Niederegger Marzipan Ingwer

Back during my last trip to New York at the beginning of the year, I spent my last night there going all out at a couple of my favorite stores. I kept telling myself that I would get around to reviewing the bulk of the goodies before Christmas...but so far, I have not been doing a really good job of it.

But today was just a marzipan kind of day, so into my bounteous stash I went. Happy happy, joy joy! Not only did I have marzipan, but I have marzipan with ginger in it!

This bar consists of semi-sweet chocolate (52%) that enrobes a generous slab of marzipan which is studded with bits of ginger.



First, the bar is nicely scored and molded.

The chocolate was indeed dark-looking. While my bar was well within its shelf life and showed no bloom (it was actually quite glossy), what annoyed me was that the chocolate shell had splintered away from the marzipan in several places. It's not an overly thick layer, but it is not exactly wafer-thin either. Maybe that's for the best, though. The chocolate, while not bad, never really rises beyond "meh." Its strongest flavor is a peppery warmth from the ginger. It's very brittle and doesn't have much of a melt. No, it's not awful, but I would never want to eat it all by itself.



But forget the chocolate -- let's talk about the marzipan! Omigawd, to be able to get a loaf of this stuff! Of course there is the sweet, cherry-like almond taste you expect of marzipan. It's not too sweet, it's not bitter. The texture is moist but not sticky. Grainy but not dry. It's really the perfect marzipan.

And what could possibly make such a thing even more perfect? If you guessed ginger, you would be correct. And there was just the right amount of it. You smell it and feel the heat it gives off more than you actually taste it. But it's wonderful. It's not too much and not too little, it complements the marzipan while not distracting from it.



Maybe it's a good thing that the chocolate on this bar was not better, because it may have been the only thing that kept my few remaining fragments self-control in command. If you like marzipan, you simply must get your hands on this bar.

Be sure to check out Jim's review. He loved it too.



PURCHASED FROM:
Barzini's (New York City)

PRICE:
$2.29

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
niederegger.de

Ritter Sport: Waldbeer Joghurt

It's been a while since my last Ritter Sport review, and I had this bar calling to me from my kitchen.



I've ended up being a fan of all of the joghurt (yogurt) bars in the Ritter line I have had so far. So I had high hopes for the Waldbeer Joghurt bar. All the verbiage on the wrapper was in German, but the picture showed the wild berries were a mix of blueberry, blackberry, and strawberry. Not only are the flavors there, but there are also little bits of dried fruit mixed into the filling. There is also crispy rice, all contained in a neat little milk chocolate square.



The center filling has a pleasant tang to it. I wouldn't pin it down as yogurt if I didn't know what it is -- but I liked it because it kept the bar from being too sweet.

The berry flavor is good, but it's just sort of a generic berry. I can't say that any one of the berries stood out any stronger than the others. It's certainly not bad. There's just nothing about it that made me go, "hmmmmmmmm, blueberry!"

The dried bits of fruit and the rice crisps added a nice bit of crunchy texture. The fruit bits seemed to be almost entirely strawberry.



The milk chocolate was smooth and creamy. The melt is fantastic and rich. There is the perfect ratio of chocolate to the filling, so that you get a good mixture of the two tastes.

This was a really tasty little bar! Jim thought so too, so be sure to check out his review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
The German Deli (Upland, California)

PRICE:
$3.50

CALORIES:
568 calories per bar.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
ritter-sport.com

Weinrich Trüffel: Whisky

I am a bit of a whiskey lightweight. I admit that in my younger days I drank my share (and probably some of yours) of whiskey sours, and yes, I did the horrible girly bit of mixing Jack Daniel's with root beer or Dr. Pepper (*facepalm*). I know that the true whiskey fans out there are reading this in horror, and I hang my head in shame.

Nowadays, while I still like the smell of whiskey (or Scotch), it is just a little too strong for me to drink. I dunno what happened to me. I like the idea of this bar because it's a whiskey filled truffle surrounded by milk chocolate.



As I've observed in a review of Weinrich's Marc de Champagne bar, I would again like to point out how beautifully molded these bars are. The chocolate is glossy and it made me think of an edible Art Deco tile.



You can really smell the whiskey in this bar -- even before you break a piece off. It's a woodsy, nutty, boozy scent, in all the best meanings of the words.

One of the bar's big selling points for me is that the filling is indeed a truffle-type consistency, rather than being filled with a syrupy liquid. I am a big fan of alcohol-flavored chocolates. I just tend to not enjoy versions that are liquid-filled, because they often taste only like some half-assed version of whatever it is supposed to be -- or worse, they have that fake Star Trek "synthahol" flavoring that makes them taste more like edible lighter fluid. The filling in this bar avoids all of those pitfalls.

The Weinrich filling has a very rich, almost ganache texture. It's super smooth on the tongue and is a deep glossy brown. The flavor is all classic whiskey. You can almost imagine that you are in a mahogany-panelled salon with stodgy old men in huge leather wing chairs, puffing on cigars while sipping single malts and complaining about what doofuses their daughters ended up marrying.



The flavor of the whiskey is strong -- but what keeps it from being too much, even for a whiskey wimp like me, is the chocolate. The milk chocolate is sweet and has strong milky notes to it. It melts with a little grain that goes great with the smoothness of the filling (on its own, it would be on the throat-burning side). There's not a lot of snap, but the melt is fast.

I really liked this bar! I'll leave the actual Laphroaig to Chris (it's one of his favorite Scotches), but this bar made me very, very happy.



PURCHASED FROM:
The German Deli (Upland, California)

PRICE:
$3.10

CALORIES:
Not available

ADDITIONAL INFO:
May contain traces of wheat and nuts. Contains real whiskey.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
weinrich-schokolade.de

Vivani Dark Chocolate with Orange

Not only is this dark chocolate with orange, but it's dark chocolate with orange and it has a fancy-schmancy wrapper with words like "art" and "organic." I feel somehow more sophisticated and spiffy just having the bar in my hand. So, before I hop into my chauffeured Rolls-Royce and start offering mustard to random strangers, let's have some chocolate.



This bar is a 70% dark chocolate and, jokes aside, it is in fact 100% organic.

It is beautifully molded into small bite-sized segments, although the chocolate itself is on the dull side. The chocolate smells spicy but I didn't get a whiff of the orange at all. Breaking into the bar, there is some fantastic snap going on. The way you can bite the chocolate cleanly into nice little bits gets addictive. (If you are the type that likes to crunch ice, this is like the chocolate version.)



You may not smell the orange, but you certainly can taste it! The wrapper says the bar contains essential orange oil, and it does remind me of candied orange rind. The orange is subtle but it is very natural. I would have liked for it to be stronger, because it's such a good flavor.

The chocolate is spicy, there are some woodsy, cinnamony notes. It has a very earthy taste. The finishing notes are coffeelike.



What I normally don't like about organic chocolate is the texture. Vivani does a nice job with this as well. It's a little on the dry side -- but again, it is a pretty dark chocolate. The melt is very smooth. It's not creamy, but it wouldn't be with a chocolate this dark. I have a feeling this bar would be good to bake with or to shave over other items.

Yes, I liked this bar. Can you tell?



PURCHASED FROM:
Sample from company

Ritter Sport: Himbeer Joghurt (Raspberry Yogurt)

Yes, I know this is a white chocolate bar. And yes, I know I have shouted from the cyber mountaintops my hatred of white chocolate. (Wait...do we actually still use the term "cyber" anything?) But...but, but, but...people, there's raspberry yogurt here! Raspberry yogurt! My love of raspberry yogurt is strong enough to push aside my dislike of white chocolate, at least for a moment. And in addition to the raspberry yogurt, there is also also crispy rice. Which is less important to me than the raspberry yogurt, but it's a nice extra touch.



I will give Ritter points for making a white chocolate that even I found enjoyable. It's very smooth, and while it's distinctly creamy it avoids being oily or tooth-achingly sweet. Would I have preferred a milk chocolate? Well yes, but no one asked me, and to be fair I would rate this as my favorite white chocolate so far.



The star of this show is the raspberry yogurt filling. I wouldn't call it a natural flavor. It's more like a really good fake version. It's tart, but I credit that more to the yogurt than the raspberry it is mixed with. It's not an overly strong flavor, and maybe that's for the better. I have a feeling that if it were stronger, the fakeness would become overwhelming.



As much as I liked the raspberry yogurt filling, my favorite part turned out to be the crispy rice. The rice itself really didn't have much of a flavor. Instead, it seemed to absorb the flavors of the raspberry and the yogurt. It reminded me of little bits of Fruity Pebbles cereal.

Given that the bar has white chocolate, I was really surprised at how much I liked it. Yet I did. This is one of those bars that is easy to down in an embarrassingly short period of time.



PURCHASED FROM:
The German Deli (Upland, California)

Trader Joe's Brandy Beans

You may have noticed that I review a lot of liqueur flavored items. That is because I like various spirits, and I really like items flavored with booze. I blame my parents.

As living proof that the Seventies were a very different place to be both a parent and a toddler, let me reveal a tidbit of Gigi family history:

The house I lived in back in Boston was a typical three story house for the area. The bottom floor had living quarters for my grandmothers as well as family room. One corner of said family room was taken up by the same leather-padded bar that every other goombah house in the neighborhood was equipped with, and which looked like Sopranos fan's wet dream. (Everyone in our neighborhood was a goombah. Everyone. Even those who weren't Italian.) Neither of my parents were or are really drinkers -- but again, in that time and place, it seemed everyone had a similar set-up. My parents' bar was stocked mostly with those little "nip" bottles that you get on airlines or on the counter of package/liquor stores. And apparently they had quite a collection going.

One autumn, they noticed that these tiny bottles were being drained of their contents...but whoever was doing it wasn't bothering to throw the bottles away, nor even to finish them. Since they knew they weren't the ones doing the drinking, they immediately assumed that it was my grandmother; who was known to like her glass of wine before bed. They told her that they didn't mind her drinking whatever she wanted, but asked that she at least get rid of the bottles afterward. She denied having anything to do with it. And after this went on for a few months, they started to wonder if she didn't have a drinking problem...but they never caught her in the act, so what could they say?

One night they were watching television (old school TV -- no cable! -- analog! -- with only 3 three channels! Can you imagine?!) and they heard the clinking of bottles behind the bar. They thought this odd because they had not seen my grandmother go by, and my other grandmother was long asleep. I was tucked in upstairs. They thought it might have been the cat...but when the noise continued, they were forced to get up and look. And there behind the bar they found three-year-old me pounding shots. Somehow I had managed to not only get down two flights of stairs, but I got those damn little bottles open -- a feat the much older me today has a hard time doing. My grandmother got to let out a big "I told you so!" and I was labeled a booze hound for life.

Yeah, like I said, the Seventies were a much different place...



Fast-forward about 30 years, and that leaves grown-up me sitting here with a box full of boozy chocolates from Trader Joe's. The box even bears the following warning: Sale of this product to persons under the legal age for purchasing alcoholic beverages is unlawful. It further adds that the beans have a maximum alcohol content of 5.2% by weight. Well, that had my tail wagging like Brian Griffin.



Each little bean is nicely molded into a little glossy crescent of semi-sweet chocolate happiness. When you bite into the bean, the liquid center starts to ooze out. I can understand why they aren't sold to kids! There is certainly a kick. But if you are expecting fine brandy, well...yeah. Right.

Yes, it does have the warm burn alcohol brings, but none of the actual flavor. The most redeeming factor the brandy filling brings to the table is the fact that, if you ate enough of them (and I have a feeling "enough" would be at least the entire box), you might, just possibly, get a minor buzz. Well, the same thing can be said about liquid NyQuil -- and I don't want to eat that enrobed in chocolate, either.



The chocolate: It's waxy, it's kinda gritty, and the bottom of the bean is surprisingly thick. It's a semi-sweet. Not light and sweet enough to be milk, yet not dark and brooding enough to be...well...dark. It's somewhere in the middle, and it's a pretty mediocre middle. And the lingering aftertaste could best be called "stale Raisinet." Yeah.

Trader Joe's so seldom lets me down that I am somewhat surprised that these were as "bleeh" as they are. Don't get me wrong, they aren't the worst candy out there. They won't make you die or anything...in fact, they won't even make you want to die. But they will make you wonder why the hell you wasted your money on them.



PURCHASED FROM:
Trader Joe's

Chocri Custom Bar: "Gigi's Dream Lemon Bar"

It's the day after Christmas, and we all know what that feels like. All the buildup, all the excitement (all the stress!) is over for another year. And we are now left wondering just how good we have to be to make the "Nice" list next year. (I don't think I will make it there in this lifetime.) There has to be something to brighten up the day...

And there is! How about a custom made candy bar?!

About a month ago, I got an email from the German chocolate makers, Chocri. Chocri has been creating custom bars in Europe for a while, and is now expanding into the United States market. (The official U.S. launch date is January 5th, 2010.) And they offered me the opportunity to create my own bars, with my choice of ingredients. BOOOOYAH! Was I psyched? You better believe it!

For the base chocolate you can choose between milk, dark, or white. Then you can add up to five additional items -- and there are over 80 toppings to choose from! I kid you not when I say I spent over an hour designing my bars. And you even get to name your bar if you want to.



I am going to rate this a little differently than I normally would. Because I selected the flavors that went into the bar, I can't really base the rating on the final taste (for good or for bad) of the bar as a whole. After all, the individual ingredients could be great on their own -- but what if I chose a combination that turned out not to work very well? I certainly couldn't ding Chocri for my own poor decision. Therefore, I am going to base the rating, as much as possible, upon the individual ingredients by themselves.



I named this bar Gigi's Dream Lemon Bar. And I included ingredients I have always wanted to have combined in one chocolate lemon bar. Those ingredients were:

* Dark chocolate
* Lemon Chocolate Drops
* Multicolored Pepper
* Organic Cane Sugar
* Real Gold Flakes

Now how could that possibly go wrong? It couldn't, and it didn't!



The dark chocolate is a 64% cacao. It has a fantastic snap and is super smooth. It's got a nice coffee flavor.

The lemon chocolate drops are made of white chocolate, flavored with lemon. Yes, we all know how I feel about white chocolate -- but in this case, the lemon taste is really zesty and just makes for a rich citrus burst of flavor.

The multicolored pepper consists of small whole peppercorns (green, black, red). I really like peppercorns mixed with the lemon. They add just a little heat, but they don't overwhelm the bar.

The organic cane sugar: Very good. None of that all-too-common HFCS nonsense; this is real, old school sugar. You can taste the difference. And the grains of sugar on the top of the bar look pretty nice.

The gold flakes -- well, I just think they're cool, and I wanted this bar to look spiffy. Silly perhaps, but hey, it's my bar! And yes, it is perfectly safe to ingest gold in small amounts. (Surely you've seen at least one of the several popular liqueurs with gold flakes floating in them.)



All of the ingredients on their own were of excellent quality. The quantities were generous, but not one of the flavors overpowered the others. It was obvious to me that the good folks in Germany who actually combine the ingredients you choose have an excellent sense of proportion.

If I do say so myself, I designed a pretty good bar! The pepper adds spice, the cane sugar keeps the dark chocolate and the pepper from being too bitter...but at the same time there is not enough sugar that it gets too sweet. (Again, they nailed the proportions perfectly!) And the lemon drops add a fun, bright flavor to the bar. So yeah, it really did turn out to be my dream lemon bar. (OK, I would have liked some candied lemon zest...but Chocri said that they are still in the process of adding that to the options.)

When you receive your chocolates, you'll notice that the packaging is very simple, very Spartan in appearance (see the first picture). It does what it has to do, namely protect the chocolate it contains, and that's it. It looks nothing like the fancy, artistic packaging that high-end chocolates often come in...but do not be deceived by appearances! After all, even diamonds come out of hard lumps of rock and coal...and believe me, these basic, functional boxes contain some true diamonds of the chocolate world.

Remember the U.S. site: CreateMyChocolate.com launches on Jan 5th, 2010. Once it's up, you can create your own bar. And if you like your custom bar so much that you want to reorder the same one later on, just keep the code that will be printed on the label -- that way, you don't need to remember all the specific ingredients you chose. (If you want to try a bar exactly like I made it, you can use the Reorder option -- which is shown directly below the choices of base chocolate -- and use code: ijoaq7)

Y'know what? Chocolate really doesn't come any more fun than this!


PURCHASED FROM:

Sample From Company

Weinrich Trüffel: Marc de Champagne

Whilst browsing in my local German deli, I came across a collection of Weinrich Trüffel bars, all filled with a variety of liquors and liqueurs -- so naturally I had to buy them.

I opted to start with the Marc de Champagne bar because I have a slight addiction to Champagne truffles. But what exactly is Marc de Champagne? Well, it's a brandy-like liquor that is distilled from the seeds and skins of the grapes used in Champagne production...sort of the hot dog of the Champagne world, if you will. I admit I have never tried it. But if it has any Champagne notes to it -- as grape based, distilled liquors such as brandy, Cognac, etc often bear a faint family resemblance to the wines they are derived from -- I expect I would like it. And I always seem to forget how much I like Champagne or sparkling wine until I actually have a glass (which is not that often). Also, there is something about Champagne mixed with chocolate that really raises my bubbles. Incidentally, I did not inherit my love of the "Champers" from my parents...

...One Thanksgiving, my brother and I were especially mortified by our father; in that special way that only siblings can share. That night, we'd gone to the fanciest-schmanciest restaurant in our 'hood. It's a restaurant that is widely known for its extensive wine cellar. And when the wine steward inquired as to my father's choice for the table, he was rather horrified when my father chose to lecture him on why the place should carry Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante! Now to be fair, it's not that there's anything particularly wrong with M&R's Asti. It's decent stuff. It's just that in this case, it was like walking into Peter Luger's (or even Ruth's Chris) and telling them they should serve the sirloin just like they do down at the Sizzler. Yeah, just another one of those times when it's so close, yet so far away... anyway, magical holiday family fun aside...



The Weinrich Trüffel has a milk chocolate shell that encases the truffle filling. Taking the chocolate out of the wrapper, you immediately notice an aroma that I could best describe as "boozy." But, it is a Marc de Champagne truffle after all, so let's call that a good thing.



The smooth outer shell is thin and the center truffle filling is a soft creme. The actual flavor of the truffle reminded me more of Turkish delight than Champagne or anything related to it. There is a soft, sweet rose note -- not as strong as in Turkish delight, but very similar. There is also definite fruit flavor in the background. I want to say it's grape...mostly because my brain is still trying to pin down something Champagne-like being the source of the flavor. But in reality, the best I can tell you is that it's fruity. The filling is sweet, but magically it never gets too sweet. There is just the tiniest amount of alcohol bitterness (whether it's actually alcohol, I don't know -- the label lists both Champagne and Marc de Champagne as flavors, but leaves it at that). It's actually the perfect amount, because it just keeps everything in check. And it was fantastic. I want vats of this filling. I want to put it on everything.



The milk chocolate that the bar is molded with is soft and melty, but held the molded design beautifully. (And did I mention how pretty the molding is? It really is a very nice looking bar.) It's creamy and you can taste the generous amount of dairy in the chocolate. On its own it might be a little bland, but it pairs with the truffle filling perfectly.

It's hard to rate this one. On the one hand, it didn't remind me of a Champagne truffle in the least. On the other hand, the filling is just so darned delicious that they could have called it Gebeizt Seife Trüffel and it would still taste great. (I will save you the Googling; that means "Pickled Soap Truffle.") It kind of goes against my standards in a way, but I am still scoring this one an 11 -- because even though it does not taste of anything akin to Champagne, it is still 17 kinds of awesome. Maybe even 18. Or maybe more than I could count.

Find it. Buy it. Eat it. You will be very glad you did.




PURCHASED FROM:
The German Deli (Upland, California)

Milka Strawberry Yoghurt Milk Chocolate Bar

I love the combination of yogurt and chocolate. It makes me wonder why American companies don't use it more.

Lucky for me, the fine folks at Milka have made such a bar!



I loved the smell when I opened the wrapper. It was a big whiff of a fresh chocolate-covered strawberry (you know, the cute ones with the little tux painted on), as imagined by Febreze. Fake, but still pleasant.



This is by far the best of the Milka bars I have tried so far. I think the reason why I like it so much is that the chocolate takes a back seat to the filling. Actually, the chocolate barely even registers. It's there, it's sweet and it adds a creamy texture, but beyond that it's forgettable.

I liked the filling. The yogurt (being lazy and using the American spelling) is tangy and cuts the sweetness of the chocolate. The strawberry is completely and utterly unnatural. In fact, it reminds me of a candy version of Crunch Berries. It's a "strawberry" that is so un-strawberrylike that you almost can't help but liking it. Much like the Ritter Sport version, it also contains some hard, presumably freeze-dried strawberry bits. But there seems not to be as many of the bits in the Milka bar as in the Ritter bar.

I really liked this bar. Jim reviewed this bar a bit ago (read his review HERE). Jim didn't like the bar as much I did. But I still like him, lol!



PURCHASED FROM:
German Deli

Milka Alpine Milk Chocolate Cream

I don't get to review Milka products as often as I would like...

And darned if I don't end up drooling on my keyboard way to often when Jim posts his many Milka reviews (in fact, he reviewed this bar HERE). Every now and then, though, my local German deli gets a new load of Milka bars in (and WHY does it only seem to be the Happy Cow bars?), so I search hoping for something new to me. I got lucky on my last visit and scored 3 different bars.


The Alpine Milk Chocolate bar is a milk chocolate bar that has a layer of chocolate cream smooshed in between the solid chocolate top and bottom. The bar is very light in color and has a very sweet, very dairy aroma.


The bar is so sweet it almost has an outright sugary taste. At first it's almost too sweet, but as you eat more of the bar it becomes less so and more milky. The melt is excellent. Very smooth, to the point that it's silky.

The chocolate creme layer is kind of a letdown. Maybe I just have this image in my mind from the wrapper, but it did remind me of chocolate Cool Whip. I do not consider that a good thing. There is a sour aftertaste. Unlike how eating more of the bar made it less sweet, eating more did not make it less sour.

It wasn't a bad bar, it just wasn't a good bar either.



PURCHASED FROM:
The German Deli

Ritter Sport- Strawberry Yogurt (Erdbeer Joghurt)

Is something automatically healthy if it has yogurt in it?
It's pretty hard not to like strawberry yogurt one way or the other and how could it possibly be bad mixed with chocolate? Thanks to the fine folks at Ritter we get to try it first hand.

When you open the bar- which is the traditional large square bar- it smells of sweet strawberry, there's the tangy almost sour smell of yogurt and of course the milky chocolate.

The yogurt layer is a semi-soft mousse like filling with studs of freeze dried strawberries. The yogurt has an almost New York Cheesecake style tartness to it. I couldn't tell if the strawberry flavor was from that- or if it was residual from the freeze dried pieces. I love the strawberry pieces, they add an unexpected crunch, they reminded me of Pop Rocks (without the pop) It's not a natural strawberry flavor, but that's alright. It's one of those things where it's so fake it's good.
The milk chocolate is the standard sweet Ritter. There is a strong dairy element. There's a nice smooth melt.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this bar. It could have been too fake, it could have been too sweet but it managed to be just right. I think a blueberry version of this would be really good!

PURCHASED FROM:
Economy Candy NYC