Candy Bar Lab

Vosges first caught my eye when I found their Bacon Chocolate Bar. It’s a bold concept for a candy bar, but not one I was going to try seeing as how I’m a vegetarian. The Barcelona Bar on the other hand is a fine substitute for me. It has sea salt and smoked almonds so it should have the smokey, crunchy, and salty properties of bacon.

Structure
A thin, “deep milk chocolate” bar chopped hickory smoked almonds and sea salt mixed in.

Texture
The milk chocolate is smooth and rich. The almonds are chopped really fine - about the same size as the large sea salt crystals. Between the two, they add a couple types of crunchiness that give the bar some textural interest. I also like how thin the bar is. It gives it a delicate feel that’s easy to bite through.

Taste
Wow, this was really delicious. The 45% cacao chocolate is deep and rich and there’s quite a bit of sea salt. I’m a total sucker for chocolate and salt together. The only disappointment was that the hickory smoked almonds weren’t that noticeable. There was a slight aroma and aftertaste of smokiness, but I would have liked it to be more prominent.

Verdict
I stopped myself (barely) from eating the whole bar in the first sitting. It was hard though, I really wanted to eat the whole thing right away. This definitely gets a thumbs up from me. I have another Vosges candy bar in the house right now, the Calindia, that I’m now really looking forward to.

A couple years ago, I volunteered to make a few hundred little chocolate hearts for my girlfriend’s sister’s wedding. I had just learned to temper chocolate, but I was confident I could pull it off. Well, it was the middle of summer and the air conditioning decided to break in my apartment the weekend I had to make these chocolates. The humidity and 90 degree temperature in my kitchen that Saturday completely thwarted my futile efforts to temper chocolate and I was forced to travel to Burlington, Vermont (the site of the wedding) with nothing to show for my efforts.

We get there and my girlfriend suggests we buy the chocolate hearts from Lake Champlain chocolates, which was nearby. This saved the day. They were absolutely delicious; some of the best chocolate I’ve ever had.

Last week, a co-worker of mine (thanks Clinton) picked up a Lake Champlain candy bar for me and ironically, it had melted and cracked a bit in storage and transit from the store to me. Unlike my chocolate hearts effort however, this chocolate was salvageable. After a couple days of sitting in my kitchen, it was back to full health and ready to be eaten.

Structure
A six-segment, molded bar of milk chocolate with small pieces of raw almonds and sea salt spread throughout.

Texture
The milk chocolate is really smooth. It is amazing how different top-quality milk chocolate is from something like a Hershey’s Bar - they shouldn’t even be considered the same thing. Bad milk chocolate can be grainy - great milk chocolate is just so smooth (I can’t think of a better description). But besides the chocolate, there’s some great crunchiness from the salt and almonds. The sea salt crystals are definitely more noticeable, but the small bits of almond provide some depth of texture.

Taste
The milk chocolate is again the star - it tastes so smooth (I’m not creative today with my adjectives). The flavor lasts really long too - another sign of high-quality chocolate. They weren’t skimpy at all with the salt. If you don’t like heavily salted foods, you might be turned off by this candy bar. On the other hand, if you’re like me, you’ll love the combination.

Verdict
This bar is making me rethink my previous belief that I preferred dark chocolate over milk. Done this well, milk chocolate is amazing. The inclusion of saltiness makes it even better; heightening it’s flavor. Even though this was an expensive bar ($2.60 for 1.25 ounces), it would have been well worth it had I bought it myself (thanks again Clinton).