Halloween Chocolate: Teuscher Beverly Hills

Guest Post from Teuscher Chocolates Beverly Hills: 

Teuscher Chocolates is truly an all Swiss import-business.We fly our finished product confections in each week from our kitchens in Switzerland. Our boxes are completely made in our workshop in Zurich.  Our eighty year old family recipes are all natural using the finest ingredients. Our Champagne Truffle is our house specialty. The teuscher champagne truffle was the first of its kind in the world, dreamed up almost 70 years ago by Mr. Dolf Teuscher, Sr. It was featured on Oprah as one of her favorite things, and remains a favorite amongst celebrities and locals alike.

For Halloween:
It’s that time of year! Autumn is in the air and the holiday season is just around the corner. This year make it a sweet one with the gift of Teuscher Chocolates. Fresh as a crisp fall day, and imported directly from Switzerland, our award winning confections are a perennial Halloween favorite. From whimsical witches to friendly ghosts, our festive handcrafted boxes are ready to be filled with your choice of teuscher treats! Choose from our classic truffles and pralines or a variety of limited specialty chocolates just in for the season. Here at Teuscher Beverly Hills, Halloween is no tricks, all treats!

Bewitching Perfectly Poisonous Parfaits for Halloween

One of my favorite sites for Party Planning.. and other reasons.. is Frog Prince Paperie. If you haven't visited this site, you're in for a treat. Paula's mission at Frog Prince Paperie is "to bring inspiration for spectacular parties, DIY party projects and interesting party finds." Oh yes.

Here's a special Halloween post for Bewitching Perfectly Poisonous Parfaits (reprinted with permission). Be sure and visit HERE for some fabulous Halloween party ideas. Her Frog Prince Paperie etsy store can be found HERE.  Happy Halloween!

BEWITCHING PERFECTLY POISONOUS PARFAITS

Ingredients
Vanilla Pudding
Non-pareils (in orange)
Crushed up Oreos
Tall shot glasses

Vanilla pudding can be made from scratch (time consuming) or  you buy the premade little snack pack cups (easy and no clean-up)

Drop a few tiny spoonfuls of pudding into the glass. Drop in some orange non-pareils. More pudding, then some crushed up oreo–then repeat till your glass is full! For those keeping track, she used 2 pudding snack packs to make three parfaits in these shot glasses.

That fun veined look comes from the non-pareils soaking into the pudding, so make them a bit ahead of time…that is, at least an hour! Put in a demitasse spoon and you’ll be ready to serve these perfectly poisonous little parfaits to your unsuspecting guests.

Want to make the Witch Hat Toppers? Here's a link to the Tutorial.

Photos: Frogprincepaperie.com

Halloween Vintage Candy Ads

Today I thought I'd post a round-up of Vintage Halloween Candy Ads. Happy Halloween! Remember any of these?

Bakers Bring It for Halloween

I hope everyone had a great Halloween!  I wound up spending it at a friend's house, so I still have tons of candy I didn't give out.  Dear God.  What about you all?  Any good stories??  Share, share!!!

Okay - this is the last Halloween post.  (If there was election candy, I'd be all over that, but alas, no such luck.) 

Most of the candy makers just repackaged their candy in Halloween wrappers - something you all know bugs the heck out of me and seems like a cop out.  I found these in TJ Maxx:

Halloween packaging and colors, but no real flavor - just sugar coated almonds.  I love their butter pecan and toasted coconut flavored Jordan Almonds, but these were just boring.  Not worth the calories.

Chips Ahoy brought out some new Halloween cookies!  Yay!

I like the new wrapper and the festive orange chips, but they pretty much are the same old cheap chocolate chip cookies.  Big points if you love Chips Ahoy, but nothing to go crazy about.

These, however, are delish:

See all that great orange filling?  These are double stuff thickness - love them!!  And look at the cute designs:

Clockwise from upper left - witch on her broomstick, black cat, ghost, jack-o-lanterns, bats.  I like the creativity, love the color of the filling (and the quantity - yay!), the packaging and the designs.  Woohoo - thank you Oreo!

Even Pop-Tarts came up with a Halloween design:

Although Choc-o-Lantern is a pretty lame name  (Palmer would have called these Bloody Pop Hearts and filled them with cherry.)  These look great on the package, but pretty grim in reality (pretty ugly and terrible actually):

But the flavor isn't bad - like chocolate cookie dough.  So appearance is bad, but taste is great!

I'm not sure if these are special for Halloween or not, but I've never seen them before and there is a mention of a Halloween promotion in the right hand corner:

Now look at them on the box - pretty cool.  Look at them in real life - ewww!

At least they are cream filled, right?  Um - no.  Not good.  Weird taste.  Boo.  (And not in a ghostly way.)

Harry and David comes through with these adorable mini iced cookies:

Aren't they the cutest?  And they taste great too.  Although they are the most expensive of the lot at $9.95 for a bag.

And is that the Salvador Dali pumpkin?  Must be a mustache.

These are in Target - witches' hats, pumpkins, and ghosts:

They are shortbread covered in white icing with orange and black sprinkles.  And they, too, are delicious.  And addictive.  I think they are laced with crack.

I found these in TJ Maxx too.  TJ Maxx has some cool treats, but you have to dig through the chaos.  These are Too Good Gourmet's Candy Shortbread Cookies:

Love the adorable witch and the pumpkin cut out window on the box.  And the cookies?

OMG!  They are GREAT!  Delicious shortbread cookies with loads of candy coated chocolate bits.

So, not only did I eat too much candy this Halloween season, I ate way too many cookies and Pop Tarts.  But what a great adventure!  I am proud of the bakers and candy companies who went to the trouble of bringing us something new - woohoo!  I am saddened by the apparent demise of the mini (70 calorie) Reese's Pumpkin.  But loved the new Hershey's caramel apples Kisses.  When one door closes, another opens.  ; )

Have a great week!! And don't forget to vote!

The Most Artistic Halloween Chocolates

The big night fast approaches!!!  And while I hate to have Palmer, Godiva and John & Kira's in the same blog - I gotta do what I gotta do.

Palmer is one of the few companies that actually came up with something NEW this Halloween.  Chocolate zombies:

Notice the coffin shaped base and the detailed creepy zombie!  For a buck you get a whole bag!  And there are multiple foil colors and designs - one zombie is actually holding a brain.  I give Palmer so much credit for crazy concepts and great execution (although it's damn hard to execute a zombie - bwah, ha, ha!).  The detail, the use of two colors of chocolate - bravo!  The taste - GROSS!  Can't have everything - cheap price, great design and great taste.  Two outta three ain't bad.

Palmer also has these screaming skullsl:

Look at the colors!  Look at the precision - green band-aid, creepy red eyeballs - still taste like Hell, but bravo, bravo for artistry!!!  And cheapness.

Godiva charges an arm and a leg (mention of severed limbs intentional) for its Halloween creations.  These cost $2.00 each:

This is a white chocolate tombstone with a caramel apple filling.  And it's only okay.  At some point I just need to give up on Godiva - overpriced, disappointing, so over rated.  Creative, yes.  Better than Palmer.  But not worth $2.00.

This is a Blood Orange Bat (bwah, ha, ha - BLOOD orange):

And as much as I hate to admit it, I like this one.  It has a rich, delicious orange taste - not that awful fake orange.  And the design and coloring is truly a work of art.  I have to say, this one is excellent.  Guess I won't be giving up on Godiva after all!

Now look at these beauties from John & Kira's:

Aren't they the cutest?  But they are small - about the size of a nickle.  And they are not cheap - about $3.00 each (yep the box is $36!)

Do you remember the Harry and David's pumpkin butter I reviewed?  These are filled with something very similar - it says it's pumpkin pie caramel, but it tastes just like pumpkin butter to me in a thin chocolate shell.  They are good, but I still think the best pumpkin chocolate confection is Knipschildt Chocolatier pumpkin truffles - sooo creamy and great.

Here's to the all the chocolate makers who take the time to design something fun and or beautiful!  And when it's delicious too - Happy Halloween to us!!

Teenage Vampires and Werewolves, Oh My!

I don't pretend to understand middle aged women who are into teenage vampires.  I don't pretend to understand middle aged women who are in to middle aged vampires.  (I mean, do you know where those fangs have been?)  But, hey, to each her own.  Or to each her own undead.

I've never seen this show or read these books and I have no intention of doing so.  But I did want to try the candy.  (I'm telling you, pickin's were slim this year!)

This assortment had three different designs and flavors.  Peanut butter for the werewolf Jacob:

I like the howling wolf design, (but is that his tongue poking out?  Wha? You can't howl with your tongue poking out!  Try it if you don't believe me.), liked the taste the best of the three, but that's not saying much.  This is no Reese's peanut butter and no great chocolate.  Better than Palmer, but that's about it.  (And really, what chocolate is not better than Palmer?)

This is a chocolate truffle for Bella:

Bleech.  Crappy chocolate.  Not even the truffle part was good.

Caramel for the vampire Edward:

Like the design - very detailed - nice!

While this looks like a good caramel, it's not that flavorful.  These are just not that great.  Mediocre. Zzzzzz...

I got this prototype bar at Candy Expo - before the final packaging was done - cool, huh?  These are made by the New England Confectionery Company (yep, Necco).  I hate almost everything else they make (Necco wafers, Sweethearts) - so I shouldn't be surprised these don't rock my world:

Here's the final - the new Sky Bar with the Twilight design:

Got a little crushed on my travels:

This is repackaged in the individual servings for Halloween.  I like the flavors even less in the bar because there's more cheap chocolate.  I like having the variety of flavors in one bar, like the creative artwork, don't care for the taste.  Sorry, Necco.  But hopefully those vampire/werewolf lovers out there will sustain you - I like your creativity. 

But next up are the real artists in chocolate, the super creative chocolate makers!  Stay tuned!