Beer Table: PB&J

Surely I've made my beliefs known on the topic of things manifested as other things. But just as surely, I've demonstrated my love of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches dressed up like chocolate bars (here, here, etc.) There's no other sandwich that so perfectly lends itself to to being encased in chocolate.

Beer Table: PB&J

Cocoa content: n/a (probably around 35%)

Notable ingredients: peanut butter; jelly

Origin: n/a

I spotted this bar at the Beer Table Pantry in Grand Central -- a to-go outpost of the original Beer Pantry in Brooklyn -- and a space so tiny that only two customers can really fit inside at a time. I went in pursuit of beer, and left with this chocolate bar and a bottle of the tart Oude Gueuze Tilquin a l'Ancienne.

This bar, more than other PB & J bars that I've tried, truly tasted like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because of the understated chocolate, and the crispy bits laced throughout the peanut butter, posing as bread. Which is to say -- this bar could have been an actual peanut butter and sandwich, and not much would be lost; with such un-chocolatey chocolate, a chocolate bar need not be a chocolate bar.

All of the ingredients were a little lackluster. The jelly was a stiff sheet of fruit paste with neither seeds nor any distinct fruit flavor (given -- I lost the wrapper. But still, you should be able to determine from whence a jelly came without much help, and I could not.) The peanut butter was dry and under-sweet. And whereas a rich, milky chocolate could have heightened both components, this chocolate was shy and thin-skinned.

Next time, I'll stick to beer. This bar gets a C.

Bosco: Milk Chocolate

The Bosco candy company was founded in 1928 by a former physician living in Camden, New Jersey -- the county seat of Camden County, the death place of Walt Whitman, and home to much mayoral corruption and gang violence. Little is known about the Bosco company of candy manufacturers, except for the oft-repeated legend that the brand's signature chocolate syrup served as fake blood in the original shower scene in Psycho -- and even that is not quite known.

Three months ago, I was eating lunch at a restaurant around the corner from my apartment when a man in a pickle delivery truck pulled up alongside the curb and signaled to my gentleman companion, who then got up from our table and went to retrieve from this pickle deliveryman a bucket of retro chocolate for my enjoyment and potential review. This much I know.

Three months later, after many rounds of periodic (but limited) consumption, many instances of neglect (I have so much chocolate, and only so little time), and much unkind refrigeration, I had but three small squares remaining, and just this afternoon I have taken my butcher's knife to the remnants, chopped them down into a cascading pattern of chalky shards, and scraped every last bit into a silver bowl full of cookie dough. A repurposed antique.

Today Bosco makes an all-natural bar, which they probably did not feel the need to make -- or to market as such -- in 1928 -- although my guess is that in 1928, Bosco's milk chocolate bar was more natural than it is today. Who, after all, was baking with soy lecithin in 1928?

As mass-market milk chocolate bars go, this one is pretty good. It lacks that sour milk flavor that Hershey is known for -- and which, for the record, I have never found to be entirely unpleasant -- and has a nice, melty finish that betrays the high proportion of cocoa butter -- unusually high, I would guess, but I can't say for sure until those new nutrition labels come out with the graphic representation of ingredient proportions.

Until then. B.

Maitre Truffout: Nuts & Raisins

This is going to be an abbreviated entry -- partly because I am tired and partly because this bar was nothing special -- just a pile of Raisinettes disguised in a chocolate bar's clothing. Oh, and there were some hazelnut shards in there, too. Nothing we haven't seen before. On to bigger and better things next week, dear readers -- let's hope.

Wonka Exceptionals: Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar

I'm not kidding about the name of this bar. It's called Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar, and it's made by the Wonka company, and I got it at CVS. But when I bought this chocolate bar there was also a post-Valentine's Day sale at CVS, so I also bought a box of chocolate eggs filled with peanut butter. Those, to be honest, were initially more compelling than this chocolate bar, so I've only Known this bar for the past few days. But I've come to know it quite well.

Wonka Exceptionals: Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar
Cocoa content: Unlisted (guess: 35%)
Notable ingredients: toffee; cookie bits; peanuts
Origin: please!

I was originally a little disappointed upon opening this bar, because I was expecting there would be some sort of golden ticket gimmick or at least some sparkly foil. As it turns out, there was a golden ticket promotion for the Wonka Exceptionals chocolate bars, but now apparently the promotion has ended (according to the Wonka website) and I don't know how the company even sells these bars anymore without some sort of Willy Wonka contest shtick. Anyway -- I guess I bought it.

The ingredients make this bar sound like a big mess, and in some ways it is. It broke in about 15 places before I even opened it, and there are crags of an unidentifiable biscuity substance peeking out on the surface of the bar. I have to tell you: I tasted toffee, I tasted cookies, and I didn't taste peanuts at all. But the cookies were actually pretty delightful -- they're like buttery animal crackers, crumbled and strewn throughout a sea of mediocre milk chocolate and dubious toffee-like bits. The bar could have benefited from a more deliberate design (and less false advertising -- where were the peanuts?) but I won't lie -- it was a treat nonetheless.

Next week, we give the candy sandwich treatment another go -- this time, handcrafted. B-.

Lindt: Pistachio

I bought this bar at an A&P in Bronxville. I'm not really that into pistachios, and I was skeptical of how they'd pair with chocolate. I like the combination of pistachio and vanilla -- in my hometown, there is this great ice cream parlor called Rancatore's and they have a flavor called Kulfi which is basically an Indian-inspired blend of vanilla ice cream, pistachio, and some spices -- cardamom and nutmeg, I would guess. It's delicious. My purchase of this bar was inspired by my love of that ice cream flavor.

Lindt: Pistachio
Cocoa content: unlisted (guess: 33%)
Notable ingredients: pistachio nuts; almonds
Origin: n/a

The "filled" Lindt bars consist of little chocolate pods with some sort of creamy filling, joined together at the edges. These pieces, each about the size of a bullet, contained a single pistachio nut suspended in a vaguely almond-flavored cream filling. Having been surrounded by cream since however long ago this bar was manufactured, the pistachio nut itself was a little bit soft. It lost its signature saltiness and distinct flavor. Pistachios are never rock hard, but this one was softened to the point that even its crunchiness amidst a pocket of cream was compromised.

It's still kind of good, though. Lindt bars are truly never bad. The milk chocolate especially is so creamy and sweet and melty that it will complement whatever it encases. The fact that the nut had lost much of its distinctiveness and texture made the bar less successful but not actually less palatable. The only real complaint I have about these filled Lindt bars is that the pods are too big to eat in one bite and too messy to bite in half. This bar tasted pretty good regardless.

Next week I'll hopefully have made it beyond the A&P for my chocolate shopping. This one gets a B.

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.

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-.

Noi Sirius: 33%

Happy Halloween! I was thinking about ways to make this entry spooky, but it's super hard to be scary in a blog entry so I have decided instead to write about this bar, the 33% milk chocolate bar by the Icelandic chocolate maker Sirius, because it is scary good. Also, it's scary big, scary inexpensive, and any kid would be lucky to receive it in his or her Halloween bag -- although it's highly unlikely that anyone will.

Noi Sirius: 33%
Cocoa content: 33%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

Noi Sirius is the leading confectionery company in Iceland -- they were established in 1920 and have been using the same minimal packaging since 1933! The company makes all kinds of candy products including chocolate eggs, pastilles, and licorice. They also emphasize that the product is really good for baking -- I can attest to that, as I used the remainder of the 56% bar to make chocolate chip cookies two summers ago.

Everything about this bar, fittingly, was highly serious. It's enormous at 7.05 oz., and it consists of two heavy planks of milk chocolate, stacked one on top of the other and then wrapped cleanly in white parchment paper. It cost only about $4, which is less than some bars half its size. I have already been eating it for a week and I've only finished one of the planks. The chocolate itself is intensely rich and creamy, but not overly sweet. Noi Sirius uses "Icelandic quality milk," which I know very little about but which is apparently delicious. According to Noi Sirius's website, the only US vendor is Whole Foods, and they keep the price really low -- I can recommend this one and also the 56% variety.

Overall, this was and continues to be delicious! Noi Sirius may be one of the best chocolate companies I have Known. A.

Frey: Sogni de Caffe

I've been bad -- I should have updated days ago, but I was traveling in another city and was busy dealing with some other desserts. Having found all of them delicious but none of them blog-appropriate, I'm back to discuss -- in brief -- another bar from my friend Dan, who plays music and has an eye for chocolate.

Frey is a 120(!)-year-old Swiss chocolate company with an adorable website that takes you on a simulated tour of a city square in Switzerland. Try it -- it's actually really fun. There's also a section on the website for chocolate advertisements, with a video archive dating back to 1969! And, believe it or not, this company is also owned by Migros, the Swiss supermarket chain.

So I'm not going to do the usual statement of facts about this bar because I left the wrapper in another state. There were two different cocoa contents going on because the bar consisted of a thick layer of milk chocolate on top of a thinner, dark layer strewn with ground coffee beans. I'm not typically crazy about coffee-flavored confections, and this was a pleasant surprise -- good, but not amazing. I found that the flavors worked but the little shards of coffee bean were too inconsistent.

That's all for now. Thanks, everyone, for reading my blog. I hope to come back next week with something closer to home. B.

Jelina Chocolatier: Nougat au Miel

I purchased this extremely exciting bar at the Food Emporium Chocolate Shop on 68th and 3rd Avenue -- right near where Grandpa used to live, and I still have a reason to visit the neighborhood. The Chocolate Shop just started carrying Jelina Chocolatier products, and there is virtually no information about this company on the web so it's all kind of very mysterious and nougaty. This was an exceptional find.

Jelina Chocolatier: Nougat au Miel
Cocoa content: 36%
Notable ingredients: honey, nougat
Origin: n/a

Wowee Zowee -- both my reaction to this bar and the name of an album by Pavement, the greatest band of all time basically whom I saw perform in Central Park on the very same day that I bought this bar, thus rendering that day one of the very best of my life. Wowee Zowee -- this was delicious. Basically, we have a lot of little squares of decadent chocolate absolutely saturated with little shards of honey nougat, at once crunchy and chewy and sweet and nutty.

If you put a square of this in your mouth and let it melt, you're left with a solid conglomeration of tiny nougat pieces, which then slowly disintegrate, getting stuck in your teeth here and there, always delicious.

This was a near perfect bar. I am so lucky to have encountered this little chocolatier from Montreal, about which I know very little but whose packaging and product I certainly admire. A.

Fatty Crab: Fatty Bar Milk

A recent meal at Fatty Crab on the Upper West Side concluded with this exciting treat, created exclusively for Fatty Crab by Tumbador Chocolates. Fatty's dessert menu consists of this and one other Fatty Bar, the dark variety, made with roasted almonds, chili, and sea salt. Somehow, after hot pickles, steamed pork buns, and soft-shell crab, dark chocolate just seemed too conservative a choice with which to cap off the meal. Although I almost changed my mind when our waiter mentioned that the chocolate/chili combo was "a little out there, but surprisingly good!" DOES HE KNOW WHO I AM.

Fatty Crab: Fatty Bar Milk
Cocoa content: unknown
Notable ingredients: candied ginger; puffed rice
Origin: n/a

Puffed rice: welcome! You are always welcome here! And that's part of why I ordered this bar. But my waiter didn't even mention ginger, and, judging from the prevalence of said spice on this blog, I would say that was a pretty welcome addition, too. The bar was thick and dense like a candy bar, with a much more complicated flavor profile and an interesting textural experience what with the chewy ginger sharing space with crispy rice.

Also, I wish you could see the wrapper more clearly because it's adorable: there are little crabs and prawns all over it. If I remember correctly, it came on a little plate and looked positively blog-worthy; alas, all who have been to this restaurant know that it is too dark to take photos, especially with a cheap phone camera.

At the restaurant, we ate about 2/3 of the bar and I wrapped the rest of it back up for enjoying later, and we didn't even notice that our waiter took it back to the kitchen with him when he went to run my credit card! Luckily, he was back a moment later when he realized the wrapper still contained chocolate. For the meal and the bar, A-.

Amano: Jembrana

This was a bar passed between cousins under the table at a Vietnamese restaurant where the dessert menu was underwhelming (thanks Clio!) This was a bar made of beans from the cocoa trees at the foot of Balinese volcanoes. This was a bar that -- though thick, dense, and stone ground -- still melted on the tongue without a hint of graininess. And thus it so happened that I set this bar forth in a scattering of cocoa beans and readied it for the close-up it deserves. Just kidding! Photo credit goes to Amano.

Amano: Jembrana
Cocoa content: 30%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Bali

Amano is one of about a dozen bean-to-bar companies in the United States. They are based in the Salt Lake City area of Utah. The name means "by hand" and "heavenly field" in Italian and Japanese, respectively, and -- get this -- they couldn't be Fair Trade certified because that exchange model simply doesn't pay the farmers enough! The company's prices paid to farmers come out at about 3 times the London Cocoa Terminal Market average.

So, their chocolate ought to be really good to warrant that degree of boasting. It is. I haven't tried any of their other bars but I have been hanging on to a dark Venezuelan bar of theirs that was given to me a few months back. Yes, I'm that deep in gifted chocolate, poor me. This milk bar, which was lighter than usual at 30%, was every bit as creamy and melty and milky as a mass-market Belgian chocolate but with so much more going on flavor-wise. Notes of honey and flowers remained present long after the chocolate had melted -- at which point, usually only the sugar is detectable.

So, this was wonderful and I'm excited to try more of their chocolates. Thanks again to my cousin Clio, who is an amazing, successful pastry cook and who has probably known sweets better than all of us. A-.

Dolfin: Au Lait Au Masala

Michael brought this bar home from Boston for me -- undoubtedly from the liquor store on Broadway in Somerville, because they stock all of these plastic sleeve Dolfin bars -- two birds, one stone, right? Just kidding. Here we have another milk chocolate bar made with masala. I know I pegged masala chai as corny a couple of posts ago, but I just want to clarify that masala itself is not corny. Hello, have you ever had chicken tikka masala? We all have -- it's dead serious. It's chai that I take issue with, and this bar earns automatic points for abandoning that nasty four-letter word and maintaining the sweet, addictive flavor.

Dolfin: Au Lait Au Hot Masala
Cocoa content: 32%
Notable ingredients: hot masala
Origin: n/a

Ok, first. Masala, what is it? Usually, it's cloves, black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom. It's just a name for a mix of spices commonly used to brew tea. But of course, the spices themselves do not add up to tea unless you steep them in water, which is kind of why I object to the concept behind that Le Pain Quotidien bar from two weeks ago.

Aside from having different names for the same thing, this bar and the Le Pain Quotidien bar are very similar. The LPQ bar had a cocoa content of 38%, and this bar is 32%. A 6 point difference in cocoa solids isn't hugely noticeable in this range, but I did feel like the LPQ chocolate was slightly higher quality. However, the spices were blended better in this Dolfin bar: it was less grainy, a little subtler (with a more surprising finish toward the end,) and sweet without being cloyingly so.

Both bars have beautiful packaging, a good snap, and good flavor. I didn't give the LPQ post a grade but this grade can serve for both of them: B+.

Le Pain Quotidien: Lait Masala Chai AND Oyster and Chocolate Tasting Soiree

This chocolate review will be cut a little bit short so that I can talk about an event that I attended -- don't worry! -- it's about chocolates I have known, and the bivalves whom they have known.

Burnt orange. Masala chai. The French language. Which of these items does not fit betwixt the rest? Of course the answer is that tired, oft-encountered spice: masala chai. Of course it is that ill-used, outrageously corny spice disguised -- in broad daylight (i.e. Starbucks) -- as exotic. Did you know that chai is corny? Like men's aprons -- like the word "segue"? It is.

Le Pain Quotidien: Lait Masala Chai
Cocoa content: 38%
Notable ingredients: masala
Origin: n/a

But Le Pain Quotidien isn't corny, and their market products are consistently delicious. So is this chocolate bar, which I had admittedly tasted long before this week. Not syrupy or salty but spicy and subtle. NB: Unintentional alliteration? Not corny.



The other thing I wanted to discuss is a chocolate-centric event that I attended this evening at Vosges's Soho boutique -- thanks to my chocolate-savvy uncle. The event was an "Oyster and Chocolate Tasting Soiree" featuring Chef Nick Korbee of Smith and Mills (Tribeca.) Four oysters from varying waters were paired with 4 distinct Vosges truffles and 4 drinks. The highlights for me came from separate pairings -- the Calm Cove oysters (Washington) were best of the bivalves, the white chocolate truffle with Kumumoto oyster brine and pearl dust was the winner for chocolate, and my favorite drink was a simple glass of Miller Hi-Life. All in all, a very "heady" evening, as promised by the online blurb.

Ghirardelli: Milk & Peanut Butter

Have you ever been having a bad day and just wanted some creamy, gourmet peanut butter with crunchy peanuts enveloped in rich milk chocolate (yes, I lifted that from the box description)? That's how I was feeling in CVS the other day, which is not necessarily the most exciting place to have a bad mood-induced chocolate spree. But they do carry nail polish, too -- a plus. So CVS in Bronxville, NY is where I got this bar from Ghirardelli, and where I incidentally passed up on a number of other enticing bars, such as the pistachio bar from Lindt. Don't discount CVS as a respectable place to make a chocolate purchase.

Ghirardelli: Milk & Peanut Butter
Cocoa Content: unlisted (30% is my guess)
Notable ingredients: peanut butter
Origin: n/a

What did you expect? The peanut butter and chocolate combo is a timeless delight. When I was little I used to bite the tops off of Reese's Cups and eat all the peanut butter -- flaky, pale, peanut paste, really -- out from within before finally eating the bottom layer of chocolate. This peanut butter bar had less accessibility for that kind of mischief, and the peanut butter inside each individual square was not quite so hefty and thick as that inside a Reese's Cup, but what it lacked in volume it made up for in crunchy, moist texture. Of course the peanut butter in a candy bar should be crunchy, and made with real peanuts!

But -- let's be real. Peanut butter is pretty much always delicious, as long as it isn't completely deprived of some added sugar and salt (yes, I said it.) Reese's Cups never suffered for the slightly synthetic peanut taste -- and while the chocolate in a Ghirardelli bar is certainly far superior to that manufactured by Reese's, the chocolate & peanut butter experience is always roughly the same. When someone I shared this bar with noted that it was like a glorified Reese's bar, I had to admit -- well, first I had to admit that there's no such thing as a Reese's Bar, only Cups, Stix, and Pieces, pay attention -- but also that this bar didn't actually differ from a Reese's Cup in a meaningful way. It's kind of the exact same thing.

And that's all it needed to be. It took me back to childhood for 8 crazy nights (that's how many squares there were.) And never again will I doubt CVS's ability to surprise me in new, chocolatey ways. A-.

Kshocolat: Honeycomb & Vanilla

This is another aesthetically pleasing purchase from the Food Emporium Fine Chocolates shop on 68th and 3rd. I've never seen Kshocolat products anywhere else -- they're a Scottish company, and from the looks of their website they haven't extended into the U.S. very much so far. Kshocolat does some interesting flavor combinations, including lemon & pepper and orange & cardamom. They also make chocolate covered currants, chocolate covered "mint nuggets," and something called the "Party Hamper" which is really just a collection of chocolate gift items. Go figure.

Kshocolat: Honeycomb & Vanilla
Cocoa content: 30%
Notable ingredients: honeycomb
Origin: n/a

I didn't list vanilla among the notable ingredients, because it's indeed present here but notably not notable; vanilla -- and specifically bourbon vanilla -- is an ingredient in most chocolate bars these days. And of course I was drawn to this bar not for the vanilla but for the honeycomb. I haven't quite had honeycomb in a chocolate bar before, although I've had a lot of things like honeycomb: Brulee Crunch by Jacques Torres, Butterscotch by Butlers. Honey is a type of sugar that I endorse, and the textural experience indicated by "comb" can only help the situation.

This bar was definitely a success. The chocolate was dense and creamy -- not fibrous or dusty like expensive milk chocolate can sometimes be. And the creaminess was punctuated by little crispy bits of honeycomb, which appears to be a combination of honey and milk solids. It wasn't really so different from the other bars that I named above, which leads me to believe that honeycomb, butterscotch, and burnt sugar are all kind of the same thing. Discuss?

Also, though the Fine Chocolates shop at the Food Emporium still has 4-6 bars I've never tried, I have to start looking around for the next inspiring chocolate store that will keep this blog going. Let me know if you have any suggestions in New York! This bar gets an A-.

Berkshire Bark Chocolate: Pretzelogical

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I checked out the chocolate selection at Dave's Fresh Pasta (in Somerville) during my last visit to Boston. Dave's specializes in homemade pasta but it's also an impressive specialty foods shop. They carry a lot of nice local chocolate, and an interesting selection of beer and cheeses. Also, they had a bowl of fresh cherry peppers by the cashier. This chocolate bar, which was made in Sheffield, Massachusetts, stood out because of the name. I can't resist the promise of pretzels.

Berkshire Bark Chocolate: Pretzelogical

Cocoa content: unlisted (my guess is 30%)

Notable ingredients: pretzels, sea salt caramel, peanut butter

Origin: n/a

What do you expect, from an entire bar of chocolate-covered pretzel? And if it were smothered with peanut butter and pressed with chips of salty, hardened caramel? Sometimes I feel it's unfair to put a bar this ambitious on my blog and, in doing so, compare it with other chocolate bars. This is really like a block of fudge: about a centimeter thick, and spilling over with chunks of pretzel, shards of sea salt caramel, and smudges of peanut butter. It is a solid, unsegmented bar and it crumbled upon breaking.

Milk chocolate, pretzels, caramel, and peanut butter. I couldn't make it up if I tried. Peanut butter, the dark horse candidate for this bar's third piece in the salty trifecta: it added a perfectly creamy note to the otherwise jagged assortment of things. The pretzels were appropriately crunchy and the caramel was neither too sticky nor too salty.

And what I like about Berkshire Bark -- other than the fact that they're based in my beautiful home-state -- is that they carefully source the ingredients that they use in this excellent chocolate bar. The caramel is homemade and flavored with really nice sea salt, and the peanut butter is entirely natural: just peanuts, oil, sugar, and salt, which is how peanut butter should be. The pretzels come from a century-old Pennsylvania pretzel maker -- it doesn't guarantee their quality, but it shows that Berkshire Bark is interested in all the parts that go into their chocolate bars, and not just in the end result.

As it turns out, though, the end result is pretty much perfect. A.

Moo: Graham Cracker

Call me crazy, but I thought kids already liked chocolate. Some things have to be branded for kids -- yogurt comes to mind -- but I'm pretty sure candy isn't one of them. Nevertheless, Moo Chocolates is a company that makes chocolate for kids, and being that I'm a kid, I'm easily swayed by the image of the friendly cow on the wrapper. Michael got me this bar at the Fresh Pond Whole Foods in Cambridge, MA (throwback!)

Moo: Graham Cracker

Cocoa content: unlisted (my guess is 35%)

Notable ingredients: graham crackers

Origin: n/a

Moo is a tiny company based in Cob Cob, Connecticut, and it was started by a woman named Jackie Ekholm who ate great chocolates while in the Swiss Alps and wished there was something like it for her kids in the US. I would argue that there actually was something like it for her kids in the US -- hello, have you seen my blog? -- but that's beside the point because I'm always happy to see new brands of chocolate. Moo makes 4 varieties: rice crisps, granola, cornflakes, and graham crackers -- I'm sorry, but I have to wonder if Jackie Ekholm has ever met a real kid if she thinks their favorite cereals are Corn Flakes and granola. WRONG. The bars are inspired by "the playful cows we love," the package says.

Graham crackers are really delicious -- it's no secret. And this chocolate is really good, too, probably because it's made in such small batches and doesn't have to travel far. And, on top of that, chocolate and graham crackers go really well together -- but we already knew that, because of s'mores. So, predictably, this bar tasted great. The package was cute, the texture was good, and the website invites customers to "help us name our cows" -- what more could I ask for? And although the marketing seems a little gimmicky and unnecessary, I've got to say that this is a greater success than Go-Gurt. I guess the real test will be to see if kids actually eat this bar, or if it's just Whole Foods shoppers and obsessive perusers of the chocolate aisle.

Branding criticisms aside, this bar was good and I was happy to come across it in Cambridge because I had previously seen it only at a location of The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn. B+.

B.T. McElrath Chocolatier: Prairie Dog Chocolate Bar

I recently enjoyed a short little piece in the Spring Fashion issue of New York Magazine called "Give Me Sodium or Give Me Death" -- written by Gabrielle Hamilton, chef at Prune. She was writing about salt as a sort of response to Bloomberg's recent crackdown, and her justification of her liberal salting policies can be summed up by this line: "Salt makes everything it touches taste more like itself -- from an egg to a steak to a tomato." So, given that this bar, given to me by my friend Christopher, is basically bathed in salt, I kept Hamilton's lesson in mind throughout my week of consumption.

B.T. McElrath Chocolatier: Prairie Dog Chocolate Bar

Cocoa content: 40%

Notable ingredients: toffee, almonds, sea salt

Origin: n/a

This bar, like last week's, was made by a company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So, yes -- that state actually does exist, and people seem to be eating chocolate there. The bar is called Prairie Dog, but it seems to have another name, sort of sheepishly printed on the side of the box: "Silky Frisky Almond Pal." I think almonds were actually the least present flavor in this chocolate -- salt being the most present and butter toffee coming in second. Salt is obviously laced throughout, but the bottom of the bar is actually dusted with gigantic, visible crystals of sea salt, such that when you put a piece in your mouth it's the first thing your tongue encounters -- unless you eat chocolate upside down, in which case stop reading because I'm not here to fuck around.

"A hint of sea salt," reads the back of the bar, in the understatement of the century. But why does salt work here so well -- and, believe me, it does -- while in other circumstances there is a thin line between perfection and excess? I think the heft of the bar in a way makes up for what could be perceived as over-salting in a thinner, more delicate bar. There's no snap to speak of: the pieces are big and chunky and basically bursting with shards of butter toffee. I approached it more as a candy bar -- kind of like a cleaned-up Butterfinger, I guess -- than as a bar of chocolate, so I really enjoyed the decadence.

Did the sea salt make the other ingredients taste more like themselves? Well, it's kind of hard to tell. Everything blended together in salty, decadent majesty. I think the reason it all held together was that the chocolate was so good and so plentiful. The state of Minnesota has fed me well this winter, and for that I'm glad to have known the Prairie Dog. A.

Lindt: Peach-Apricot Yogurt

O, sweet dairy. Ours is a forbidden love. This odd bar was gifted to me by my friend Wonja, by way of her parents (thanks, everyone involved.) The peach-apricot filling, though poisonous to us chocolate lovers of the lactose intolerant variety, is actually a surprisingly pleasing accompaniment to milk chocolate. But I've got to tell you -- there's definitely something a little sketchy about this bar, because it can't really be found anywhere on the internet. There is mention of it on some blogs but not on the Lindt website, and I've certainly never seen it in stores. All the information I have, I've gathered from the wrapper.

Lindt: Peach-Apricot Yogurt

Cocoa content: Unlisted (milk)

Notable ingredients: peach, apricot, yogurt

Origin: n/a

Now, I think we can all agree that cream fillings are, as a rule, a classless bunch. And pity the fool who injects vaguely fruit-flavored substances into a perfectly good chocolate bar, as we have seen here and, most notably, here. Furthermore, this isn't just a fruity, creamy filling; this yogurt has something called "crunchy apricot crispies" within, and they're like nothing you've ever encountered before.

Trashy? Yes. But also kind of obscenely delicious, or at least good enough for me to eat it for four consecutive nights despite four consecutive lactose-induced belly aches. I think it was the tanginess of the yogurt, offset by the sweetness of the milk chocolate and the peach flavor, that brought the flavor above and beyond its lowly context. And as for the apricot crispies, they weren't so strange that I couldn't appreciate their crunchy interlude in a sea of dairy. Think of them as the rich man's Fruity Pebble, but encased in a fruity yogurt, that being further encased in milk chocolate. That's a lot to think about, so I'll leave things there.

This bar gets a grade solely based on taste and texture, both of which were heightened in comparison to the not-so-impressive concept. B.