Fruit and Cookies - I Say Yes! Yes! Yes!

There's no chocolate at all in this post, but there is more fruit!  The problem is there are so many great vendors at Candy Expo and the Fancy Food Show I get distracted and venture into other areas....like cookies.  I am the female Homer Simpson when it comes to cookies.

At Candy Expo I met a great guy named Gordon Cramer who works for Biscomerica. He really hooked me up with some FABULOUS samples! Look at all these different flavors of Knott's Berry Farm Shortbread:

And I gotta tell you - they are all good!  Raspberry and Boysenberry are really, really good - but they all are sooo hard to stop eating!  They are not as rich and buttery as Walker's, but they good.  They are relatively inexpensive and the fruity taste is there, but not overpowering.  Good, good stuff!!

And I didn't know this, but according to the wrappers - In 1920 Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries and preserves from a roadside berry stand in California.  They earned a place in history when Walter cultivated a luscious new fruit - the boysenberry!  (Who knew?)

Lance (Archway is a Lance brand) was at Candy Expo too and I got a sample of their fruit filled strawberry cookies:

I have to say I was really disappointed.  There's not much fruit filling at all - got a dot in the middle.  And the cookies, while soft and cakey - really didn't have much flavor.  I usually like Archway, so I was very sad about these. 

This cutie is raspberry shortbread from Harry and David:

It's yummy - nice and buttery, but could use a little more raspberry.

These, however, are absolutely to die for:

Look at all that filling!  This is blackberry:

And this is peach:

And they are soooo buttery and so fruity - I swear they are sinful.  Harry and David makes some of the best baked goods on the market.  AMAZING!!!   They also come in raspberry.

These cute, all-butter biscuits (cookies to us Americans) have blackcurrant juice in them:

I just don't like that blackcurrant taste.  Slightly bitter.  And the purple color really isn't appetizing to me.  Cute for kids, but can't told a candle to these babies:

Walker's pure butter raspberry thins:

Delicious buttery taste offset by tart raspberry and in perfect balance.  These cookies are truly a work of art.  I love Walker's.

And on their package it says - "For a real treat these are truly wonderful served with raspberries and fresh cream - the perfect Scottish dessert."  YUM!  We ain't talking no roadside stand here!

McVitie's has a currant shortcake:

No good - dry and tasteless.  Somehow I bet the British love them.

At the Fancy Food Show I met the great folks from Flathau's Fine Foods based in Mississippi.  They were so nice and set me a box of their gourmet shortbread cookies - all flavors (more reviews to come). They come in a couple of different packages:

They taste the same - one might be a little overdone (you can see the difference in the color).  These are raspberry and have little chunks of candy in them.  These are great if you are looking for something that is flavorful, but not too sweet.  And I like my cookies SWEET!  I like them, but the problem is......

I am completely addicted to these raspberry tea cookies from Harry and David:

These are so powdery and sweet and raspberryish - oh man!  Every time I go into Harry and David I have to get some.  OMG!  Start buying Harry & David's baked goods at your own risk.

I think fruit and cookies work really well together.  And with all these berries we can rationalize that we are getting antioxidants.  Woohoo!!!  It just doesn't get much better......unless chocolate is involved.

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.