There are so many mid-range chocolate bars available these days, just going into Target presents a whole aisle of upscale chocolate choices that go far beyond the traditional Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar or Nestle’s Crunch.

One European manufacturer that’s becoming ubiquitous is Cote d’Or. It’s Belgian chocolate, which has a certain cache. Cote d’Or was named for the Gold Coast of Africa, which is now Ghana and a prime cocoa growing area. The company was founded by Charles Neuhaus but is now owned by Kraft Foods (which owns many European chocolate companies, including Toblerone, Terry’s Chocolates of Whack-&-Unwrap-Orange fame, Milka & Marabou).

Though they’re made by Kraft, they’re imported and distributed by Ferrara Pan ... you know, the Atomic Fireball and Lemonheads folks. (But it makes a certain amount of sense, they don’t do chocolate candy but have a huge distribution network.)

I’ve never really given Cote d’Or much thought, I always put it in the same category as Ghirardelli or even Lindt - a very nice brand, but just not quite my bag. Or is it? Candy Blog is supposed to make me open my mouth and expand my mind, so I should be trying new things. So when a bunch of bars Cote d’Or 70% Cacao bars showed up in my All Candy Expo samples box, I had to give it another look.

Rating: 7 out of 10

I started with the Intense 70% Cacao. The boxes are smart looking, just a paperboard box, great for protecting an unfinished bar. They’re 100 gram tablets (3.53 ounces), so it’s about 2.5 servings. There are 10 squares, each with the trumpeting Elephant icon of their logo.

The tempering is good, they have a great snap, if a little soft. The bar doesn’t look shiny like many others, but this is because of a texture in the mold that makes it matte. I think it makes the bar look a little dull. What sells it though is it smells wonderful - fresh and woodsy and of course chocolatey.

What struck me as odd about these bars is that they’re called Belgian Dark Chocolate Confection ... not just chocolate but they qualify it as a confection. Flipping over the box it shows that even though this is high cacao chocolate, it also has milkfat (though listed on the label right above soy lecithin, so not in very high proportion).

It melts quickly, it’s smooth and not too intense, no matter what the name says. It has a very buttery, nutty tasting base. It’s a little fruity, not acidic but has some raisin notes. For a dark, it’s very approachable.

The bar that pretty much made me squeal with anticipation is the new Cocoa Nibs 70% Cacao. I’m a huge fan of nibs and this one promises caramelized cocoa nibs in DARK chocolate confection. Unlike the other 70% bar, this one has no milkfat, so is suitable for vegans.

It’s easy to see the nibs in the cross section. They’re the perfect proportion of chocolate and nibs. The caramelization is what makes this bar so nice. It’s not like they’re toffee coated, they’re just crips and crunchy, kind of like chocolate infused macadamia nuts.

The flavor is a bit more intense, but the variations in texture and the delivery of so much chocolate in each bite makes this bar a winner. I haven’t tasted it side by side with the Hershey’s Cacao Reserve, but since I expect them to be similar price points, I definitely say give this a try.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Ghirardelli Intense Dark
2. Pop Rocks Milk Chocolate Bar
3. Theo 3400 Phinney Bars
4. Scharffen Berger - Cacao Nibs
5. Noir au Grue de Cacao

When I was a kid one of the prized chocolate bars to get in a Christmas stocking was a Toblerone bar. They were huge and exotic. Pretty to look at and certainly unique in their composition: milk chocolate with almond nougat bits.

Times have changed and Toblorone aren’t so hard to find any longer. Toblerone is named for both the inventor of the confection, Theodor Tobler and torrones, the honey and almond nougat found in the chocolate. The shape is also distinctive (and protected by trademark), each piece a little triangle representing the Swiss Alps. The traditional bar is a series of twelve peaks. The single pieces are now sold in assortments and may be my perferred way of enjoying them.

The Toblerone is now made by Kraft, but before that it was made by Suchard (which was later swallowed by Kraft in Europe). Whether this has changed the quality of the chocolate is up for debate. I remember Toblerone being better when I was a kid, but there could be any number of reasons I appreciated it more.

The Milk Chocolate peak smells mildly of milk and coconut with a little chocolate touch. It has a pretty soft bite to it, so it’s not at all stiff and waxy. The honey notes of the hard nougat bits and almonds come out immediately, and if you’re a chewer, they add a little light texture. It’s rather sweet, but also rather different from the overtly milky Swiss chocolates I’ve become accustomed to.

The second iteration of the Toblerone was Toblerone Dark in 1969.

It has a pleasant fruity overtone to the chocolate. It’s semi-sweet, so it’s not too dark, but still has a good melt. It’s a little grainy, a little chalky feeling towards the end but the abundant torrone bits kind of cover that up well.

The nutty notes from the nougat also blends well. This is the first time I think I’ve tried the dark bar, and it doesn’t really work for me. I’m completely missing the honey flavor from the nougat.

It’s very sweet: throat searingly sweet. It’s a good thing each piece is only two bites.

Toblerone White came along in 1973.

Though Toblerone calls this a “white confection” the fat in there is cocoa butter (so it really is white chocolate). So no worries about hydrogenated oils! It certainly smells strongly of Easter baskets and vanillin.

The milk flavors are very strong here, so strong it’s almost like eating a block of sweet vanilla cheese or something. The nice thing about it is that it does enhance the honey of the nougat,

Now this one is pretty cool. I have no idea what it’s called, as it’s not really on the Toblerone website. I’m calling it the Toblerone Stack and it features a hefty base of the traditional Milk Chocolate Toberlone and a little white cap of the White Toblerone.

Maybe they’re called Matterhorns. While the white chocolate one was far too much white chocolate, the balance of 3 to 1 milk chocolate actually works here.

The white chocolate makes the honey and vanilla notes pop even more and the milk chocolate keeps it grounded with the chocolate flavors. I know there used to be a candy bar in the States that had a trio of flavors stacked, the only current mass-produced bar I could find is the Australian Nestle Triple Decker (contains Strawberry, Milk & White).

The Toblerone Praline was introduced in 1997. It may be the only format they’re available in (I’ve never seen them in bar form). They come in a smart red wrapper.

The outside shell is pure milk chocolate, no nougat bits in there. The inside is a softer chocolate cream studded with the almond and honey torrone. There seems to be a larger proportion of almonds in there than usual as well.

It has a very distinct and creamy melt like a truffle, but completely lacking in the honey flavors and coconut scent of the original Milk Chocolate.

I really like these Single Peaks and would love to buy them for Christmas for putting in stockings or perhaps just in a candy dish. I don’t think they’d quite work for Halloween as an individually wrapped candy. Besides the fact that they’re probably absurdly expensive for giving away to kids you don’t even know the wrappers aren’t sealed (just twisted) so it’s possible that vigilant parents would just throw them out (or maybe they’d take them from the kids pointing out that they weren’t sealed to protect them but actually eat them).

I got these as samples from All Candy Expo but of course there’s no American website just for Toblerone, but here’s the page on the Kraft site.

Has anyone seen them in stores?

If you’ve ever been to Europe you’ve probably seen the Milka bar called ”Alpenmilch”. It comes in a lilac-colored wrapper featuring a lilac colored cow on it. Billed not as a chocolate bar, it’s called a “Chocolate Confection”. Reading the ingredients, it’s not added vegetable fat that keeps it from being called “chocolate” in the United States, it’s whey and hazelnut paste.

Milka was introduced in Switzerland in 1901 by Suchard as an affordable confection for the masses. The name comes from the German words Milch (milk) and Kakao (cocoa).

The Suchard company was briefly run by Philip Morris starting in 1990. In 1993 Philip Morris rolled their other food conglomerate, Kraft, in with Suchard and is now called Kraft Jacobs Suchard AG. This huge company makes a lot of well-known European sweets under the brands Marabou, Terry’s, Toblerone, Callard & Bowser, Cote d’Or and Daim. At the beginning of this year Altria (the new name for Philip Morris, which sounds like a diet drug to me) announced it was spinning Kraft back off into its own company.

I found this attractive looking bar at Target for $1.69. I’ve also seen the white confection version at the 99 Cent Only Stores, but I wanted to try this one first.

The funny thing about the bar is the little marketing line on the back:

Treat your senses to a smooth, rich flavor. Delight in MILKA - the tender, chocolaty pleasure of Alpine Milk.

I’ve never heard chocolate described as tender before!

The bar is rather light looking, lighter than a Hershey bar. It has a softer snap to it, as most milk chocolate bars do. It smells distinctly milky and a little nutty. It melts slowly and has a very sticky, fudgy feel on the tongue. The thick melt does release a lot of flavors. The primary flavor is powdered milk, followed by a little burnt sugar taste and a light touch of hazelnuts. Though the bar is pleasant, there’s very little “chocolate” flavor in here.

There must be a lot of milk in this bar because a single serving (1.48 ounces) contains 10% of your RDA of calcium and 3 grams of protein. (Of course a glass of milk has three times that.)

Target carries a rather wide selection of all kinds of chocolate. This isn’t really top of the line stuff, but if you’re a fan of European style milky chocolate or would like a less expensive version of guanduia (hazelnut chocolate paste), then this might be a good option. I’ll finish this bar and likely try the Milka White confection, but I’m not sure if I’d buy it again.

Note from wrapper: May contain traces of other tree nuts [remember there are hazelnuts in here] and wheat. This bar was made in Germany. 

Related Candies

1. Theo 3400 Phinney Bars
2. Hershey’s Cacao Reserve
3. Villars Swiss Milk Chocolate
4. Karuna & Princas Sokoladas
5. Dairy Milk Bubbly

My next door neighbors went to Peru for three weeks and brought back a huge cache of Peruvian (and South American) consumer candies. (They also brought some cookies, but I’ll try to keep this focused.) I find it quite fun to sample the consumer candies of all countries and regions and Peru was no different. So here are nine candies from Peru:

Name: Lentejas
Brand: Nestle
Size: 36 grams

These little guys probably look familiar. They’re chocolate lentils ala Nestle Smarties. Only they’re not quite Smartie-like ... they’re the same size as M&Ms (Smarties are just slightly flatter and larger than M&Ms). The shell on these is very thick and crunchy. The colors are unbelievably bright.

The chocolate itself is only so so - grainy, too sweet and completely lacking in chocolate taste.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Name: Prime Peruvian Milk Chocolate
Brand: Winter’s
Size: 100 grams

This bar had a lovely photo of the cloud-wrapped city of Machu Picchu on the box. Inside the box the large chocolate tablet was inside a plastic wrapper that looked exactly the same.

The bar was attractive: a dark looking milk chocolate.

The snap was not as sharp as some dark chocolates can be and it had a rather soft bite as many milk chocolates do. The flavor is rather milky, in a goat-cheese sort of way, with a little tangy note. The flavor of the chocolate was also strongly raisiny. It was very pleasant though completely different than most other milk chocolate bars I’ve had.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Name: Cua Cua
Brand: Lacta (Kraft)
Size: 18 grams

This is one of those bars that looks huge. The package is about the size a set of Twix bars, yet it only weighs 18 grams. This featherweight bar is all wafers with some light mockolate coating. Between the wafers is a little cocoa cream.

The bar, called Cua Cua, I’m guessing is a play on the sound a duck makes.

The bar smells sweet and a bit of chocolate. It’s also a little smoky smelling, though I couldn’t quite figure that out from the ingredients.

The smoky notes gave it a little bacon flavor that I wasn’t really happy with. The wafers were crunchy and foamy - providing more light texture than taste in this party in my mouth.

The mockolate was of course waxy and unappealing. It often flaked off the bar when I bit into it. I’m a big fan of wafer with cream (I can’t imagine how many pounds of Nabisco Wafers I’ve eaten over the years) but this one just wasn’t quite as ducky as I’d hoped.

Rating: 3 out of 10.

Name: Cañonazo
Brand: Costa
Size: 26 grams

This bar calls itself “barrita bañada rellena con crema de chocolate” which I’m guessing means chocolate filling with crisp wafers bathed in chocolate.

The crisp log of wafer was interesting, kind of like a sweet Cheeto. The chocolate filling was like a frosting, with a good chocolate taste and slightly grain. Like the Cua Cua, this was a light bar. Though it’s big it only weighs 26 grams (and is the size of a Snickers ... which are 58 grams). Unfortunately the coating on the outside isn’t chocolate and it’s rather waxy and uninteresting.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Name: Gomas Eucalypto
Brand:  F y D Inversiones, SAC
Size: 125 grams

These are crazy! Crazy, I tell you.

They’re little gummis covered with granulated sugar. About the size and shape of an incense cone. Nice and soft but with a good gelatin bounce. They look like they could be green apple or lime or maybe even spearmint. But they’re not. They’re mentholated eucaplytus flavored. Just like Hall’s Cough Drops.

They’re sweet and aromatic and tingly.

It’s rather refreshing to get a cough drop that’s not all crunchy and hard, instead it’s soothing and invigorating all at once.

Definitely a winner in my book.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Name: Nikolo
Brand: Arcor
Size: 30 grams

The packaging here is pretty, it’s a white thick plastic wrap with a bold brown logo for the name of the bar and pretty little pictures of the nuts in the bar.

The label says, “tableta con sabor a chocolate rellena con mani almendra y cereal crocante” which means “peanut, almond and crispy cereal filled chocolatey bar.”

The chunky look of the bar reminded me of Legos and was just about as tasty.

The nuts were fresh and crunchy and gave the bar a promising aroma, but the mockolate in this bar was waxy, chalky and just so bad. Look at it in the photo ... does that look like something you’re supposed to eat or something I molded out of dung?

Rating: 2 out of 10.

Name: Golpe
Brand: Arcor
Size: 27 grams

If it weren’t for the Arcor brand on this, I’d be looking forward to this bar. The label says “Oblea rellena cubierta con caramelo y cereal crocante, con cobertura sabor chocolate” ... which translates to (courtesy of the wrapper, thankyouverymuch) “Filled wafer, toffee, crispies, all covered with chocolate flavor.”

Oh Arcor, again with the chocolate flavor? Is that why your company motto is “Le damos sabor al mundo” (translation: We flavor the world)?

It’s a nice looking wrapper and it made me think of soccer.

The bar looks promising as well, with it’s crunchy studded mockolate. Inside are wafers with creme filling and then a scant covering of glistening caramel (I’m guessing that’s the toffee). The wafers are nice, and the toffee adds some nice flavor to the whole thing, but the bar had a rather chemical taste, like licking fresh dry cleaning. I don’t know if that’s the taste of Carbox/Methylcellulose (the last ingredient on the list), but it made my tongue buzz.

After this series of Arcor products they are now on my list as the Worst Candymakers in the World. (Granted, I haven’t tried everything made by everyone yet.)

This candy bar was made in Chile.

Rating: 2 out of 10.

Name: Sublime
Brand: Nestle
Size: 22 grams

This is a cute little bar. The wrapper says, “Chocolate Blanco de leche con Mani” which is “white milk chocolate with peanuts.” Doesn’t sound too bad.

And it is pretty cute to look at.

The chocolate is rather sweet, but also has a salty bite to it, which helped the peanut flavors stand out. I’m wondering if this was not de-odorized cocoa butter (most white chocolate is deodorized, so it has no chocolate flavor to it). It just may have been that the milk flavors with the peanuts were strong.

It was actually pretty good white chocolate bar. A little grainy but not the least bit waxy.

This bar was made in Bolivia.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

Name: Princesa
Brand: Nestle
Size: 38 grams

This is a cute little bar and of course has a upscale appeal of a regal name like Princesa. The ingredients are promising too, real chocolate in there.

The bar says that it’s “chocolate relleno con crema de mani” which means “chocolate stuffed with peanut butter.” Yum!

The chocolate here is dark (though there’s some milk listed in the ingredients, it’s way down the list). It’s a creamy though sweet bar. The peanut butter is very smooth and creamy as well and is completely overshadowed by the chocolate.

There’s a little spicy taste in the background, kind of like cinnamon.

This is a nice bar, not as peanutty as I expected, but as sedate and reserved as you’d expect from royalty.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

This is another tale of a super find at the 99 Cent Only Store.

I went in there looking for Pink Grapefruit Mentos. I ran out of my most recent stash (from Munchies) and didn’t feel liked driving all the way over to Beverly Hills or wherever that is and I also didn’t really want to pay a dollar a roll. I’ve seen them before at 99 Cent Only Stores, but I hadn’t in quite a while. So on my third 99 Cent Only Store in two weeks, I quietly gave up that search. This didn’t stop me from scouring the aisles for something else that would be good to report back on.

Enter the Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection.

Just like the milk chocolate orange (or Peppermint Chocolate Orange), this is a sphere of little wedges stuck together with a stem of white chocolate. The sticker on the wrapper bids you to “Whack and Unwrap”. I’ve never had the confidence to do that, I just unwrap it and pry it apart by pressing my thumb into the top of the orange and prying out a few wedges ... then a little pressure applied to the rest of it in my palm and pretty much falls apart.

These puppies usually sell for about $4.00 ... and here I was picking up one for only 99 cents. Don’t worry, the expiration date says June 28, 2007, so this is fresh.

The package calls this A White Chocolate Confection, so I immediately examined the ingredients: Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Nonfat Milk, Whey, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, Orange Oil, Natural and Artificial Flavor. Hey! That doesn’t sound too bad, no partially hydrogenated oils, no tropical fats! (Not that there isn’t a lot of fat in there ... )

The wedges smell sweet and milky with a slight hint of orange to them. They’re definitely sweet, though there’s a decent buttery melt on the tongue before the light orange essence kicks in. It’s not super-orangy, but it definitely cuts through what would otherwise be a too-sweet white chocolate slice.

I can’t say that I’d go buying and eating these all the time, but I liked the price. A lot. And as a treat goes, it’s special and attractive. If you’re putting together an Easter basket, this would be a great, inexpensive featured item.

Note: Terry’s of York is now owned by Kraft. This was made in Poland (as was the peppermint one I had last year). 

Following up on the Munch Bar post a few weeks ago, this is the competing product: Planters Peanut Bar Original.

As pointed out in the comments on the Munch Bar review, the Planters bar isn’t as toffee-like. In fact, there are no dairy products at all in this bar.

It’s a heavily peanut bar, as you can see. The peanuts are jam packed together with the hard candy part just there to keep it all in one cohesive unit. The peanuts are toasty tasting and fresh with a nice salty hit from the candy.

It’s pretty satisfying even though it’s only 1.6 ounces. It also keeps well in harsh conditions, like warm summers or maybe in the car. It does just fine if it gets broken.

Of the two that I’ve had now (Planters Peanut Bar and Munch Bar), I think I prefer the Munch because of the more toffee-like candy cement. But I wouldn’t turn this one down. Both are a little hard to find. Drug stores seem to have a good selection, but I didn’t see this or the Munch bar at my usual 7-11s. 

A friend recently came back from Sweden, and you know that means I got some fun new European candy bars. The first one has the best name ever for a candy bar ... Pigall.

Frankly, a bar named Pigall is kind of scary. This bar actually had part of the label in English, so let me fill you in on the ingredients: sugar, hydrogenated vegatable oil, cocoa butter, rice crisps, dried partly skim milk, cocoa mass, milk, sugar, milk fat, buttermilk, hazelnuts, fat-reduced cocoa, emulsifier, salt, flavorings. The 40 gram (1.4 ounce) bar had 250 calories ... that’s 177 calories per ounce. (The label says it’s actually two servings) It might win an award for the highest caloric density product I’ve ever tried. Pigall is right!

The bar is long and kind of soft. The chocolate on the outside is very light in color and of course it smelled very sweet. On the inside there’s a “nut truffle” filling that I can only describe as a chocolate buttercream. It was seriously buttery though from what I could read on the ingredients, it’s some sort of whipped vegetable oil filling.

Mixed in with the buttercream filling are rice crispies.

I found the bar interesting, but too much like eating the frosting off of a piece of cake. The prospect of that much trans fat kept me from eating more than half the bar.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the second bar, Brejk. It’s hefty, clocking in at 56 grams.

It also came in two pieces, which I always like. Good for sharing, a little neater and you can save some for later. This one came on a little tray and I thought for a moment that they were Finnish 100 Grand bars.

The bar is built like this - a light chocolate cookie is covered with a stripe of dark caramel then the whole thing is covered in a light milk chocolate studded wtih crisped rice.

The chocolate is sweet and has that European milky taste and a kind of tang to it. The textures are interesting too, think of it as a cross between a Twix bar and a 100 Grand and you’d pretty much have this bar. The cookie center is crumbly and bland but maybe had a little hit of salt to it. The caramel is dark and chewy, but not too sweet. The milk chocolate covering it is sweet and creamy though there aren’t as many rice crispies as you’d get in a 100 Grand.

I thought it was a great bar and I wonder why we don’t have something like it here in the States. The only place that I reliably see Marabou products is at Ikea, so if you see this one there and you like Trix Twix or 100 Grand bars, pick it up for a try. 

Lifesavers are known for being highly-flavored hard candies. If there were a candy model that Jelly Belly might have gone off of, it was probably Lifesavers - here is a hard candy, a little smaller than usual, but super-flavored and in a huge variety. Lifesavers got into the gummi game a while ago and I tried them when they first came out, but didn’t think much of them. I decided to revisit them, especially since they changed the flavors out on the five flavor tray.

The 5 Flavor variety bears little resemblance to the hard candy rolls that have been around since 1934. The flavors in this roll are Cherry (an original flavor), Watermelon, Green Apple, Blackberry and Strawberry. No orange, no lemon, no pineapple. Drat! The candies are much larger than the hard version, they’re soft, if a little greasy on the outside to prevent sticking and are positioned upright on a clear plastic tray inside the wrapper.

The Cherry is just as you’d expect it, great woodsy cherry flavor with a good tart bite. I’m not fond of cherry flavored stuff, but I actually find Lifesavers rather acceptable, probably because the flavor doesn’t seem as artificial as many others. The Green Apple, the lighter of the two green flavors, is rather mild, not too sour but good overall flavor. Watermelon is a darker green and bears little resemblance to real watermelon flavor but has a nice tart bite to it without that overwhelming fragrance that many watermelon candies have. Strawberry was a bit disappointing. It was sweet and had only the slightest hint of a berry flavor to it. I’d tell you about the Blackberry, but this roll had none. I think they’re dark purple. I’ll hazard that it’s the same blackberry flavor in the Wild Berries below.

The Wild Berry mix held more promising flavor for my tastes: Cherry Berry, Strawberry, Red Raspberry, Black Raspberry, Blackberry and White Grape.

The colors are a little bland, but I guess when you’re making a dozen different flavors you’re going to run out of primary and secondary colors. The White Grape was my favorite. Soft and delicate, it’s just a bit tart and has none of that artificial grape note that I only seem to like in Tootsie Pops and SweeTarts.  The Cherry Berry was remarkably similar to the Cherry in the 5 Flavor, but I’m not complaining. The Blackberry is the only one that seemed opaque, a lustrous dark purple it was tart and fragrant but hardly had a flavor different from the other berries. The Strawberry was the same as above. The rather lavender looking one was, I think, Black Raspberry. It was sweet and tart like the others and much more perfumed, as raspberries tend to be. The lightest red one was probably Red Raspberry and was similar to the Black Raspberry one, but perhaps a little tarter.

The good thing about this mix is that the flavors all blend together well, you can eat them one after another without the flavors fighting or combine them if you’re so inclined.

I like to eat gummies when my throat is bothering me, and I’m just getting over a cold (so if my tasting is a little off, it’s some sort of leftover malaise). They’re soothing and not too sour, so I don’t have to worry about burning my tongue like I often do on my overdoses of SweeTarts. I bought these in a Christmas Storybook on an after-holiday clearance for 98 cents ... so I certainly got my money’s worth for five packages of these.

While these flavors all have merit, I’d really like to have my favorite Lifesavers flavors - Lemon, Orange, Tangerine, Banana, Pina Colada and Pineapple. Actually, I’d be game if they wanted to try a Butter Rum gummi, too!