It’s now three months since the All-Candy Expo, and I’m still getting reviews out of my dwindling candy stash. (It helps that I’m the kind of person who saves candy rather than scarfing it all down as fast as possible.) But the further I get from the expo, the more further removed I get from the context of these items, most just grabbed on a whim from a sample table and given no more thought.
Take these chocolate-covered blueberries and cranberries from Wolfgang Chocolates, for example. Anonymously wrapped in pink and blue foil pouches that totally disguised the contents, they could have been anything from Raisinet-style pieces to chunky clusters.
(It turns out that Wolfgang Candy has nothing to do with Wolfgang Puck, the first Wolfgang who comes to mind – the company was founded by the Wolfgang family from York County, Pennsylvania, who have been making candy since the early 20th century.)
Under the wrappers, the chocolates turned out to be individual molded items, with a cherry-cordial-like shell around a soft inner filing. They smell like dark chocolate with a hint of liqueur. Unfortunately, the chocolate was somewhat bloomed from being in hot summer weather for a few months (that’ll teach me to store my chocolate better).
It turns out my cherry cordial impression was right on – if you’ve had one of those, these are the same idea, with a piece of sugar-preserved fruit suspended in a liquid or fondant medium. I tasted the cranberry one first. Unfortunately, the bloomed chocolate tasted a little stale (totally my fault). The syrup had a very faint twinge of liqueur, or maybe that was just the way its sugariness burned the back of my throat (not in a bad way, though).
The dark-colored syrup had a definite cranberry tang, with a big, plump dried cranberry, rehydrated by the sugar syrup, at the center. The cranberry was very soft, with a few seeds and a very faint gritty grain to it, like all dried cranberries. Cranberry isn’t my most favorite flavor, but if you’re a fan, this will be right up your alley.
The blueberry cordial was less bloomed than the cranberry, and thankfully, the chocolate tasted less stale. The syrup at the center was more of a very thin, opaque fondant than the clear syrup of the cranberry cordial. The fondant, colored a light pinkish purple from the blueberry at the center, had a fresh, natural blueberry flavor – a welcome change from the artificial blueberry companies usually use. I thought I detected a liqueur-type aroma from the chocolate before I ate it, but I couldn’t taste anything of the kind, just sweet, tangy blueberry flavor.
There was definitely a real blueberry in there, though its texture and flavor got lost when eating the whole chocolate at once. I definitely liked this one the better of the two, but that’s just because I’m more of a blueberry person than a cranberry person.
I really like the idea of cherry cordials, but often they’re more about throat-burning sugar sweetness than actual cherry flavor. I liked the fresher, more natural fruit flavors of these, and the dark chocolate and the tanginess of the fruit really helped to cut down on the sweetness. I enjoyed them, and other fans of cherry cordials should definitely give them a try.
