ZOMG, Candy!

Whew! What a day! Many thanks to Emma for playing Twitter master and wearing out the #SSE12 tag. Here’s me after we sorted through our haul. Most of the full-sized salty snacks came in our swag bags. Super nice of them to give them to us, but probably too difficult to fly home.

After Emma and I split the goods and leave more with our Chicago host, we’ll be taking the extras back to the Expo and donating them to be sent to troops overseas. So nice that the Expo is providing that service!

Here are some candy interactions that really stood out today:

1. The Perugina booth, where a wonderful Italian man gave me one of every single chocolate bar in their line. Here’s how it went down:

Me: I’m a candy blogger. Could I get a bar to take home for reviewing?

Awesome Italian man: Sure. Which do you want? All of them?

Me: Okay!

As he started grabbing bar after bar, he seemed to realize that “all of them” was a lot of chocolate to hand to one person, but he was too nice to rescind his offer. So now I am the Perugina queen.

Perugina is probably best known for their Baci. Their new thing this year was a white chocolate Baci, identical to the original except for a white chocolate coating.

2. Ritter Sport was represented by a US importer call Euro-American Brands. I chatted up their Gourmet Grande Dame/Goddess of Swagger, who gave me a limited summer 2011 edition Amerena cherry, a rum raisin flavor, and a limited edition dark chocolate with peppermint.

After I dropped hints about how yogurt Ritter Sport was my favorite and gosh, just so hard to find in stores, she gave me one those too. Thanks, GGD!

Ritter Sport’s new thing for the states is individually wrapped small squares in a holiday-esque gift box, similar to these little guys, but in four flavors.

3. Jelina Chocolatier is a Canadian chocolate company in search of a US distributor. I hope they find one, as they have an extensive line of Fair Trade bars in all sorts of flavors. I left with the two most intriguing (to me, at least), a honey nougat and a maple crunch. And some truffles. I can’t wait to break into these.

4. Nashville Toffee is a small, family run operation that makes a delicious chocolate covered almond toffee. When I asked owner and lone booth-manner George if I could have a small bag for a sample to review later, he said no, as he had just the one box of bags, and he needed them to show off and try to sell.

I could, however, take a whole half pound box. In fact, I could have two boxes, one milk and one dark. Thanks, George and Nashville Toffee!

5. Coco Keeno had a great display in Innovation Alley of different types of superfruits and superfoods covered in dark chocolate. I got a sample of chocolate covered golden berries, which were super noms. Formal review to come.

6. Chatting with export manager Manolo at the Fini booth was a pleasure. He was super nice and probably would’ve slowly given me one of each of their hundreds of products if paying customers hadn’t pulled him away.

To answer all the commenters’ questions, yes they are available in the U.S., but alas, he couldn’t tell you where. He sells to an importer and they sell to a distributor, so good luck to Fini hunters. Please report your Fini sightings in the comments for my original review.

7. Meeting fellow candy bloggers! I got a chance to chat with The Candy Fan and Joe of Eat More Chocolate. Note to self: update blogroll!

8. Emma and I hugged a giant Peep. And then she tried to take a bite out of it. Life is awesome.

I’m writing this from the media preview room at Sweets and Snacks. They kept their presentation short and sweet, so we’re just hanging out until the full expo opens, totally surrounded by treats of all kinds:

We also get giant swag bags full of treats representing some of the 4600 new products debuting at this year’s expo. Hooray swag!

More to come later. In the meantime, check out our Twitter feed @zomgcandy

Right around the time that this posts, I’ll be picking up my press credentials for the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago. I’m excited to attend for the first time!

I’ll try to update here with some daily recaps, posting time to be determined by how good the wifi is in the press room. My friend Emma will be playing Twitter master. We’ll be tweeting as @zomgcandy from the expo floor, so check that for status updates.

Candy candy candy time!

These Dorval Sour Power Straws were a free sample of a new flavor: Pink Lemonade. The rest of their line-up includes blue raspberry, watermelon, strawberry, and green apple, which I’d tried before under their Sortz name.

I really enjoyed these Pink Lemonade straws. They didn’t have any of the stiff plastic taste or over-wheaty flavor that put me off the Sortz and that you get in Sour Punch Straws.

Instead, they were soft and pliable tubes, about 6-7 inches long, with an easy chew. They were much softer, and thus much more texturally pleasant, than Twizzlers. Also unlike Twizzlers, they didn’t get stuck in the cracks of my teeth.

The sour sugar sand on the surface of the straws was mostly sweet with a little tartness. The pink lemonade flavor of the actual straws was sweet with a light, mild citrus note.

There was no lemon zestiness, but a definite lemonade/lemon drop flavor persisted throughout the chew. The sour came through in the middle when the sour sand started melting on my tongue, and the final finish was just the sweet fruitiness of the straw.

I thought these were quite well done for a relatively simple treat. The texture was spot on, while the taste was sweet and sour – but not too sour – without any off notes. An OM.

Dorval will be at the Sweets and Snacks Expo. I plan to revisit the Sortz to see if my original batch was past its prime (though I did taste it before its best-by date).

Today I’m reviewing a second Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Bar on the heels of Wednesday’s review (that I briefly accidentally posted on Tuesday; oops!). This time, it’s toffee with walnuts and pecans. Here’s its epic description from the back of the box:

“The beauty of caramelized sugar reveals itself in flying colors when mixed with butter and artisinal sea salt to create rich toffee. Add walnuts and pecans to that toffee, then pair it all with our sophisticated deep, dark chocolate…”

This solid bar was scored into 8 rectangles. Mine had slightly bloomed, but I didn’t notice any detriment to its flavor or texture.

It had a sharp snap that revealed bits of toffee and nuts along the break. The roasted nuts and cleanly cleaving toffee added a pleasant, dry crunch that made me want to chomp this bar rather than let it melt.

The nuttiness of this bar was immediately noticeable. Walnut’s mild, acrid nuttiness and pecan’s darker nutty tinge were both present, and the whole thing finished on a strongly salty note.

The toffee added a light sweetness. Though I didn’t get any caramel complexity, the sweetness played off the salty and nutty quite well. It would’ve been nice to get more scorchiness, but it served its role just fine as is.

I’ll call this bar a win for Trader Joe’s. Though I thought it was a tad too salty at the finish, I enjoyed the toffee and loved the strength of flavor of the nuts. An OM.

By now, y’all must have gathered that I have a food blogger crush on David Lebovitz. The man lives a charmed, Parisian life!

He’s made a great video and blog post about a visit to a Parisian candy shop called A L’Etoile d’Or, embedded below.

The Candy and Confections of l’Etoile d’Or in Paris from David Lebovitz on Vimeo.

This Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Bar comes with fun old-timey art on the front and a lengthy narrative on the back of the box. Ready?

“Exotic Hawaiian Black Sea Salt hails from the Pacific seawater that surrounds the Hawaiian islands. This stunning black salt is evaporated in above ground pools that form naturally from lava flows. Together, its smoky aroma and intense caramel complement this sophisticated dark chocolate experience.”

It seems like Trader Joe’s was trying to emulate a classier/more expensive chocolate bar with this one. The Vosges Black Salt Caramel Bar (black Hawaiian sea salt, burnt sugar caramel, 70% dark chocolate), perhaps?

It succeeded on emulating Vosges in one annoying sense: this bar was incredibly messy. I didn’t get a shot of the whole bar because it was all crushed and sticky and oozing when I unwrapped it.

The dark chocolate shell was segmented into squares, but it was so thin that it broke anywhere that it pleased, releasing its amber liquid caramel all over the place. It did, at least, have with a nice snap and crunch when chewed.

I thought the flavor of the 70% dark chocolate was a bit one-dimensional and muddy in its finish. The caramel was so intensely sweet that it was almost sour. Alas, I found it to have no burnt complexity, though the salty finish was quite nice.

When eaten altogether, the combination of sweet, sour, and salty was nice enough, but I found that it lacked oomph. It just felt flat.

Part of me wonders if it is just a rebranded version of the Vosges Black Salt Caramel. I’m 90% sure it’s not – the Trader Joe’s chocolate didn’t have a nice melt or duskiness – but I could just be falling prey to marketing and cost cues of quality and enjoyableness.

At any rate, I’d give this an O. Nice try but something’s missing here.

AdFreak had curated a list of 10 viral chocolate commercials in honor of Easter. Easter is long gone for this year, but none of those commercials are Easter-themed, so I think the list is still worth checking out.

My expat friends, Nana and Justin, sent me a bag of Okinawa Brown Sugar Candy in their last generous shipment of foreign candies. At first I thought that making sugar-flavored candy was strange, but then I realized it’s not that different from honey candies or straight up shooting honey sticks.

The prettily matte bag was mostly covered in Japanese. I was able to recognize the character for bamboo on the top right corner, but otherwise I had to rely on the English letters to know what it contained.

The back of the bag described them as “Nature’s blessed ‘Okinawa Kokuto (brown sugar)’ made from sugar cane grown in Okinawa”. I think that makes them a regional specialty.

The candies were individually wrapped in plastic that echoed the bamboo motif of the larger bag. They were smooth flat cylinders, like butterscotch hard candies.

The candies and their melt was perfectly smooth on the tongue, with nary an air bubble to break its glossy surface. The flavor was simple – that of dark brown sugar, sweet with a burnt molasses edge to keep it from being cloying.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed such a simple treat. They didn’t taste revolutionary, but if you’ve ever sneaked a pinch of brown sugar while baking or making oatmeal, you’d enjoy these. An OM.

Dear Readers,

Thanks to finals time, I wasn’t able to get my act together enough to have a review ready for you today. I am, however, ready to put you to work! In just over a week, I will be attending the Sweets and Snacks Expo for the first time!

What’s the Sweets and Snacks Expo? It’s the annual candy (and now snacks) trade show, where candy makers show off their wares so that candy sellers will want to buy and resell them. Candy press (that’s me!) gets to go too. Homer Simpson is no longer invited.

There will be over 550 exhibitors this year, and as much as I want to taste ALL the things, I probably won’t be able to. I’ll obviously hit up the big guys, like Ritter, Jelly Belly, Albanese, Hershey’s, and Mars, but I need y’all to tell me who else to see.

There’s a searchable exhibitor list  and interactive map. Leave a comment if there’s anyone you want me to visit, and I’ll report back. I’ll also tweet from the Expo @zomgcandy.

If you want more info on the Expo from a candy blogger’s point of view, check out Cybele’s thorough guideposts (harhar).