ZOMG, Candy!

Apparently my distaste for Rochester winters has been, well, apparent. I recently got an email from Lisa Reinhardt, a University of Rochester grad, telling me that she sympathized about Rochester winters.

Fortunately for the sake of the blog, she was also emailing to tell me that she was the owner of Wei of Chocolate, a chocolate company that makes organic, vegan, and Fair Trade chocolates, and would I like to try some free samples, two of which would be chili chocolate? Yes, please!

I got a bag of 6 dark chocolates with very (for lack of a better word) yoga-y names and claims to bring you warmth, insight, joy, etc. According to the company website, Wei of Chocolate will help you “take your experience of chocolate to a whole new level by experiencing the finest quality organic chocolate, infused with intentional blends of deliciously complex flavors designed to balance body and mind.”

Read the rest of this entry »

After I noted TCHO’s off packaging, they sent me fresh samples with their new packaging. In the months since my roommate bought the pack that I first tasted, TCHO had switched from an inner paper liner (which probably contributed the nasty paper flavor) to an inner foil liner.

It seems like they’ve also reformulated the chocolate a tad as well. This time, only the Chocolatey was 70%. Citrus was 67%, Nutty was 65%, and Fruity 2.0 was 68%. The latter three are made from organic beans, and “Nutty” and “Fruity 2.0″ are fair trade as well.

The etchings on the mold have changed too - I much prefer the current line graph markings.

“Citrus” tasted dusky at first, then became brightly sweet and fruity/citrusy. It totally hit its mark.

“Fruity 2.0″ had a darker sweetness to it. It tasted of cherries and strawberries and carried a brightly fruity finish. There was no duskiness, and the bar had a thin melt.

“Chocolatey” was by far my favorite. It was initially sweet, then gave way to a strong nuttiness with a fruity undertone. It had a thicker melt and mouthfeel than the other bars.

Nutty had a darker nuttiness than the Chocolatey did - more reminiscent of hazelnuts, I think. It had a strong, jammy sweetness that lingered in the finish.

I greatly enjoyed this set of TCHO bars. A little packaging change made a huge difference! I’m impressed at how well the bars hit their flavor marks. These would be great bars to use for a chocolate tasting party. They’re all similar percentages, yet their flavor profiles are distinct and easily discernible. Chocolatey gets an OMG, while the others get OM.

Salazon Chocolate Co. is a newly launched company that’s specializing in organic salted dark chocolate. Thanks to my candy press status, I got to try them out via free samples from Pete Truby, the company’s founder.

According to their FAQs, Salazon is Spanish for salted. Their wrapper features a striking picture of salt farmers in South East Asia. Salazon’s natural sea salt actually comes from South America; the photo was just too pretty to pass up.

It’s also featured as the design on the bars themselves. They plan to change the photo in the future (necessitating the expense of getting new molds, perhaps?) and are inviting people to submit their own travel photos for consideration.

There are currently three bars in their lineup. The “plain”, so to speak, is their “organic dark chocolate with natural sea salt.”  The salt crystals visibly line the bottom of the bar (they’re not mixed into the chocolate).

The chocolate has a firm snap and a clean, smooth melt. It smells dusky and sweet, with notes of citrus. The salt does wonders - it brings out the many flavors of the chocolate, making it brightly sweet, tangy, and fruity, with an almost sour/salty tint. If you’ve never had salted sweets before, this bar will give you a flavor epiphany.

Next is the “organic dark chocolate with sea salt and organic turbinado cane sugar.” This seems to be Salazon’s alternative to a salted milk chocolate bar. Rather than dial down the cacao, they turned up the sweet by adding turbinado sugar, which has a large granule (visible in the photo below; see the brown speck just above the watermark?).

The salt’s effects are much more tempered here, thanks to that additional sugar, and the taste of the salt doesn’t come through much. The chocolate, still smooth and creamy, feels a bit thicker, and the bar tastes more muted. I mostly get a milky, caramel sweetness with a bit of a raisin finish. If I didn’t know that it was dark, I could swear it was milk.

The third and final bar in the Salazon line-up is “organic dark chocolate with sea salt and organic cracked black pepper.” I often seek out chili chocolates to try, but I have less experience with pepper and chocolate.

The bottom of this bar, flecked with big bits of cracked black peppercorns, is a visual treat. The salted chocolate component is back, with the sharp, tangy, sour, saltiness of the “original”, followed by a black pepper finish (full of olfactory peppery-ness). I don’t think I like it, exactly, but I did enjoy the evolving flavors and found them intriguing.

Salazon’s debuting with a solid product line of tasty bars. An OM and my best wishes for them as they make their way onto the market.

TCHO chocolates have long been on my radar. I finally got to try them when my roommates were kind enough to bring me a variety pack from California. The variety pack contained 2 each of their fruity, chocolatey, nutty, and citrus flavors.

All of the squares were about 5 centimeters across the diagonal and quite thin, just half a centimeter. All were comprised of 70% cacao.

“Fruity” was made with organic and fair trade beans from Peru. It had a sharp snap with a very dry mouthfeel. There was a definite red fruit fruitiness to it, but the overall flavor was dominated by the stale taste of paper/cardboard.

At first I thought I just had an off square - I had unwrapped it to take photos and then rewrapped it for later -  but that cardboard taste pervaded the other, not-unwrapped-until-tasting-time squares.

“Chocolatey” (beans from Ghana) smelled duskier and featured strong cocoa notes and an almost savory tinge. Its mouthfeel is also dry, but it’s a bit smoother/creamier once it starts melting. The paper/cardboard taste is present in the finish.

“Nutty”, made from organic and fair trade beans from Peru, was the softest and creamiest of the bunch, and it did carry a distinctly nutty favor. But that paper tinge is still there.

Finally, “Citrus” (organic beans from Madagascar) smells sweet and has a very dry and crumbly melt. It tastes a bit chalky with a sweet bright finish, and again that infuriating, ruinous tinge of paper/cardboard taste.

I think TCHO needs to rethink their packaging on these bars, as they all took on an unpleasant, papery overtone that ruined the taste experience. I’ve had them sitting around for a few months, but bars should keep for at least that long, especially when you’re selling them in 90-day supplies.

I’m torn on how to rate these. The paper taste warrants a –, but that doesn’t seem quite fair, as TCHO didn’t mean for them to taste of paper. Then again, they did choose the packaging and neglected to put a “best by” date on the package or any storage guidelines (that I could find) on their website. So the – stands, with the caveat that my supply was off.

I covered Yummy Earth’s organic gummy worms on Wednesday. Today, I’m reviewing their organic gummy bears.

Since the gummy bears share 2 out of 3 flavors with the worms, I expected them to be pretty much the same. Nope!

First of all, the bears have a much, much stiffer chew. It’s almost unpleasantly stiff. They’re softer than Jujubes and are still definitely gummies, but they are reminiscent of Jujube-ness and sort of get stuck in my teeth.

On the plus side, they taste AMAZING! The flavors are uber-concentrated, making Yummy Earth’s bears taste even better than Yummy Earth’s worms.

Sour Apple Tart is still clear and still tastes like a granny smith, but it’s darker, with more complexity than its worm counterpart. There’s a nearly imperceptibly slight bitterness that’s reminiscent of apple peels.

Strawberry Smash is lightly orange/pink. It tastes sweet and fruity, like a usual strawberry flavored gummi but with a slightly more concentrated flavor.

Pomegranate Pucker (red) is by far my favorite. It’s much more tart in bear form and tastes more deeply red, with a little astringency on the finish. A lovely sweet fruitiness lingers on the tongue after the bear is gone. This one definitely tastes authentically of pomegranate, and it’s wonderful.

I had trouble deciding which I liked more. The worms are texturally more pleasant with great flavors. The bears’ texture is just a bit too firm for me, but their concentrated flavor profile blows the worms out of the dirt. In the end, the bears win out and get an OMG.

Yummy Earth, can you mix up a batch of gummy something elses (llamas?) that combines the best of both worlds?

I’d been meaning to try Yummy Earth’s line of all natural, organic candy for ages, but I never got around to buying them. Fortunately, they eventually made their way back onto my candy radar and into my stash when Yummy Earth contacted me and offered to send me some free samples of their gummies and lollipops.

Today, we’ll chat about the gummy worms and hit up the gummy bears on Friday.

First up, the gummy worms. They look different from most gummy worms. Instead of a long worm made of multiple colors and sometimes flavors, they’re single unit entities and look more like little snakes (worms don’t have eyeballs!).

Texturewise, the gummies have a soft, sproingy chew that’s slightly softer than that of Haribo gummies. The opened bag smells intensely fruity, almost winey, in a good way.

They come in exotic flavors. Pomegrante Pucker (red) doesn’t taste noticebly of pomegrante, but it’s still yummy - deeply red, sweet, and fruity.

The clear worms are Sour Apple Tart. It’s mellow with a slightly sour green apple flavor. Finally, Tangy Tangerine is orange and tastes authentically of orange citrus. I even get notes of orange pith! It’s tart, tangy, tangerine-y deliciousness.

They’re uber fruity and thus super addictive. I’d take these over artificially-flavored gummies anyday. An OM.

Here’s the second of my two Vere bars (remember, they were buy one get one free), Vere Raspberry + Lemon.

Like its Mint + Nibs counterpart, the Raspberry + Lemon is an organic, single origin bar. It takes the cacao content up a notch, to 75%, and I found that difference hugely apparent. The snap of this bar is super hard - it almost hurt my teeth. It was so snappy as to be unpleasant to bite into.

The scent was dark and chalky with just a hint of citrus sourness. Upon tasting, if you survived biting into it, you’d find a dry melt and a bar that tasted of powdered dark cocoa with a lightly sweet and tart fruity finish. I could taste the raspberry and lemon, though I’m not sure that I would’ve been able to identify the specific fruits in a blind tasting.

While the Mint + Nibs bar was studded with bits of cacao nibs, the Raspberry + Lemon bar was full of raspberry seeds. That I greatly appreciated, which is surprising, considering my profound distaste for seedy raspberry candies. It may have been my imagination, but I felt as though I got a bonus burst of sweet raspberry flavor from grinding up those seeds.

All in all, the fruit flavor was decent, but the chocolate was lacking. And the bar was way too hard to eat. This bar would greatly benefit from a reformulation to make it softer. An O.

I bought this Vere Mint + Nibs bar at my local food co-op. They were buy one, get one free, and I’m never one to turn down a chocolate deal! If you’re curious, the other Vere that I chose was a Raspberry + Lemon one. It’s currently languishing, unopened, in my chocolate stash, though I presume that it will be consumed and reviewed in due course.

I’m going to purposefully ignore mentioning how the mark over the “e” in Vere affects how one would pronounce the name. Because honestly, is that really necessary, Vere?

I will point out that the bar is certified organic, and it’s single origin. Also, the blurb on the back of the box suggests that it’s at least fair trade in spirit, if not in certification, so that’s plenty enough hip points there to not need silly naming gimmicks.

The Mint + Nibs (I will concede it the use of “+” instead of “and” but refuse to use all lowercase letters) smells strongly of mint oil (as opposed to fresh mint) and dry cocoa. I love the presentation - little bite sized pillows of shiny dark chocolate etched with uniform squiggles.

The melt is pretty dry, which is unsurprising, as it’s a fairly high 70% cacao. The nibs give it a gritty crunch. The bar’s pleasantly intriguing texture makes this fun to chew. I find it best appreciated through chomping rather than melt-on-the-tonguing.

The chocolate is lightly sweet and fruity, with a light undertone of mint oil. There’s just the barest hint of effervescent refreshing mint finish. As previously mentioned, the plentiful nibs do wonders for the texture, but they don’t add much to the flavor.

All in all, it’s a great bar for snacking but not complex or inspiring enough for slow savoring. An OM.

It was bound to happen. I bought and wrote a review for a candy that I’ve already written about: the Dagoba Super Fruit bar. But I’m publishing it anyway, as it’s far more thorough than my first review of it.

In my defense, the bar’s wrapper has changed, so I um… didn’t recognize it?

The chocolate smells dry and dusky, and it tastes that way too. The melt is dry, and the texture is just shy of chalky. It makes me think of cocoa powder, in a good way.

The bar itself is a 74%, with bits of acai, currants, and goji berries. Every once in a while, you come across a bit of dried fruit, which delivers a powerful hit of sweet red berries.

I came across a currant, which was chewy, and some other slightly crunchy dried fruit that was either the acai or the goji.

I wish there were more fruit bits. They were too few and far between, and I didn’t want to eat the whole bar to get a good feel for it. Still, it was good, and my original OM rating stands. But Dagoba, stop being so stingy with your super fruits!

Today’s post is super long, but hey, you’ve got the whole weekend to read it. I start with a mini wrap-up of my tour of Taza’s chocolate factory and finish with a review of their four Mexicano disks.

Coincidentally enough, on the day that my written-weeks-ahead news post about a virtual tour of Taza posted, I was taking my own in-person tour of the Taza factory. Aaron, their director of marketing, was kind enough to show my boyfriend and me the works while stuffing us full of yummy samples (dude’s also a whoa-legit foodie - he’s got a pig’s butchers’ guide tattooed on one arm and a carrot on the other).

I already knew quite a bit about the company from their website and from the good publicity they’ve been getting, but Aaron still left me with plenty of additional tidbits. Their organic Domincan Republican beans are bought directly from the farmers at an above fair trade price, thus ensuring quality control while also helping their farmers maximize profits (similar to how Kallari runs things). The photo above is of their raw beans, waiting to be roasted in Taza’s retro-looking mid-century machines.

All of Taza’s ingredients are organic, and their vanilla pods and cinnamon sticks are also biodynamic. They buy their cane sugar from Green Cane, which uses the leftover cane fibers to power the cane sugar factory and the surrounding village.

Taza’s castoff cacao shells are used to flavor tea or beer or turned into compost. In a nice touch of cyclical, sustainable agriculture, the farmer who grows chilies for Taza uses their cocoa mulch fertilizer. Most of Taza’s employees bike to work, and they even bike their bars to local farmers’ markets in a specially outfitted tricycle from Mexico. Now that’s commitment to being eco-friendly!

Taza chocolates are unique because their cacao is ground with two doughnut-shaped, hand-chiseled Mexican granite millstones called molinos (background of above photo, covered in ground cacao and cane sugar). They give Taza its unique, slightly gritty, natural-tasting texture.

Aaron guesstimated their chocolate to be around 80 microns. Most chocolatiers aim for about 20. The minimal processing really makes Taza’s flavors zing. Their chocolate is unmistakably bright and fruity, and you know you’re getting good quality stuff.

I’ve had three bars before in past tasting parties - they make 60%, 70%, and 80% bars - but I’d never seen their Mexicano disks before I visited their factory. They currently come in four flavors: cinnamon, Guajillo chili, salted almond, and vanilla. Each hand-wrapped 2.7 oz package contains two disks of 8 wedges each.

The Cinnamon Mexicano is made with real Ceylon cinnamon, not the Cassia stuff that most people keep in their pantries. Ceylon cinnamon is sweeter than Cassia, with a more delicate flavor that’s more reminiscent of cinnamon oil than what you’d sprinkle on your oatmeal. The difference is even noticeable in the smell of the Mexicano: it smells and tastes like chocolate and red hots.

The cinnamon flavor plays under the fruitiness of the chocolate. There’s a slightly bitter and astringent finish to the Taza that I countered by popping another wedge. For me, at least, this Mexicano needs a chaser, but I don’t mind. An OM.

Taza’s Guajillo Chili is like chili chocolate to the umpteenth power. It initially tastes just like a standard Taza chocolate bar. Then woo baby! the burn comes through. It’s just on the bearable edge of tongue and throat burning pain. The tingle lingers for a bit, but it does subside on its own after a few seconds. It’s definitely not for the faint of tastebud, but I relished the taste experience. An OMG.

Salted Almond isn’t quite what you’d expect from a chocolate and nut bar. The roasted almonds (roasted in the same roaster used for the cacao beans) are ground right along with the cacao beans, so that the whole disk is evenly textured. I’m guessing the fatty nut addition is what makes this disk’s crumble a bit softer than that of the other Mexicanos. Unlike the previous two Mexicanos, organic cane sugar is the first ingredient listed, making the salted almond a bit sweeter than other Tazas.

The sweet characteristic Taza frutiness gives way to a roasted nuttiness, which then yields to a sharp salty finish that’s quite intriguing. It’s nicely balanced, but I actually prefer Taza’s chocolate-covered almonds to this Mexicano - the flavors are the same, but the chocolate-covered almonds have more nuttiness and a more addictive textural contrast. An OM.

Vanilla also has cane sugar listed as the first ingredient, and it’s noticeably sweeter than all the other Mexicanos. That extra boost of sugar makes this taste especially round. The vanilla flavor comes through in the finish. Taza uses real vanilla beans, and the difference is definitely noticeable. If you’re used to vanilla extract and have never had the pleasure of smelling a real vanilla bean, you’re in for a treat. Another OM.

Taza is quite unlike anything out there in the U.S. chocolate market. Instead of showing off with flashy flavor combos and pretty designs, Taza impresses with high quality ingredients and a rustic feel that I adore. Lucky for y’all, they’re doing quite well and appearing in more and more stores across the country. And if you’re ever in the Boston area, swing by their factory, where you can buy their products at a price that’s lower than what you’d pay elsewhere.