The Candy Store is exactly the kind of confectionery shop I’d like to have in my neighborhood. Sadly for me, it’s in San Francisco, and I only get to visit about once a year.

So I was pretty excited when I heard that Target was going to make some curated shops within Target enlisting the help of Diane and Brian of the Russian Hill store. What I love about the store is that they have such an interesting collection of little tidbits from around the world. Sure, there’s some that’s completely common, but there were things I’d pick up there, especially licorice, that I have a hard time finding elsewhere.

Unlike Target’s house branded line of Choxie items, this is not a permanent addition to Target, when it’s gone, it’s gone.

The store at Target amounts to an endcap near the candy aisle in the food section at Target. The theme colors are black and white with a field of some sort of weird light green that I associate with government buildings, black and white. There aren’t really that many products and only three or four formats. There are lollipops and different candy in jars and then some tins of chocolate confections. The price points vary from $2.49 for the lollipops to $9.99 for the large tins.

The cornerstone, I would say, is the display of lollipops. The packaging is simple but the actual pops are clever and appealing. There are swirl pops and clear pops with little Necco wafers embedded in them.

The largest array of products, though, are the ones in the jars. This is where my disappointment originated. They’re $4.99 for 11 to 14 ounces of bulk candy. The candies themselves are underwhelming and expensive. I appreciated the harder to find items, like the sour sanded jelly stars, the gummi fried eggs and licorice scotty dogs. But $5 for less than a pound of Bit O’ Honey or Necco Wafers? That’s insane, the packaging is nice, but not like the tins for the chocolates. They’re just plastic.

So I bought the lollipop. Because it was the one item that I’d never seen before and I did really appreciate the whimsical touch of using Necco wafers as decoration.

The lollipop is double wrapped, which is a good idea. The outer wrap is loose and is closed with just a little twist tie that holds the bow on. Inside that, the pop itself is shrink wrapped. It was tough to get off, the shrink wrap had a big glob of melted plastic at the stick that took quite a bit of work with some scissors to remove.

The pop is 3.5 inches square and came in a variety of colors/flavors. I chose orange because I thought it would be a good representation of how flavors are handled.

The hard candy part of the lollipop is nicely poured. It’s a little uneven in spots but has only small bubbles in it. The tight shrink wrapping ended up creating creases and lines across the corners and edges of the pop. The Necco dots are lined up in the sort of pattern that might make some think of Lego blocks or perhaps a six sided die.

The flavor of the candy is very simple. It’s orange, just sweet orange. There’s a lot of zest notes in it, but it’s mostly a soft and sugary orange. The Necco wafers are crunchable with the candy, if you’re the type who chews their hard candy. I found the flavors (lemon and lime) of the Necco actually went well (except for pink). But still, it was just a big piece of hard candy on a wooden stick. It’s fun to look at, but really not for eating. The Necco Wafers contain gelatin, so this is not a candy for vegetarians, also contains soy.

I like the idea of a curated set of candy that’s hard to find and well priced. This has some of those elements, but I’m not their actual intended audience. This is for people who don’t realize that there are neighborhood candy shops in so many places where you can find this sort of thing, along with an enthusiastic person behind the register like Diane or Brian. If you’re stuck in big-box store land, this at least has more personality and is a better gift than a peg bag of Scotty Dogs.

Related Candies

1. Original Necco Wafers Return
2. Target’s Market Pantry Malted Milk Balls
3. Eat with your Eyes: Butterfly Lollipop
4. Hammond’s All Natural Lollipops
5. Choxie 3 Ounce Chocolate Bars
6. Friday’s San Francisco Candy Adventure

One of the most popular candy bars in the country is the Snickers bar. This is not review of that.

Instead I’m testing a knock off version, presented by Aldi, the German grocery chain under their house brand Route 1.

The Route 1 Racer Bar comes in a well priced bag of nearly 10 ounces (9.8) fun sized bars for only $1.79.

The little bars smell good, like milky chocolate and roasted peanuts. They’re small bars, smaller than the Romeo and clock in at about .70 ounces and about 110 calories. The size is still a nice portion, and two make a good treat.

The construction of the bar is just as you’d anticipate for a Snickers knock off. There’s a nougat base, which has a light peanut butter flavor to it then a caramel over that studded with peanuts. The whole thing is covered with a very thin coating of chocolate.

(Racer Bar compared to Snickers 3X Chocolate for ratios)

The textures were great, though the ratio of chocolate was a bit lacking. I didn’t miss it though, because it really wasn’t that good. It was more a toffee milk flavor than chocolate. The flavors though, well, sometimes they were what I’d call good. But there were bad peanuts. The photo of the first bar with a bite up there, that was a bad peanut, like spit it out bad. And I accept that when using a natural ingredient that there will be bad peanuts, but then I got another. I’ve eaten seven of these little bars and two had bad peanuts. The flavor of the peanuts is a little more grassy than I’m accustomed to, which leads me to believe they may not be American peanuts.

This is the first product I’ve bought at Aldi that I’ve been truly disappointed about. I doubt I’ll finish the bag, and I doubt that folks who come grazing for candy in my office will be interested in them. I’ll stick to Snickers, even if it is twice the price.

Aldi is a German chain of stores that are very popular in parts of the United States. They carry low priced merchandise, usually Aldi’s house brands and most of the packaged products made in Germany.

They have a great selection of low-priced, good quality candy. Much of it is under the brands Moser Roth, Choceur or Grandessa. But two years ago I noticed that they launched a line more traditional candy bars under a more North American-oriented brand called Route 1. This assortment features knock-offs of common candy bars. The Route 1 Romeo Bar is like the Mounds Bar but is made with milk chocolate instead of dark. Or you can call it an Almond Joy without the almonds. In reality this is most similar to the Bounty Bar, which is made by Mars, but rarely seen in the United States.

The bar is listed as delicious sweet coconut bars covered with milk chocolate. Some of the Route 1 bars are sold as single serving sizes, but the Romeo I could only find in the fun size bag. The bag is really well priced at $1.79 for 9.7 ounces. It’s a far better deal than the Hershey’s Mounds, which are usually about $3.00 for a similarly sized bag. The little bars are a little shy of an ounce (.88 ounces) and come in at about 125 calories each. The packaging is simple, but easy to spot and tell apart from the other candies in the brand line.

The little bars are 2.25 inches long and 1 inch wide. The milk chocolate coating is swirly and looks appealing. It has a nice snap to it and a very milky scent, like heavily sweetened powdered milk.

The whole thing is very milky, the chocolate is more milky than cocoa, the coconut center has just as many cream and dairy notes as coconut. The coconut is soft and has a moist and easy chew without being to dry and fibery.

While I enjoyed them while eating them, I didn’t find the chocolate notes satisfying enough. The combination of the chocolate outside and the coconut inside never quite felt integrated. If you’re not really picky or are looking for a really good value for something like Halloween or a Pinata, this is a good option. If you’ve always thought that Almond Joy wasn’t sweet enough, this is also a good choice.

There is no indication of the source of the chocolate. There are allergens present, made with soy and dairy and may contain traces of peanuts, tree nuts, gluten and eggs.

Related Candies

1. Choceur Chocolate Crisp Bars
2. Blue Ribbon Neapolitan Coconut Bar
3. Choceur Nougat Bites & Marzipan Bites
4. King Leo Dark Chocolate Crunchy Patties
5. Sunspire Coconut Bars
6. Moser Roth Chocolate
7. Choceur Luxury Mini Chocolate Bars
8. Ritter Sport Capuccino and Rum Trauben Nuss

I’m traveling again, which means I’ve got a hankering for portable coffee. I know that coffee flavored chocolates don’t have the same caffeinated kick as actual coffee, but a little snacking on some coffee-ish candy probably has some sort of placebo effect.

I’ve written about Feodora Moccas before. When I was in Germany I actually visited the factory where Feodora and Hachez chocolate is made and picked up both versions of their chocolate coffee beans. Even at the factory store, they’re still not cheap, though certainly less expensive than the prices I pay in the United States.

The Feodora Moccals Zart-Bitter is the most common version, but I was eager to try their Feodora Mocca’s Vollmilch because Feodora is so well known for their extremely smooth milk chocolate. The Feodora website had a product page for them in English:

Besides the well-known chocolate specialty FEODORA Mochas – mocha beans of superior semi-dark chocolate with coffee – a new product was introduced in September 2009: FEODORA Mochas WHOLE MILK. The premium whole milk chocolate refined with coffee gives the Mochas new momentum.

The handy, resealable pack is easy to use and the compact size fits ideally in any shirt pocket and handbag. FEODORA Mochas – the ideal companions for chocolate gourmets and everyone who wants to become one!

The previous review of these holds up, as I still feel the same way about the slightly grainy texture. They’re quite strong in flavor, on the bitter side but not too acidic. They’re very woodsy but also sweet and have a note of cinnamon to them.

The pieces are excellently detailed, larger than a real coffee bean but with the little crease down the middle. They fit well in the mouth, and one is actually a great portion. There chocolate is mixed with 3% coffee beans ... I don’t know what that means for caffeine content, but I’d probably put it at least than 20 mg per portion.

I was a little disappointed by the Vollmilch variety (called Superior Milk Chocolate with Coffee on the back of the box in English). The Feodora chocolate is extremely smooth and milky, slick and cool on the tongue. However, the Moccas lack that smoothness, probably because of the addition of the actual coffee beans. It’s a little bit grainy, bitter and the milky flavors are more toffee and almost molasses.

Much to my surprise though, I went through the milk chocolate variety much quicker than the dark chocolate. It really shouldn’t surprise me, I prefer my coffee with a bit of milk in its liquid form. My favorite coffee flavored chocolate lentil is still the Meiji Coffee Beat from Japan, but this one does have an authentic coffee kick to it.

Related Candies

1. Askinosie Intelligentsia Coffee Bar
2. Sukoka Soft Coffee Candy
3. Ginger Chews: Hot Coffee
4. Coffee Rio
5. Coffee Nips
6. Feodora Chocolates
7. Pocket Coffee
8. Coffee Beat

Here’s one of those weird purchases I made at a liquor shop called Mel & Rose that sells imported candies. There, within sight of the Hollywood sign, I bought Hollywood Chewing Gum: Chlorophylle. But it’s not a quaint local brand or even American. It’s made in France, by Cadbury (now owned by Kraft). It’s not even one of those original gum brands from the final days of the Victorian era.

Chewing gum first arrived in France in June 1944 along with the US troops during World War II, but it was not until 1952 when former GI Courtland Parfet returned to France that the first French chewing gum was launched. Named Hollywood, the green stick offered a soft mint taste called chlorophylle (spearmint).

The gum is simple and pleasant. It’s the classic style of stick, right down to a real foil wrapper on each piece. The flavor is spearmint and it’s quite mild but with a good enough punch to make me feel refreshed and clean without a sticky or artificial feeling. The package also boasts that it has chlorophyll in it, you know, that stuff that allows plants to photosynthesize. I remember it was popular in gum and mints in the seventies, but hadn’t seen it on a package in quite a long time.

I like that it was made with real sugar, so few stick gums are these days. So if you’re looking for something to remind you of the classic Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum, this is probably the closest you can find since Wrigley’s went to artificial sweeteners. The sugar isn’t terribly grainy, but the flavor and sweetness does go away pretty quickly, much quicker than Chiclets, but this is a more adult gum than Chiclets.

Related Candies

1. Wee Glee Gum
2. Choward’s Spearmint & Lemon
3. Spearmint Leaves
4. Classic Gums: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans & Teaberry
5. XyliChew
6. Mentos Xtrm: Mint & Spearmint
7. Tiny Size Chiclets

My weaknesses are cream filled wafers, peanut butter and dark chocolate. (Well, I have more weaknesses than that.) So it’s only natural that I picked up Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies last weekend.

The package promises that they’d be Crunchy, Creamy, Salty, Sweet!

The gusseted bag is rather small, but predicts 8 full servings, if each serving is only four pieces. Not so easy. These are also calorie bombs, if I believe the Trader Joe’s Nutrition Facts label. It shows that that serving of four pieces is 26 grams (.92 ounces) and clock in at 160 calories. That’s 174 calories per ounce. I’m not sure that’s possible when the third ingredient is flour. But there you have it, one of the most calorie dense products I’ve ever reviewed.

The pieces are pretty small, a little shy of a quarter of an ounce each and a little under one inch square and half an inch high. They don’t smell like much, I expected roasted peanut scent when I opened the package. I liked that, I liked that the dark chocolate must have sealed it all in.

The dark chocolate is quite dark but has a good, immediate melt. It’s a little on the bitter side but has strong woody and charcoal flavors. The wafers are pretty thick, much thicker and airier than I expected. Their flavor is mild, but has a light malt note to it. The cream between the wafers is part peanut butter with a little milk or coconut oil to make it smoother. The texture combination is fantastic. The size of each piece makes it easy to cleave the layers apart with my teeth, or just eat it whole. (Eating it in two pieces can be messy, as some of the chocolate may fall off.)

I found them filling, but not heavy like some peanut butter products can be. Each element was well balanced. The chocolate filled its role without overwhelming the peanut butter flavors, the peanut butter wasn’t so thick and sticky and the wafers were light and airy without getting gummy or tacky.

Really what I wish they had was a better name that didn’t use 9 words.

The pieces are great for sharing and munching as a snack. (Though be careful of that calorie count.) They look good in a small bowl, but I’d wager it’d be empty pretty soon. I would buy these again and would love to see them in other varieties.

There’s no notice on the package or Trader Joe’s website about the origin or ethical sourcing of the chocolate and other ingredients. It’s all natural with no preservatives. Contains soy, wheat, milk and peanuts.

Related Candies

1. Fujiya Look Wafers & Crepes
2. Christopher’s Good News
3. Tunnock’s Caramel Milk Chocolate Wafer
4. Nestle Butterfinger Snackerz
5. Q.Bel Double Dark Chocolate Wafer Bar
6. Baby Ruth Crisp & Nestle Crisp Bars
7. Q.Bel Wafer Rolls

Madre Chocolate is a newer bean to bar chocolate maker based on O’ahu in Hawaii. The logo for Madre Chocolate tells a lot: it’s the Maya glyph for cacao. You can see a larger version in this Archeology magazine article. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be “smiling” on the Madre version, but that’s the way it looks to me.

Madre makes their chocolate in Hawaii, but uses personally sourced beans from Central America, where chocolate was born. The Madre Chocolate Dominican Dark Chocolate bar is made with fair trade beans, and is 70% chocolate using organic sugar and Mexican vanilla. There are no emulsifiers.

The bars are absolutely beautiful. They’re wrapped well, too. The bars come in a tough and really re-usable foil then inside a printed kraft paper sleeve. Many bars come in foil, but the foil tends to protect the bars only in the store, not after they’re opened. Here I was able to open the wrapper and rewrap the bar without any difficulty or mess.

The bar itself has a beautiful mold, with designs inspired by Central America art and iconography. The Dominican Dark Chocolate bar is a deep reddish brown color with an excellent, crisp snap.

The bar has a strong dried cherry note to it and some deep, oaky smoked flavors. It’s on the bitter side with a lot of berry and spice to it, there are notes of hibiscus, black pepper, chipotle and black tea.

The melt is smooth, there’s some slight grit every once in a while, but for a chocolate with no emulsifiers, it’s exceptionally smooth with a crisp and brief dry finish.

Madre Chocolate: Jaguar Cacao Chocolate from Central America was the bar that spurred me to get to know Madre Chocolate.

I’ve often wondered about the plants that chocolate comes from, like the diversity of citrus fruits. Theobroma is in the same family as the Mallows - which includes things like Kola Nut, Marshmallow, Okra and Cotton. Most chocolate aficinados already know about the three varieties of beans: criollo, forastero, and trinitario. So I was really excited to see that Madre Chocolate uses jaguar cacao, or mocambo which comes from the plant Theobroma bicolor. It’s another species of Theobroma and fruits in a similar fashion, in a large pod. The tree looks remarkably different but the beans can be treated in the same way: fermented, dried, roasted and conched. You can see more about all the Theobroma species on Wikipedia and pictures of the Mocambo on Fruitipedia.

The ingredients are organic cacao beans, organic sugar, organic cocoa butter, jaguar cacao and vanilla. So this is not a pure jaguar bar, but a combination. It is definitely lighter than the Dominican, looking almost like a milk chocolate bar.

The texture is softer, almost lighter on the tongue than the Dominican. The flavors are also rather strange. There’s the standard cocoa notes, it’s woodsy and a smidge grassy. But then there are other flavors like ginger but also something more savory. I want to say leeks, but it’s not as obvious as something like onions, it’s just something faint in the background that isn’t quite “chocolate” in the traditional sense.

The melt is smooth, a little sticky but not sweet. There’s a milky quality to it, but of course there’s no milk in it at all. For folks looking for a dark chocolate or a dairy-less chocolate that’s not so bitter or astringent, this is that bar.

The final bar I have is the Madre Chocolate Rosita de Cacao which features cacahuaxochitl blossoms. The plant, Quararibea funebris, is also in the mallow family so distantly related to cacao. The blossoms were used to flavor the original Mayan chocolate drinks.

This bar also features the Dominican cacao of the first one I tried. The ingredients are the same: organic cacao beans, organic sugar, organic cocoa butter and then rosita de cacao and Mexican whole vanilla.

That’s the Jaguar on top and the Dominican bar on the bottom, to show the difference in the color.

I’d read that rosita de cacao smells like maple sugar and I found it’s absolutely true. The woodsy, sweet notes of maple syrup were front and center when I unwrapped the foil.

This bar was a little grittier than the plain Dominican, but had a very different flavor profile. The dried berry notes were still evident, but the woodsy profile was much stronger. It was very oaky, very vanilla with strong bourbon, leather and pipe tobacco flavors. The texture did have a little fibery grit to it, which I’m guessing is the flower. At times it was like fig seeds and seemed to intensify the soft florals if I chewed them.

As part of a drink, I think I’d enjoy them more than in a bar. It wasn’t just the texture but the strength of the very perfumey vanilla that seemed to overwhelm some of the deep chocolate notes. It really softened the profile overall of the intense Dominican beans.

This exploration into the flavors and influences of modern chocolate was fascinating. It provided a lot more than just the few lines in books and articles that talk about the more savory foamy chocolate drink that was first served to Westerners.

Like many of the new bean to bar artisan chocolate makers, Madre is interested in many of the historical and sociological aspects of chocolate, responsible sourcing as well as exploring and recreating the rich history of chocolate for modern humans. It’s more expensive than buying a history book to try them all, but I guarantee you won’t forget it. I got my bars because I sponsored the group’s initiative to source Mexican cacao on Kickstarter. You can buy them on their website and they list stores that also carry the bars there.

Related Candies

1. Zotter Scotch Whisky
2. European Bars in Brief
3. Amano Dos Rios 70% Chocolate
4. Askinosie White Chocolate (Plain, Nibble & Pistachio)
5. TCHO Fruity
6. Amano Single Origin Bars: Madagascar & Ocumare
7. Theo 3400 Phinney Bars

I’m always scouring Trader Joe’s for new candy and was rewarded with this little tub of Trader Joe’s Almondictive Bits. It’s the familiar stackable clear plastic bin, this time with a name and design worthy of the Fearless Flyer.

A compulsively, compelling candy, caramelized almond morsels covered in dark chocolate

I often complain that Trader Joe’s doesn’t take the time to name their products beyond a description of what it actually is. So kudos to them for coming up with something original (so original that all google searches lead back to Trader Joe’s references). But most of all, I appreciate that Trader Joe’s used the slightly more proper addictive as their source instead of addicting. Of course since it’s a made up word, it also reminds me of the vindictive, and I don’t like mean almonds.

The pieces vary in size, some as large as a peanut but most about the size of a garden pea. The 45% dark chocolate coating is quite deep looking and glossy. There’s a slight coating of glaze on it, but it melts very quickly. The chocolate is a bit on the bitter side with lots of brownie batter and coffee notes to it. The centers are crispy caramelized chunks of almonds. Some pieces were pretty much all toffee while others were very nicely roasted almonds with a hint of crunchy toasted sugar.

The nuttiness made these just a little different from their chocolate covered toffee bits they also sell in the small bags by the register. It’s a satisfying combination of sweet, salty and bitter along with a creamy chocolate coating and different textures of crunch in the center. I wish the pieces were just slightly larger or more consistently large. The little bits at the bottom, which were like ball bearings and mostly chocolate weren’t doing much for me. These would be a great ice cream topping or added to a nuts & pretzel trail mix.

As with many of Trader Joe’s products, I don’t know where these were made or the ethical sourcing of the chocolate within. They are Kosher, contain dairy, almonds, soy and might have traces of wheat, peanuts and other tree nuts

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Covered Joe’s O’s
2. Trader Joe’s Eggnog Almonds
3. Trader Joe’s 70% Dark with Caramel and Black Sea Salt
4. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
5. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Powerberries
6. Recchiuti Asphalt Jungle Mix
7. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds