Looking for a gorgeous chocolate gift? Whether you’re treating yourself or someone else, Edward Marc has some lovely goodies to share with you. I recently received of a box of Edward Marc gourmet assorted chocolates and a box of chocolate peanut butter pretzels to review.

The first thing I noticed was the packaging. It’s very classy and elegant, without being stuffy. My immediate thought was “Ooh, this would make a nice gift!” When I opened the box of chocolates, I was delighted to see that the inside was even prettier than the outside.

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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?

I ordered a dark chocolate bar with pecan and sour cherries, same as from Chocri, and then threw in some candied rose petals for the heck of it, since I’d thought they’d be better with dark chocolate than the milk I’d had them with before.

I also asked for a sample of the milk and white chocolate for comparison, and actually they sent me two more whole bars with surprise additions. Which – again speaking as someone who didn’t really want to pick from among ten billion choices – was kind of a relief actually.

The milk chocolate bar had blueberries, honey roasted soybeans, and crystallized violet petals – perhaps they overestimated my degree of interest in eating candied flowers. The white chocolate had only dried strawberries, and the simplicity was a nice change from the other two.

Again, I think my personal opinion of the combinations is kind of beside the point. I mean, to start, I think that three things added to a chocolate bar is too much, actually. And you probably know whether or not you like honey roasted soybeans or not. (If you don’t, though, try them. They are surprisingly good, like peanuts but less greasy.) Basically, I am sure you are all grownup responsible chocolate eaters who can be trusted to combine these things for yourselves. You don’t need my opinion.

How about the chocolate, though? Like I said in my Chocri review, I come to this with a prejudice that Americans have a tendency to pile on the toppings (pizza, sandwiches, etc.) with the apparent assumption that if there’s enough stuff on top, it doesn’t matter that the underlying product isn’t of very good quality.

Well, OK, I apologize for my prejudice. This chocolate is less to my personal taste than the Chocri, but neither is it a cheap junk that they’re hoping you won’t notice under a load of gummy bears, wasabi peas and gold flakes.

I was most suspicious of the white chocolate, on general principles, because there is so much bad stuff going under the guise of white chocolate. It didn’t help much that the big, dark, wrinkled lumps of dried strawberries looked on first glance like – um, let’s just say it was something not edible, and maybe only my mind would jump to that idea because I’ve spent a lot of time in my life cleaning up after a wide range of animals.

But the white chocolate is good. It is sweeter than the Chocri, but quite acceptable. And the strawberries are a good addition in the way that strawberries go well with white creamy things.

The dark chocolate is also not bad. Also a hair too sweet – but I like very bitter dark chocolate. The cherries and pecans are good. And so is the rose petal, with a very strong rose flavor, but I wanted to pick it off and eat it separately (which was unfortunately impossible). OK, I give up – candied flower petals on chocolate are a bad idea. I tried something new, now can I please just stick to nuts and crispy rice? Thanks.

The milk chocolate was my least favorite but I am a tough customer for milk chocolate, I prefer it to be basically dark chocolate over which someone has more or less waved a carton of milk. I think it’s fair to assume that someone whose favorite kind of chocolate is milk chocolate is going to like this better than I did.

I don’t care for the ‘big chunks scattered on top’ approach that both of these companies take. I’d rather have smaller pieces more evenly distributed. They’re obviously going for the visual effect, with similar packaging with clear plastic windows displaying the top of the bar. (Which as noted in the case of the strawberries was not such a hot idea.)

Overall I think these bars are – not surprisingly – more pitched to American tastes as far as sweetness level. If you are the sort of person who often complains that things are too sweet, I suspect you would prefer the Chocri. If that is not one of your recurring problems, you are likely going to be OK with the Chocomize. But you would not be embarrassed giving either as a gift, and since they have different toppings, your choice might come down to either the choice of additions and/or the price, which I can’t speak to, having not paid for either one.

So, if this sounds like fun to you, go wild. Personally, now I am going to go eat some PLAIN chocolate for a change of pace. And please, if there is really anyone out who is tempted to order a chocolate bar with Sour Patch Kids on it, I would rather not know about it, OK?

Candy Addict received this product as a sample from the manufacturer. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

• Chocomize Website

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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I’ve been on hiatus from the candy world ever since I relocated to Montana for graduate school. My days seem to be riddled with homework and the correcting of grammatical mistakes made by the students in the freshmen composition course that I teach. Have you ever tried reading 24 essays for split infinitives, misuse of appositives, and the lack of proper semicolon use? Let’s just say it makes for a very draining experience.

Luckily, the kind folks over at Bubble Chocolate knew just how to perk up my day by mailing me a sample of their chocolate. In what world is free chocolate not a good thing?

I had never heard of this company, which makes sense considering they are new and based on the East Coast. But I have heard of and consumed similar products. Aerated chocolate, the candy term for such a confection, is something I first discovered in New Zealand with Nestle’s Aero, but have seen in many forms since.

For those of you not familiar with aerated chocolate, my best equivalent is to compare crème fraiche to meringue: they are both similar in consistency and appearance, but the latter is much lighter. Bubble Chocolate comes in two varieties: milk and dark chocolate.

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