Theo Milk Chocolate 62% Salted Toffee

3oz (84g) bar

Ingredients: Organic fair trade cocoa beans, oft. sugar, oft. cocoa butter, o. milk powder, o. butter, o. corn syrup, salt, o. vanilla

15g sugar/42g serving (35.7% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Copied from 12/15/12) I've written about Theo Chocolate many times, and in short, it's a great Seattle company making bean-to-bar chocolate and creative, often seasonal confections (you'll see more in-store than online) that are organic and fair trade. You can visit Theo's retail store, order online, or find a selection of Theo's bars at upscale and health food stores nationwide. My only beef with Theo is that I tend to find its usual 70% dark chocolate base too sour as a match for flavorings, but that's a personal taste issue.

Today's Bar: Milk Chocolate 62% Salted Toffee, a seasonal blend from this past winter. It's not listed on the site right now, but in my experience, Theo's holiday chocolates tend to be repeated in one way or another in succeeding years.

Appearance: As with most of Theo's chocolate, this is a rich, orangey brown with a slight gloss and minor variations in color and texture (i.e. probably not super smooth and creamy).

Smell: Warm, bright, fruity, beany but not challenging.

Taste: Texture is a little chalky and chewy, with the candy crunch of the toffee. Flavor has Theo's usual sour notes, and they linger for a very, very long time, along with a little astringency and some rawness. During the eating, though, the milk softens the sour impact just enough to make this an easy chocolate to munch. The salt is a great addition to the toffee, as I think that without it, the toffee wouldn't stand up to the chocolate's strong flavors.

Conclusion: The milk and salt in Theo Milk Chocolate 62% Salted Toffee works well with Theo's strong chocolate base.

[Note: As you can see, I was intrigued enough to start in on this bar before I'd photographed it!]

B.T. McElrath Ginger Toffee Chocolate Bar

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cane sugar, cocoa butter, milk fat, salted butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, ginger, sodium bicarbonate, cayenne pepper, natural flavor, sea salt.

13g sugar/43g serving (30.2% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Altered from 12/17/11) Minneapolis's B.T. McElrath was founded by a chef, and accordingly seems to focus on creating unusual flavored bars and interesting seasonal confections. No organic/fair trade here. B.T. McElrath's Chile Limón Bar is one of my favorites, and while I was less enamored with the seemingly popular Salty Dog, I'm always up for more of the company's fun flavor combos.

Today's Bar: Continuing a ginger theme is B.T. McElrath's bar of both ginger toffee and candied ginger in 70% cacao. The complex-sounding flavor, which includes cayenne pepper in the toffee, sounds right up my alley.

Appearance: Shiny, rich brown with tiny light flecks under the surface and intermittent, barely-perceptible bumps on the back.

Smell: Rich, sweet, nutty, and mild, but with a bitter-sour undercurrent for chocolatey realness.

Taste: Not nearly as gingery as I thought it would be! I can see little toffee and crystallized ginger pieces, but the ginger here mostly adds candied complexity and texture to a mild, pleasant chocolate, with the cayenne contributing a super-subtle (and quite nice) burn at the end. As the smell demonstrated, the chocolate isn't flavorless, it just doesn't have any standout flavors: It's balanced sweet/sour/bitter/beany with no sharp edges and a smooth (save the inclusions) texture, a very easy 70% cacao. Kind of boring, but nice.

Conclusion: B.T. McElrath Ginger Toffee Chocolate Bar is a nice, mild dark chocolate with textural interest and just a hint of ginger and cayenne.

B.T. McElrath Salty Dog Chocolate Bar

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar (in the chocolate), cane sugar (in the toffee), cocoa butter, soy lecithin, butter, bicarbonate of soda, natural flavor, salt (in the toffee), sea salt (on the back of the bar)

17g sugar/43g serving (39.5% by wt.)

Corporate Info: Minneapolis's B.T. McElrath was founded by a chef, and accordingly seems to focus on creating unusual flavored bars and confections like Sweet Potato Pavé and Buttered Toast. B.T. McElrath's Chile Limón Bar is one of my favorites, and now that I'm eating a little more sugar, I can venture into the other 70% bars, including today's Salty Dog.

Appearance: Very glossy, richly hued reddish-brown with pale flecks under the surface and sea salt evenly sprinkled on the back.

Smell: Not strong, but with a hint of roasted beans and nuts.

Taste: Creamy chocolate, a lot of salt, toffee is more subtle in very small bits of crunch and low-key caramel flavor. The chocolate is mild, so even though it's 70% cacao the sweetness of the chocolate (not the toffee) stands out. Additionally, the salt doesn't seem to have a good counterpoint, which makes me wonder about the whole salt-sweet concept. I'm thinking that it's not just sugar and salt that work against each other, it's burnt sugar/caramel specifically that's so wonderfully enlivened by salt. Thus, I'd say there's too much sugar in chocolate form and not enough in toffee form to really play off the salt here. I've seen this bar many times and have the impression that it's pretty popular, but to my taste there's a balance issue that the Chile Limón bar didn't have. It's all very interesting, and I'd love to try more B.T. McElrath products.

Conclusion: For me, B.T. McElrath Salty Dog Chocolate Bar has too much sugar and not enough toffee to balance well with the mild chocolate and abundant salt.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Bar Toffee with Walnuts and Pecans

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, cane sugar, cocoa butter, butter, corn syrup, walnuts, pecans, soy lecithin, water, vanilla, sea salt

14g sugar/43g serving (32.6% by wt.)

Sometime after I tried last week's Trader Joe's caramel-filled bar, I happened to be back at the store and spied the other bar in the same line, Toffee with Walnuts and Pecans, though this one contains inclusions rather than a filling.

Appearance: First of all, I love these box designs, a crowded and colorful riff on the detailed, Victorian-style illustrations Trader Joe's uses on its promotional materials. That aside, the bar is thin and flat, with a uniform, glossy surface, solid brown color, and little bumps visible on the back.

Smell: Not particularly strong. Pleasant, rounded, fruity.

Taste: This bar contains small nuggets of toffee and flecks of nut. The chocolate is good in a generic way, so while it's not complex or intense or smoky or anything else you might like personally, it's also pretty dark and doesn't have any “off” flavors or no flavor at all, and I suppose that's a good way to appeal to a lot of people. The toffee pieces are large and salty-buttery enough to be enjoyable (I'm looking at you, Endangered Species), and the small nut bits are pretty forgettable, but given how many people buy chocolate bars containing little pieces of delicately flavored nuts, maybe others get more out of them than I do.

Conclusion: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Bar Toffee with Walnuts and Pecans doesn't stand out, but it's inoffensive and fun, and for $1.99 you get a gourmet-ish bar in a nice box.

Colorado Chocolate: Enstrom Candies' Toffee Petites

I recently visited a friend in Grand Junction, Colorado, home of Enstrom Candies and its “World Famous Almond Toffee”. We checked out their factory store, which carries not only Enstrom's chocolate covered toffee but also behind-the-counter chocolates, an assortment of boxed confections, some fun candies from other companies, ice cream, and a few baked goods. I bought myself a tiny box of their dark chocolate toffee “Petites,” some imported salty licorice, and a few interesting confections like dark chocolate mints (basically fancy Andes) and a tasty chocolate-dipped coconut caramel. Aside from the house-made toffee, prices are fairly reasonable; the confections aren't super-upscale molded and printed confections with creative fillings but rather homey dipped turtles and chews.

As for the Toffee Petites, they're fine but not my personal ideal. FYI, Unless you're the type who eats a Snickers in under a minute, the fat “petites” are really two or three bites. The crushed almonds on top don't stick well and end up getting everywhere. The dark chocolate in the coating is fairly forgettable, is thicker than I would have wanted, and tends to flake off the toffee, so it mostly gets in the way. I'd prefer a thinner coating of chocolate, as in Enstrom's regular toffee product (at least that's how it looks in the picture), and of course I would like it to be darker. The toffee nuggets, though, are pretty darn good, all butter and sugar. Next time I would eschew the Petites and go for regular toffee.

Enstrom has three stores in the Grand Junction area and two in the Denver area. If you're visiting Colorado and have a hankering for sweets, you might find what you're craving at Enstrom Candies.

Theo Organic Fair Trade Nutcracker Toffee Dark Chocolate 70%

3oz (84g) bar

Ingredients: Organic fair trade cocoa beans, oft. sugar, o. almonds, o. hazelnuts, oft. cocoa butter, o. corn syrup, o. vanilla bean, sea salt, baking soda

12g sugar/42g serving (28.6% by wt.)

I'm a sucker for seasonal bars. Their novelty gives me a reason to revisit familiar brands, and it's just fun to spot something new on the shelves. This winter Theo offers tasty-sounding milk chocolate bars, seasonal caramels, and two dark chocolates: Peppermint Stick and this review's Nutcracker Toffee. Okay, so it's just another toffee-nut inclusion, and I haven't been so enamored of late with Theo's 70% mix, but I like toffee and I don't see it too much in dark chocolate, so there you go.

The bar looks and smells like Theo's other 70% bars: medium-dark, simply molded, and almost pungent. Will it taste like the others too? Verdict: Ehhhh. It's not bad, it's just that I don't get much toffee and nuts in there. I can see them, tiny beige (nuts) or shiny (toffee) pebbles in the solid brown of the chocolate, but as with spring's coconut bar, the inclusions are simply drowned out by a strong, vividly flavored chocolate. I know this is a matter of personal taste, but I really wish Theo would come up with a milder chocolate for its flavored 70% cacao bars. For now, I'll just have to resist the pull of those seasonal novelties.

Conclusion: Theo Organic Fair Trade Nutcracker Toffee Dark Chocolate 70% tastes like the rest of Theo's dark chocolate.

Endangered Species Dark Chocolate with Hazelnut Toffee 72%

3oz (85g) bar

Ingredients: Bittersweet chocolate (chocolate liquor, beet sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla), hazelnut toffee (butter [cream, salt], beet sugar, roasted hazelnuts, tapioca syrup, soy lecithin)

13g sugar/43g serving (30.2& by wt.)

My favorite candies pre-sugar restriction were Sour Patch Kids and the like, super-sour chewy wads of sugar that I frequently craved and often purchased en masse from pay-by-weight mall candy stores. In the long run, though, the sugar, corn derivatives, and artificial colors and flavors were tangibly empty calories: I would scarf them mechanically until I realized I'd eaten the whole bag, and then I'd feel a bit ill. On the other hand, caramels and toffees, while not my treats of choice, actually satisfied. One or two pieces provided buttery richness and gave my teeth a workout, and I would think, “That was tasty, and I've had enough candy.” Now imagine me in my current state, deprived of creamy sweets, and you're sure to understand why I occasionally pick up Endangered Species' toffee bar. It's usually not expensive and sometimes even on sale, and it slides below my 1/3 sugar limit despite including candy as an ingredient. I appreciate that it's an option.

The inevitable downside of this bar is that it's not all that good. Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible or I'd stop buying it, but it doesn't live up to the name. The chocolate is Endangered Species' usual simple sweetness (I'm starting to wonder if using exclusively beet sugar affects the taste in some way); I keep detecting an odd cooling sensation, like a very subtle mint or menthol; and the toffee is undetectable as fragrance or flavor, its presence limited to the texture of a few small crunchy crystals. And I won't even touch on the promise of hazelnuts.

Conclusion: Endangered Species Dark Chocolate with Hazelnut Toffee 72% conforms to my restrictions and is seductively named, but to my taste it's really just another mediocre Endangered Species bar.