ZOMG, Candy!

Hooray for globetrotting friends! My friends Nana and Justin recently finished up a three year stint teaching English in Korea (next stop for them: Scotland). Before they left Korea, they were kind enough to buy and mail me a bunch of Korean candy for the blog. Thanks for the help, as always, Nana and Justin!

First up is Lotte‘s Pepero. I thought it would be fitting to start with one of Nana’s favorites. According to Nana, this box was “nude”, which is how Korean’s refer to inside-out. It’s basically like an inside out Pocky, with a hollow cookie shell filled with chocolate.

The box had a sealed plastic bag full of Peperos. I kind of chomped right through them and lost count of how many there were. The cookie shell was rather mild, with a hint of buttery nuttiness.

The Peperos weren’t so much filled with chocolate as lined on the inside with chocolate. In other words, I could suck air through it like a straw. The chocolate was slightly fruity with a chalky cocoa hit.

Like Pocky, these are more cookie than candy. Also like Pocky, they’re a nice snack, and I polished off the box fairly quickly, but I don’t know if I’d ever seek them out to buy them again. They’d remain an impulse buy for me – that is, if I could find them in the states; I think I’ve seen them in Asian grocery stores before? – so an O. I do see why Nana likes them, though!

One of my dad’s specialty, cranks-it-out-for-dinner-parties dishes is taro root with chicken. He poaches chicken, uses the resulting stock to cook sliced taro root for hours until it’s buttery and meltingly soft, and mixes in the poached chicken (pulled into thin slivers that disappear into the “melted” taro) along with some chopped scallions. It’s delicious.

So, taro + chicken =  delicious. Taro + chocolate? We’ll see. I bought this box of Choco Roll Taro solely because it was so weird! If you’ve never had it, taro is a root vegetable that’s sort of like an extra starchy, slightly sweet and nutty, purple potato.

Ever thought, “Gee, I like mashed potatoes, but I bet they’d be better with chocolate instead of gravy”? Well, some Asian person thought the equivalent for the taro. From the looks of the purple frosting and cherry covered thing on the box, the Choco Roll Taro might be based off of some pre-existing dessert concoction.

Each individually wrapped Choco Roll Taro is a pink and purple speckled taro root center inside a round wafer roll, all covered in a yellow-y white chocolate. Don’t worry – the purple center isn’t nearly as bright as it looks on the box. In fact, the mottled pink/red flecked center is rather pretty.

The taro center tastes like pasty, extra-starchy mashed potato with a hint of nuttiness and lots of added sweetness. The extra sweet comes through in the finish and ends on a rather fruity note.

The wafer layer is unremarkable: airy, bland, and crisp. It serves its textural and structural purpose well, at least. Finally, the white chocolate outside is kind of greasy and pretty bland. I’m not a white chocolate fan, so I have little experience in picking out flavor notes in white chocolate. It just tasted like regular old sweet white chocolate to me.

All in all, I think I’ll continue to take my taro with chicken rather than chocolate. The flavor combination is just too strange for me to appreciate, and that strangeness overrides any ooh factor that the interplay of paste and crunch and melt could have brought.

I ate half of a roll to taste; the rest of the box disappeared when I moved. I may have given it away back in New Haven, or it could be buried in my candy stash somewhere. Either way, a taste is plenty Choco Roll Taro for me. It gets a no lettered – for being harmlessly not tasty.

Most people are pretty familiar with Ferrero‘s Kinder Surprise eggs. They’re banned in the U.S. and some other countries because they mix edibles and toys with tiny parts, which is a no-no. Kinder Joy, which I came across for the first time in Europe, is a newer addition to the Kinder egg line. It too, mixes edibles and toys, so it’s also not allowed in the U.S.

The two halves of Joy egg are split. One half contains a toy (in my case, a lame Ice Age 3 – yes, they apparently made an Ice Age 3 – badge), while the other half is a creamy spread studded with two chocolate cookie balls. Each half is individually sealed so that the spread doesn’t get on the toy (and vice-versa, I suppose). Finally, a flat plastic “spoon” is included to scoop up the spread.

The spread is a layer of white chocolate on hazelnut chocolate. It has the viscosity of Nutella – smooth and thick and glossy, but just short of the runniness of honey. Inside the spread are two chocolate balls comprised of chocolate ganache surrounded by a thin wafer shell covered in chocolate and crunchy chocolate sprinkles. They’re similar to Rocher balls, but smaller and without hazelnuts.

If you try to pry the balls out of the spread, a half shell of chocolate and sprinkles gets left behind, which imparts a nice crunch to the spread. Overall, I found this treat too sweet to eat on its own. The balls are managable, as their wafer shells help cut the cloy, but eating the spread is akin to eating straight frosting: okay for a lick or two, but too much beyond that. It did go nicely on bread, however.

All in all, a nice treat, but I’d rather buy a normal Kinder chocolate treat, like a Happy Hippo, Bueno, Rocher, or Duplo, and just put Nutella on my bread. The Joy gets an O, with the caveat that it would be great for gift-giving as soon as they stop coming with lame-O Ice Age 3 toys.

Here’s the second of the two Balisto bars I bought in Cambridge. In case you missed it, the other Balisto that I bought, a Muesli-Mix bar, was reviewed last Friday.

The ingredients for this bar are biscuit à la farine complete, crème au miel et amandes, enrobe de chocolat au lait (39%). I believe that translates to a whole-wheat cookie, cream of honey, and almonds enrobed in milk chocolate.

The composition of this bar was similar to that of the Muesli-Mix, and it was the same wholesome-tasting cookie with a similar fake-milk-cream thing, all covered in milk chocolate. I didn’t notice any almonds or almond bits, perhaps because the fake-milk-cream thing had a honeyed tinge that was pretty overpowering.

I thought the cross-section of this bar looked better than that of the Muesli-Mix, but unfortunately, it didn’t really taste better. The honey cream give the bar a strange finish that really doesn’t work for me. I finished the two bars, but that’s enough for me. An O.

So the honey-almond-mix wasn’t quite right. Still, after two bars, I’m going to keep my eye out for the rest of the line while I’m in Europe, as I’d love to try more variations.

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.

My favorite part about Whole Foods is their bulk food bins. I can pick out as much or as little as I want! Instead of buying a whole jar of a spice when I only need a pinch, I can buy just a pinch. Instead of buying a whole tub full of chocolate-covered almonds when I have a craving, I can buy just a handful.

And instead of buying a whole box or bag or whatever these usually come in, I can pick out just the SunDome flavors that I want to try: Chip ‘N Mint, Cashew Coconut Crunch, Mocha Jolt, and Chocolate Almond Toffee.

I’m currently having a hard time finding out more about these, as the SunRidge Farms website is under construction as of the time I’m writing this post. Best I can tell, they fit into Whole Foods’ image of crunchy-granola (literally) save-the-earth ethos pretty well. I can’t tell you, unfortunately, how many different kinds of SunDomes there are. I do remember the bin having at least twice as many different kinds as I bought – I wanted to get one of each, but that got heavy and too expensive.

The SunDomes are, expectedly, dome-shaped blocks of chocolate flavored in accordance with their names. The chocolate blocks are solid and thick, so not that easy to bite through and also not that easy to share. Each dome is sizeable, about half the size of a hockey puck.

Chip ‘N Mint had a strong, pepperminty scent with little bits of cookie or rice crisp that gave it a hint of crunch. The peppermint was nicely balanced – noticeable, but not too strong.

Mocha Jolt had a strong, genuine coffee taste that was quite enjoyable. There was a slight grit to the texture, which I’m pretty sure was ground up bits of coffee beans. Both of these were solid and thick, with a hefty, dull snap.

Cashew Coconut Crunch turned out to be a surprise. Its chocolate was a bit softer and milkier. It smelled strongly of coconut and had a hint of toasted dry coconut flavor that mingled with the slight nuttiness imparted by tiny bits of cashews sprinkled throughout. The surprise? Raisins! They added a fruity-raisin taste that sort of worked and sort of didn’t. For me, at least, that’s also how I feel about raisins. They sort of work as a snack, but they sort of don’t.

Finally, the Chocolate Almond Toffee, which also had a bit more give when bitten into. It starts with a slight nuttiness, thanks to the tiny bits of almond embedded throughout, that’s more roasty than that of the Cashew Coconut Crunch. That nuttiness then gives way to a burnt sugar note from the toffee aspect. I appreciated its complexity and flavor development.

I wish these came in smaller portions. I ate them across several sessions because they were just so big, and one bite of each was plenty satisfying. If they came in little tasting disks or something, I’d buy all of them again. As is, I think the Mocha Jolt and the Chocolate Almond Toffee are worth buying again, so they get OMs, while the Cashew Coconut Crunch and the Chip ‘N Mint are too big for their own good and get Os.

I’m sure I left y’all on the edge of your computer chairs last Friday when I promised weird Japanese Kit Kat reviews. Here are the remaining three in order of escalating weirdness.

Apple and chocolate aren’t an unheard of combination, but I’ve not enjoyed it in the past. In the Kit Kat iteration, it’s less bad, but it’s still not good.

Visually, it seems just like a normal Kit Kat. Though it smells strongly of Fuji apples, it initially tastes mostly of chocolate. Then the apple comes in. It’s weird and unpleasant and kind of earthy, more like an apple core than an apple. A –.

Next up, Muscat grape. Or, more specifically, Muscat of Alexandria. I don’t really know if a Muscat grape is any more special than the white seedless grapes you’d pick up at your local supermarket, and I also don’t know what makes Muscat of Alexandria special enough to warrant its own wikipedia entry. Or its own Kit Kat flavor.

I also don’t know why people thought grape flavored chocolate would be worth making. This bar is white chocolate with a pale green tinge, at once pretty and alien. I think it smells more like lychee than grape, but the taste is white grape all the way through. Would you want to eat grapes and white chocolate in the same bite? I wouldn’t, but I did try this bar, and I didn’t like it. Another –.

Finally, the mystery flavored Kit Kat. I don’t know Japanese, but I know some Chinese, and there’s a lot of character overlap. I could make out the characters for “university” on here, which didn’t help at all. I guessed that it was candied sweet potato with black sesame seeds. Cassie had no clue, and my boyfriend thought it may be tofu. We consulted my friend Michael, who lives in Kobe. Turns out I was sort of right; it is sweet potato and sesame.

The “university” part was to signal that it was a limited edition bar, released for exam session when Japanese students test to get into universities. Just goes to show you how candy can teach you about other cultures. Can you imagine an SAT Kit Kat being sold in the U.S.?

This was another white chocolate bar, tinged pale yellow. It was slightly nutty with toastiness that may have come from the wafers. I don’t really get sweet potato, exactly. The white chocolate is the most prominent flavor. Another –.

Thanks for the flavor adventure, Cassie! I enjoyed tasting them, even if the flavors weren’t that enjoyable. Guess there’s a reason they’re not widely available outside of Japan. Now, if only I could find a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat…

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!

More from Emily’s holiday lineup that I received after the holidays (thanks a lot, Fed Ex). On Monday we had pecan halves. Today, we’ve got graham crackers. Beautifully enrobed in milk chocolate and individually wrapped for freshness graham crackers, that is.

Like the pecan halves, these guys are simple, yet tasty. The milk chocolate layer is pretty thick, nearly as thick as the graham cracker itself. But because graham crackers are light and airy, the chocolate is far heavier. Though I love Emily’s milk chocolate – it has a nice thickness to its melt and a lovely dairy finish – I wish the graham cracker was a bit more assertive here. It could have provided more nuttiness or something. Instead, it mostly just added a nice crunch and grain.

This straddles the border between an O and an OM. I’d definitely eat it again and again, but I just don’t think I’d buy it, especially since Emily’s makes other stuff that I like better. After revisiting my rating scale explanation, I think it merits an OM, but with the aforementioned caveats.

I was excited/mad when I read this Jezebel post about Mars’s new Fling bar. Excited because my press packet and free samples were in the mail; mad because they were still in the mail and ugh, if I’d already reviewed them I might’ve been able to nab a link from Jezebel, like CandyBlog and CandyAddict did, which would’ve been huge free publicity for this site! Oh well. I still got to try them, at least. And I got to page through the hilarious/horrible press packet they came with.

Fling chocolates are marketed as portion controlled chocolate indulgences that are “naughty but not too naughty.” Now, I’m all for portion control, but I hate the way Mars went about marketing these guys. Here are some of my favorite quotes from my press packet, with my thoughts in italics:

• FLING offers chocolate liberation – freeing every woman from the guilt of indulging in chocolate pleasure. Why do women need to feel guilty about eating chocolate?! Guilt implies wrongdoing, and there’s nothing wrong with eating chocolate.
•  California women confess that they enjoy chocolate as much as passionate kissing (77% enjoy chocolate, 75% enjoy passionate kissing). That’s not how statistics work, Mars.
• Your boyfriend doesn’t need to know. If this is a legit concern for you, you deserve a better boyfriend who isn’t judgmental about your chocolate consumption habits. 

Those press notes bothered me far more than the hot pink wrappers or the sparkles in the chocolate (which I thought were kind of neat) because they embody how society can dictate how women should behave and eat and look. On a non-candy note, Frito-Lay is running a similarly annoying and sexist promotion for Baked Lays, SmartFood, and Flat Earth chips.

But that’s enough of my feminist rantings. How do the Fling bars taste? Not bad, actually, but not great. They come in three flavors: from left to right, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and hazelnut. The milk chocolate is described as “a delicate truffle on a subtle crisp layer enrobed in shimmering chocolate,” and the same could describe all three bars. I initially thought the “crisp layer” was like the inside of a malted milk ball, just minus the malt flavors. After perusing the press packet, I learned that it’s a bit of meringue cookie. The same meringue is in all three bars and is consistently light, airy, and crisp. The chocolate literally shimmers, thanks to some added pixie dust (a.k.a. mica). Yes, it’s a bit irritating to think that Mars made the chocolate SHINY! to appeal to women, but I’ll admit it – I like shiny things. I thought the shimmer was neat, it wasn’t nearly as horrid as it looked in the press photos Mars sent me (see below), and it didn’t affect the taste at all, so why not?

The truffle of the milk chocolate bar reminds me of a 3 musketeers’ nougat filling. It had a slightly dairy finish, but there was something a bit off about the flavor, perhaps due to PGPR being listed in the ingredients.

The dark chocolate had a slightly deeper cocoa flavor and a sweet finish. It didn’t taste as dark as it looked. The ingredients for the dark bar didn’t have PGPR, but it did have “chocolate processed with alkali,” which is where the dark coloring came from.

I was most excited about the hazelnut, as chocolate and hazelnut are a great flavor combination. Unfortunately, the hazelnuttiness was far too light and not enough to really distinguish it from the milk bar. And it has more PGRP. Yay!

Overall, I give these an O. I really enjoy the novelty of the meringue cookie, but I wish the chocolate was nicer. Better chocolate and more nuttiness to the hazelnut could’ve pushed these up to the next rating. As for their marketing… Right now they’re just being test marketed in California (others can buy online). We’ll just have to wait and see how much further they get.