Make-your-own-combination chocolate bars must be the next big thing – or at least some people hope they are. As soon as I posted my review of Chocri, what should we get but an offer of samples from another website that offers the same sort of product.

Chocomize is American (although they use Belgian chocolate) and offers a different range of additions, although they also say that ten billion combinations are possible. They offer some pre-made combinations, which doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the thing, but as someone who previously lamented that I didn’t really want to pick from among ten billion choices, I guess I shouldn’t throw stones, right?

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Another box of filled chocolates to sample! You guys have no idea how hard I work for you. Derry Church Artisan Chocolates have a schtick which is kind of cute, where each one is named after a city and is flavored with stuff that at least sort of has something to do with the place they are named after. They also have some flavors that I can pretty much guarantee you have never encountered, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes very much not so good at all.

San Fran – black mission figs. Good dark chocolate. Just a hint of figs really but it’s enough. It’s a good combination.

London – butter toffee and crushed almonds. I picked this up and said to my assistant “I don’t like toffee, you can have this one,” and took a little bite. And then finished the whole piece. (Don’t worry, there were two, he got the other.) Nice and buttery and not the kind that sticks in your teeth. They need to make a whole big bar of this.

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Chocri is a German company that plans to open for business in the US in the new year. Their website allows you to design your own chocolate bars – white, dark, or milk, with your choice of additions, which range from the normal (nuts, fruit) to the more exotic (gold balls, gummy bears, spices).

When they asked if I’d like to order some sample bars to review, I was all “heck yeah,” but as I delved into the site, I began to realize that I am not exactly the ideal customer for this sort of thing. Because A, I have very strong opinions about what flavors go together, and B, I am overwhelmed by too many choices.

So, on the one hand the only things I would be sure I would like were the totally traditional choices like milk chocolate with crispy rice. On the other hand I knew that was totally not in the spirit of the thing. What would be the point of getting a combination that I could get anywhere?

Beyond that, I no longer remember exactly what went on in my mind as I clicked around the options on their site – so many that they claim that more than ten billion combinations are possible. So when the following bars arrived, I thought some crazy person had ordered them:

• White with red rice and mango cubes
• Milk with coconut shavings, candied rose petals and a marzipan rose
• Dark with pecans, sour cherries and orange pepper

Well, on the bright side, they sure aren’t anything you could walk into a store and buy, right?

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Aequare chocolates have an interesting story about the chef who started the company and how they’re single origin Ecuadorian chocolate and ingredients and blah blah. You can read their website for all that. What you came here to read is how they taste, right?

When asked if I wanted a sample of these to review, I checked them out and the answer was an immediate HECK YES. This is definitely my kind of thing. On the other hand, that means I’m a tough customer. Like, to start, I was not all that excited about the Dark Chocolate Cocoa Beans, because I don’t really see any reason to eat cocoa beans. I mean, there must be a reason that humanity invented the elaborate processes that turn them into chocolate, right?

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I haven’t posted a review here for a while, but it’s not because I haven’t been eating candy. It’s because I made the mistake of saying that I would review these Target chocolates, and I have been unable to face up to it. It’s just too depressing.

I have prided myself on always being able to get something to write out of a candy – if it’s terrible, at least finding something funny to say about it. But there’s nothing funny about how bad these are.

It’s just totally depressing that Target thinks they can fool us into thinking that these are ‘artisan truffles’ just because they have fashionable flavor names and are visually a poor imitation of the most high-end sort of chocolate, and that it doesn’t matter that as something to actually eat, they’re totally awful.

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