These Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramels were an expensive (I think ~$7?) impulse candy buy from my last Trader Joe’s run. They came in a round plywood tub with a lid, sort of like a hatbox.
The tub described them as “buttery, soft chewy caramels with imported French sea salt.” It had two sealed pouches of individually cellophane-wrapped caramels.
Be prepared for some serious teeth picking if you decide to chew these up. They’re incredibly sticky and impossible to eat in polite company.
When held on my tongue, they were buttery and smooth, though constant vigilance was still required to keep them from adhering to the backs of my teeth. When eaten this way, they left a greasy feeling on my lips.
They tasted lightly sweet and mostly of butter with a hint of butterscotch flavor. There was a slightly salty hit at the end that brought just the tiniest edge of sourness.
For me, they were too one-dimensional and way too sticky/chewy. The salt just wasn’t pronounced enough, and I wish the caramel was deeper and more complex.
I actually grew up disliking cheese. Thanks to my Asian parentage (cheese is not a thing in China) and public school lunches, I only knew cheese in Kraft singles form and square pizza slice topping form.
When I got to college, however, my cheese horizons were expanded thanks to some food-loving roommates. After graduation, I moved to Rochester and basically ate my way through Wegman’s incredible cheese selection.
Though fine chocolates are often sold with nice cheeses, it had never occurred to me to eat the two together. As in, in the same bite together.
The result was funky and sweet. While it was an interesting experiment, I don’t think the sum was greater than the parts. I may try it again the next time I impulse buy a chunk of fancy cheese, but for now, I’ll be consuming separately.
Have any of y’all ever tried the chocolate + cheese combination? Am I just picking the wrong chocolate or cheese for it?
Surprise! I’ve got one more See’s review for y’all. An extension of last week’s See’s week, I guess.
I’ve breezed over the See’s Scotchmallow before, and it’s near the top of my list of favorite candies. It’s about time it warranted a full review.
You can get Scotchmallows by the box, as part of an assorted box, or as a hefty, 1.5 oz. individually wrpaped bar, as I did here. The website calls them, “a delicious layer of See’s caramel with a layer of See’s honey marshmallow enrobed in rich dark chocolate”.
In bar form, they only come in milk chocolate. That milk chocolate shell had a slight snap. It had a great duskiness with hints of malt and slight notes of coffee.
The marshmallow was dense and foamy with a light pull when bitten into. It’s unlike anything you could pick up in a grocery store – it’s lightly sweet and vanilla-y, and the texture is a toothy pleasure.
The caramel was extremely chewy and sticky. It tasted of sweet, brown sugar with a slight grit at the end.
The mix of flavors and textures was sublime. The sticky caramel chew combined with the fluffy marshmallow chew plus the melting milk chocolate is a chomping pleasure, and the malty chocolate goes great with the scorchy brown sugar caramel and vanilla marshmallow.
It’s incredible how the different types of sweetness play off each other and bring out each others’ flavors. I could eat Scotchmallows for days.
I prefer the dark chocolate version because it better cuts the sweetness, but this bar version is still a favorite. An enthusiastic ZOMG!
Happy Friday the 13th! Great time to wrap up a week of See’s reviews (see Monday and Wednesday for previous reviews this See’s week).
I got today’s candies the best possible way: the mall See’s stand had a little basket of individually wrapped candies by the register, and the owner told me to help myself to as many as I wanted. I nabbed a Cafe Latte Krispy and Mint Krispy, along with a Butterscotch Squareand Dark Butterchew.
Both pieces were squares of flavored toffee covered with a thin layer of chocolate. The Cafe Latte Krispy was a golden brown coffee toffee hidden in milk chocolate.
The toffee chip cleaved into shards with a great crunch. It had a bit of a tendency to gather as grit in my molars but mostly melted on my tongue.
The thin milk chocolate coating melted thickly and tasted of malt and caramel. The toffee had a nice coffee flavor without any bitterness. Combined with the chocolate, it had a nice mocha frappucino effect.
The toffee crispness kept the whole treat feeling light. It was a nice mix of texture and flavor and OM-worthy.
The Mint Krispy was a white mint toffee covered in dark chocolate. The texture of the mint toffee was the same as that of the Cafe Latte: light and crisp.
The minty center was powerful in flavor and scent. It tasted strongly of peppermint oil and was nearly spicy in how it set my mouth a-tingling, with just a hint of bitterness to the finish.
The strength of that mintiness overpowered the dark chocolate, which came through as just a hint of cocoa flavor undertone. I enjoyed the treat but it was too minty. An O.
See’s has long been one of my favorite confectioners for good reason. They make delicious treats at reasonable price points, and they may be enough impetus to get me back to the mall more than once every six months.
Serious Eats has been running a series of food-themed YouTubed playlists. The opener in their candy video playlist is decadently drool-worthy.
I definitely need to go on a Liddabit Sweets shopping spree next time I make it to New York City. Also I sort of want to quit grad school and open a candy store.
The bulk of the rectangular bar was a log of chewy nougat covered with a dark chocolate hsell. The texture was great. It was chock full of crunchy whole almonds surrounded by a lightly sweet and chewy nougat.
The nougat had the amber undertone of honey, which nicely set off the crisp, fresh almonds. The dark chocolate shell was only lightly sweet and brought a great cocoa depth to the bar.
I loved this bar. The honey in the nougat added a delicious complexity while the almonds had a great crunchy nuttiness.
The chewy nougat and the crunchy almonds and the dusky chocolate also made for a great textural mix. It was a near perfect treat.
My only complaint was that the dark chocolate shell shattered and made a bit of a mess when I bit into the bar, but it’s a minor one. An OMG.
The folks at Public Displays of Confection make delicious hard candies by hand (reviews here and here). Now they’re trying to raise money to rescue and restore some candy making equipment from the 19th century.
You can check out their Kickstarter page here. Any pledge of $25 or more comes with candy as thank you gifts!
I am no longer the mall shopping machine that I was when I was in middle school and high school. These days, I just don’t have the patience anymore and mostly shop online.
Thus, I had lived in Durham for nearly six months before I finally set foot in a mall for an Apple store errand. Lo and behold, the mall had a See’s stand! I picked up enough treats to make this week another See’s week.
The See’s Awesome Peanut Brittle Bar was a 1 oz. bar that they described as “crunchy peanut brittle drenched in milk chocolate.” It was a beautifully enrobed slab.
The brittle cleaved cleanly and was full of peanuts, some whole and some in pieces. When chewed, some of the brittle shards came together and got a bit stuck in my molars, but it was mostly a clean chomp.
It was salty and buttery with a hearty nuttiness thanks to the roasted peanuts. The milk chocolate added a light duskiness that was a great pairing with the salty sweet brittle.
I’m generally meh about peanuts, but I really enjoyed this treat. I love toffee that cleaves like this brittle did, and the flavors were great – predominantly that of roasted peanuts with a nice balance of salty and sweet. An OM.
If you want other opinions, Cybele and Sera both reviewed this on their sites long before I did. In my defense, I’ve never lived in a city with any sort of See’s shop before!
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