I’ve had a few Hachez chocolate products over the years, though I haven’t written much about them (just this one review). They’re a German chocolate maker (though they have Belgian roots).

My boss was traveling in Europe recently and returned with a stack of candy, and this bar was definitely blog-worthy (all others were tummy-worthy).

The Edel Vollmilch Nuss is a dark milk chocolate bar studded with hazelnuts.

The wrapper is odd in that it doesn’t look like the other Hachez products I’ve seen, which are long narrow bars. However, the classic shield and seal that accompanies the logo is the same. The wrapper here is a heavy and glossy paper wrap with a light drawing of a squirrel holding a nut and some nuts growing on a limb. (And of course the little image of the chocolate bar itself.)

It’s a thick bar, and even so the nuts protrude from the bottom of it in a cobblestone look.

The bar smells smoky and woodsy with a strong grassy hazelnut scent and a slight hint of dairy.

The texture I’ve experience with Hachez before is extremely smooth with no grit and this was no exception. The melt is slick and silky and the twang of the dairy notes were spot on perfect. The notes have a toasted flavor to them that echoes some of the darker notes of the rather dark milk chocolate (37% ... but remember that 24% of the mass of this bar is just hazelnuts).

It’s a wonderful eating bar. The hazelnuts are a little small, but then again there were a lot of them. Every one was roasted to perfection so it was crunchy with just a slight sweet note to it. I enjoyed it simply as a hearty snack and a decadent little treat after dinner. And now it’s gone and I’m going to have to find a way to get them in the United States.

Related Candies

1. Walkers Nonsuch Roasted Hazelnut Toffee
2. Short & Sweet: Hazelnut Bites
3. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts
4. Valerie Lemon Hazelnut Nougat
5. Caffarel Gianduia 1865
6. Dagoba Hazelnut
7. Hachez Chocolates

Lindt is well known for their economically priced & widely available Lindor truffle line.

Their line of individually wrapped bites called Fioretto differs from the Lindor Truffles in that it contains no tropical oils (palm, palm kernel or coconut).

These little morsels are more of a cross between Perugina Baci and Ferrero Rocher.

I liked the little stand up bag, it’s simple and not too fussy. What I liked even more is that they sell the chocolates in single flavor bags plus this assortment of all three. To top it all off, Target had them on sale for $2.50 a bag (regularly $3.50). While that sounds like a good deal, it’s not like there’s a lot in the bag - it’s 4.1 ounces and holds 10 pieces.

The Nougat Hazelnut Praline is in a blue wrapper, which may be the universal color of hazelnut.

Inside the cellophane the little candy is further wrapped in paper-backed foil. The pieces are about 1.25” in diameter and barely 1” tall. They’re lumpy affairs with obvious cereal crunchies lurking below the milk chocolate coating.

They smell sweet and milky, and a little like malty rice crispies.

Biting into them is quite a journey of textures. The chocolate shell does have crisped rice bits in it. Then the center is a soft hazelnut cream with crushed hazelnuts in it. The hazelnut aroma comes out quite distinctly once the seal has been broken.

It’s sweet but with a good bit of hazelnut and milk flavor to it. It’s sticky and a bit cloying but the variety of nut & cereal crunches break that up.

Cappuccino was a bit of a mystery, as the package didn’t really have any description. So I was pleased to see it was a milk chocolate shell (not a white chocolate one). It does smell like rich dark espresso with a liberal helping of sugar.

Like the hazelnut, there were crisped rice bits in the shell. The center here, though, had no nuts. Instead it was a creamy coffee, milk & chocolate filling. It’s a bit crumbly but melts easily. It has a strong coffee flavor and even bits of coffee beans in there (not my favorite way to get coffee flavor).

I liked the flavors and the crisped rice covered up some of the bitterness associated with the little crunchy coffee bits.

As I mentioned at the top, there were 10 pieces in my package. As you might imagine there were at least three of each ... and the flavor that got four was Caramel.

The wrapper is a tantalizing burnt orange. It smells a bit buttery and like Stroopwaffles (if you’ve ever had those, you’ll know what I mean).

The consistent element in the Fioretto is the chocolate shell with a moderate amount of crisped rice in it. It’s creamy and sweet, but doesn’t have a super chocolate punch to it, allowing whatever center is there to be the dominant flavor.

The caramel center is smooth and almost like a pudding. There’s a faint cinnamon or mild spice in there, like this is a baked good instead of a chocolate. It’s a comforting sweet flavor and texture, but lacking that bunch of “caramel” that I would expect to have notes of butter, salt and burnt sugar. 

I prefer these over the Lindor Truffle line, if only because they seem more chocolate-based than oily. I would love to see them in a dark chocolate version.

Other views: Candy Addict, Jim’s Chocolate Mission got a dark one (and a lime & white chocolate) and Rebecca at SugarHog.

Related Candies

1. Laica & Caffarel Chocolate Eggs
2. Ghirardelli Luxe Milk Crisp
3. Lindt Chocolate Carrots
4. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
5. Ritter Schokowurfel
6. Ferrero Rocher
7. Baci Bar

I bought Katjes Tappsy because they’re cute.

And they’re also licorice. Actually, the completely unattractive sticker on the front of the bag informs me in English (the rest of the package is in German) that it’s Licorice Foam Candy.

They’re shaped like panda faces and I have to say that they’re fraktacularlary cute. So cute I just wanted to eat them up. And the name? Tappsy! How could you not like something called Tappsy? (It reminded me of Stampy.)

What was also fun was the fact that they’re a European candy, so they don’t use any artificial colorings and seem to have all natural flavorings. (I don’t know if ammonium chloride is consider natural or not ... I mean, it’s a mineral.)

The light & flexible disk are shaped like cartoon panda faces. They’re about 1.5 inches across at the ears. They come in two varieties - licorice faced and foam faced. (Panda’s don’t actually look like that, they have white faces with black eyes and ears.) The white faced ones had little noses made of a berry flavored jelly. (Real pandas also have berry flavored noses, but couldn’t find any verification of this, so you’ll just have to take my word for it and of course make mention of it in conversation until someone starts sending around emails and Snopes investigates.)

The little faces have a kind of cock-eyed smile that reminded me of Wybie from Coraline.

The licorice parts are quite mellow - a light anise flavor and not overtly sweet and a good caramel & molasses undertone. The texture is more like a chewy licorice than the foamy stuff - not the wheat based chew of the US/Australia and not quite a jelly or gummi. The foam white part is rather like a marshmallow - but smashed, just a bit more dense and not at all sticky.

I loved the licorice parts and ate the licorice-faced ones first (sadly they didn’t make up half the bag). Licorice-eared ones were just a little bland, so towards the end, I just ate their ears and tossed the face ... it’s the candy equivalent of shark finning.

I would definitely buy them again, though I would like to find them in bulk bins so I can pull out a better proportion of licorice. (They also come in a fruity version.) I looked on the Katje’s website and think there may be some other products that are more balanced to my liking like the Domino Delicious (which appears to be the first same-sex-marriage-marketed candy I’ve seen - well, besides the Rainbow Mentos).

Finally, here’s a commercial for Tappsy starring Heidi Klum:

I don’t know what’s going on in that commercial except that it’s a pretty accurate depiction of my Saturday mornings in my breezy white-clad bed, rolling around with my candy.

Finally, just a note about the calories: each piece has only 28 calories. And a whole ounce clocks in at 97 calories. So this is definitely a candy you can use a a little low-calorie treat that looks like a high calorie one.

Related Candies

1. Van Slooten Lakrids Figurer
2. Necco Paas Gummi Baby Bunnies
3. Van Slooten - Autodrop Total Loss
4. Licorice Assortment
5. Katjes Tropical Gummis & Yogurt Gums
6. Panda Bars

In 1973 Toffifee was introduced in [then West] Germany. The candy was unlike anything else on the mass-produced market and capitalized on Germany’s fondness for hazelnut and chocolate. The candy was such a huge success in Europe, it was introduced in North America as Toffifay in the late 1970s with a large marketing campaign that still sticks in my head.

The tagline “Toffifay, it’s too good for kids” is gone but the rest of their description of the candy and marketing line of All Your Favorites in One are still used.

Though I doubt this is actually how they make them, this is what they say: We spin chewy caramel into a little cup, drop in a whole hazelnut, cover it in chocolate hazelnut filling and top it with a drop of delicious chocolate.

The international Toffifee website lists the components with precision:

I loved Toffifay when it was first introduced, though in my penny pinching days of college/grad school I could scarcely afford oatmeal & eggs and wasn’t about to pay candy bar prices for something half the weight.

Then when I did start working regularly I found the partially hydrogenated oil content to be a little disturbing. So I was happy to see that the ingredients have now shifted to naturally bad for you tropical oils like palm. The individual serving four-pack is pretty hard to find, but I picked up the 15 piece tray at the local KMart. Even though the expiry was nigh (August 31, 2009) they looked pristine & glossy.

There are a few ways to eat the candy: I usually bite it in half, as I have a well-documented fascination with what bisected confections look like and of course my own tooth prints.

But sometimes I like to scrape the chocolate disk off and then attempt to peel the caramel cup apart to have a really intense hazelnut & buttery choco experience.

They smell quite divine - a little buttery and a lot hazelnutty. The little chocolate disc is mediocre chocolate. It’s very sweet and a little grainy, but holds its own against the even sweeter hazelnut paste inside the cup. Of course what gives the candy its true punch is the whole hazelnut at the core. The caramel cup is a cross between the flavor of a good caramel (nice salty mix of toasted sugar and butter) and the soft & yielding chew of a Kraft caramel.

The combination of textures, sugar & fat work extremely well for me. I think the packaging is excessive (a plastic tray inside a paperboard tray sealed in cellophane inside a paperboard sleeve) but then again it was fresh and unmarred. Sometimes the little cups satisfy me in a way that few other candies can. But I’m always hesitant to pick them up simply because they’re over $25 a pound and when I think about what sort of candy I can get for that price, I usually hold out for the higher quality stuff.

I’ve always found it a bit odd that no other versions of Toffifay ever emerged. No Marzipan, no Peanut Butter, No Caramel Macchiato, no Rum Raisin.

Lance at Candy Addict declared them Awesomely Addictive and Esquire magazine actually gives them an endorsement (though the text indicates it’s against their better judgment), Candy Monster pronounces them Freakin’ Adorable and Rosa of ZOMG Candy eats hers by placing the chocolate side on her tongue.

Related Candies

1. Werther’s Original Caramel Dreams
2. Fling: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut
3. Reese Hazelnut Creme
4. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
5. Storck Chocolate Riesen
6. Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs
7. Kinder Bueno

The Werther’s Original line has really expanded over the past few years. Known best for their classic toffee/hard caramel candies they’ve expanded into caramels and chocolate. Their newest product, Caramel Dreams combines the two.

The package says: Rich Creamy Caramel Covered in Smooth European Chocolate.

The bag is an interesting soft matte mylar. My bag was puffed up from a lot of air, which I assumed was to like the air in a bag of potato chips - meant to protect the contents from getting smashed. And it did its job well. Each little piece I picked out looked pretty close to perfect.

Each little molded chocolate is wrapped in the classic golden folk/cellophane wrapper that Werther’s is known for.

They smell a little milky, a bit like Cadbury chocolate. The caramel center is quite liquid and gooey, so I don’t recommend biting into them expecting a chewy caramel. They’re best enjoyed popping the whole thing in the mouth.

The caramel center is smooth, a bit thick & sticky with a slight salty note to it. It’s more on the milky side of caramel than toasted sugar flavors.

They’re very pretty, well crafted and decently priced. If you’re a fan of Rolos, Cadbury Caramello or Dove Promises Caramels you might also find these to your liking. I think I’ll stick to See’s or perhaps something a little more nutty like Snickers for my caramel needs or just some Sugar Babies.

The other varieties in this line are CaraMelts and Caramel Mousse. (Candy For Dinner has photos of CaraMelts & Caramel Mousse.)

Related Candies

1. Caramilk Deluxe
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels
3. Big Mo’ Bars: Peanut Butter & Creamy Caramel
4. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
5. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
6. Sugar Babies
7. Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramels
8. Head to Head: Rolo vs Caramel Kisses

Continuing with my theme this week of “Drinks & Chocolate” I have two boxes of Doulton’s Liqueur Chocolates.

I picked them up at the Fancy Food Show in the final hour, which is usually a chaotic grab as the vendors tear down their booths and opportunists & vultures grab at anything and everything that isn’t hot-glued down. Some companies also abandon their booths and leave piles and piles of merchandise for whomever wants it. I wanted these. I took three boxes: two of the Cointreau and one of the Teacher’s Scotch Whisky.

I rarely see these kinds of chocolate except around the holidays at stores like Trader Joe’s (which has a “brandy bean” each year) and Cost Plus World Market.

The box isn’t upscale of fancy, it reminds me of the kind of box you might get a pair of gloves in or a new tie. Inside is a plastic tray that holds the little beans. Four beans wide and six beans long, they’re an impressive sight.

The ingredients aren’t fancy, in fact, some are downright cheap. It goes like this: glucose-fructose syrup, cocoa liquor, sugar, lactose, Cointreau, cocoa butter (contains milk), rectified spirit, milky, soy lecithin & polyglycerol polyricinoleat [PGPR], flavouring.

I started with the Cointreau Liqueur Chocolates because I think that orange and chocolate are a great combination. Cointreau is made by Rémy Cointreau in France. The spirit is made from sugar beets and flavored with a proprietary blend of sweet & bitter orange peels.

The little beans are cute, maybe a bit banana shaped.

The insides are quite syrupy. I liked biting off an end and then sipping the liquor, but eating the thing whole was fun, too.

The chocolate isn’t quite dark, not quite milk. It’s sweet and a little grainy. Though Cointreau has a substantial orange flavor by itself, it was a bit lost in the sweetness and chocolate flavors. Still, there was a little orange essence that lingered after it was all gone.

The second variety (not photographed) is Teacher’s Scotch Whisky. My experience with whisky is a bit more limited than my experience with aperitifs. Whisky is a dark and mysterious liquid, usually very strong with charcoal, tobacco, oak and peat and has a companion flavor called throat searing.

This particular variety, Teacher’s Highland Cream Scotch Whisky, is completely new to me.

The chocolate is rather unappealing, bland and sweet. The liquor center is sweet but definitely alcoholic. There’s a mild burn and some woodsy dark flavors do accompany it, a highlight in the flavor department here, because the chocolate itself wasn’t doing much.

I liked this combination, but the novelty wore off after about three of them, so then the package sat around for a few weeks before I polished them off for this review. I prefer them to the wine ones that I reviewed yesterday, but didn’t really care for the packaging or the ingredients, though they’re a much better value.

A cautionary note to anyone who buys any kind of alcohol infused chocolate - eat it quickly after opening. Alcohol evaporates, even through the chocolate shell and any plastic wrap. They’re best consumed fresh. As the weeks went by, these weren’t nearly as potent as when I opened them.

I haven’t seen this particular brand for sale (though I suspect that the same manufacturer may produce house brands. I believe these retail for about $3 to $4 a box. So they’re not that expensive and kind of a kick in the mouth. They come in other varieties as well: Irish Whiskey & Cream and Grappa. They do have some alcohol in them, so consuming the whole box may give you a buzz (they’re probably 3-5% alcohol).

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Irish Cream Chocolates
2. Rum Cordials
3. Anthon Berg Filled Chocolates
4. Jim Beam Fudge
5. K Chocolatier

At the Fancy Food Show I stopped at the Niederegger importer’s booth. I love their flavored marzipans, though I only ever see them around Christmas at Cost Plus World Market.

The newest version is Bittersweet Chocolate filled with Ginger Marzipan (called Marzipan Ingwer on the package).

Though it wasn’t open and out on the counter for tasting, the fellows at the booth really thought this was a special bar and opened one up for me to try. After I confirmed that it was in fact, pretty darn tasty, they gave me the rest to take home. I had a hard time, even with all my other samples, not continuing to eat it before I got home to photograph it.

It’s a bittersweet chocolate shell filled with a rustic almond marzipan with chunks of candied ginger.

The bar was fresh and glossy, it has a woodsy and spicy scent. A little touch of bitter almond at the start along with the creamy and slightly bitter dark chocolate. This slowly gives way to the mellow almond paste flavors with less of the “amaretto” taste and into a warm ginger burn. It finishes again with the chocolate. 

I ate the whole bar.

I am definitely a fan of Niederegger, though I can’t stress this enough: it has to be fresh. They make a wide variety of products, including traditional loaves of plain marzipan, but they’ve found a new convert through their consistent flavor versions.

The chocolate contains milk products, so this is not a vegan product but it is all-natural.

Related Candies

1. De la Rosa Mazapan
2. All Candy Expo - Wednesday Noon Update
3. Niederegger Marzipan Orange
4. Soubeyran Array
5. Charles Chocolates
6. Halvah and Turkish Delight
7. Capuccino Marzipan

Here’s another item I knew was coming out but it took me months to find it. Ritter Sport Peppermint isn’t exactly new, but newly available in the United States.

It’s a simple bar, described on the wrapper as dark chocolate with peppermint filling. I fully expected it to be like a molded York Peppermint Pattie.

Where this is different from the York Peppermint Pattie is fat. While a York is marketed as a lowfat food, it clocks in with a smidge from the dark chocolate coating, about 2.5 g per 39 g serving.

Ritter Sport Peppermint, on the other hand, has a liberal amount of fat in it, about 11 g per 38 g serving. At first I thought it was because there is more chocolate, ratio-wise, in the Ritter Sport. But looking at the ingredients, it lists palm kernel oil in there (which I’m guessing isn’t in the chocolate, since it does say it’s chocolate and not a chocolate flavored shell).

Some would find that disconcerting, or perhaps even a reason to eschew it. I, on the other hand, have often wondered what a fattier York Peppermint Pattie would be like.

The bar was lovely to look at. Glossy and dark, though not as dark as some dark chocolates. It smells mostly of peppermint, delicate and refreshing with a little acidic twang.

The snap of the chocolate was good. It broke along the segments easily and there was no sticky goo emerging from the margins. Biting into an invididual segment though, that was a very nice feeling. The chocolate shell keeps its shape well, not shattering into a bazillion flakes.

The mint filling is silky smooth, whatever fat is in there is doing a wonderful job of keeping it from becoming a fudgy blob or a crystallized chunk. Instead it’s almost like a white chocolate truffle - sweet and minty but not watery or milky. The chocolate is buttery smooth as well, and melts readily but without any sort of greasy tastelessness. It’s a little bitter, a little dry and the perfect balance for the sweet center.

I don’t know why Ritter Sport hasn’t sent this to the States before, it’s definitely not like other chocolate & mint fondant options here, so it’s allowed to occupy its own niche. I hope it’s not seasonal, because I think this is a perfect item for a crisp fall picnic. (I give these suggestions as if I live this sort of life, which I don’t, but go ahead and imagine it.)

Jim’s Chocolate Mission has been doing an awesome job documenting far more Ritter Sport than I’ve been able to. (Of interest to me are the Trauben Cashew, Neapolitan Waffle and the Voll Erdnuss.)

Related Candies

1. Christmas Mint Round Up
2. Ritter Sport White Chocolate with Hazelnuts
3. Junior Mints Deluxe
4. Ritter Darks
5. Ritter Sport Capuccino and Rum Trauben Nuss
6. York Pinkermint Patties