ambrosius’s truffles were exquisite. The Lucille’s Vanilla, Raspberry, and Caramel were my favorites (yes, that’s half of the ones I just wrote about, which just further underscores how delicious these were) and get ZOMG!s.

The Cognac gets an OMG, while the Cointreau and Earl Grey get Os mostly because I don’t really like floral flavors and have never been much for orange and chocolate combos, and they therefore got overshadowed by their truffle buddies.

Come back on Monday for Gail’s adventurous collection!

On Monday, I covered Le Caramel’s Caramel Cream and Caramel Topping (and sort of their Caramel Syrup). Today, I get to write about their new Salted Butter Caramel candies and the new mystery product that they’ve been hyping on their Facebook page. For the record, I got permission to spill the beans!

The Salted Butter Caramels that I got were hand-wrapped in bits of wax paper. Le Caramel just invested in a wrapping machine, so when these babies become widely available, your packaging mileage may vary.

Each rectangle of caramel was about 2 inches long. They tasted super rich and buttery, with a round caramel flavor. The saltiness is noticeable in the finish and really makes the caramel flavor pop and linger.

While it tasted wonderful, I had trouble with the chew. It was very teeth-sticky and worked its way into my teeth – or rather, the space between my gums and my mouth, so that eventually there was nothing left to chew because it had all migrated away from my molars.

To be fair, the Le Caramel brochure that I got touted “the classic way to enjoy caramel: just unwrap and let the caramel slowly melt in your mouth to reveal its wonderful taste.”

So it’s kind of my fault that I tired out my jaw because I was impatient. And letting the caramel melt is a lovely taste experience. But you’ve been warned – the caramel candies aren’t best appreciated through chewing. An OM if you’re patient and eat it the recommended way. An O if you’re not.

And now, the big reveal (unless Le Caramel beat me to it in the time between when I wrote this review and when it posted): Caramel Cream with Chocolate.

The mystery ingredient of chocolate was quite sensible and not altogether unexpected. While the just-caramel caramels smelled of butterscotch, this smells intensely of pure cocoa and dark, almost scorched toffee. It’s brooding and complex and intriguing.

The Caramel Cream with Chocolate is still thick and caramel-like in texture, though it’s slightly less sticky and prone to dripping crazy long strands.

It tastes of deep cocoa notes with a lingering chocolate finish. While the caramel influence is clear in the texture, it’s less pronounced in the flavor, mostly coming through as a rich, buttery-ness.

It gets an OMG for being the best chocolate sauce I’ve ever had. I’ve been told it should be ready for sale within a month or so.

Le Caramel’s products are clearly well made with care and attention. At $12/13 a container (if you’re lucky, you can find it a bit cheaper on Woot), they’re more expensive than a bag of Milk Maid Caramels or a squeeze bottle of “caramel” that’s probably mostly high fructose corn syrup, but I think they’re pretty reasonably priced for an artisinal product that’s full of flavor and decadence.

Le Caramel is a new homegrown candy company run by a husband and wife team. They’ve turned up before on Wine Woot to rave reviews, and I got the chance to sample their line-up for free, including sneak peaks of some new products that they’re in the process of rolling out.

I’m covering their current products that are now available for purchase. You’ll have to wait until Wednesday to see what the sneak peak products are, though they may debut on the Le Caramel Facebook page before then.

First up, their Caramel Cream made with Salted Butter. Press notes say that the “rich caramel cream is a blend of butter, sugar, creme fraiche, and just a hint of salt…[cooked]…in a copper kettle imported from France.”

It’s kind of ridiculously luscious looking (I think the below photo may be the food porn-iest picture I’ve ever posted). The caramel is crazy thick. It pours smoothly, yet the drizzle goes on and on. And it smells amazing, like a Werther’s Original on steroids.

The flavor of the butter definitely comes through, along with some deep notes of butterscotch and a sweetness that reminded me of Lyle’s Golden Syrup. There’s a definitely saltiness to it to accent the flavor, and the dark finish is almost bitter (in a good way!).

The Caramel Topping made with Salted Butter was a thicker, stickier, and saltier version of the Caramel Cream (the two had the same ingredients list).

If you look carefully in the below picture, you can see the air bubbles in the Caramel Topping. I think they happen because the more viscous Topping takes longer to settle back into itself.

The Topping had stronger notes of butterscotch and a more pronounced saltiness. Unlike the perfectly smooth cream, I could feel the occasional grain on my tongue. Each one really made the caramel stand out.

I tried these two caramels plain and drizzled over lightly fried plantains. They were excellent both ways and especially dangerous the first way. Eating it straight promotes indulgently rapid consumption and a resulting sugar overload.

I can’t wait to try them with crepes! And cookies, and apples, and ice cream… They both get OMGs. I really hope my roommates help me finish of the jars, mostly so that I don’t end up eating it all.

Le Caramel also makes a liquid Caramel Syrup that they recommend be poured onto desserts or into coffee. Believe it or not, I don’t eat dessert that often (I get enough sweets’ calories from candy), and I haven’t had coffee in years, so I’ve yet to try the Syrup.

I can, however, report that it smells wonderful – clear, sweet Werther’s Original/butterscotch/toffee scent to the hilt – and my roommates seem to have been enjoying it. I left out the full bottle to share a few days ago, and it’s already down to the label line.

Anyone want to invent a cocktail recipe for me, to put that syrup to good use?

If you want a chance for a free sample of your own, Le Caramel is giving away one free sampler pack a month on their Facebook page. And come back Wednesday to check out my reviews of their new products!

This bag of Streit’s Sour Bears caught my eye in a display of Passover foods at Wegmans. They’re imported from Israel and “Kosher for Passover and year round.”

They’re billed as “soft & chewy” and “sour jelly candy”. I expected them to be gummi bears. Instead, their texture was similar to Haribo TropiFrutti, only way better!

The jelly candy was soft with an instant give. It was similar to fruit pate, only smooth rather than lightly grainy. The outer layer had a light stiffness and was softly wrinkly.

Yellow was a bright and sunny lemon. It was sweet with just a little tang and sour all over.

Orange was slightly more bitter at the start. It was tart with a zesty edge – surprisingly complex!

Green was lime, maybe? I didn’t get any lime-specific notes, but it was still nice and bright and tart.

Pink was strawberry, I think. It had the sour overtones of all the Sour Bears but also had nice floral undertones.

Pinkish purple was the least sour of the lot (and hard to visually distinguish from the pink and the purple). It just tasted sweet and fruity to me. I’d guess cherry, but it was pretty mild if it was cherry.

Last, but definitely not least, was purple. I’m pretty sure it was blackcurrant, which is a great flavor that’s not really used in American candy. It had a touch of edgy bite to it.

I had low expectations for these candies because the packaging looked so simple and old-fashioned. They totally blew me away with their bright, concentrated flavors and pleasantly soft and buoyant texture.

I couldn’t handle more than ~a dozen in a sitting – the sweetness got overpowering, and I hit sugar overload – but the flavors were so powerful that they were satisfying in small amounts. An OMG.

These Caramel Almond Sticks are the last of my free samples from Charles Chocolates. Sad, as I really enjoyed munching my way through their wares!

The sticks are their “Fleur de Sel Caramel, enrobed… in 65% bittersweet chocolate and coated… in toasted almonds.” I loved Charles Chocolates’s Fleur de Sel caramel chocolates, so I had high hopes for these – and they really delivered!

The pack of 9 sticks came packaged in a little cellophane bag with a pretty gold bow. Each stick was about pinky finger-sized, covered in dark chocolate, and rolled in chopped almonds.

The caramels were buttery soft but also chewy. They stuck around my molars a bit, but I can forgive them because they were so decadently buttery flavored as well.

As you can see, the almonds had a tendency to fall off. They brought a bit of grit to the texture of the sticks, and I wish they were even more roasty flavored. If the website hadn’t said so, I wouldn’t have guessed that they were toasted.

The chocolate flavor was pretty dominated by the buttery caramel and the nutty almonds. I was able to notice its nice cocoa notes.

The caramel is really the star here. It’s so decadent and delicious and addictive. I just wish the nuts were a tad toastier. Still, I chomped and chewed my way through these at a frightening pace. They get a hearty OMG.

Today wraps up New Zealand review week (here’s day one and two), brought to you by ZOMG, Candy! reader Saskia. And Schoc Chocolates, I suppose, as I’m reviewing a second item from their line: Lime Chili (they spelled it Chilli) in rich dark chocolate.

I’m a chili chocolate addict and love trying different takes on the mix, but this was my first time trying lime and chili and chocolate all together (lime and chocolate I’ve had before, but it was never memorable and/or poorly executed; I thought I’d never had it until I searched my archives). Schoc calls this bar a way to “push flavour with a balanced interactive taste sensation”.

The first thing I noticed about the bar was the scent. It smells just like Rose’s lime juice! In other words, bright, sweet, citrusy, and concentrated.

The lovely dark chocolate was speckled with bits of lime crystals – actually minuscule shreds of zest, I believe – that left flashes of intense lime flavor and sweetness on the tongue. The chili factor brought an underlying burn to the whole experience.

I found this bar zingy and delicious! The lime kept my taste buds alert while the chili burn smoldered in the background, and the dark chocolate tied everything together. I hope I can find a more easily accessible version in America! An OMG.

A final thanks to Saskia for putting together a much appreciated and enjoyed package of New Zealand goodies, and a final plug for Cybele’s Candy Swap forum, where candy lovers the world over can share their favorite candies and find new ones!

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.