Chocolate and Orange - I Say No

Godiva's orange sherbet concoction got me thinking about the whole chocolate/orange combo.  I like orange, I like chocolate.  But do they really need to be together?

This is Lindt's Arancia (Italian for orange) truffle:

Holy cow it's strong!  That filling tastes like Tang!  Whoa!  This might be a little too much.

This is the famous Lindor truffle in orange:

This is better - that great creamy Lindt chocolate with a taste of orange.  Is it my favorite combo?  (With peanut butter and hazelnut in the mix?)  Not really, but this is a better balance.

This is a awesome milk chocolate bar with creamy orange filling:

Now that filling doesn't really look like the filling in the picture, does it?  Taste wise, it's pretty heavy on the orange.  I gotta tell you, this combo just doesn't really work all that well for me.

New Tree has this combo - Bitter Orange and Crisped Rice:

While I like the crisped rice, I'm not a fan of bitter orange.

Chocolove has orange peel in dark chocolate:

I like the dark chocolate, but I don't think orange PEEL really adds anything.

Seattle Chocolates at least adds CANDIED orange peel:

Love the wonderful dark chocolate truffle bar - was not thrilled by the chewy orange peely chunks.
Look at this giant box of Orange Sticks:

The picture doesn't really show it, but that's a jellied orange center.  I don't really love those jellied centers, but these are scarily addictive.  If you like those creepy orange slices, you'll adore these.  By the Sweet Candy Company http://www.sweetcandy.com/.  I got the box at Candy Expo - thanks Sweet's!

This is by Harvest Sweets and after I ate some......

I discovered they were milk chocolate covered orange PEEL!  EWWW!!!  Too bitter and I don't like that peel texture.  Even a chocolate coating can't save these.  UGH!  The worst of the lot.

These just say Orange and are by Lindt:

Dark chocolate with a hint of orange - I liked these best.  More to the chocolate end of the spectrum than the orange and the chunks aren't so bitter.  Maybe they aren't orange PEEL.

This exotic bar is by B.T. McElrath Chocolatier and it is dark and white chocolates infused with passion fruit and tangerine:

Look how pretty!

I really wanted to like this bar - it's so pretty, the chocolates swirled together.  But......it really didn't do much for me.  Passion fruit tastes kinda weird to me and the flavor combos just didn't wow me.  For $5.00 I want a bar to wow me.

Chocolate and orange - I say no.  I think each is way better without the addition of the other.  Maybe a slight hint of orange in some confections, but overall - nah.  What do you think, dear readers?

And orange peel - really?  Just leave that be. 

Shamu and the Cherry Tree

Hi Gang! Sorry for the long break - I've been extremely busy motivating as many people as possible. (And stocking up on Easter candy!! Soon to come!)

I have to finish up the whole cherry thing - there's just no better time than the present.

Endangered Species Chocolate has a 48% cocoa milk chocolate with cherries bar. This is one of those bars that have a kumbayah component:

10% of net profits are donated to help support species, habitat and humanity. (I guess that covers just about everything.) Inside the wrapper, you can read all about the dolphin. (Too bad it wasn't the killer whale.) You get some info about dolphins and some clever ideas on how you can help save the species - example: "pick up litter everyday - trash is often confused with food by mammals." Hell, just yesterday I saw a dolphin on the side of the road trying to eat a Whopper wrapper.

Killer whales confuse stupid humans for food too. As do tigers. That's not on the wrapper.

Here's the actual chocolate, but when you're saving a species, who cares, right?

The chocolate is okay - nothing bad, smooth. But cherries? What cherries? I can't smell them, I can't taste them. I can see a few. They are there, but the flavor is completely overpowered by the chocolate. Why bother? Oh yeah - to help the dolphins. Kumbayah.

Seeds of Change has some kumbayah propaganda too - "1% of net sales are used to advance the cause of sustainable organic agriculture worldwide." It's all about the organic thing.

I love their packaging - inside are three individually wrapped bars. Much better than just one giant bar.

I like the darker chocolate (61% cacao) much better with the cherries and I can taste them better. This is a really good bar. And I have to say the Seeds of Change sales rep at candy expo was the best! She was so enthusiastic and nice!!

New Tree has lots of different flavors - this one is Blush. It's billed as "rejuvenating" (sounds like a line for spas):

These boxes are little - two inches tall - one inch wide - with three pieces inside. Cute.

Taste? Ugh. 73% cocoa - and cherry? I can't sense any cherry. The only way I can think of to describe these is bland. Bland chocolate - that's just depressing. I do not feel rejuvenated.

Chocolove is one of my favorites:

Now this isn't fair because this bar also has almonds which makes it REALLY delicious. Crunchy nuts, chewy cherries and nice dark chocolate.

I love Chocolove!!

Seattle Chocolates has the most gorgeous wrappers - I love them! Very colorful and so art deco!

This is a dark chocolate truffle bar with praline pecans and cherries.

The truffle filling gives this bar a creamy rich taste, but I can't taste any cherries. I'm sad - I had high hopes for this bar! Not very exciting.

Even Choxie has a bar with cherries:

This is a mini bar in dark chocolate with almonds and cherries.

And as with all the Choxie that has gone before - yuck. It has a cherry taste (a nice change from some of these) but the chocolate is awful.

This Choxie bar sounds great - solid milk chocolate with roasted Mission almonds, cashews and Montmorency tart cherries. The nuts are there, the cherries are there, but the bar still sucks. Choxie just isn't very good. Here, Shamu!

Looks good, but the Hershey bar with almonds is much better.

This bar has all the goodies just sprinkled on top - no cherries, but strawberries, blueberries, cranberries and white chocolate chips. It's from Hebert Candies (http://www.hebertcandies.com/) and is a Fully Loaded bar. I mean that's the name, it's clearly fully loaded.

It looks pretty good, right?

And it is! Truly! But all those berries and the white chocolate make it too sweet for me. The chocolate is WAY better than Choxie. It's an interesting and good bar - worth trying. If it had nuts, I would LOVE it!!!

The Twin Bing is by the Palmer Candy company (http://www.palmercandy.com/) - not to be confused with R.M. Palmer, the maker of copious quantities of el cheapo chocolate. I read about this candy bar - it's one of those first made back in 1923. And I was prepared to hate it. I mean look at it!

It has a cherry flavored center surrounded by chocolate, wrapped in a ball of chopped peanuts in chocolate. It looks kind of creepy. I made be the only person alive who likes this, but I do! I took one tentative bite and then ate the whole thing! I can't explain it. Maybe I confused it with food.

It's no gourmet treat (that's not a real cherry in there) and it's not something I would buy again, but I gotta tell you, I liked it way more than I thought I would. It must be the peanuts? I have no explanation.

Did you have any idea there was so much cherry and chocolate candy out there? I'm not a huge cherry fan, but the ones I can't stop eating are the cherry cordial Hershey's Kisses! I love them.

Takeaways?

Try new things - you never know what you might really like.

As always, don't judge a candy bar (or Bing) or anything else by its appearance. Things can look ugly and still be awesome. It's what's on the inside that counts.

And finally, don't get in the mouth of a killer whale.

Tutti Frutti, oh Rudy

Little Richard was born in the town I grew up in - Macon, Georgia.

Today we are going to talk about chocolate with fruit flavors.

That means we have a theme song - Tutti Frutti, oh Rudy! a wop bop-a-loo-bop a wop bam boom!


Let's start with orange:

We have already reviewed Terry's Orange (the best thing about it was its cool shape and that I had to beat it with a stapler to get it to break apart into slices). As a rule, I'm not thrilled about the chocolate/orange combo. I dunno - just seems like there are sooo many better choices (I mean why pick orange when you can have caramel, peanut butter, or nuts?)

The fluorescent nightmare on the right is a teuscher Mandarin Chocolate bar http://www.teuscherfifthavenue.com/index.php I got this in their Fifth Avenue store which is decorated like a bad cross between a funeral parlor and Hello Kitty. It's actually disturbing - like five year old beauty queens. The home page of the website gives for a feel for it. This is a Swiss chocolatier, but this bar is awful. I have several of their bars, so I'm hoping the others are better. Avoid this orange wrapper like you avoid orange traffic cones.

The Lindt bar really surprised me - it actually has pieces of orange and almond slivers. And I found the chocolate richer, smoother and creamier by far than the teuscher bar. This is the best orange/chocolate combo I've tried yet. If you like orange and chocolate - this is IT! Good Golly Miss Molly!

Chuao Chocolatier makes these ChocoPods:

Great packaging! Love the shiny, metallic pink wrapper and the cacao pod shape! These were Passion - Passion Fruit Caramel. Okay - I don't know if I got a bad batch, but these tasted terrible. Maybe the passion fruit is too weird, I don't know. I just thought they tasted, well, wrong. If I see a different flavor, I'll try these again, but they were really bad. Oh Rudy!

Another Lindt bar:

This one is a 70% dark bar (delish, smooth dark chocolate) with cherry filling and supposedly with "the lingering heat of chili." My verdict? zzzzzz Boring. Too subtle on the cherry and chili. If there's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on, it ain't going on here. Pass.

Now these kind of scare me, but I'm going in:

Let's start with Crave by NewTree http://www.newtree.com/chocolates.php The chocolate was good, but I'm not a big apricot fan and the apricot flavor is pretty strong. I did like the fact that in this box are three individually wrapped bars - very nice. Here's what I don't like - they have 11 flavors - crave is one - others include forgiveness, blush, cocoon, vigor - PLEASE! Forgiveness is not a flavor! Neither is cocoon! Everybody has to have an angle, but damn! There's a whole lotta BS goin' on! (I'll try more of these, though - the chocolate was nice and smooth.)

The other two are by Dolfin (they had a great chocolate bar that was weak on the almonds, reviewed in the Nuts post). In the tan wrapper is Summer Memories, Apple Crumble - it has apple, hazelnuts, and sugarcane. Eh. Didn't do much for me. Sounds more interesting than it is. Caramel and chocolate REAL apples are soooooo much better.

The screamin' green wrapper is Fruity Escapade (okay, that's just insane - it sounds like something the Fruit of the Loom guys would be involved in). The flavors here are apple, peach and apricot. What the hell was I thinking when I bought this?

Actually it's not bad - the chocolate has so much flavor and the fruit is very subtle, so the combo is very good. There are fruit pieces in the chocolate. I like the size of this bar too - it's a 1.058 oz bar (those large Lindt bars are 3.5 oz to give you a comparison).

So far, I really like fresh fruit with chocolate best - the giant apples at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory - oh, baby!! Those are awesome!! But of these bars, my very favorite was the Lindt Intense Orange. I highly recommend this one. A wop bop-a-loo-bop a wop bam boom!

Music is a great motivator - I think we all should have a theme song. Or at least a cool fruit costume.