For the longest time, my palate’s intelligence for toffee has resembled my career in high school geometry: I liked the class and got a B, but I was nowhere near as good in it as I was in English (chocolate) and Science (gummi). Toffee always seemed likable, but I never ate enough of the stuff to be an aficionado.

Toffee itself is a simple candy made by boiling sugar and mixing it with butter. Though most Americans identify toffee by the way it appears in Heath and Skor bars, it can take several forms. English toffee is a derivative that can be chewy, and honeycomb toffee is aerated, as found in Crunchie and Violet Crumble bars.

Toffee tends to be a flavor spread around by the British, resulting in it being more popular in Europe and its colonies rather than in the U.S. When I was living in New Zealand, I was exposed to a variety of toffees of all different textures and tastes, which were never readily available to me back in the States. This inundation of the sweet created my craving for toffee that still exists today.

When I was offered to write a piece on LalaBoodles’ Gourmet Toffee, I couldn’t turn down the offer. I had never sampled gourmet toffee, and the descriptions of what they produced were so enticing that I circled my mailbox for an entire week until they showed.

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Hello, Dove chocolate. Where have you been all my life? Apparently Dove first hit the streets with the Dovebar ice cream treat in the 1950s. Since then Dove offerings have trickled onto supermarket shelves, and now there are cookies, chocolates, and ice cream (and speaking of Dove ice cream, you should really try it if you haven’t. The pints have a top layer of chocolate, so you break through the chocolate barrier to get to the ice cream. I cannot emphasize enough how incredible this is).

But, I digress. The matter at hand is some new chocolate from Dove, namely three flavors of the Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate line. The flavors are Roasted Hazelnut, Blueberry Almond, and Peanut Toffee Crunch. Each 3.53-ounce box holds three individually wrapped bars, which psychologically might be a good thing, since you can avoid feeling guilty if you eat just one of the wrapped packages.

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I live in Canada, where it’s a fact of life that many aspects of our culture are borrowed from our neighbors to the South – our TV shows, our chain restaurants, our food brands. And for the most part, we’re cool with that. The only problem is, we don’t get all of those things – just whatever sells well enough in the United States to be worth importing. (Vanilla Coke, Wild Cherry Pepsi, I miss you guys! Come back!)

So, when I got into this whole Internet candy thing a year or two ago, I was surprised to learn that many of my childhood candy staples like Coffee Crisp and Aero are not sold in the United States and, what’s more, they have legions of rabid American fans exchanging the addresses of obscure import grocery stores that carry the elusive candies – candies that are available at any gas station here in Canada. I’m too polite to say “Turnabout is fair play” – I am Canadian, after all – so instead, I’ll get right to today’s candy: the Cadbury Crunchie bar.

The Crunchie bar is technically of British origin, but it’s widely available here in Canada. (In the States, not so much.) Behind its extremely generic name, the Crunchie is actually pretty unique. It’s based on a traditional candy called sponge toffee, honeycomb, or cinder toffee, which is made by adding baking soda to molten sugar, causing the sugar to expand in a froth of bubbles. Once cooled, the foam becomes a light, airy, crunchy treat. It can be eaten plain or, as is the case with the Crunchie, coated in chocolate.

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(photo from davidlebovitz.com)
Even if you are not Jewish, you must RUN to your nearest place-where-there-are-Jews and buy a box of matzah. You must then RUN home and make a giant batch of this stuff. Seriously. Trust me - it’s THAT good.

When pastry chef David Lebovitz posted this recipe several months ago, I bookmarked it out of loyalty to a fellow Jew-slash-chef. Anyone brave enough to claim that this was the stuff of legend, AND be baking it a full four months early, had to be on to something, right? The recipe then got lost in a sea of bookmarks, until such time as another food blogger posted her version of this and reminded me of its existence. I will freely admit that I cut and pasted the recipe that very second and abandoned my computer to go and make some.

By the end of the day, I had endured several burnt fingertips and was surrounded by a sea of chocolate-smeared napkins. Not because I am a particularly messy pastry chef, but because I am an impatient so-and-so whose nose and eyes could no longer handle the absolutely heavenly caramel smell and the shiny molten chocolate layer on top. I ate rather more of it than I originally intended, AND I ate it before it was technically ready to eat, hence the scorched skin. Luckily for me and my Seder guests, the recipe yields enough that I had some to serve on both nights and even a few scraps to give the kids in the days after.

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(image from danzimmermann.com)

Honeycomb (also known as Cinder Toffee) is one of those quintessential British candies which has made its mark everywhere but the U.S. Here in Australia, people tend to either love them or hate them, and those in the “love it” camp have their favourite brand. Violet Crumble is perhaps the most well-known of the commercial honeycombs available.

Every time I’ve offered to bring someone a sweet treat from from Down Under, it’s either the Violet Crumble or the Crunchie they beg for. Honeycomb is essentially basic toffee which has baking soda added to it. The baking soda and molten sugar react, creating a volcanic eruption of sugary golden edible styrofoam. You can eat it as is, but dipping the irregular chunks into chocolate is delicious. You can also smash it up and mix it into cookies, top cupcakes with it, stir it through ice cream and sprinkle it on top of a chocolate cake for a whole new eating experience.

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Exotic treats are not what you commonly expect to find on the candy rack of the local gas station. And though exotic might be a bit lofty when describing Toffifay (known outside the US as Toffifee), its unique nature compared to its store shelf neighbors definitely makes it stand out.

I recall first running across this Storck product when I was young. I wasn’t a very big fan back then of toffee (unlike today) and avoided this odd confection at first. But the curious looking box the candies came in intrigued me, particularly the beautiful rendering of the candy on the front of the package that didn’t appear to be toffee-like at all (which it’s not).

Imagine my surprise the first time I opened the package. The box is open at the top with paper enveloping all sides. Once you push your thumb through the paper and pop open one side of the box you discover a golden plastic tray hiding inside with four inch-wide cups each containing an individual Toffifay piece.

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My friends and family were good to me this Christmas and, naturally, many of the exciting gifts I received were candy. Of all the various treats I was given, I was most intrigued by a tin from Peet’s. I’d never heard of Peet’s before, and was ready for some good eatin’ from the looks of the high-quality packaging. All four varieties in the one-pound tin looked and sounded tasty: Toffee Almond Crunch; Chocolate-Covered Cherries; Chocolate-Covered Blueberries; and Chocolate-Covered Cranberries. My only dilemma was deciding which candy to try first.

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Want some sustenance for an all-night gaming session, something that’ll deliver a kick of caffeine just as well as your Mountain Dew and Bawls? Uncommon Loot thought so. They recently sent over a few Headshot bars, whose packages boast, “Headshot is a candy made for gamers by gamers. Feeling tired owning all those newbs? There is enough energy packed into this bar to improve your game so much, that people will be complaining you have an Aimbot!” Made with guarana, a highly caffeinated berry, the bar promises to pack quite a punch.

The first flavor Uncommon Loot released is Chewy Chocolate Toffee, though they plan to follow up and release new flavors such as Chewy Peanut Butter, Fudge Graham and Mocha Cappuccino every three months. The packaging looks like something a gamer would pick up - it’s silver and adorned with a cross hair and bullet holes.

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Like most kids, I used to like searching for buried treasure. I’d still do it today, but my friends would refuse to be seen with me if I were to buy a metal detector and go searching for pieces of eight around the suburbs.

Still, the opportunity to strike gold arises every time I open my ridiculously cluttered bag, for somewhere below the sea of papers, pennies, and movie tickets from 8 years ago lie little golden treasures known as Werther’s Originals. Gustav Nebel created these wonderful little treats in the village of Werther over 100 years ago, and they have been a staple of purses, pockets, and candy dishes ever since.

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A long while back, I reviewed some wonderful chocolate covered blueberries from Chocolate Moon. Unfortunately, the company went out of business. Recently I received an email from Ms. Chocolate who said she now makes chocolate covered blueberries as good or better than the Chocolate Moon blueberries.

So, she sent me some and also sent me some chocolate covered apricots and cherries and also cocoa almonds and toffee almonds. The fruits are all dried before being coated in chocolate and a coating of colored, fruity, chocolaty candy. In a word, all the candy was fantastic. Let’s look at each individually:

• Chocolate Covered Blueberries: These are wonderful. They are truly delicious. The ratio of chocolate to blueberry is just perfect. I could easily eat a whole bag of these in one sitting. For comparison, I tried out some Harry and David chocolate covered blueberries and they were nothing compared to Ms. Chocolate’s.
• Chocolate Covered Apricots: Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever had an apricot before I tried these so I have nothing to compare them to, but these are good. Of all the things from ms. Chocolate, these were probably my least favorite, even though are actually pretty good.
• Chocolate Covered Cherries: The cherry flavor is actually really subtle. I am used to the overly sweet and fake cherry flavor (such as in the Cherry Kisses). These were really good and quite large. I liked these a whole lot more than I thought I would.
• Cocoa Almonds: These are whole almonds coated in dark chocolate (though very milky dark chocolate I would say), then dusted in cocoa powder. These too were excellent. They reminded me of very almondy Hershey’s ar with almonds.
• Toffee Almonds: These are whole almonds dipped in milk chocolate, rich butter toffee, and lightly dusted with powdered sugar. I love toffee and these were crazy-good - absolutely fantastic.

As I was writing this review and tasting the candies again, my wife commented that she thought these were the best candies we have tried since starting Candy Addict. I think I agree.

• Ms. Chocolate website

More candy articles about: candy, sweets, chocolate, fruit, toffee, almond, almonds, cocoa, blueberries, apricots, cherries

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