ZOMG, Candy!

More Japanese candy fun thanks to my friend Michael, this time in the form of Gummi Sushi. The Japanese are quite good at coming up with cute things (Hello Kitty much?) and clever things, and they certainly haven’t skimped on cuteness and cleverness in their gummis. Better yet, unlike the gummi hamburgers or pizzas that you can find at most party stores,the Gummi Sushi actually tasted good.

I like the cartoony sushi chef guy on the packaging and the clearly illustrated instructions on how to eat sushi gummies. Just in case you couldn’t figure it out for yourself. And I liked the little pictures of fruit - an apple, a cantaloupe melon, and a strawberry - on the bottom to help those of us who love Japanese candy but can’t actually read Japanese.

The gummies themselves are sealed inside a second bag and arrayed on a plastic tray so you can marvel at the cuteness of the gummi shrimp and rice and things. The gummis are sweet and fruity smelling, with a scent that reminds me of those little lychee gelatin pots.

The gummis are very soft (a case of good double-bagging!) and slightly greasy to the touch. And they’re so cute! Red is strawberry, white is apple, and orange is cantaloupe. While the apple and strawberry go well together, the melon flavor of the cantaloupe is so strong that it’s not so good for pairing. A sweet concept with a sweet and tasty execution earns these an OMG.

These Morinaga Choco Balls were amongst the wide assortment of Japanese candies given to me by my friend Michael. It took me a while to find the name of these. The Morinaga logo is fairly clear in the top left corner (they make the pretty ubiquitous Hi-Chew candies), but the Choco Ball 40th Kyorochan seal is harder to notice. I wish I knew what Kyorochan means - maybe Choco Balls are celebrating a 40th anniversary? If so, then I’m not surprised that they’ve been around for so long. One taste of these Choco Balls had me addicted.

The Choco Balls are basically a crunchy chocolate cookie inside a shiny white chocolate coating - think Whoppers, but with different flavors. Usually I don’t enjoy white chocolate, as I find it way too sickeningly sweet, but here, it’s delicious. Like many Asian chocolates, the white chocolate shell has a creamy, fresh milk essence that’s refreshing. Maybe that’s why that toucan-looking thing on the box has a dairy cow print body.

The balls are perfectly-sized for popping, making it easy to get addicted.They’re smaller than Whoppers but bigger than M&Ms, and wonderfully, uniformly spherical. The clever packaging has a built-in spout near the top, and I found myself constantly reopening it to pour more Choco Balls into my hand so I could pop them in my mouth. I wish they came in a bigger box, as mine was all too soon emptied. An OMG for sure.

In continuing with Wednesday’s spirit of cleaning notes out of my candy tasting notebook, more quick reviews of candies that I didn’t have much to say about. These, like Wednesday’s, were all gifts, but they are not all international.

South African Nestle Chocolates from former suitemate, future roommate Catherine (who doesn’t like chocolate!), who got them from a YDN friend

Tex - milk chocolate coating around two wafers sandwiching an aerated chocolate middle. Meh chocolate quality, but coolness and novelty points. I’ll definitely seek this out if Concert Band tour is in South Africa next summer. OM.

Bar-one - nougat and chocolate. Reminds me of a Tootsie Roll’s flavor. O.

Quality Street - the name confused me, because Quality Street is a whole line-up of assorted and individually wrapped chocolate miniatures in the UK. In this case, the treat labeled “chocolate nut toffee creme” had caramel and was vaguely hazelnutty. Another O.

Hershey’s Limited Edition Hot Cocoa Kisses from a YPMB scavenger hunt group, submitted as “Candy Rosa’s never tried before”

I think these kisses had melted a bit, then reformed, hence the kind of lumpy look on the wrapped one. I wonder if they have a lower melting point because truffling the filling means adding vegetable fat or something.

Like many of the overabundant Kiss varieties (seriously thorough round-up from Cybele here; awesome photographic round-up here) that Hershey’s rolled out recently, these are molded truffles rather than “kissed” out like traditional kisses. The hot cocoa kiss had a milk chocolate shell surrounding a soft truffle center with a cocoa powder finish. It was soft and sweet and so-so. An O for something that was awfully similar to the plain old truffle kisses.

Long Grove Confectionary Chocolates from Mrs. Cobb that didn’t make it to Chicago Week

Clockwise from the top: Kahlua, raspberry, vanilla buttercream, and dark chocolate.

Kahlua - nice whole coffee bean on top. A thick and creamy ganache with a slightly sweet finish. Not much chocolate or coffee flavor.

Raspberry - nicely sweet raspberry flavored filling without the bitter seeds

Vanilla buttercream - strong maple notes with a super sweet maple finish. Slight grain to the ganache.

Dark chocolate - doesn’t taste very chocolatey or very dark, but the ganache is lovely, as it’s thick and creamy and smooth.

A good assortment that’s better than most grocery-store bought boxed chocolates, but nothing that really sets it apart from other not mass-distributed chocolates. An O.

A quick round-up of things that I ate and photographed but couldn’t come up with many words for. If the picture takes up more room than the review, it doesn’t warrant a standalone review. These were all gifts from friends who brought (or mailed) me candy from afar, which is why they’re mostly hard/impossible to find.

Israeli something from my friend Monica:

Like a prettier, square-r, tastier, and creamier Kit Kat. Amusing because to me, the words on the wrapper look more correct when they’re upside down. I had to spin the wrapped bar around a few times to remember how it should be oriented. An OM

St. Lucia Rum Fudge from friend and former roommate (which is quite different from a roommate and former friend) Jenny:

I don’t know if it was the St. Lucia or the rum part that made it weird, but it was weird. Instead of being sticky/creamy/gritty like regular fudge, this was dry and sugary. It was supposed to be chocolate-flavored, but to me just tasted like sugar. I don’t actually like fudge (way too sweet for my palate), and I, despite dear Jenny’s best intentions, didn’t much care for St. Lucia’s rum fudge, though I bet I’d love St. Lucia, where Jenny got to go for Spring Break. An O.

Australian Cadbury Picnic from reader Hannah (who now writes for Sugar Savvy)

Similar to the British version, but minus the sultanas. The strip of caramel was quite hard and only sort of got chewy once you worked it around in your mouth a bit. The peanuts were plentiful and crisp but could have been more roasty and flavorful. All that plus the dry wafer center made this bar much drier than its British counterpart. I have no notes on the chocolate, which meant it, like the bar, was unremarkable, though the plentiful peanuts would make it a hearty snack. An O.

Turkish chocolates from my friend Ben from his suitemate:

The one shaped like a giant Hershey’s kiss had a thin chocolate shell around creamy but not silky ganache with slightly fruity notes. Those sprinkle looking things were made of chocolate as well. Mine had a slight tinge of mustiness (like it had taken on the scent of a paper towel). I will chalk up to storage and transport rather than to the chocolate and thereby give it the benefit of the doubt. But still just an O for unremarkableness.

I really liked the shape of the one that had bits of pistachio all along one side. It would make for good architectural inspiration, doncha think?

The pistachio studded one was a thin chocolate shell around a nutty paste that was soft and quite velvety. I’m assuming the paste was made of pistachio, though it tasted more of pine nuts to me. The filling is heavy on the palate, so I ate the confection over several days, spacing out my bites and nibbles. An OM.

I once wrote that I’ve yet to meet a Ferrero product I didn’t like. As my Lily O’Briens experience showed, I’m not above eating my words. The Kinder Cereali bar was not for me.

The packaging on my Kinder Cereali is all in Italian because I got it from my friend Andrew, who was lucky enough to spend his spring break in Italy. All expenses paid, I believe, as he is a geology major. There are few geology majors at Yale, so even undergrads get special treatment and get to do cool things and go on cool trips.

Unlike most Ferrero/Kinder products, the Kinder Cereali contains no hazelnut. Instead, it is chocolate-covered puffed wheat and a frosting-like confection. I guess if the wheat is supposed to be like cereal, the frosting is meant to approximate milk? If so, then this bar is reminiscent of those horribly processed Milk ‘N Cereal bars that General Mills makes.

I love how the Cereali looked outside of the wrapper. It’s already tiny as it, more fun-sized than full-sized, and even still it’s neatly pre-segmented. And the little imprints of heads of wheat are a lovely touch that make the whole thing quite darling (can you tell I’ve been in England for a couple of weeks now?).

The puffed wheat was, for me, an unexpected taste sensation because it was different from the usual candy bar go-to of crisped rice. The wheat was similar to puffed rice, but with more texture and flavor. Think Smacks instead of Rice Krispies. The milky white frosting that surrounded the wheat puffs tasted blandly of blah vanilla frosting. Finally, the layer of chocolate that coats the whole thing is quite thin but creamy.

The Kinder Cereali wasn’t bad, exactly, but it wasn’t good either. It just kind of… was. And though the use of wheat instead of rice made it different, it didn’t really make it better. Just a non-negative, tepid O.

Part II of II of the Meiji Chocolate tasting (courtesy of my worldly friend Michael) that started on Monday. Today, we shall begin with the somewhat incongruously named Black Chocolate.

Why incongruous, you ask? Because for a bar that’s named BLACK in giant letters, this one isn’t very dark in taste or appearance, though it did have a nice snap to it. You can see the coloring for yourself below. It’s definitely brown, not black, and it’s not even a very dark brown at that.

This “dark” bar had a nicely smooth melt, but that’s less of an accomplishment when your cacao percentage isn’t that high. It also tasted quite sweet, for too sweet for a dark bar. I found its finish to be fruity; berries, perhaps? Overall, an OM. As chocolate, it’s not that bad, but it’s also not that great. As a dark chocolate bar, it should hang its head in shame.

The Meiji Rich Matcha bar was another bar where the color is worth noting. Matcha is a green tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies and is also used as a flavoring for lots of Japanese foods. The wrapper is an iridescent green and is sort of pretty, in a cheaply flashy way.

The chocolate bar itself, not so much. Instead of being a bright, fresh, spring-timey green, it’s the color of pea soup. While I’m unsure as to how appetizing bright green chocolate would look, I can tell you that G.I. Joe green chocolate is not appetizing. Especially when it smells and tastes like flowers.

I don’t know if matcha is supposed to taste like flowers, but Meiji’s Rich Matcha bar had a strong floral scent and a sweet floral flavor with a slightly bitter finish that lingers a bit, almost imperceptibly. I’d wear that lovely floral scent as a perfume, but I didn’t like eating it in my chocolate. This bar was really not for me and gets an O. You can read Terry’s take on it here; he didn’t much care for it either.

My friend Michael brought me a ton of candies from Japan, including four Meiji chocolate bars. I shall review two today and two on Wednesday, making them parts N and N+1 in my Asian candies series (sorta forgot to keep counting on that one). First up is Meiji Hi Milk.

Like all the Meiji bars (I think; my notes are annoyingly ambiguous on that, so I may be misremembering), the Meiji Hi Milk came sealed in a thin foil wrapper that did a wonderful job of keeping it fresh. It had been sitting in the bottom of my desk for several months but tasted great. If only individual wrappers didn’t come with the sustainability guilt trip.

The chocolate itself had a crisp and clean snap. It smelled thick and creamy, and it tasted that way too. The middle of the flavor profile was incredibly sweet, with the buttery caramel tones that I’ve come to associate with Asian milk chocolate. Far better than any Hershey’s bar, this deserves an OMG.

Meiji also makes a Milk Chocolate bar that, as far as I can tell, is slightly darker than the Hi Milk but is still mighty milky.

The Milk Chocolate is a slightly darker shade of brown than the Hi Milk, and if you look closely, you can see that the Meiji imprint is sharper on the Milk than the Hi Milk, which is why I’m pretty sure the Milk Chocolate bar has a higher cacao percentage.

Despite the fact that I think it has more cacao, the Milk bar tasted sweeter to me. It was also much fruitier, with a great cocoa finish. And, like the Hi Milk, it was rich and thick and creamy. Also an OMG, though it’s not as indulgent as the Hi Milk. My like of these two sweet and creamy milk chocolate bars is part of what got me wondering if I’ve developed a greater tolerance for sweetness, by the way.

Here’s a more tempered review from Mariko at Candy Addict. Try to stop yourself before you get to the Black review; that one’s posting on Wednesday.

Thorntons seems to be pretty well known in England but unheard of in the US. I actually had this bar in America, a month or so before I arrived in the UK, courtesy of my British friend Michael (the same one who gave me all the Japanese candy that I’ve been reviewing. He’s British but lives in Kobe. And he’s also American because of his parents’ citizenship. Or something like that). I’m glad I didn’t let my impression of this bar turn me off on Thorntons entirely, for I’ve since had fresh stuff straight from a Thorntons shop that I liked much better than this bar.

The wrapper bills this as “delicious milk chocolate, dusted with icing sugar, and a golden roasted hazelnut and almond praline center.” Too many commas in that sentence, I think. From what I can tell from browsing the Thorntons website, this chocolate bar is the bigger version of their Alpini truffle. I think it was better off little, since it doesn’t look like much as a chocolate bar. Mine, at least, was somewhat irregularly formed, and while the uneven coating of powdered sugar looks nice on the truffles, it just looks sloppy on the bar.

The center was quite creamy and hazelnutty, but not in the nice roasty hazelnut way that I love. Instead, it tasted rather artificial, making it not unpleasant, exactly, but nothing to crow about. The almond praline of the center gives the whole thing a nice crunch and a super sweet tinge. For me, the chocolate coating was unremarkable, but I’ve since had better Thornton’s truffles with nicer chocolate, so I think it may have been a lack of freshness issue with the bars.

Overall, I found this bar to be overly sweet for me, though others may like it. Again, I’ve since had a few of their truffles, singularly purchased straight from the shop, and I liked those more. Freshness, I’m sure, has a lot to do with it, and I’m wondering if I’ve lately developed even more of a sweet tooth - that is, a highly tolerance for sweetness - recently. Something to ponder, I suppose. At any rate, this bar warrents just an O; I had no desire to buy more Thorntons bars when I visited the shop, and I still don’t.

After my review of Liberty Orchards’ Aplets and Cotlets, which were a gift from my friend Rita, posted, her mother left a comment promising to bring me the chocolate covered version next. And, lo and behold, when Rita’s parents visited her at school, they came bearing a box of Liberty Orchards’ Fruit Chocolates. Hooray!

They came in a box of fifteen, three each of five different varieties: orange delight, cherry and pecan, apricot and walnut, raspberry and pecan, and strawberry and walnut. Basically, they were the same fruit pate from the aplets and cotlets but with different fruits, sometimes studded with different nuts, and covered in milk chocolate.

The orange delight was my favorite. It was the only one without nuts, and had a bright orange flavor that went nicely with the chocolate coating. Cherry and pecan was serviceable cherry pate, apricot and walnut was softer in texture and flavor (due to the apricots and blander walnuts) than the others, raspberry and pecan had a nice bite of raspberry to it, and the strawberry and walnut had a bright berry flavor.

Again, these fruit pates are a more subtle and natural treat than the in-your-face sweetness of artificially flavored fruit candy. I really enjoyed them, as did the friends I shared them with, so I’m awarding an OM for the lot.

Another Japanese chocolate courtesy of my friend Michael, Dars Milk Chocolate wins for coolest packaging. The pink dot on the box is a chocolate temperature gauge. From what I could tell (some Japanese characters are taken from Chinese, so I could puzzle out the meaning), purple is too cold at 19 C or lower, the bright pink was just right at 22 C, and the light, nearly white pink is too hot at 25 C or higher. My dot was bright pink, meaning that I kept the chocolate at just the right temperature.

The chocolate itself comes sealed in foil and arrayed in neat rows on a paper tray, and each chocolate is stamped with the word “DARS” on it. They were perfectly sized for tasting, about the size of my first thumb knuckle.

Like other Asian milk chocolates that I’ve tasted, the Dars had strong caramel notes. The melt was smooth, rich, and creamy, and overall, a nicely elegant treat from Japan and a milk chocolate that I can actually enjoy. An OM from me. It also gets bonus cool points for the temperature gauge, though that wasn’t factored into its taste rating.