hey, bargain shoppers: your friendly neighborhood target store may have just put a bunch of pretty decent chocolate on clearance! this weekend i picked up a handful of chocolate bars from Frey, which is notable mostly for the fact that they produce some really f'in unusual combinations (especially for a mass-market retailer).



i picked up the Japonais, a milk chocolate bar with hazelnut and meringue filling, as well as the White Chocolate with Lemon and Lime Zest. each was $1.28 per 3.5oz bar. they also had White Chocolate with Blood Orange and Cinnamon (not too sure about that combo) and White Chocolate with Blueberry.

so far i've only tasted the White Chocolate with Lemon and Lime, and it is exceptionally tasty. the chocolate has a nice snap and melts readily, but the real star is the zest, which is very bright and... well... zesty! the texture is a little unexpected, somewhat crispy like toasted coconut, as if the peel had been freeze-dried before mixing with the chocolate. totally yummy.

anyway, just a heads up for you bargain shoppers... good luck!

BREAKING NEWS ALERT: the reason it doesn't have the texture of zest is that it is, in fact, not zest at all. instead, the chocolate contains little crunchies made of lemon or lime "powder." so, probably not all natural, but it doesn't change the fact that i thought this bar was delicious.

my canadian friend also brought with her an assortment of local candy, since she knows what a weirdo i am. so far, most of it has remained untouched (!) but i did try these:



the caramilk deluxe comes in individual portions, like a mass-market truffle or bonbon. each is filled with smooth, flowy caramel (right up my alley!) and a curious darker chocolate filling that has a bit of chew to it. the flavors all come together so you can't really tell any one ingredient from anything else except by texture. overall, i wish the caramel had a little more OOMPH, either from burnt sugar or perhaps salt. still, i enjoyed it and ate 'em all.



assorted walker's toffees... i only tried "nutty brazil," which is a soft chewy toffee with shards of brazil nuts mixed in, and "nonsuch liquorice," which is (as the name suggests) a black licorice toffee. the normal walker's toffees are good, enough chew to provide some substance but not dangerous to dental work. unfortunately i LOATHE the flavor of black licorice so i threw this one out after just a bite, but i'm sure someone somewhere would enjoy these :)

i bake all sorts of stuff depending on my mood, but it seems like i'm always coming back to cheesecakes. the base recipe is relatively simple, but lends itself well to countless modifications. and even though i have a tendency to try somewhat bizarre varieties, i'm kind of a cheesecake purist at heart: i really prefer to leave the cheesecake filling alone. you can put chunks of stuff in it, sure, but i don't care for "flavored" cheesecake batter, even chocolate, and i don't like to mess with the fat content.

that said, one of my friends from canada is visiting this week and she has lost an enormous amount of weight. i had no idea what to expect, to be honest, but she looks FAN-freakin'-TASTIC. and she's kind of wearing the clothes that say, yeah, i know i look good! but that's a subject for a different blog :)

so in her honor, i wanted to try my hand at a low-fat cheesecake. hmm, perhaps "low-fat" is a misnomer; how about "lower fat?" i used reduced fat cream cheese, reduced fat sour cream, and replaced most of the sugar with splenda. i was a little concerned that the batter really did look different than my normal cheesecake batter-- a little grainier, a little more wet. i ended up making this into a black forest cheesecake, thinking that perhaps the chocolate would mask a bit of the "diet" flavor.

the result? i like it. it actually turned out very creamy and the flavor is pretty good. i can definitely taste the splenda. and the cheesecake might (MIGHT) actually not be sweet enough, but i dunno. it seemed to go over pretty well. so it turned out to be a fun challenge! nonetheless, i think i'll be back to my ridiculously high fat cookery in the near future :)

i really like dollar stores. there, i said it. now i won't exactly admit to spending a lot of money in these places; mostly it's just a kitschy way to spend a few minutes. but sometimes you run across interesting products you don't see anywhere else: test-market stuff, close-outs, foreign crap that doesn't meet FDA standards, etc.

there's a 99¢ Store just down the street from my condo, and i try to visit at least a couple times a month to see what's new. of course, i'm mainly concerned with their candy aisle (which sadly seems to have shrunk in recent weeks...)

one of my best 99¢ Store purchases ever: Pink Grapefruit Mentos. i'm pretty sure these were never widely available in the US, but they are totally awesome: zesty with bright, authentic citrus notes. there's even a hint of grapefruit peel bitterness lingering in the background! alas, these disappeared quickly and have not been seen since.

last week, i picked up a box of individually wrapped peppermint puffs from King Leo. i seem to find these mostly around christmas, often in stick form. but here they were, a 7oz box for just 99¢. there may have been something slightly lacking in the texture-- inconsistent and perhaps not as soft as i like-- but still pretty good for a buck (and of course i finished the box.)

at the moment, i'm in the mood for something a little more upscale, but i'll save that post for another time...

ok, i lied, this post is not about candy per se; let's talk about gum.

i go through quite a bit of gum. like violet beauregard (left, in her original and much preferred incarnation), i want to be chewing gum at all times. keeps the saliva flowing and is moderately successful at preventing me from stuffing my face with actual food. whereas i used to be all about the endless exotic flavors of Bubblicious or Hubba Bubba, nowadays i don't necessarily want that brief-but-intense blast of sugar so tend to stick to the sugarless stuff.

for whatever reason, sugarless gum only seems to work in minty varieties. my favorite used to be Extra Polar Ice, which has little blobby mint 'crystals' that may or may not actually extend its flavor half-life. i've since moved on to Stride Sweet Peppermint, which true to its advertising campaign does seem to last (slightly) longer than many competitors.

but i'm still a sucker for new products, so i jumped on the chance to try Stride Tangerine yesterday. apparently it's so new, it's not even on their website as of this posting.

all i can say is, i'll stick to mint. upon popping a piece of Stride Tangerine, the first thing that comes to mind is: Flintstones Chewable Vitamin (in case it ever comes up in conversation, orange Flintstones Vitamins take the shape of Fred, Wilma or The Great Gazoo...) then there's that brief period of gum nirvana, when the flavor really blossoms and you're like "OMG THIS IS DELICIOUS" and the bright tangy citrus notes really get the juices flowing, but you know in the back of your mind, just like every other gum that's disappointed you in the past, the flavor is destined to fade quickly. and you're right-- 2 seconds later, the gum reverts to tasting like a nutritional supplement. and if i am gonna chew on something that tastes like a nutritional supplement, dammit, i demand 100% USRDA of something!

ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on this beauty! well, ignore the fact that the photo quality is subpar; i swear i take THE WORST pictures of all time. at any rate, this sassy little number is a lemon ginger cheesecake, and i made it!

normally i don't make a big deal out of my baked goods, which tend to taste a lot better than they look, but i was super happy with the way this turned out. taste-wise, here are the highlights and lowlights:
- the crust was really delicious. it's just a standard graham cracker crust recipe, but made with gingersnaps and candied ginger. next time i would add less butter, because i found the crust to be a little oozy right out of the oven.
- i tried to transform a lemon curd recipe into ginger lemon curd, but the ginger flavor was way too subtle. next time, more ginger?
- i might add a tablespoon or two of heavy cream to the cheesecake batter, because it seemed a little stiff. but at room temp, the finished cheesecake really was perfect.

ok, i'm done tootin' my own horn. next post will be back to our regularly-scheduled candy rants.

this weekend i had the opportunity to attend the 5th Annual Quail Gardens Chocolate Festival. basically, a bunch of local chocolatiers (both independent and corporate!) set up tables and offer tastings of their wares in exchange for $.50 tickets.

a few of the participants:

Jer's is a perennial san diego favorite, specializing in peanut butter truffles. normally i'm somewhat ambivalent towards peanut butter, but much like a gourmet version of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, Jer's has perfected that deeply satisfying, crumbly, slightly grainy peanut butter filling that feels cool on the tongue and is not cloyingly sweet. i always enjoy these, particularly the one with tiny bits of toffee.

guanni uses top-notch ingredients and exotic flavor combos to great effect. i tried the new cusco, a combination of hot yellow peppers and candied citrus peel in dark chocolate ganache. not only is it a very attractive piece of chocolate, it's also quite delicious. the yellow pepper has a pleasant slow burn, but i couldn't really detect much citrus.

i think helen grace is a frequent sponsor of school fundraisers, so their chocolate is... shall we say, slightly more crowd-pleasing? but that's not at all bad. one of their pieces on display was a thick square of pleasantly buttery caramel sitting atop a square of smooth semi-sweet chocolate, then drenched in white coating (i don't think this was actual white chocolate, it was kinda too sweet and BRILLIANTLY white) but it was a nice chunk of candy for a reasonable price.

i didn't see chuao this year, which is too bad cuz i'm jonesin for some of their passion fruit chocopods.

all in all, a good time. i only spent $10 on tastings (that's like 7-8 pieces of chocolate) and i surely could've kept going, but hey, it's summer and i'm trying to keep an eye on my expanding gut.