ZOMG, Candy!

Fini is a Spain-based candy company that offered to send me free candy samples to review. So I went to their website and drooled over their gorgeous candy photos, all the while wishing that I spoke Spanish. Fortunately, their contact pointed me to clicking the little British flag in their navigation bar, and voila, everything was in English. I specifically requested filled licorice bars, which I fell in love with while in England, and I now have more than I could/should ever eat.

Filled licorice bars are pretty ubiquitous in the UK, where they’re also referred to as licorice pencils or, in their chopped up state (below photo), as mini cables. They’re basically hollow tubes of fruit licorice filled with fondant. I’m not  fan of Twizzlers or Red Vines, but there’s something about the licorice and fondant combination that makes these addictively yummy. Fini has a large assortment that varies in size and licorice flavors.

The red ones were strawberry, the green was green apple, the white matte was strawberry, the orange matte was peach, and the fat pink one just tasted of sweet, as it was fondant on fondant.

The smallest (in terms of diameter) ones were my favorite. The larger/fatter bars have a too high fondant to licorice ratio, making them overly sweet and messing with the fun textural play on slightly rubbery, chewy licorice against soft fondant. The matte ones (white and orange) were a fondant-type coating around a rubbery center; those were manageable.

These aren’t fancy hoity-toity candies, but they’re tasty and addictive and get an OM. Unfortunately, Fini is still in the processing of rolling out their U.S. entry, so it’ll be a few months before you U.S. readers can order their products. If they update me, I’ll update you.

Michael Recchuiti is an American chocolatier who creates elegantly sleek and beautiful truffles. I stopped by his shop (also elegant and sleek, with a predominantly brown and gold scheme and employees dressed all in black) in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. His confections and boxed chocolates are extremely pricey, so I only bought two truffles from his extensive range. It was so hard to choose just two!

I definitely could have used help making my truffle selections, and I now regret not asking for it. The store was packed when I got there, and I got a snobby vibe because one of the employees ignored me when I was standing right in front of her and instead addressed the two well-attired gentlemen behind me. That kind of snubbing isn’t exactly inviting. I also would have bought more than just two truffles had I known that the chocolates are sold by weight when you pick them out individually, which makes them cheaper than when they come in prepackaged boxes. But because no one offered to help me, that was never explained to me.

I ended up choosing a honeycomb malt (left) and a star anise & pink peppercorn (right). I love malted milk balls and will eat Ovaltine malt straight, so I was excited about the honeycomb malt. It turned out to be a sweet, honeyed truffle filling with a soft chocolate coating. The filling looked a bit grainy but was actually quite silky. However, it was not as thick and creamy as richer ganaches are. The honeyed flavor of the filling was nice and smooth, but there was no malt taste that I could perceive, which disappointed me. If I didn’t know the name of the truffle, I’d give it an OM. Because it’s called a honeycomb malt and there was no malt, it only gets an O.

The star anise and pink peppercorn carried a slight hint of anise that sat nicely in the back of my throat. I don’t like licorice, so I found the light anise touch to be just right. There was a hint of pepper without any burn. No suggestions of pink (or if there were, I wouldn’t be able to tell, as I don’t know how pink peppercorns taste different from black ones). The ganache, like that of the honeycomb malt, also had a more liquid viscosity than most truffles. This one gets an OM.

I’m choosing to give Recchuiti the benefit of the doubt here because I wanted to like the shop and the chocolates more than I actually did. I felt pretty “meh” about the two truffles I bought, but those are only two truffles out of his extensive line. And even though I didn’t rave about the truffles I got to taste, I do recognize that they are well-crafted and of a high quality. I’m not going to make a special pilgrimage to California just to visit his shop again, but if I came across Recchiuti truffles elsewhere, I’d give them another shot.

I spotted this bag on a candy display in Michael’s. I’d never seen them before, so I thought Original Snaps (BUY) would be a great review candidate, even though I couldn’t tell exactly what they were. Since the store was closing and the cashiers were shutting down their stations, I was in a hurry to get out, and I didn’t look closely at the package. When I got to the car, I turned the bag over and saw this:

Read the rest of this entry »