The Great Caramel Throw Down

I love caramel. But like chocolate (and men) caramel is all over the map. Some caramel is nice and chewy, some is almost like liquid, and some is that horrible wheat flour stuff in Goetze's caramel creams. GLACK!! Of course, the best caramel for you is the one you like the best. But I think you have to try a lot of caramels so you can figure out which one is really your favorite.

All these caramels taste so different I thought I should get a definition of caramel. From Wikipedia:

Caramel (pronounced /ˈkærəmɛl/ or /ˈkɑrməl/) refers to a range of confections that are beige to dark brown in color and derived from the caramelization of sugar. Caramel also refers to a soft, dense, chewy, caramel-flavored candy made by boiling milk, sugar, butter, vanilla essence, water, and glucose or corn syrup.

Yahoo! I'm all about milk, butter, and sugar - YAY! And all of the caramels we'll review here (except for one) are covered in chocolate. YUM!!!

In the last entry I told you how fabulous the caramels from The Chocolate Fetish were. Well, today we're going to look at their sea salt collection:

http://www.chocolatefetish.com/proddetail.php?prod=SSCGBO&cat=8







And because it's easier for me to compare and judge than just describe, we're also going to look at caramels from another Asheville chocolatier, French Broad chocolates:

http://www.frenchbroadchocolates.com/salted_honey_caramels.html

We'll talk more about their other chocolates in an upcoming entry.

And since all the celebrities (including our new President) keep raving about Fran's chocolates, we'll take a look at them too:
http://www.franschocolates.com/home.php?cat=1

Okay - first off, the diamond shaped thing is not a caramel - it's a hazelnut milk chocolate truffle. And it's very, very good - especially if you like hazelnut.

Okay - on to the caramel.

Let's compare all the dark chocolate sea salts and then the milk chocolate ones.

The winner is The Chocolate Fetish - their caramel is slightly softer than French Broad's and has a richer taste. There is also a better marriage between the chocolate and the caramel in the Fetish caramels. The French Broad chocolates use a local wildflower honey rather than corn syrup - I don't know if this accounts for the difference in taste and texture or not.

The Fetish caramel is so rich and chewy - it's just amazing.

Now what about the famous Fran's? Third place! Too salty - the salt completely overpowered the caramel. Now French Broad's caramels could actually have used a little MORE salt. It was too subtle there. Fetish was just right, Goldilocks.

Now here's the thing - if you only had Fran's you might think it was good. The combination of salt and caramel is a delicious one. But when you compare it to these other two - not so good! And Fran's is the most expensive, thank you very much. In this case, celebrity endorsement is worth more than quality.

Now what about the milk chocolate ones?

Fetish wins again! I just can't tell you all how amazing these caramels are. They have such a rich, deep taste. And look at all the different salts - they use SIX different salts from around the world. This really gives you an amazing taste experience. You would never think salts could taste so differently.

This time Fran's comes in second - I really liked the milk chocolate ones much better. The salt was less overwhelming than on the dark chocolate ones. But it was close, the French Broad caramels had a delicious finish. The chocolate was a bit smoother on the Fran's caramels.

So, when it comes to chocolate covered caramels, The Chocolate Fetish RULES!

All I want to do is get you to try something different. You may decide you'd rather have Kraft caramels any day, and that's great! But choose based on knowledge, not just because those are the caramels you've always eaten. And remember, this blog is about chocolate, but the message is bigger. Don't just do what you've always done or hang out with the same people you've always hung out with. Try new things! Meet new people! Your life is as big and as exciting as YOU make it. Everyday can be an adventure.

Even salt can be exciting!!

Candy from Beyond the Grave

Can I just tell you - dating is so unbelievably time consuming! Talking on the phone, planning the date, getting ready for the date, going to the date, enduring the date. It is totally taking me away from my blogging, and I actually find blogging more rewarding. I think my relationship with chocolate, candy and you, my dear readers, may be better than what I can hope for with any mere man. The three of you have yet to cancel on me, give me an unwanted kiss, or talk so much about yourself that I considered slitting my own wrists. I'd say I am going to dating hell, but I think I am already there.

But enough about me - let's talk about chocolate!!

Thanks to Russell Duncan for reminding me about Mast General Store and their selection of nostalgic candy! When I was in Asheville, I stopped in. The place was crowded, with almost everyone jammed in the candy section. Maybe people did coke in the 80s, but they are mainlining sugar in 2009. Rock on, I say!! Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Mast has one of those set-ups where you pick up a big basket and walk around all these barrels of candy and put what you want in the basket. Well - you know what happens - you get a couple of these and a few of those and pretty soon, you have an ungodly amount of candy. Nature abhors a vacuum and you fill that basket right on up.

To check out, they weigh it (some of the specialty items are priced individually) and you walk out having had a blast and paying way too much for a very customized and bizarre assortment of candy.

Here are some of the things I got:

Let's have a heart-to-to heart about these. See the hot Cinnamon Bear? That's a Sweet's Cinnamon Bear without the chocolate. MUCH better. Still a little too cinnamony for me. But very chewy and good. As hard as it is to believe, not everything is enhanced by adding chocolate.

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE those brown striped peanut butter bars! I could eat them until I exploded. They are made by Atkinson's, another old American Candy Company. Around since 1932 and located in Lufkin, Texas: http://www.atkinsoncandy.com/about/

They also make Chick-O-Stick which has always creeped me out because of the chick reference. I mean what the hell is that? The web site should say where the name came from. It's peanut butter, but why chick? I don't like the name and want no chicks to have touched any candy bar I eat and no chick parts to be in any candy bar I eat.

They also make the Long Boys you can see below the Peanut Butter Bar. These are crappy versions of the Tootsie Roll. Very crappy versions. Coconut tastes nothing like coconut, maybe like a weird caramel. It has a gross coconut texture at the end of chewing it. Not sure what it tastes like, but it's really not of this earth. Don't get these.

Yuck - don't get the Slo Poke either. Bleech!!! Billed as "delicious caramel" it is pretty yucky. It is not delicious and is only vaguely caramel like. It's like a horrible Kraft caramel. And after some of the absolutely earth stopping caramels we've reviewed here, you should not waste your time with this.

Under the Slo Poke is the Squirrel Nut Zipper - the best thing about these is the name. Way cool. There is a great swing band called the Squirrel Nut Zippers. The candy is made by Necco and I can't see how Necco can sell all these really bad candies and still be solvent. When all the people who buy them for the sake of nostalgia die, Necco is going down. Note to Necco - invest in R & D before it's too late!!!

I tried one Squirrel Nut Zipper, considered spitting it out, and threw the rest away. Walnetto's are much better. And you know how I feel about them.

The last two candies here deserve a close-up:

These are by Goetze's. They have a cool website:

http://www.goetzecandy.com/index.cfm?page=caramel_creams

The website says:

A favorite of many generations, Goetze’s treats have always been made the same old-fashioned way with a low fat, low sodium, no cholesterol recipe. You’ll enjoy the same great taste that’s been loved for years. Made with wheat flour, milk and real cream, Caramel Creams® have a clean simple taste that doesn’t give you that sour stomach that many really sugary sweets give you.

AAIIEE!!! These are HORRIBLE!!!! I never was a big fan of the caramel creams - I'd get them at Halloween and never liked them. But when I saw strawberry and chocolate versions at Mast, I thought, "Cool - I can't wait to try these!" Maybe it is the wheat flour, but these have a weird mouth feel and a vile after taste. I've never gotten a "sour stomach" from sugary sweets but these......these are evil. They must be designed to give children a lifelong fear of candy. Goetze's backwards is Sezteog, surely the name of a lesser demon. And the chocolate ones are called Bull's Eyes to go with another of their candies, Cow Tales. Bovine parts. EVIL, EVIL, EVIL!

Maybe there is a reason these candies are no longer popular. Maybe it is because they are awful. We have such amazing candy makers working today, these relics can no longer compete. I love capitalism.

We're not done yet! Well, I'm done - after a coconut Long Boy, a Slo Poke and that god-awful devil's wheat flour strawberry cream, I'm feeling a little ill. We'll talk more about the past tomorrow. If I live that long.