ZOMG, Candy!

I think the Dubble bar I bought at an OxFam (secondhand charity shop) in Cambridge was the cheapest fair trade chocolate I’ve ever come across. At 49 pence (about $1.00 when I was in England, now $0.77), it’s comparably priced with mass produced bars that aren’t so kind to their cacao growers.

Dubble was billed as “smooth milk chocolate crispy crunch” on its wrapper. Clearly Dubble is better at being socially conscious than it is at using correct grammar. The wrapper also promised that it would be “dubbly good,” possibly because the Dubble comes presegmented so that it’s easy to break in half, with each half stamped with the dubble facing B logo.

As you can see, my bar wasn’t in pristine shape when I unwrapped it, but it tasted wonderful. The crisped rice makes up a thin layer on the bottom, and it’s super crisp and crunchy. The ingredients say that the rice is caramelised. I didn’t notice any taste difference from that caramelization, but I think it was a crucial textural component.

The thick layer of chocolate is really what made this bar stand out. It was wonderfully creamy and thickly coated the inside of my mouth. And it tasted like really high quality cocoa, definitely better than the chocolate from comparably priced, mass produced chocolate bars. I would definitely buy this again (and wish I could). After all, how often do you find a bar that’s affordable, delicious, and fair trade? An OMG.

From the Washington Post, an ode to treacle and treacle toffee. I’ve been saving my last bar of Walker’s for a special occasion, but if I can find treacle somewhere in the States to make my own toffee, I’ll be able to eat the Walker’s without remorse.

I got a set of five Meiji Mini Candies from my friend Michael, who is originally from Japan. I’m still looking for a place where I can buy them in the states.

Let’s go left to right and top to bottom, starting with the chocolate sugar-shelled candies (possibly called Marble Chocolate?). These were slightly thicker than M&Ms. Either the chocolate had a slightly fruity finish, or the shells were flavored. They were agreeable enough and get an OM.

The next three were variation on a theme, lemon, yogurt (?), and strawberry. I love the little character thingies in the corner. Japan does ridiculously cute so well! These were all little spheroids with sugar shells around a sugary flavored centers.

Strawberry was lightly pastel pink. It tasted bright, with a slightly sour strawberry preserve taste. It was so genuine that I wouldn’t be surprised if I found seeds inside. OM.

Lemon was yellow and tasted bright, tart, and effervescent, like a candy version of lemon zest. OMG.

Yogurt (I think) was white and had a little blue alien instead of a lemon or strawberry head. It had a sour tinge to it and reminds me of those little yogurt jugs you can get in Asia. The Chinese name for them literally translates into “sour milk”. Not for me, but a pretty genuine representation of what they were going for. O.

I was all sad that I had lost my Poifull notes. Then I realized that I didn’t lose them; I’d just already reviewed them here. If you’re too lazy to click over, they got an OMG.

I would buy the whole assortment just for the lemon sugar thingies and the Poifull. Of course, ideally I could just buy the lemon sugar thingies and the Poifull on their own, but hey, variety is the spice of life.

Dagoba was my introduction to upscale chocolate. It was a big part of my first chocolate tasting party, when I first really tasted chocolate, which is why I have reviewed as many Dagoba bars as I have. That and they’re sold at the campus convenience store, where I used to have $150 to spend there as part of my meal plan, back when I was on a meal plan. And they come in a ton of flavor varieties, so there are several types to review. Here are two more.

The Mon Cheri was a 72% dark chocolate with berries and vanilla. It was a smooth bar with a creamy melt, which is surprising for a 72%. I was also a little curious about the 72% part - if I remember correctly, most of Dagoba’s super dark bars are 74%. 72% would mean they have a second dark base?

The berries are tiny bits that stud the bar. Based on the color of the bits and the name of the bar, I’m going to guess that cherry was the predominant berry present. Chocolate and berry is a nice flavor combination, though the addition of fruit tends to overwhelm the natural notes of the chocolate. An OM.

The Super Fruit bar I disliked on principle. Just take a look at the wrapper, and see if you can guess why.

Any ideas? It’s a 74% dark bar with acai, goji berries, and currants. In other words, it jumps on every hype train! All it’s missing is pomegranate seeds and giant boasts about antioxidants splashed across its wrapper. For the record, I don’t buy into the “dark chocolate is better for you because it has more antioxidants” hype. You’d need to eat a ton of it to get any real effect, and eating a ton of any kind of chocolate is bad for you.

All the hype aside, this bar isn’t bad. It tastes a lot like the Mon Cheri - like dried fruit plus good quality chocolate. I thought I noticed a slight saltiness around the dried fruit bits, but it was so faint that I couldn’t be sure. Another OM.

Basically, Dagoba makes good, solid bars. I don’t give them Os because they’re so much better than your standard Hershey’s bars (even though Hershey’s owns Dagoba), but they also don’t stand out enough to warrant higher ratings. The way I see it, they’re great to taste your way through, but I’ve yet to find one that I’ve become attached to enough to buy a second time.

Yesterday, I started a new blog for my final project in a course I’m taking this semester (The Psychology, Politics, and Biology of Food). I’m taking a week off from eating candy (horrors!) to take the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge: living for a week on America’s average food stamp budget of $3 a day.

I’m hungry. And I miss candy. Reading the Times Dining section didn’t help, but it did mean I came across this piece on cacao growers.

I give Rowntree’s Jelly Tots major props for cute packaging with built-in portion control. I only ever saw them in the UK in tiny bags, each including 146 calories, according to the little lower right nutrition corner. The “now with 25% fruit juice” is a bit worrying - what did they use to be made with? - but I’ll take it.

Jelly Tots are little button shaped springy jelly candies covered in sugar, and they come in five flavors. Or flavours. Blackcurrant tasted of dark berry with an almost bitter finish that may be too much for palates not used to blackcurrant flavored things. Lemon was rather bland, with only a slight citrus twinge. Lime was a bit more tangy than the lemon, but too sweet to be truly limey and exciting. Orange had a mild citrus finish but doesn’t warrant much more attention.

Strawberry was my favorite of the bunch. It had a strong mellow berry flavor with a strawberrilicious finish. Overall, Jelly Tots were cute and nicely portioned, but nothing worth stocking up on to fly back to the States. An O.

And yes we cake.

Back in February, I got to hear Obama speak at a rally in Hartford. I’m so glad I decided to put my schoolwork on hold to make that trip. Because now I get to tell my future kids that I got to hear and see President Obama speak, live, back when he was making his historic run for the White House.

Via Candy Yum Yum, a bizarre new new-age-y product called Eye Candy. I don’t even know where to begin. That website needs to be seen to be believed.

 I bought this chocolate bar, made by a Turkish company called Solen, at a random candy store in London. Embarrassingly enough, the first bar I picked up melted in my hands before I finished browsing the store. I may have snuck it back onto the rack and grabbed a new one when I checked out… Oops.

While there was lots of Turkish on the wrapper, it also thankfully, included an English translation: “milk chocolate with crispy rice and hazelnut cream.” The bar came in six segments of creamy, pliable, elastic chocolate and praline. I like my chocolate creamy, but pliable and elastic, not so much. And, as previously mentioned, it’s super soft with a low melting point (which also suggests a high fat content).

The praline wasn’t terribly hazelnutty, but the flavors are there. The crisped rice inside was airy and crunchy. Overall, it was nice, but it just lacked oomph, so it gets an O.

I wish I was still young enough to go Trick-or-Treating. But I am old enough to hit up day-after-Halloween sales, at least!

And for those who are going out, bring a pillowcase to maximize your candy haulability.