ZOMG, Candy!

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!

Review number two from my box of New Zealand chocolates, courtesy of Saskia (review one was on Monday), is a Kiwifruit Bliss Bar hand made by Bliss Chocolates (note: video plays upon loading Bliss Chocolates’ main page).

I’m pretty sure Saskia purposefully picked a kiwi-filled bar to be representative of New Zealand candy. Sadly, I was not a fan of this bar - though I did enjoy the cheerful green of the wrapper and the translucent green of the inside goop.

The first three ingredients in the “dark compound choc” were sugar, vegetable oil, and cocoa powder. Not a good thing when vegetable oil shows up so high (or at all) in an ingredients list for chocolate. Also not a good thing when cocoa butter never makes an appearance.

It reminded me of Palmer’s chocolate - poor quality, overly sweet with unpleasant tastes and aftertastes, and just not what I consider to be real chocolate. The green kiwi goop was super sweet and fruity, but I couldn’t get a clear read on it because the chocolate was just so overpoweringly blech.

My apologies go out to Saskia. It’s weird to publicly post negative opinions of gifts people give you. I feel like I sound horribly ungrateful. In fact, I value all tasting experiences as learning experiences, even when I don’t like what I’m tasting.

And I did not like this. The Kiwifruit Bliss Bar gets a sound – for its mockolate foul.

Reminder: check out Cybele’s Candy Swap forum if you want to set up your own candy swap!

Around Thanksgiving-ish, I did a candy exchange with Saskia, a ZOMG, Candy! reader from New Zealand. Quick tip - if you ship internationally via USPS, hang onto the customs form that they give you. That way, if the package you shipped in November still hasn’t arrived by late January, USPS can try to look it up for you. If you threw out the customs form thinking you’d never need it again (like I did), you’re out of luck, even if you have a sales receipt.

Luckily, the package finally turned up at the end of January, right as I was planning to pack and mail another box. Candy exchanges are fun, but international shipping ain’t cheap!

Anywho, Saskia sent me a lovely assortment of locally made Kiwi goodies. Enough goodies, in fact, to make this week all New Zealand reviews! First up is a Peanut Chili (they spell it Chilli) Cluster from Schoc. Check out the firecrackery tag!

They’re straightforwardly described on the website as “peanuts gathered in a dark chili chocolate”. I love the use of the verb “gathered” there. That’s basically what they are, but the simple description belies the complexity of the treat.

The dark chocolate was high quality, with a thick-ish melt and pleasant cocoa flavors. There was a nice initial crunch and strong peanuttiness from, you guessed it, the peanuts. But where was the chili?

Wait for it… There! After the chocolate melted away, the chili punched through with a tingly back of the throat burn. As I took more bites, the burn built up and melded with the chocolate and peanut flavors, as I couldn’t wait for the heat to fully dissipate before chomping up more peanut chili cluster.

A fun twist on my favorite combination of chili and chocolate. An OM.

Quick tip number two: if any of you readers would like to do a candy swap of our own, I suggest y’all check out Cybele’s forum on candy swaps to find a buddy. As much as I’d love to trade candy with you all, it’s too expensive for me to do often.

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!

Just when I thought I’d exhausted the Qra Qra line (I previously reviewed lemon and milk), I found this bag of Strawberry Qra Qra in a newly discovered Rochester Asian grocery store. As a bonus, it was $0.89, a whole ten cents cheaper than at my previous Qra Qra source.

For some reason, the Qra Qra kangaroo gets to wear a crown on this bag. Qra qra kangaroo - try saying that quickly three times in a row!

The strawberry flavor on these chews is super genuine. Bright, sweet, tangy, and surprisingly tart - almost but not quite too tart.

I can really taste the concentrated strawberry juice from the ingredients list. You know how biting into a dried cherry yields a burst of chewy flavor? This is like biting into the dried cherry equivalent of a strawberry (forgive my ignorance if you can dry strawberries; I’ve only ever seen them freeze-dried). It yields a great punch of flavor.

The sugar shell on the outside has a bit of a grain to it that crumbles in the mouth. Most of the flavor is concentrated in the chewy center. Like the previous Qra Qra, the chew is long lasting.

Conceptually, it’s similar to a strawberry Starburst, but it’s executed to the nth degree. More chew, more flavor, more deliciousness. The lemon is still my favorite Qra Qra because I love citrus fruit candies, but I’d buy a bag of strawberry to go with my lemon anytime. An OM.

I bought this Lindt Croquant de Caramel bar in France. It’s “lait aux éclats de fin caramel”, or milk chocolate with caramel (toffee) bits/chips. I swear, French makes everything sound better.

Check out the description from the back of the box: “D’abord un plaisir pour les yeux avec sa belle teinte blonde ou l’on devine le caramel. Ensuite, vinet le plaisir de tous les sens: le fondant d’un chocolat au laut velouté marié au délicat croustillant des éclats de caramel blond.”

The bar smells lovely - sweet, dusky, thick, and caramel-y. The bar has a pleasant snap to it, surprising for a milk bar. It’s generously studded with crunchy toffee bits.

The milk chocolate (30% according to the back of the box) didn’t melt and coat the tongue like Lindt milk chocolate usually does. I wonder if it was a different formulation for this bar?

The toffee bits cleave cleanly under my teeth. They taste sweet and buttery, with honey highlights.

The milk chocolate and toffee is a bit sweeter than I tend to like my chocolate, but the combination does work well together. An OM.

Cybele from Candy Blog reviewed the U.S. version of this bar, called Lindt Toffee Crunch.

I often came across Nestle’s Yorkie bars during my summer in England, but I never bought them because they’re “NOT FOR GIRLS!” It wasn’t that I was intimidated by the tagline or the red-slashed purse-toting icon; it was that I believed any candy company misogynistic enough to have such a slogan, even if only tongue-in-cheek, didn’t deserve my business.

I’m just as anti-marketing solely to women (when such marketing is also done stupidly) by the way.

So how did I end up with this bar anyway? My friend Steve visited Economy Candy and was thoughtful and sweet enough to bring me back a goodie bag generously stuffed full of candy deliciousness. This bar was included in the mix.

The bar is pretty basic, just five thick segments (~3/4 inch high) of pure milk chocolate, each stamped with YORKIE in block sans-serif caps. You’d think that a no-girls-allowed bar would have some manly bits, like nuts, mixed in (I’m talking about peanuts and almonds; get your mind out of the gutter). Maybe the manliness lies in the thickness of each chunk. Girls’ jaws must be too delicate to take on that task (keep staying out of that gutter).

The milk chocolate is smooth and creamy, though it’s not as luxuriously thick on the tongue as other slightly more premium bars (such as Ghirardelli or Lindt). But that’s to be expected, as this is really more of a vending machine/checkout aisle grade candy bar.

The chocolate is sweet, with strong caramel notes, and it melts to a lingering sweet finish. I wasn’t surprised by the sugar-bomb nature of the bar, as it smelled powerfully of generic sweetness. It was too sweet for my taste. Still, it wasn’t appalling or anything, so an O.

Just to prove how sweet it was - we had a bit of a mouse problem in my house. Being smart little mice, they found their way into my candy drawer. First, my giant slab of treacle toffee (made of boiled sugar) got gnawed on and had to be trashed (I had been saving it for ages! I so love Walkers’ treacle toffee…). Next they got to a piece of taffy (made of boiled sugar).

And finally, they got into my chocolate stash. Thankfully, they bypassed my hoard of finer chocolates, included a prized Valrhona bar, and instead went straight for the Yorkie, probably due to its high sugar content (don’t worry; I photographed and tasted mouse-free chocolate).

On the plus side, I was able to use the gnawed on Yorkie bits to set a humane mouse trap and managed to catch this adorable little bugger. We had put out a store-bought humane trap - and spent weeks watching the mice dance around it. The Yorkie bar, a piece of cardboard, and a bucket did the trick in about 30 seconds.

Unfortunately, his buddy didn’t fare so well; when the store-bought nice trap didn’t work, I set out a snappy one, also baited with a bit of Yorkie. The above mouse survived because I was too racked with rodent-murdering guilt to put out anymore snap traps.

But if they get into the rest of my Walkers’ toffee stash, I might not be so nice again…

Back when I reviewed the Qra Qra Lemon, I pointed out the weirdness of the name. The Qra Qra Milk sees the Lemon’s unpronounceable Qras and raises it an inexplicable flavor. What exactly is a milk flavor, any way?

Milk flavored candy is actually a common find in Asian markets (I’ve reviewed a hard milk candy in the past), and I usually find them quite enjoyable. But chewing on milk? I dunno…

The Qra Qra did not taste like vanilla. Instead, it tasted of cooked milk, like the skin that forms when you heat up milk, with maybe a bit of coconut milk to it as well. It was almost savory and had a hint of salt in the finish.

The flavor reminded me of a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly but less buttery. The scent of it as it’s being chewed (and the lingering Qra Qra breath that one is left with) is spot-on buttered popcorn Jelly Belly.

While the Qra Qra milk was still quite chewy (chewchew chewchew), it wasn’t as long lasting as the lemon. Despite its chew-time advantage, the Qra Qra Milk did not disappear nearly as quick as its lemon counterpart did. I was torn between giving them an O or a — and ultimately settled on an O. While they’re not bad, they’re also not really good, but they are intriguing, so a bonus letter point there.

This is the second of the Ritter Sport bars that I bought in Spain. Those two made me want to try more, so I did. I picked up a couple more at Target (they were only $1.99!), which gave me enough bars to make this a Ritter Sport review week.

The Dark Whole Hazelnuts (or Negro con Avellanas Enteras) was a dark chocolate Ritter base “with hand selected whole hazelnuts”.

You know how some things promise whole hazelnuts, or almonds, or peanuts, or whatever, and there are always a few broken ones mixed in? Admirably enough, every hazelnut in this bar remained intact. Well, until I chomped into them, that is.

And there were lots of them too! The bar was generously studded with whole roasted hazelnuts. Their dry roasted nuttiness contrasted well with the smooth dark chocolate.

This bar was a deconstructed Nutella/gianduja. It made it easy to appreciate how well chocolate and hazelnuts go together.

The chocolate itself was fairly simple, a dark chocolate that lacked complexity. It had a lightly sweet finish, but that was about all I got in terms of its flavor profile. Still, it was tasty enough to do what was required of it - balancing out but not overpowering the hazelnut. An OM for the decently executed combo.

More from my stash of Korean candy, courtesy of Nana and Justin (past hits included Crunky Nude Balls). Nana phonetically translated the title to be “Ti Dui” but doesn’t know what the words actually mean. She also informs me that somewhere on there is a character for flavor, I think under the fruit pictures on the bottom seam.

Thank goodness for pictures. I guessed that these would be like peanut M&Ms, only with lemon, apple, and orange flavored shells, and I guessed right!

Unlike peanut M&Ms, the peanuts in the Ti Dui tasted unroasted and young (is that the right word for it? They felt like they needed more time to develop their flavors). I did catch one in the package that had some depth and tasted nicely roasty, though I now wonder if it was an anomaly, and I actually just ate a half rancid nut or something.

They come in four colors and flavors. All have a crunchy candy shell (slightly thicker and thus crunchier than M&M shells) around a layer of generic milk chocolate encasing a peanut. I appreciated the earthy color scheme, especially the lovely shade of green.

Yellow is lemon. It starts off with a light sweetness, which then becomes a bit tart before the chalky chocolate and peanut flavor come through. The shell alone tastes vaguely sweet but not fruity. For all of these, the fruit flavor is melded into the chocolate, I think.

Orange is orange. It tastes like just plain chocolate up until the finish, which is mellow and round with floral orange notes.

Green is apple. It has an immediate Fuji apple sweetness that reminds of apple Jell-o. It’s too weird for me. As past experience has shown, I do not appreciate the combination of apple and chocolate.

And finally, brown is just chocolate, meaning that it tastes like meh chocolate around a meh peanut for an all around meh-ness.

I give these an O. I’m not sure how much I appreciate the fruit and candy shell and chocolate combination, but I did manage to finish the package over the course of a few weeks, popping a few at a time. I really only found the apple one repelling, and I even ate those eventually. Then again, I did mostly finish them because I’d left the package at my desk, thus keeping them always in sight and in mind. Had I kept them elsewhere, I would’ve forgotten about them, probably.