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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You’ll see Swiss conglomerate Nestle’s Milkybars in England just about everywhere. In the U.S., they’re much harder to find – even the Nestle USA website doesn’t list them anywhere. So when I saw one in World Market the other day, I snagged it. Even though I’m not a huge white chocolate fan, I’m curious to try this candy that’s so popular across the pond.

In keeping with recent trends to make foods with fewer suspect ingredients, Nestle makes a big fuss about the “all natural ingredients” in this candy, even explaining the ingredients in little parenthetical remarks. “Whole cow’s milk (that’s been dried).” Okay… thanks. Skeptics will reply that “milk” and “sugar” don’t reveal the whole story, since cows injected with antibiotics or sugar cane plants sprayed with pesticides lead to measurably unnatural byproducts (this is why organic foods can be safer and better tasting), but at least the artificial flavorings and colors are absent from the Milkybar, right?

Yeah, fine, but how about the taste?

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I grabbed this box without looking too closely when I saw it at my local Japanese market. As you might gather from my last Crunky review, I was hoping to use it as part of my continuing quest to convince English-speakers to love Crunky instead of just making fun of its name.

However, I wasn’t sure this plan would work, because I assumed that what I had was white chocolate. Now, I love almost everything Japanese and I love white chocolate. But with the exception of Crunky, I usually find Japanese chocolate to be not of the highest quality. And white chocolate, with such a mild flavor, has nothing to hide behind – if it’s not of the best quality, it’s horrid.

But when I got home and looked more closely, the plot began to thicken. I wondered why the box had an illustration of a bowl of ice cream on it. The text next to the picture was something that I could only interpret as “Kanji Kanji Kanji Vanilla” (kanji being the Japanese version of Chinese characters, of which I can only read a couple dozen, none of which were included here).

On the back, the pasted-on English label only deepened the mystery at first: “Okinawa Shiovanil.” And this time the problem was not one of language, exactly. I know that “shio” means “salt.” But salt-vanilla? Salt-vanilla ice cream?

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I had the distinct pleasure of sampling Amella’s Artisan Cocoa Butter Caramels and OMG they are decadent and scrumptious. These caramels have an incredible texture – just a bit chewy and so creamy and buttery that they just melt in your mouth.

Passion Fruit: Out of the three flavors I tried, the passion fruit was my least favorite and it was still excellent. The caramels include real passion fruit, cocoa butter, and Tahitian vanilla and are hand dipped in milk chocolate. The passion fruit flavor is really strong and tangy – if you’re into passion fruit these will make you do the happy dance. Since I think passion fruit is just ok, I’d have preferred more caramel flavor. But even so, yum!

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Before attending the All Candy Expo, all the registered press people were sent dozens and dozens of press releases from various companies advertising their products and inviting us to drop by their booths. That is where I first heard about Landrin Waferatto USA.

The company’s roots date back to the nineteenth century when Georg Landrin began preparing confections for the Imperial Court of Russia. The reputation of his delicacies spread throughout the country and Europe, earning his products notoriety for their quality ingredients and taste.

Landrin USA was recently founded with the intent to market a line of truffles with designs and packaging inspired by couture fashion and art – i.e., appealing to women. I remember checking out some of the photos from their press release to discover all their boxes adorned with orchids, chiffon prints, the elegance of a perfume box, and they somehow unfolded into vases when you opened them.

Elaborate much? Maybe. But the principal and design is aesthetically sound, which is why it’s a current silver finalist for two of the 2009 Sofi Awards (Specialty Outstanding Food Innovation). But part of me didn’t want to like these. They were too pretty. They were too girly.

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