DGZ Chocolates – Poparazzi and Turtlerazzi [Review]

I received several free samples from DGZ Chocolates, a husband-and-wife-owned chocolate company located in Houston, Texas. Today I’ll review their Poparazzi and Turtlerazzi, and on Friday, I’ll review their best-selling Toffarazzi.

First up, the Poparazzi review:

All of the DGZ Chocolates came in white boxes with a pretty metallic gold design and a neatly tied gold ribbon. The Poparazzi was described as “an explosive combination of popcorn, chewy caramel, and rich Swiss recipe chocolate.”

My box had four decently sized squares, just under 2 inches per side. They were made of whole pieces of popcorn embedded in caramel, all sandwiched by top and bottom layers of milk chocolate. It was an interesting idea – I’ve never heard of popcorn being used in a confection like this.

The milk chocolate was dusky with a finish of sweet caramel. The actual caramel was chewy and sticky and mostly just tasted of sugar.

The popcorn added a nice visual contrast and toasty flavor, but I didn’t appreciate its contribution to the texture of the confection. The white fluffy part was great, but little hard bits of kernel were mixed in the caramel.

Upon getting chewed, those hard bits of kernel became firmly embedded in my molars, which was rather off-putting and required some unladylike teeth picking. Maybe that’s why popcorn isn’t more widely used in treats like this. An O.

Next review is the?Turtlerazzi:

The Turtlerazzi were billed as “a delicious sensation of the finest fresh pecans and buttery caramel topped with rich Swiss recipe chocolate.” They came four to a box as little round pats of caramel with nuts mixed in, all enrobed in milk chocolate.

The pecans added a light textural crunch and a mild nuttiness – so nutty that I wasn’t sure if they were walnuts and pecans when I first tasted them before I looked them up online.

The Turtlerazzi’s mostly tasted of the caramel, which was smooth and extremely chewy. Alas, it just tasted of brown sugar sweetness. I wished that it had more complexity, more burnt sugar or toffee notes or something.

I wanted more from the Turtlerazzi – more depth to the chocolate, more complexity to the caramel, and more nuttiness to the pecans – so they get an O as well.

I should note that these two really pale in comparison to the Toffarazzi, the third confection that I got from DGZ Chocolates, so that may have colored my opinions. Come back on Friday for the Toffarazzi review!