Fancy Food Show 2010 Continued

The first night I was in NY, my friend Ruth (she makes fabulous jams and wanted to go to the Fancy Food Show to learn about selling them on a larger scale) joined me and we went to Junior's for cheesecake.  Look at this beauty:

Oh yes, that's cheesecake with chocolate cake, amazing chocolate frosting and chocolate chips and chocolate shavings.  It was absolutely fresh, moist and delicious.  And HUGE!

We also hit Hershey's Time Square store (as I mentioned) and I found these:

Macadamia nut Kisses!  I love how the paper tag says Aloha!  These are wickedly addictive.  I haven't seen them anywhere else, but I highly recommend them.  I ate almost a whole bag one night in my hotel room.  It was the nuts - crunchy, delish.

Here we are at the show (see how big it all is?):

You weren't supposed to take any pictures, but my buddies at Walkers let me.  Look at this amazing booth:

Rich wood, thick carpet - and it was packed the whole show.  The gang was doing some SERIOUS business.  This is the booth right before the award celebration:

They gave the guests these great Walker's goodies:

I love the paragraph on the back of the gorgeous black tin - Walkers is still owned by the founding family.  And they do make some simply amazing shortbread:

And eight cookies were packed in there!

We'll be reviewing them in upcoming posts = sooooo good!!

Now, since one of my readers (thanks, Perry!) recommended these, I had to try some:

These cookies contains real bits of ginger:

Now, here's the deal - if you like ginger - these are amazing!  I think real ginger tastes weird, so I am not crazy about these.  My heart belongs to shortbread.

It was so fun to be part of the Walkers' celebration!  And to play in NYC!  More to come!!!

Eggnog, Pecan Pie, and Gingerbread

Well I've been regaling you with reviews of cheapie chocolate, how about some of the fancier brands? Both Ghirardelli and Godiva did some special seasonal flavors.

Let me just say - WOW! This has a great flavor with that smooth Ghirardelli chocolate. This is more than just chocolate with some pecans tossed in - it smells great, just like real pecan pie and has that special pecan pie taste. I think the pecans are carmelized. Very, very good. and I live in the land of pecan pie, so I should know.

They also did eggnog:

Okay, I don't like this. I like the fact that I can taste the cinnamon, but I don't like this one. Now, I'm not a big eggnog person, so if you like eggnog, you might like it.

Godiva did eggnog (boo!) and gingerbread (yay!):

The dark chocolate one is the eggnog. and yep, I don't like it. Too eggy. I liked the cinnamon taste of the Ghirardelli, which I didn't taste here. But I did like the dark chocolate. The perfect one in my mind would combine dark chocolate and cinnamon with the eggnog. Wait, the perfect one in my mind wouldn't have any eggnog. Yuck.

The gingerbread is much more up my alley:

I actually like this one. The gingerbread taste is fairly subtle. It's good. Is it better than chocolate covered gingerbread? Not in my book? I am standing by my assessement that Godiva is overpriced. $2.25 a truffle? Please! I can get a whole bunch of Archway gingerbread men for that. And they are better!!

Two more gingerbread concoctions - the first from Crate and Barrel. is gingerbread caramels:

I had high hopes for these. I love gingerbread and love carmel. And when I first starting eating one, I thought it was great. BUT over time the spices really came out and were overpowering, leaving a terrible aftertaste. So disappointing! And so NOT good. ARGH! Not cheap and now I have a whole tin full of awful caramels. Don't get these, even if they are half price.

These are by Choxie, Target's chocolate. I haven't tried Choxie yet, so we're going to see more of them. They are not off to a good start:

The box reads: "the home-baked crunch of warmly-spiced gingerbread pieces, dipped in sweet white chocolate swirled with dark." The box lies.


These are spitters. Yep, they are so bad you have to spit them out. They have a weird salty taste that makes me wonder what really is in the middle of them - it sure doesn't taste like "warmly-spiced gingerbread". It's bad. this doesn't bode well for Choxie.

Just because a flavor is good, doesn't mean it needs to be a chocolate (or a caramel or a jelly bean or a martini.) Stop the madness!