Chocomize Custom Candy Bar: Currying Flavor

Once again, guys, I am going to indulge my love of creating custom candy concoctions (say that five times fast) by reviewing another bar that the nice folks over at Chocomize let me create.

I love Indian food. This was not always the case. In fact, as I have said in previous reviews, it really took the chef/owner of a sadly now-closed Indian restaurant in northern Georgia to bring me around -- but once he did, I was hooked. (Ken, wherever you may be, I would kill for an Indian crabcake). In addition to loving not only traditional Indian (and Indian fusion) dishes, I also just like the spices and ingredients that go into them.



"Currying Flavor" was inspired by my love of all things Indian. (And I'm hard core here. I even have my own copy of the Bollywood musical version of Fight Club.) As I do with all my custom bars, I am only rating the bar based on the individual ingredients and NOT the overall taste of the bar. Because I put the combination together myself, the ingredients could be top-notch on their own, but maybe never should have been put together -- and if that's the case, the fault is mine and not Chocomize's, so I won't ding them for it.



Anyway, Currying Flavor contains:

A milk chocolate base
Crystallized rose petals
Hot curry powder
Roasted pistachios
Diced mango

I liked the milk chocolate base more in this bar than I did in the first review I tried it with (the "Sugar High" bar). It's still very milky and a little sweeter than I prefer -- but in this case, the sweetness balances the heat and spice from the curry and the mango perfectly, and it just works really well.

The mango chunks are exactly what you'd expect of dried mango. They are generously sized and are a little chewy. The flavor is fresh and it has that nice, light warmth that mango has. The mango pieces are good enough to snack on by themselves!

The pistachios are on the small side, but they whole and very fresh. They were still nice and crunchy, though I would have liked for them to have been salted a bit more. But they were good either way.



The curry powder is liberally sprinkled on the top of the chocolate. There is enough so that you see it and you definitely taste it...but not so much that you feel like it's flocked like a cheap Christmas tree. I like it because it adds just enough curry to wake you up and let you know it's there, but not so much that you wonder what demon ever possessed you to put curry in with chocolate.

The rose petals were a pleasant surprise. Honestly, I was expecting them to simply taste like sugar. And while they certainly do have a sugary edge and crunch to them, you can actually taste the rose! I love that!

All in all, every single one of the ingredients on its own was pretty good. Yes, the milk chocolate is still sweeter than I liked, but when paired with everything else it just worked.

While I will not be rating the bar on the overall taste, I wish I could -- everything just paired up much better than I could have hoped for.

If you would like to try this bar (or create your own), the nice folks over at Chocomize have given my readers a generous 10% off coupon. If you use coupon code "Gigi" at checkout, you get 10% off your order! How can ya say no to that?

This bar was just really, incredibly good!



PURCHASED FROM:
Sample from company

CALORIES:
133 Calories per 1/5th bar.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains nuts. May contain traces of milk, nuts and gluten.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
chocomize.com

Chocri Custom Bar: Gigi's Persian Bar

It was with great excitement last month that I reviewed the first of the three custom Chocri bars that I got to create (see Gigi's Dream Lemon Bar). Chocri has been creating custom chocolate bars in Europe for years, and is now offering them in the United States.

I've said it before, but I love the idea of creating a bar that has exactly what I want in it. Visit CreateMyChocolate.com to see for yourself.



This bar was inspired by my love of Persian ice cream. Persian ice cream, if you have never had it -- and if not, you should -- is typically a base that is flavored with rosewater and saffron. (A few places where I have eaten it were either cutting costs or catering to unadventurous American customers, and they used vanilla ice cream as the base and added the rose and saffron on top of that.) There are almost always pistachios added. I have also had versions that include ginger and/or pomegranate sauce. I am not sure which of those were the most authentic version (if any) but I liked them in any event.

With this bar I used a milk chocolate base. In retrospect I probably should have used white chocolate -- and Chocri does offer white chocolate as an option. But as we all know, I pretty much hate white chocolate, so I went with milk. Also in the bar are candied rose petals, cinnamon, pistachios and candied ginger.

Just as with the last bar, I am going to rate this one based on the individual ingredients rather than the overall taste of the bar. After all, each ingredient could be great on its own, but it could be my combination that doesn't do the bar justice -- and it would be unfair to ding Chocri for my own poor choices. And if it does taste good together, well...that just makes me awesome. I guess (and modest).



The chocolate: Crocri has a really, really good milk chocolate. It's extra creamy, and you can really taste the dairy. Super smooth, fast melt.

The ginger: Soft and very sweet. If you're not into super-hot ginger, this is perfect for you. If you are into super-hot ginger...errrrm...well, maybe just eat a lot of it. It does taste good.

The pistachios: The bar uses whole pistachios! Not halves, not little pieces, but whole entire nuts. And they are crunchy and salty and delicious!

The rose petals: Super crunchy from the sugaring. The texture is nice. I didn't really notice a strong rose flavor, but they are pretty (they are a really vivid pink) and the sugar was good.

The cinnamon: Large dark sprinkles lay just on top of the chocolate. It adds a tiny bit of extra warmth and spices up the chocolate.



Once again, my compliments to the folks at Chocri for having a perfect sense of proportion. Everything was pretty equally balanced perfectly. And all of the ingredients were fantastic. (OK so the rose petals didn't really taste like rose -- but they did look good, and they were covered in sugar.) I liked the milk chocolate so much I could happily eat it plain.



While I am not rating based on the overall flavor, I have to say it was a pretty good combo. The sweetness of the milk chocolate keeps the ginger hot, but also keeps it from tasting soapy. The rose petals add color and some extra sweetness. The whole pistachios bring salt and crunch to the bar.

As much as I liked my Dream Lemon Bar, I liked this bar even more. If you would like to try it the way I put it together, it's easy: Just go to Chocri's web site and use the reorder option when making selections for your custom bar, and use this code: f9yz1e



PURCHASED FROM:
Sample From Company

Beech's Rose Creams

I was perusing the selection at my local Brit import store, trying to get my hands on that Wispa Gold stuff that Jim loved...sadly, I had no such luck.

But all was not lost. There are always many interesting products available, and they did have a nice little table display with a variety of Beech's Creams candies.

This one caught my eye because it was a rose flavored cream! I happen to love rose flavored items, and I just had to have them. Once I got home I tried to do a little research on Beech's because I had never heard of them. I didn't find much, other than Beech's own website. In a nutshell, the company was started in 1920 in the town of Preston in the North West of England...well,OK, that's really as far as I read. Let's just skip to the candy.



Each little patty is about the size of a U.S. half dollar coin, and they are nicely presented in three neat little rows. There are 11 individual candies in the in the box. Once opened, the sweet smell of roses wafts up.

The patties are made with dark chocolate (the box says 55% minimum). The chocolate is thin and soft. There's no snap -- though, to be fair, I wasn't really expecting it in a fondant-filled patty. There's not much a flavor to the chocolate either, other than super-sweet. The melt is waxy and lumpy.



And then there's the rose fondant itself. While the picture on the box would lead you to expect a pink filling, the fondant is actually white with only the very faintest hint of pinkish-lavender. The fondant is slightly sticky but perfectly smooth. The rose flavor is strongly floral (well, DUH!) but it's also oddly fruity. It tastes like chemicals trying to taste like rose water.

Even worse, far worse, is the aftertaste. Think of old flowers and cat pee. (No, I don't really know what cat pee tastes like, I'm just guessing by the stink -- and what I imagine is pretty similar to this.) And did I mention that it lingers...and lingers...and lingers...? You'll need to brush your teeth immediately after eating one.



I wanted to like these candies. I really wanted to. But they just don't taste good. In fact, they are so far from good that if we were talking in terms of miles, I could practically walk to England from Southern California and it still would not be far enough to get away from them.

These will truly make you gag. BLECCH!



PURCHASED FROM:
The British Emporium (Upland, California)

Sultans Turkish Delight

I love the flavors of Turkish Delight. Rose water is not used nearly as much as it should be, and I really wish that there was more high end rose water flavored chocolate.

I had previously tried Fry's Turkish Delight and loved it. I knew that Sultans was a competing product, but until recently had not been able to get my hands on a bar.



As you can see, my bar was not the prettiest bar ever. It was marred, scarred and slightly bloomed. The aroma was mostly that of too-sweet chocolate and lemon zest. But since lemon zest makes everything better, I will call that a good thing.



The bright pink center looks deceptively like a piece of tuna sushi enrobed in chocolate (mmm sushi...). The chocolate is, as I had feared, way too sweet. It's grainy, it's oily, and it has no melt. It just lumps in your mouth.

The beautifully colored filling is deeply flavored with both lemon and rose water. That should be fantastic -- but sadly, both flavors are so strong and so artificial that it ends up tasting like a jelly candle. The aftertaste is lingering and perfumy.

The texture of the center was interesting. Whereas the Fry's version had been like either a very soft gummy or a very firm jelly, the Sultans version is a jelly that softens to almost a creamy melt. It was a neat sensation and had it tasted good, I would have loved it. But it DIDN'T taste good, and that defeats the whole purpose of candy.

Blecch. This was just bad and disappointing.




PURCHASED FROM:
THE BRITISH EMPORIUM
Upland, California

Fuwarinka Rose Flavored Gum

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Fry's Turkish Delight

This is another review I have to give Jim over at Jim's Chocolate Mission a shout out for.
Jim reviewed this bar a few months ago (check it out HERE) and it just looked and sounded like something I had to try.

I admit, at first I had to do a Google search to find out exactly what Turkish Delight is- and for those of you that don't know it's a candy made of sugar and starch (sort of like Boton Rice Candy)and it is often flavored with things like Rose Water, lemon or even mint and nuts.

Fry's Turkish Delight is a Turkish Delight center that's enrobed in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

Once you open the bar give it a good sniff, it has the faint scent of rose water. The chocolate is very sweet, slightly gritty and it melted at a strangely fast rate (or maybe I am just so hot that I melt things instantly!).
This bar is not about the chocolate, it's about the filling. The Turkish Delight texture wise is- depending on your point of view- either a very firm jelly or a very soft gummi. I want to say it was sticky, but that's not really the right word. It was more like tacky. I LOVED the flavor! it was a soft rose water with a hint of lemon and a sweet finish. It almost reminded me of a solid form of Persian Ice Cream. I did something I don't often do with this bar- I finished it in one sitting!

PURCHASED FROM:
THE BRITISH EMPORIUM Upland