I did something recently that I swore I’d never do: I moved to a place with no Trader Joe’s. To the TJ uninitiated, this may seem like no big deal. But for those of you who have enjoyed TJ’s amazing food, drink, and CANDY (at even more amazing low prices), you understand my loss and dismay. So please join me in bidding a fond farewell to three of my all time favorite TJ candies.

Image by Anthemic Tangle
Milk Chocolate Clouds: Behold the chocolate, caramel, pecan glory that is the Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Cloud. Honestly, these are better than any other turtles I’ve ever had. The caramel is buttery and chewy, but doesn’t stick to your teeth. You can fully taste the sweet pecans and somehow they still retain some of their crunch. And, to top it all off: the milk chocolate is sooooo good. Unlike some milk chocolate, it’s not too sweet and is plenty chocolaty. And they don’t skimp on anything: each cloud is jam-packed with chocolate, caramel, nutty gooey goodness. Ah bliss!

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I love Christmas. I am a fool for all things holiday. I celebrate September, October, and November 25th as 3 months, 2 months, and 1 month until Christmas, respectively. The tree goes up and the carols come out as soon as the turkey is finished, and December 26th is the darkest day of my year.

To reiterate, I love Christmas. And, have no doubt, that all-encompassing amour most certainly extends to holiday candy, be it candy canes and red and green M&M’s or gourmet assortments with appropriately hued ribbons. So I was Deck-the-Halls, All-I-Want-For-Christmas-Is-You happy to get into the spirit of things a little early this year, in order to preview and review Divine Chocolate’s holiday line of treats for 2008. As I did for my review of their standard products, I again enlisted my chocolate-covered-Christmas loving pals for opinions, and here’s our take on their seasonal goods:

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A side-effect of doing the Great Chocolate Experiment posts is that I’ve become a lot more inclined to try unusual chocolate bars when I see them in stores. After all, if even my hopelessly amateurish attempts at candy-making can make unlikely combinations like garlic and chocolate taste good, then how much better will a professional chocolatier’s efforts be? So, when I found this Dolfin Chocolat au Lait Hot Masala bar in Montreal, I decided to give it a try.

According to the Food Lover’s Companion, masala is “a word used throughout India for a spice blend with myriad variations. It can refer to a simple combination of two or three spices (such as cardamom, coriander and mace) or a complex blend of 10 or more ingredients.” Masalas, especially the most popular variety, garam masala, are often used as a spice base for curries. Chocolate and curry couldn’t be any worse than chocolate and pickles… right?

Once I’d brought the bar home, a look at the ingredients quickly dispelled my hopes of rocking the chocolate/curry combo. The bar’s spices of cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, cloves, ginger and vanilla were more consistent with a different type of masala – tea masala, used to make the popular sweet beverage known as masala chai, usually just called chai in North America. Now, I love a good cup of chai almost as much as I love a good plate of curry, so I wasn’t really all that disappointed.

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And then there was U-No. This is the fourth and final oddly-named retro bar in my mini-cycle of candy that spiraled out of a dream I thought I had about overhearing a woman speaking to her husband when in New York City. (The other three candies are Oh Henry! Look!, and the 5th Avenue bar.)

Unlike those other three bars, I had U-No as a kid. And I remember liking it. So today we’ll see if I’m transported back to those halcyon days of rare treats, or caught in a transporter with a fly, like Jeff Goldblum, with disastrous consequences. And really, I’m a little worried, because my childhood taste was far from infallible.

Two things I didn’t realize growing up: U-No’s have powdered buttermilk and crushed almonds in them. That might have freaked me out at 8, but it intrigues me now.

So, will I still like this unique candy in the lunar-module, super-shiny wrapper?

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Not since the day that I first saw Men’s Pocky has a candy bar screamed Sexist! like the Yorkie Bar. And even in Pocky’s defense, the idea of a male-flavor has always been more confusing than it has been insulting. This is not the case with Yorkie, whose tagline proudly boasts “It’s Not For Girls!”

Maybe the makers of Yorkie, Nestle, don’t realize it, but girls are a very large component of the candy market. I mean, our wonderful staff is 75 percent double X chromosome bearing. So it would just seem odd to base a marketing campaign on such a blatant message, but hey, it’s a British candy bar and people in Europe can be a little… well… you know.

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Oh, Halloween! For a Candy Addict, it truly is the most wonderful night of the year.

As a kid, I would spend hours on the streets of my neighborhood, trekking from door to door to door, opening my pillowcase and shouting, “Trick or Treat!” in my neighbor’s faces in the hopes of collecting lovely chocolates and sweets. My sister and I had Trick-or-Treating down to a science: we’d mapped out routes, planned time schedules, and figured out ways to crisscross certain streets in order to maximize our candy-haul potential. At the end of the night, we’d usually end up with about 150 fun-size bars (and a few full-size bars, because believe me, we knew exactly who gave them out and where to find them).

Our post-Trick-or-Treating ritual was always the same; we’d dump our pillowcases on to the living room rug and start categorizing our candy into separate piles. Not only did this make it easier for us to decide which bars we wanted to trade (”I’ll give you 4 Kit-Kats for 4 Baby Ruths“), but it also made it easier to spot the most important candy bar in the pillowcase: the all important Halloween Gem.

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Go ahead and twist my arm. Make make me review Toblerone’s One by One, a tasty treat manufactured by one of my favorite chocolate companies. In fact, make me review the One by One assortment as often as you like. These little chocolate pyramids are every bit as delicious - and in some cases even more so - as their better-known bigger cousins.

Remember those dark days when you could only find Toblerone candy in an airport’s duty-free shop? Well, we’re living in enlightened times; those dang delicious bars are everywhere now, from your local gas station to the supermarket down the street. But that doesn’t mean that the candy’s quality has diminished. Toblerone bars are still made in Bern, Switzerland, where they have been produced since 1908.

It’s true that nothing is better than Toblerone’s super-sized 10-lb. jumbo bar, large enough to knock a home run not only out of the park but into outer space, too. For more modest appetites, though, Toblerone now offers the ‘One by One’ five-variety pack. This pack contains a treat for every rabid Toblerone fan: snack-sized individually wrapped triangles of five versions of the company’s chocolate.

The mini-review? Each variety has its own charms. Some are outstanding. Others are a bit below average. But it’s like buying a greatest-hits album: you’ll love some songs, and you’ll tolerate them all.

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My mom is a baker. Not like a real, wakes up at 4am and wears a big white hat baker, but she makes sweet vittles in the oven more often than your average bear. And in fact, cookies are her specialty. But despite her arsenal of specialty biscotti and her 20-plus holiday varietals, she’s never really embraced the classic chocolate chip cookie. I mean, she’s made them and, as such, I had occasion to sample raw cookie dough in my earliest years, but my affection for this delicacy didn’t really blossom until junior high, when my school introduced its Market Day program. (If you don’t know, Google it.)

Yep, Market Day. And more importantly, Market Day frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls. That’s right, only a greased cookie sheet and 14 to 16 minutes separated you from freshly baked chocolate chip cookies – just like Mom’s! (Or better, as the case may be.) And while that certainly revolutionized the after-school snack in my house, my siblings and I quickly discovered that exactly NOTHING separated us from delicious frozen raw cookie dough, any time we could sneak our greasy mitts to the freezer. And thus began the love affair.

So it was with fond memories of sweet, grainy dough and hard chocolate chips melting between my fingers that I ripped into Taste of Nature’s newest incarnation of my childhood treat: Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.

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Wrigley’s recent purchase by Mars is just the most recent instance of a candy company being “congloberrated” by a larger one. Though you might not realize it, many of your favorite candies were once manufactured independently of the big names that now produce them. Jolly Ranchers is just one popular example.

This also helps to explain one of the most annoying naming blunders in the history of candy. I am talking about Hershey’s and Reese’s. To the untrained eye, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong about this, but Reese’s is owned by Hershey’s. Maybe I am also a grammar addict, but I don’t like having to say Hershey’s Reese’s products.

But there is more to my rant, including a valid point. You see, as Reese’s operated on its own merits for so many years, its original products were not supposed to match Hershey’s line, as they were two different entities. Reese’s was the peanut butter candy company that carved a niche for itself with its unique flavor.

When purchased by Hershey’s in 1957, Hershey’s did not change the brand names because Reese’s was already associated with such a popular product that it would be bad marketing to make people start buying Hershey’s Peanut Cutter Cups or Hershey’s Pieces (it just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?).

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The last of the three expired limited edition pieces of candy I purchased from the Dollar Tree Store was the now defunct Reese’s Big Cup with Caramel and Nuts. Honestly, I don’t remember hearing about them when they were out.

Also being frank, I wasn’t too thrilled to get my hands on these any more than I am with any new candy that presents itself. At least with the Hershey’s Special Dark Raspberry Flavored Macadamia Bar and 100 Grand Dark Bar they sounded appetizing. But a Reese’s Big Cup? With caramel? And with peanuts?

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