"chocolate covered" news and stories

The trend of mixing sweet and savory in candies is still going strong - and this is a good think for candy lovers. A pinch of salt really enhances the sweetness of sugar, chocolate, caramel or other sweet things by creating an obvious contrast. It also creates an instant mouthwatering effect - and who doesn't want food that's mouthwateringly good?

Getting back to candies, sea salt caramels - which are caramels spiked with a bit of salt - are the ultimately combination of salty and sweet. If you're a caramel purist, you'll want to skip the chocolate coated caramels and go straight for The Little Flower Candy Co's sea salt caramels, which are surprisingly salty and crazily addictive. Trader Joe's is also selling sea salt caramels in little wooden gift boxes this month and they are probably priced a little bit lower than LFC's candies. If you want to get some chocolate with your caramels, try Fran's Gray Salt Caramels. The award-winning chocolates have a sprinkle of salt on top and are one of the confections that kicked off the trend to begin with. For a lower priced, but equally chocolaty version, Crate and Barrel is selling a gift tin packed with them. It would also be a great thing to bring as a hostess gift for a holiday party, as it will probably be shared with everyone during dessert.

St. Patrick's Day might not have the same type of candy-giving connotations as Valentine's Day, but with candy companies seeing increases in holiday-related sales nearly every year, there certainly is some incentive for them to celebrate each and every holiday with a special product. See's Candy has a special confection for St. Patrick's Day and it is one of the most interesting I've seen. Not content to merely see chocolate leprechauns (though they have those, too), See's has come out with a candy potato. The St. Patrick's Day potato is a potato shaped lump of fluffy, marshmallowy divinity, packed with California walnuts and dipped in chocolate. The whole thing is rolled in a mixture of cinnamon and cocoa powder to round out the flavors of the candy and balance its sweetness, as well as to simulate the natural look (dirt) of the spud. I know that the See's divinity is delicious, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on one (or two) of these!

I will admit that both of these were gifts, but I am a big fan of chocolate covered coffee beans and often buy them as snacks for myself. I love the smoothness of the chocolate with the crunch and flavor of a coffee bean - sort of a deconstructed mocha. But how do the more than twice as expensive Dean & Deluca beans stack up to their Trader Joes counterpart?

Dean & Deluca's confection had excellent chocolate surrounding a large bean. The flavors blended amazingly well and the whole thing had a distinctly caramely tone to it, though the coffee bean flavor was evident. Excellent ratio - a bit more than 1:1: - of chocolate to bean.