ZOMG, Candy!

Last Friday, I reviewed my free samples of Gail Ambrosius’s classic and tea collection truffles. Today’s review is of her Adventurous Collection, which is presenting quite adventurously in the below photo (courtesy of Gail Ambrosius’s media kit).

The Adventurous Collection includes Machu Picchu, Lemongrass With Ginger, Sweet Curry With Saffron, Rica Organica, Cinnamon/Cayenne, and Shitake Mushroom. That’s right – shitake mushroom. With chocolate.

I originally labeled the below truffle as a mystery one, as it didn’t look like any of the truffles in the guide. I’ve since decided that it’s the Machu Picchu, which is supposed to be topped with “crushed and candied almonds.” I guess my topper missed the crushing step.

It had an airy cinnamon flavor and lots of grit to the texture. The gritty bits were astringent and pulled the moisture from my mouth. I guessed that it was an allspice truffle.

The Machu Picchu’s description says that it included caramelized cacao nibs (the grit), 65% Peruvian chocolate, and “a light touch of cinnamon and vanilla bean.” My tasting notes weren’t too far off!

Lemongrass With Ginger had the prettiest topper, a colorful mix of candied lemon peel and dried safflower. It tasted floral with a bright, sweet lemony fresh flavor.

It managed to be cheerful while avoiding that medicinal floor cleaner effect. I didn’t notice any ginger flavor – I think it got all mixed up with the taste of the lemon zest topping.

Sweet Curry With Saffron is definitely a non-traditional truffle flavor. It tasted strongly of dried spices – cumin was a high note I picked up. The truffle guide also listed coriander, tumeric, cardamom, and saffron.

In this savory truffle, the chocolate took a backseat supporting role, while the curry was the star. All those spices brought a little astringency to the finish.

Rica Organica had a beautiful cacao bean as a decorative flourish. The bean was a solid chunk of chocolate. This ganache had a cool, fatty melt that was at once savory and sweet.

I loved the distinctive flavor of the Rica Organica. This may not be the most feminist-friendly description, but its bold flavor tasted manly (the truffle guide calls it muscular) and assertive before giving way to a bright finish.

Cinnamon/Cayenne was the only rolled truffle of the bunch. It was quite possibly the roundest rolled truffle I’ve ever seen. It had a thin chocolate shell and was rolled in cocoa powder.

The chocolate flavor came through first. It was super smooth, creamy, glossy, and slightly sweet. Then, the cinnamon and powerful cayenne come through. The cayenne burns the throat with its heat, but the spicy tingle dissipates after a few minutes.

The kicky spice makes this not for the faint of heart. It’s not a daily, casual treat, and it’s definitely an exciting adventure.

Shitake Mushroom was another hard one to identify, as the biggest mushroom pieces that topped it had fallen off in transit, so I tasted it thinking that it was the Cointreau truffle.

It started with a bright citrus sweet high not from the chocolate shell. Then, a powerful cream and butter flavor punched through. It had a familiar earthiness that I couldn’t place until I realized that I was eating a mushroom chocolate. Unique and delicious!

Gail Ambrosius definitely has a way with chocolate. The shitake mushroom truffle alone is a taste experience worth seeking, and the rest of the box ain’t too shabby either.

All of the truffles were so packed with flavor that they were extra satisfying. A ZOMG! for the shitake mushroom and Rica Organica, and OMs for the rest.

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!

When I met my sweetie in Saratoga Springs*, our wanderings about that cute little town took us into a natural food store. This Alter Eco Dark Chocolate Quinoa (aka Midnight Crunch, hidden under that hefty price tag) bar caught my eye, as I’d never seen quinoa and chocolate together. At nearly $5 with tax, it was definitely a splurge, but one that I couldn’t pass up.

Alter Eco is a brand that’s only recently made its way onto my radar. They’re a Fair Trade organization that’s also carbon neutral, and I believe all of their stuff is organic as well. This bar was all three.

The back of the box describes this bar as, “A crispy chocolate like no other. Made with cacao and quinoa from Bolivia, Alter Eco Dark Quinoa chocolate brings together ancient ingredients from indigenous Andeans.”

As you can see, the bottom of the bar is heavily studded with bulging spheres of quinoa. While I could easily see it, however, I couldn’t taste it. Or if I was tasting it, it just tasted like crisped rice – the ingredients list calls it “rice-quinoa crisps”, so maybe it was all just one crispy entity that I was eating.

No matter. While the crisps added a nice little airy crunch, the real star here is the chocolate. At 61% cacao, it’s quite snappy.

It started off with dusky cocoa notes, then a fruity sweetness emerged along with notes of caramel and coffee, until the chocolate disappeared, leaving me with that lovely fruitiness in a lingering finish.

I could take it or leave it with the quinoa crisps, but the chocolate I could eat all day. It was satisfying yet kept me reaching for more. As always, I’m amazed at how much flavor complexity can come from just cocoa mass, cane sugar, and cocoa butter.

The bar earned itself a ZOMG! The next time I’m feeling flush and in the mood for a candy splurge, I’m going to check out more of the Alter Eco line.

Finally, for those who care about these sorts of things, the bar is soy-free, GMO-free, gluten-free, vegan, and without artificial flavors or emulsifiers.

*For the record, I don’t often refer to the boyfriend as my sweetie, but the alliteration was too good to pass up

Charles Chocolates contacted me when they launched a revamped website and a new flagship store in San Francisco. I got sent a bunch of free samples which I’ll be reviewing this week and into next, and I got an email interview with Charles Chocolates’s founder, Chuck Siegel, which y’all can read tomorrow!

Today, however, y’all get to read about their Triple Chocolate Almonds. They come in a beautiful cylindrical tin. Check out the top! Here’s the back-of-the-tin blurb: “Our premium California almonds are roasted darker, then coated in our exceptional blend of bittersweet and milk chocolates.”

The almonds themselves are beautiful as well. First of all, they’re ginormous, thanks to a generously thick chocolate coating. They’re also coated in cocoa powder and look like matte, brown zen stones (I was too busy eating them to try to balance them, and they weren’t really flat enough anyway).

The milk chocolate coating is thick with a flawlessly smooth and creamy melt. It’s got dusky caramel notes, and while it’s on the sweet side, that sweetness pairs perfectly with the nutty roasted almonds.

The flavors are wonderful, the textures are great, and the flavor and texture contrasts between the chocolate and the almonds make these triple chocolate almonds seriously addictive. They are dangerous to keep around; I emptied my tin all on my own and wish I had more. A ZOMG!

Cybele enjoyed them too; you can read her take on Candy Blog here.

These Espresso Pillows are yet another purchase from Trader Joe’s arsenal of candy, this time from the candy display near the checkout counter. I nearly missed them, despite their classy looking tins, and I’m glad I didn’t.

They’re billed as “crunchy toffeed espresso bits covered in dark chocolate”. I’m not sure where the pillow part fits in, exactly, as they’re neither pillow soft nor pillow shaped. Each “pillow” is somewhere between the size of a Tic Tac and a jelly bean.

The dark chocolate is sweet, though unremarkable. It does its job just fine, though, paring well with the toffee centers.

The espresso toffee has a great texture. It cleaves with a clean crunch, which gives way to a bitter coffee edge on buttery toffee sweetness.

These things are AWESOME to crunch on. They have the flavor profile of chocolate-covered espresso beans, but they lack the grit of actual beans. They’re addictively tasty, warranting a ZOMG! and a stop to pick up more next time I’m near a Trader Joe’s.

If you want a second opinion, check out Cybele’s Candy Blog take.

I’ve previously sung the praises of Hedonist Artisan Chocolates on this blog, and today, I’m adding to the chorus. Unfortunately, because they shake up their line up so much, I’m no longer sure these truffles are even still available. Oops. On the plus side, that also means that they’ve got new flavors out!

These are a custom assortment that I chose (and, unlike the previously reviewed autumn collection, paid for) myself. I love that Hedonist lets you write down your order and then turns that into your chocolate guide. From left to right in the above photo, I’ve got cardamom, peanut butter and honey, imperial stout, ginger pop rock, and sesame.

Cardamom, a rolled truffle, is by far my favorite of the bunch. There’s an intense, almost savory note to the truffle that makes it wonderfully earthy. It’s a great flavor pairing that’s astoundingly delicious.

Peanut butter and honey (above) is a molded milk chocolate truffle with a fun skull stenciled on top. The peanut butter inside is dry, with a slight grain to it (similar to the texture of a Reese’s).  It’s super peanut-y, with a tinge of sweet and a slight saltiness to the finish. The honey and the milk make it a little too sweet for my taste, but it’s otherwise good.

Imperial stout is another rolled truffle (below). It tastes of cocoa with a dark yeastiness, with a finish that’s reminiscent of the scent of Guinness. Ever since I had Guinness for breakfast as a college freshman, I’ve generally avoided dark beers, so this wouldn’t be a truffle I’d pick out again, though I did enjoy tasting it.

Ginger pop rock was a hollow, heart-shaped dark chocolate shell filled with flavorless pop rocks and bits of candied ginger. It adds a fun effect to the fairly familiar (to a candy blogger, at least) combination of chocolate and ginger.

I tasted this one about 2 weeks after I’d bought it, so the pop rocks had softened a bit from moisture. They were still poppy and fun, but I’ve now learned that pop rock truffles should be consumed as soon as possible for maximum crunchiness.

Last, but not least, the sesame truffle was a molded milk square sprinkled with sesame seeds. Unsuprisingly enough, it tastes similar to the bark, just creamier because it’s a ganache, and maybe a tad heavier on the salt and sesame oil. I think I prefer it in bark form because you get a bit more crunch that way, but the truffle incarnation is nice as well.

All in all, I’m happy with the five truffles that I chose. As I write this from my notes, weeks after I first tasted them, I wish I had more of the cardamom, so that gets a ZOMG! Sesame merits an OMG for its surprising and surprisingly delicious flavor combination, while the rest hover around an O/OM. While all are expertly crafted and well-made, they do run the ratings gamut solely based on my personal flavor preferences.

In addition to some delicious dark chocolate cocoa beans, Aequare also sent me an assortment of their handmade single-origin bars for free sampling. Today’s review is of their 55% semi-sweet.

According to their website, the beans that went into this bar came from Aequare’s grower in Quevedo, Ecuador and their summer 2008 harvest. How’s that for precise! I can’t remember if that was stamped on the box or not, but I think it should be. It would be a neat marketing gimmick.

The chocolate bar itself is nicely presegmented into tasting-sized squares. There’s a nice snappiness when the bar is broken apart. The color is a lovely medium brown with a nice, smooth sheen, and while the melt isn’t thick, it is silky soft with just a bit of tongue-coating-ness in the finish.

Flavorwise, it’s brightly sweet with great complexity. There’s a bold fruitiness that lingers in the finish, which also has just a hint of bitter/astringent cocoa notes.

It’s absolutely lovely, thanks to its pleasant texture and intriguing complexity. It blows every other bittersweet/semisweet chocolate that I’ve had in this cacao percentage-range out of the water. A ZOMG!

Today’s review comes courtesy of my roommate, Celeste, who was kind enough to bring me a German chocolate bar that she bought in Boston. I’ve seen the Milka brand in stores, but I’d never tried them before, and I’d definitely never tried their Joghurt flavor.

As best I can tell, the Joghurt bar is not manufactured for U.S. markets (this bar was an import. Note the German on the wrapper), and that’s a huge shame, as it’s ridiculously good. It’s “I’m almost glad it’s hard to find because otherwise I’d eat it all the time, but gosh, I wish I could eat it all the time” good.

Basically, it’s Milka’s “Alpine milk chocolate” surrounding a yogurt-flavored filling. The milk chocolate is sweet and creamy, with strong caramel notes. It’s tongue-coatingly thick.

Then POW, the yogurt flavor comes through. It’s bright and sour, like good quality plain yogurt turned up to 11. That sour tinge wipes the palate clean and readies you for more. Texturewise, it’s soft and creamy and pliable, though it doesn’t coat the tongue as well as the chocolate does.

The milk chocolate is a little too sweet for my liking, but in this bar, that actually makes it better. It provides a stronger foil for the sour yogurt taste, and it makes the yogurt effect that much more enjoyable. The two flavors don’t mesh; instead, they play off each other and, to borrow a corporate buzzword, synergize to make something that’s even better than the sum of its parts.

This bar is incredible. And Celeste is incredible to be generous enough to give me a whole bar. If I ever have the good fortune to come across it myself, I’m stocking up. A ZOMG!

My first run-in with chocolate-covered sunflower seeds was when my mother brought home several little logo-ed packs that she’d gotten at some booth at a job fair. The two of us polished them off lickety-split and then didn’t know where to find more.

This was several years ago, when chocolate-covered sunflower seeds were a rarity. These days, they’re not exactly ubiquitous, but they are far easier to find. I picked up my 1.3 oz. bag for $0.79 (I think; it was definitely under a dollar) at a local Wegman’s (which, by the way, has turned out to be an awesome candy source. They sell some full-sized Vosges bars for around $2!).

As the front of the bag says, these are candy-coated, cocoa-covered sunflower kernels. Each kernal is bright and covered in a colorful candy shell, M&Ms-style. Most are nicely tear-drop shaped, like sunflower kernels, but a few here and there look a little wonkier. They all taste divine, though!

I really can’t say too much about the flavor notes on these. They taste like chocolate and sunflower seeds. The combination is pure synergy. I don’t like sunflower seeds, but I LOVE these. The sweet cocoa balances so well with the seeds’ nuttiness, and the textural tiny crunch is marvelous.

They’re great for snacking. Each ounce has 110 calories, 5 g of fat, 1 g of saturated fat, and 2 g of fiber. The tiny size of the individual seeds is enough to slow you down, so one bag can last a long time. I managed to make mine last three whole days, over the course of at least half a dozen sessions.

These are definitely making it into my regular snacking rotation. A ZOMG!

And in case you want a second opinion, Candy Addict reviewed the Sunbursts brand, while Cybele from Candy Blog found a similar and cheaper version at Trader Joes. I dunno if buying these in a giant tub is a good idea though, as I’d power through that tub so quickly…

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!