Cold Stone Creamery: Peanut Butter Cup Perfection

May I say: Lol. May I say lol because Cold Stone Creamery's Peanut Butter Cup Perfection bar represents the Cold Stone concept come full-circle: they use candy in their ice cream, and then they adapt their popular ice cream creations to candy form -- what's next? Will Cold Stone eat itself, and use its own ice cream-turned-candy creations as mix-ins into new ice cream creations? Is that too meta for Cold Stone? First things first:

Cold Stone Creamery: Peanut Butter Cup Perfection
Cocoa content: unlisted (guess: 30%)
Notable ingredients: "filling" (vaguely peanut butter-like substance)
Origin: please!

This was actually a truly disgusting bar. I don't know why. I'll be the first to admit that Cold Stone Creamery is not bad! I know, I know, the ice cream is mediocre -- but even mediocre ice cream tastes awesome if you grind an entire Butterfinger into it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying! I've never had the Peanut Butter Cup Perfection, but I'm guessing it's delicious. Peanut Butter tends to turn everything it touches into gold.

Not this bar -- but then again, we can't really call this peanut butter. Peanuts aren't even mentioned until the 6th item in the ingredient list under "filling," and even then it's "artificial peanut flavor." Well, something went horribly wrong with this artificial peanut filling, because it tastes like blue cheese legit. It's disgusting. It's unspeakable.

Or maybe the problem is with the chocolate? It's made by Turin -- a self-proclaimed "master chocolatier" -- a company that's been around for almost a century. I'm pretty sure the chocolate is at best tasteless, and possibly kind of stale and chewy, too. Really, the disgusting filling distracted me from the chocolate. So, Cold Stone -- stick to what you do best. Keep combining good candy with bad ice cream, and leave the bad candy out of it.

As a fan of Cold Stone I'm sorry to say -- this bar gets a D.

Ritter Sport: Yogurt

I got this bar -- one of the last Ritter Sport bars that I haven't tried -- from my friend Mia. I was curious about the consistency of the yogurt because I figured it would just spill out if I snapped off a piece of the bar -- the little squares on Ritter bars aren't capsules like that Lindt yogurt bar I once had. As it turned out, the yogurt magically stayed in place, and my time with this bar has been a festival of creaminess.

Ritter Sport: Yogurt
Cocoa content: 55%
Notable ingredients: yogurt
Origin: n/a

So on Ritter Sport's website, the yogurt in this bar is described as 45% skimmed milk yogurt. I don't know how much yogurt is typically skimmed, but this yogurt was pretty solid and dry, almost more like an almond paste or crumbly white chocolate. But still -- it was exceedingly creamy. And whereas that last yogurt bar was a little too sweet, this was the kind of yogurt I like -- tangy and a little sour.

The way it blended with the chocolate was really delicious. Both the chocolate and the yogurt retained their sweet and milky notes while melting together, and the sharpness of the yogurt was kind of tempered by the chocolate. I only had an issue with the way the bar broke apart -- because of the consistency of the yogurt, the pieces sort of tore softly rather than snapped -- which undermines Ritter Sport's slogan for this bar: "Why spoon when you can snap?"

But overall it was interesting and creamy and good. I wonder if I should have refrigerated it? A-.

NibMor: Crispy

My local Eden Gourmet recently began selling NibMor chocolates, so I picked one up when I was home for Thanksgiving break. The name is kind of misleading -- there are no nibs (bits of roasted cocoa bean) in this chocolate. There may never have been nibs in the processing of this chocolate, because I don't think the cocoa beans were ever roasted. And that, readers, was a huge mistake on NibMor's part. Because this bar was nasty.

NibMor: Crispy
Cocoa content: 65%
Notable ingredients: crispy brown rice; agave nectar
Origin: n/a

NibMor is a couple of women in Huntington, on Long Island, making nasty chocolate bars and leaving out all the good ingredients that make chocolate palatable. Vegan. Dairy Free. Gluten Free. Non-GMO. No Refined Sugar. Kosher. Recyclable. I don't even know how a chocolate bar can be recyclable. Was I not supposed to eat it? Anyway, I'm going to make a list of things I hate about this bar.

1. Raw: The package has all sorts of labels and certifications on it. It's Raw (of course,) it's Certified Vegan, it's USDA Organic. Here's what I don't get -- vegans, ok, I understand that they have to eat chocolate too. Some of their chocolate is ok. Most of it isn't -- whatever! They're doing the best they can! But Raw foodists? Isn't the Raw food movement primarily concerned with maintaining the natural nutrients and antioxidants in food? I know what they say about a little chocolate every day being good for your heart or something, but let's be honest -- chocolate is an indulgence! There are no important nutrients to maintain here, really. Is it worth ruining what could have been a perfectly good chocolate bar just to save some antioxidants?

2. Agave Nectar: Agave is what vegans use instead of honey, because honey comes from bees. Agave is nice to drizzle on yogurt. But last time I checked, sugar is ok for vegans. Sugar actually comes from a plant! And it's the only sweetener that really works with chocolate for consistency reasons. So why couldn't NibMor use sugar? Of course they're concerned with refined ingredients, but plenty of chocolate is made with unrefined cane sugar. Is this flashy, unnecessary nod to veganism worth the gummy, crumbly consistency?

3. Consistency: Combine raw chocolate and agave nectar, and you've achieved the consistency of a Power Bar. NibMor doesn't break along even lines, it has no snap to speak of, and eating it involves a lot of chewing and no melting. Creaminess is sacrificed for cold processing. This was a sticky, lifeless mess.

4. Brown Rice: This is just ridiculous. If you're staying away from refined grains -- if you're staying away from refined anything -- just forget about chocolate. Everything that is good about chocolate is going to offend your diet.

That's that. Next week I will enjoy a chocolate bar rife with refined sugar and literally filled with dairy. This bar gets a D.

Komforte Chockolates: French Toast

My friend Molly told me about Komforte Chockolates, a company in Orange, CA. I have never encountered these in stores, and I've had a lot of encounters in a lot of stores. These bars seem to be sold only in California, Oregon, Washington, and of course online. I bought this one on Amazon for about $5 and the shipping costs doubled the price but -- French Toast! It was worth it.

Komforte Chockolates: French Toast
Cocoa content: Unlisted (estimate 33%)
Notable ingredients: "french toast"
Origin: n/a

A lot of people gave me shit for choosing this bar over some of Komforte's other wackier flavors: Ramen Noodle and Tortilla with Lime. I love ramen noodles, but I imagine that bar just has crunchy dried noodles tangled within the chocolate, like packaged "ramen" before you've put it in boiled water, and that just didn't interest me. Plus, I was very curious about how french toast -- which I generally think of as sort of soggy and fluffy -- would be incorporated into the chocolate bar. Would it be eggy? Powdered with confectioner's sugar? Moist?

No, no, no. Actually, the second ingredient listed on the back of this bar (after milk chocolate) is -- get ready -- bagel chips! What? What do bagel chips and french toast have to do with one another? Are bagel chips even an ingredient? Aren't bagel chips just stale pieces of bagel? Obviously not, because these bagel chips have molasses in them. And natural beta carotene. What are bagel chips? What is french toast? When shall the twain meet?

But -- you know what -- I'm not really here to ask questions. This bar was so tasty. It tasted like honey-comb flavored bagel chips (go with it) embedded in creamy, appropriately salted milk chocolate. I had a really good time getting to know this bar and then -- in the blink of an eye, 2.5 ounces later, it was gone. Ramen noodles might be next, because who knows what will REALLY be in that bar. A-.

Starbucks: Dark Chocolate with Via

So I told you: I had something decidedly non-anonymous planned. I bought this bar in the Starbucks in Bronxville, NY, because I needed to go online and I thought I had to buy something to get a wireless code. Not so -- apparently you can get free wireless in all Starbucks locations now. But anyway, I ended up with this bar and apparently they had just been released. This has been my first introduction to Via coffee, Starbucks's new instant coffee product.

Starbucks: Dark Chocolate with Via
Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess: 75%)
Notable ingredients: instant microground coffee
Origin: n/a

This is a tiny bar, 1.2 oz., which I guess is the size of most of those little chocolate bars they have up at the counter. "Via" and "Readybrew" are imprinted on the bar -- it's cute. It baffles me that Starbucks has such stale, dried-out pastries because they actually have really smart chocolate partnership: they sell TCHO and Santander bars in the stores. I think the chocolate for this Via bar was made by Santander, which is a really good foreign chocolate maker.

It tasted ok -- I'm generally not a big fan of coffee flavored things, but I have found that I enjoy a coffee flavor if its with a sweeter, lighter chocolate. This chocolate is actually quite dark and suffers from being a little acidic. The coffee is thankfully not grainy, and also not too strong. I guess it would be nice to enjoy with a cup of coffee.

I will probably not eat this again, but it wasn't bad. B.

Tikras Sokoladas: Mystery Bar

This week was interesting because this week I ate a mystery chocolate bar. This will be an un-traditional entry because I'm working with very little information. Here's a list of the facts I do know:

1. My friend Dan brought it back from Lithuania for me.
2. It comes from a store called Tikras Sokoladas.
3. It is dark.

This gigantic bar, wrapped simply in plastic and a dark red ribbon, weighed probably close to 10 oz. I would guess that it had a cocoa content of about 72%, but it's hard to know for sure -- when I tried googling "Tikras Sokoladas," I got a scary list of Lithuanian Yelp-equivalents. There's no information about this bar online because it's not really a chocolate bar packaged as such -- obviously there's no label -- it's just a bar shaped package of this store's product.

It's very good! It's deceptively good. The snap is decent, the texture looks very inconsistent and air bubbly, but the taste is great: creamy, rich, and full of that roasted nib flavor.

The sticker on the bar has the address of the store: Vytauto g.4, Trakai (Trakai is the name of a town in Lithuania.) I used Google Maps to see the surroundings, and it looks like the store is right by a big lake -- Lentvario ez. Again, I tried googling the name of the shop and clicked on a blogspot link and asked Google to translate it to English for me. Once the page had loaded, there was no (translated) mention of Tikras Sokoladas -- only a curious blog entry titled "Hot Chocolate Cocoa Does Not Really."

So, this was a great find about which I still know very little. Stay tuned for next week, when I'll feature a decidedly un-mysterious chocolate bar. B+.

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Madame Chiang

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek discovered Lake Winnipesaukee, smack-dab in the middle of the State of New Hampshire (thanks, Sherlock Kai-Shek,) in 1908. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe when they say (on the back of this bar) that she discovered the lake, they mean she came across it, not having known about it before. It's actually absurd to think that a woman from Shanghai could possibly have discovered Lake Winnipesaukee in 1908--while attending summer school nearby. I guess this packaging is just badly written. Anyway:

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Madame Chiang

Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess 65%)

Notable ingredients: crystallized ginger

Origin: n/a

So anyway--Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, former First Lady of the Republic of China, was walking in the woods in New Hampshire one day and came across Lake Winnipesaukee, as any normal person might if he or she were walking in the woods in New Hampshire--eventually--that's a pretty small state. To honor the day she happened upon the biggest lake in the state of New Hampshire, Winnipesaukee Chocolates created the Madame Chiang bar, which consists of dark chocolate with crystallized ginger. Sounds a little bit racist to me. Discuss.

This bar was kind of a dud, which is disappointing because the last Winnipesaukee bar I tried--Sally's Gut--was pretty nice. This bar was just way too thick and the ginger was dispersed too scarcely. The chocolate was kind of inconsistent in texture: unpleasantly grainy, with a lot of air bubbles, and very dried out. No melt or creaminess to speak of. And, on top of that, the bar was almost impossible to break. They should stretch these 3 oz. bars out so that they're half as thick--that would go a long way.

So, this bar certainly wasn't disgusting, but after eating it for two nights I wanted nothing to do with it. On to the next. C.