ZOMG, Candy!

I recently had the pleasure of getting a candy sneak preview. Crown Candies sent me two boxes of their Borrachitos (Spanish for a little drunk, and a traditional Mexican treat, apparently). I got one each of their two available flavors: Tequila and Licor de Cafe.

Crown Candies imports these handmade candies from Mexico. They call them “gourmet caramel candies,” but, as I explained to David of Crown Candies, I find that a bit of a misnomer, as they aren’t actually caramels. Instead, they’re a soft jelly-like candy flavored with caramel (or dulce du leche, if you prefer) and liquor. The Tequila flavor is laced with Tequila (duh), and the Licor de Cafe with coffee liqueur (less intuitive if you’re unfamiliar with romance languages).

The borrachitos come inside a resealable plastic tub with paper dividers separating them from each other. That tub is then shrink-wrapped and packaged inside a box. The texture of the candy is hard to describe. It’s super soft and immediately gives way when you bite into it, yet there’s a slight chew to it, The white center is creamy and also soft. They’re covered in granulated sugar, presumably to keep them from sticking to each other and to add an extra touch of sweetness.

The Licor de Cafe had a lovely strong coffee liqueur flavor to it in addition to its caramel notes. I noticed an initial, barely perceptible mustiness to it, probably from the paper liner, but it wasn’t present enough for friends to notice when I shared the borrachitos. My band director proclaimed them to be “very good,” and he’s got a doctorate in music education (sorry; inside YUB joke).

The Tequila borrachitos (left three in below photo) were lighter in color than the Licor de Cafe flavored ones (right three below) - more golden than brown - and their mustiness was a little stronger, probably because they had a double-layered paper liner. David from Crown Candies assures me that they’ve stopped using the double layer and that they’re looking into plastic separators, so that should resolve that issue. He was so confident that he sent me a third box of borrachitos with the new packaging to taste, but I haven’t had a chance to get them yet because I’ve been out of town and without access to my PO box.

The Tequila borrachitos were also strong! They immediately taste of caramel, and then whoosh comes the alcohol flavor. I’m not hardcore enough to enjoy the Tequila flavor, but I think tequila lovers/hard liquor connoisseurs would enjoy it. The Licor de Cafe flavor was just right for me, with it’s slight but innocuous alcohol tinge. An O for the tequila. The Licor de Cafe isn’t something I would reach for as a casual snack, but I would indulge in a piece now and then and would offer it to company. It gets an OM. I wonder if Crown Candies has considered a chocolate liqueur version.

Borrachitos are available online from the Crown Candies website, and they’ll also be at the All Candy Expo in Chicago that’s going on next week.

For some reason, this post disappeared after I wrote it the first time. It was originally supposed to publish after Russian Candies I and II but instead published as blank nothingness (much to the disappointment of Leslie, who gave me the candy in the first place). Fortunately, I still have my tasting notes, so I can recreate the review.

Dove Bitter Chocolate with Lemon Peel and Coffee

I think Dove really needs to rethink the packaging on this one, as I noticed neither the lemon nor the coffee on the box. The coffee bean blends right into the chocolate, and the lemon looks like it’s just an extension of the yellow satin. What if some poor little Russian child or Russian tourist who can’t read Russian mistakenly bought this? He or she would be in for a flavor surprise.

All that being said, the flavor combination of chocolate, lemon, and coffee worked better than I thought it would. The bar had a crisp snap to it (and a slight bloom, but hey, it flew from Russia to Ohio to Texas to Connecticut. Stuff happens), probably because it’s quite dark, and little bits of grit from the coffee beans and dried lemon bits.

Upon first bite, the lemon flavor really smacks you in the taste buds. It tastes like super sweet candied lemon zest at first, then gives way to a coffee finish with a slight bitterness to it. It’s an interesting flavor combination that some of my friends loved, but it wasn’t quite for me. An OM.

Spartak Elite Dark Bitter Aerated Chocolate (72% cacao).

Leslie calls this one “exotic dictatorship chocolate” because it was made in Belarus. I really like aerated chocolate because it’s such a unique textural experience, and I was excited to try this one, as I’ve never had a dark aerated bar before.

The bar was quite glossy and dark. At first, it tasted quite dry, and unlike milk aerated chocolate, it doesn’t melt in your mouth very well. The chocolate itself was a bit on the sweet side for dark chocolate and had a slightly musty finish. Also an OM.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a review of Lily O’Briens crispy heart and sticky toffee. It was about as scathing as I get:

“From the two I tasted, a crispy heart and a sticky toffee, either Ireland has poor chocolatiers or Lily O’Briens is quite overrated.”

The next day, I got the following email from one of their representatives:

“I work for Lily O’Brien’s Chocolates and have read your comments on our two signature recipes with great interest. Our chocolates, when fresh, taste truly fantasti and the two recipes critiqued are among our chocolate fans’ favourites (check out the testimonials on our website from across the globe). Unfortunately I would suspect that the chocolates tasted we were past their best and should not actually be on sale still… I would be happy to send you fresh chocolates if you would like to critique them fairly.”

I was impressed that Lily O’Briens was so willing to stand behind their chocolates, and I was eager to take them up on their offer of a re-review. After all, I had bought the original chocolates from an Italian coffee shop in tourist trap Las Vegas, not exactly a place that would be worried about quality control and customer loyalty. When a generous package arrived from Ireland, and I happily ate my words, along with the chocolates they sent: one pouch each of their Chocolate Collection, their Sticky Toffee, their Crispy Hearts, and their Trufflicious (that name needs a noun, I thin), a two sets of their luxury bar assortments. This review is of the Chocolate Collection, which includes a sticky toffee and a honeycomb crisp (just like the crispy hearts, but not honeycomb shaped).

The Chocolate Collection, starting from the white chocolate cup going clockwise and finishing in the center, includes crème brûlée, hazelnut torte, honeycomb crisp, farmhouse ice cream, sticky toffee, lemon meringue pie, chocolat noir, and cookies ‘n’ cream. There was one of each and two of a few (the sticky toffee, the honeycomb crisp, and the chocolat noir, if I remember correctly), and I’m ashamed to say that over the course of a few days, I ate the entire pouch. What can I say; it’s that time of year when final papers are due and final exams are coming up.

crème brûlée - White chocolate shell with granulated sugar sprinkled over a white cap; white chocolate ganache filling and a touch of caramel sitting in the bottom of the shell. I don’t particularly like white chocolate. Still, the cup is a cute design.

hazelnut torte - one of my favorites of the bunch, this one was quite nutty. Like most hazelnut/chocolate combinations, it was sweet, but this one managed to be just shy of overly so. The ganache almost had a slight grain to it from the hazelnuts. I liked the textural difference.

honeycomb crisp - honeycomb and crispies in milk chocolate that was soooo much better than the stale crispy heart I bought in Vegas. The chocolate was creamy and yogurty rather than brittle, and though it was still on the sweet side, the sweetness was more bearable when the chocolate melted heavily on the tongue.

farmhouse ice cream - I also enjoyed this one, a dark chocolate shell around a white ganache. The ganache wasn’t white chocolate (I think). Instead, it tasted like fresh cream.

sticky toffee - the other one that I had originally panned. This time around in a fresh version, the “toffee” caramel was smooth and flowing with a slight butterscotch tinge. No grain and grit here. And again, the sweetness was helped by the proper melt of chocolate (whereas my Vegas ones were pretty brittle).

lemon meringue pie - milk chocolate shell, white chocolate button, bright lemony ganache. Didn’t make too much of an impression on me.

chocolat noir - dark chocolate shell and a lighter, sweeter, and fluffier dark chocolate ganache. I liked the dark chocolate the shell was made of, as it had a nice fruitiness to it. For those who are easing their way into enjoying dark chocolate, this dark chocolate was on the sweet side.

cookies ‘n’ cream - somehow, Lily O’Briens managed to get the a nice bit of cookie crumb grain into this one, a milk chocolate shell surrounding a white chocolate ganache studded with tiny chocolate chips. I was amused that there were actually more chocolate chips in the actual chocolate than in the photo of the chocolate on the box. Usually, it’s the other way around. This tastes overwhelmingly of white chocolate. I think I would have liked it better if it tasted more like the cream of the farm house ice cream.

So, Lily O’Briens, I owe you an apology. Your chocolates are tasty. They’re a little overly sweet for my palate, and the ganache fillings are almost on the greasy side, but I liked them enough to eat them all. Irish people do have good taste in chocolate. Hooray! An OM for the lot as a whole, with an OMG for the hazelnut torte and farmhouse ice cream.

According to their website, Lily O’Briens is one of Ireland’s top chocolatiers. From the two I tasted, a crispy heart and a sticky toffee, either Ireland has poor chocolatiers or Lily O’Briens is quite overrated.

Edit: Lily O’Briens believes that my chocolates were past their best-by date and have offered to send me fresh samples so I can give them a fair shake. I respect companies that stand behind their products, so I’ll re-review Lily O’Briens.

I actually picked this box up from an Italian coffeehouse/gelato place in the Venetian on the Las Vegas strip. The right is the sticky toffee, and the left is the crispy heart (duh).

The sticky toffee is toffee as the Europeans would describe it. In other words, it’s what we could consider a caramel. I found it to be grainy and gritty. The chocolate shell and its filling were overly sweet, and I had no urge to have more than my tasting bite. Not a good sign.

The crispy heart had bits of crisped rice that was a bright yellow. My initial notes describe it as a saffron yellow, but I now think it is yellow because it’s made of honeycomb. Either way, it’s not enough crispies to temper the sweetness of the chocolate shell. I liked the crispy heart better than the sticky toffee, as it reminded me of a Nestle Crunch bar, but I still found it cloying.

An O for the box. Granted, since I bought it from a coffeehouse and not a chocolate shop, and since it may have been imported, my box probably was not exactly fresh. But still, I wouldn’t recommend Lily O’Briens’ chocolates based on the ones I got to taste.

The Cadbury Picnic is a UK bar composed of milk chocolate with toffee, wafer, peanuts, sultanas, and a crispy cereal centre. You can tell it’s British not only from the spelling of centre but also from the “toffee,” which in British vernacular is actually what we would call caramel. That is, cooked sugar that is still sticky and viscous rather than solid and crunchy.

In case you’re wondering, like I was when I first read the wrapper, sultanas are basically raisins made with a specific grape. Not that it mattered much in the case of this bar. The chocolate that coated it was way too blandly sweet and overpowered all the “Picnic” treats. The toffee/caramel ribbon that sat under the wafers (or was that supposed to be the crispy cereal centre? hard to tell) could barely be tasted, and the peanuts that studded the bar were unroasted, a wasted flavor opportunity.

Overall, the bar was at least texturally interesting. It was a shame that so much went into this bar, so little actually managed to flavor it. A disappointing O.

Part II of many of my series of Russian candies courtesy of my friend Leslie. This week will be Russian candy week, but the series will extend beyond that.

Red October’s Iris Kis-Kis

On these Leslie writes, “My dictionary calls iris ‘taffy,’ but I’m not sure that’s quite accurate… Kis-Kis means ‘Here, Kitty Kitty.’”

I called these candies cat caramels in my notes, so Leslie has a point when she says they’re not quite taffy. They do have the texture of taffy, as it cleaves but is also sticky and chewy. In fact, the more you chew it, the stickier and chewier (and more stuck in your molars) it gets. It tastes like molasses, with dusky sugar flavors without any overt bitterness. An OM for this tasty treat that Leslie likes to buy at the open air market and eat on the way home.

RotFront’s “Slavyanskii Prostor” (Slavic Lands)

I’m guessing that RotFront in Russian doesn’t have the same meaning as it does in English. Apparently, no one Leslie knows could tell her what this is made out of, but they all love it.

It looks like a Tootsie Roll, but it’s completely different. Instead of being chewy, it’s grainy and breaks apart in the mouth. The flavor is pleasantly nutty and reminds of the Chinese crumbly peanut candy from my youth. Leslie thinks the nuttiness may come from sunflower seeds, but she’s not sure. I can’t figure it out either, but I still liked it. An OM.

Ryskie Optima

These are actually Polish, so Leslie doesn’t know what the name translation would be. The candy is basically just sesame seeds in a sugar glaze. It looks like it would be brittle but is actually chewy and did a fine job of sticking in my teeth. I enjoyed the toasted sesame flavor, which is quite strong, and gave it an OM. I think there’s a Chinese candy that’s similar to this.

My friend Leslie was kind enough to mail me a giant box full of Russian candy back in December, and I’ve since been slowly tasting my way through everything. Candy blogging, at least the way I do it, is a Sisyphean task, only I get to eat lots of sweets instead of pushing a boulder around. I know, I know. My life is so hard. Here’s the first of my long overdue, many-part series on Russian candies.

First up, a series of what Leslie calls “the heart and soul of Russian candy, with its fake chocolate glaze and weirdly-folded, artistic wrappers. There are several other varieties… Bizarrely, all of them come from different candy factories all over Russia. The wrappers are always the same color… and the artwork is always similar. Apparently there’s no trademarking going on.”

Red October’s Mishka Kosolapy/Pigeon-toed Mikey (the affectionate name for bear cub) - Dark “chocolate” covered crisp innards topped and bottomed with a stale wafer. I don’t know if they’re usually stale, as they’d been sitting around for a long time before I got to tasting them. The innards were made of a sugary, slightly chocolatey solidified paste of some sort that gave it a sweet finish.

Babaevskii’s Belochka/Squirrel - The same dark “chocolate” shell around a crumbly filling composed of chocolate and hazelnut (I think; it could have been pistachio) bits. Also a sweet finish.

Mikey in the North - The same dark “chocolate” shell and paste of Pigeon-toed Mikey. In this version, the wafers completely box in the filling, so the overall candy is both thicker (in crunch) and airier (in texture).

Overall, I ate one of each all at once, which was a bad idea. They’re super sweet, and the fillings don’t exactly melt away, so I felt ill afterwards. An O, but on the high side because they get bonus points for novelty.

Sunflower Kozinak

Excuse me a second as I try not to drool into my keyboard just reliving what it was like eating this stuff. It’s like peanut brittle but made with sunflower seeds. Lots and lots of sunflower seeds jammed in very little brittle made the thick bars hard to crunch through, but I still powered right through half the package. I wish it came in thin slabs like peanut brittle, if only to slow down my consumption of it. Simple, delicious, and ZOMG! worthy. I wish I had more and miss it so…

Nestle Nesquick Bar

Leslie calls this “a ubiquitous European candy bar marketed towards children.” It’s a sweet milk chocolate coating over a top layer of white, crunchy… something and sweet chocolate nougat. The mysterious top layer tastes like a wafer but doesn’t have the mouthfeel of one, while the nougat layer is like a more dense 3 Musketeers filling. It’s a little sweet for my taste, so I give it an OM.

I’m always on the prowl for candies I’ve never tried before, and when I saw the Lee’s Chocolate Mint bar on the shelf at Randall’s, I snapped it up, along with a Jaffa Bar, which I haven’t opened yet. I’d never heard of Lee’s, a Scottish based food maker, before, so I was eager to see what they had to offer.

The Chocolate Mint bar is billed as “a delicious mint creme fondant covered in real dark chocolate.” Immediately upon unwrapping the bar, my nose was invaded by a super strong, minty scent that reminded me of a York Peppermint Pattie. Unlike a York, however, the mint filling was hard - so hard that it was nearly impossible to break in half, a fact my friends all commented on when they tried to break apart the remainder of the bar to share it amongst themselves. With enough muscle, the bar does snap and cleanly cleave like a piece of toffee, except that toffee is brittle and much easier to break. Once it gets in your mouth, the fondant softens and becomes chewy in a grainy sort of way.

The mint fondant isn’t nearly as strong as it smells. Instead, it’s super sweet with a minty feel but without much actual mint flavor. The finish is sweet, and the fondant got stuck in my molars. The layer of “real dark chocolate” that coats the bar is thin, bland, and rather grainy. It might as well be fake, as there’s so little of it and it’s of such poor quality.

I’ll stick with York Peppermint Patties for now. Like the York, the Lee’s is quite low in fat (3 g total, 1.5 g saturated) and pretty reasonable calorie-wise (230 for the whole bar, which is so hard that you’ll be forced to eat it slowly), probably because the bar is mostly sugar. It gets just an O, but it was good enough to make me want to try the rest of the Lee’s line, though I do fear for my teeth a bit.

Here in the U.S., the Kit Kat is manufactured under Hershey’s. Elsewhere in the world, Kit Kat is made by Nestle. My Kit Kat Hazelnut Cream was given to me by my friend Katie, who bought it for me while in Egypt last Christmas, so it’s made by Nestle. And because it’s probably manufactured in the U.K., I’ve filed is as European rather than African.

The Hazelnut Cream is a Kit Kat of the Big Kat (in the U.S.) or Chunky (everywhere else) variety. That is, rather than being four small “fingers,” it’s one giant stick. The chocolate around the wafers is extremely thick. In fact, there’s about as much chocolate as there is wafer. I found the milk chocolate to be creamy and sweet without being cloying, unlike the Hershey’s Kit Kats you can buy here. For mass-produced candy bar chocolate, it was pretty nice.

Despite it’s name, there was little hazelnut or cream to this bar. It had a sweet nutty tinge that’s far from the in-your-face hazelnut approach taken by Ferrerro. The light nuttiness served the bar well, but there was still room for more hazelnut taste to come through.

I personally don’t like the Chunky/Big Kat bars because I think they’re too big and hard to chomp down on. This would be wonderful in the smaller, standard Kit Kat form, I think. The hazelnut flavor could stand up better with less chocolate to overshadow it. An OM from me.

There are a surprising number of candies that carry the Hello Kitty brand. I found these adorable little plastic barrels of compressed sugar candies in a Sanrio store next to Sanrio gum, lollipops, and hard candies. Each barrel was $0.75, and they came in Hello Kitty (peach), Badtz Maru (cola), and Pandapple (apple).

The candies themselves were little tablets that were similar to Tart N Tinies in shape and size. They were made from a compressed sugar that was fairly soft, like the core of a Smartie after you nibble away the outside rim (everyone eats their Smarties that way, right?). The peach was a faint pink, the apple a pale yellow/green, and the cola a soft light brown.

The Hello Kitty peach flavor was lightly floral and completely different from that of a peach flavored Jolly Rancher. Though it still didn’t taste exactly like a real peach, it was also far from artificial tasting. I would call it reminiscent of the flavor of a peach Asian gelatin candy (you may be more familiar with the lychee jelly version, but they do come in peach as well). The Badz Maru had a dark cola taste that was almost fizzy, and the Pandapple candies had a lightly sweet apple taste that was more like a Fuji than a Granny Smith.

These compressed sugar candies get an OM from me. I found them to be tasty, addictive, and cutely packaged. My only wish is that the little barrels were resealable (they have little pop top pull tabs, like canned sodas do abroad), but I think a packaging change would probably drive up the price.