A Big Bowl of Polish Candy

http://i.imgur.com/G9uHH5q.jpg

There's a Polish butcher down the block from where we moved in. I went in one day, a gentrifying interloper with a budget, to find cheap chicken thighs, twelve different kinds of kefir and a wall of candy jars. Each of the candies was completely unfamiliar to me.

I am one of those guys who has a sweet tooth and has developed it into a personality trait: the guy who gets gummys and nonpareils at the movie theater, who has a line item for sweets to match my partner's wine budget.

I asked the woman behind the counter to please put together a mix of $20 worth of the candy and to please attempt to pick two of everything for me to try. It ended up being $25. Now I have A Big Bowl of Polish Candy. That's probably not right. Much of it is not Polish, it hails from Moldova or Spain or other places whose name doesn't appear on the label. But for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to consider it A Big Bowl of Polish Candy.

Let's try some.

http://i.imgur.com/3orPOcA.jpg
So far, so good!
This ended up being a reasonably decent dark chocolate covering over a whole dried apricot with an almond in the center. It tastes even better than it sounds. The apricot was moist in a lightish honey coating and the chocolate was crumbly but melt-in-your-mouth.
8/10, would snack again.

http://i.imgur.com/vhpVdAC.jpg
A total and tasty surprise!
Asking for Crabs at the candy store seems a bad idea. The first impression made it seem even worse: the candy comes out the wrapper as a dull pink lozenge the size of the first joint of your thumb. When you bite into it, the pink coating is revealed to be paper thin and underneath is something that tastes like a chick-o-stick mixed with chocolate. Nutty, chocolatey, crunchy, sweet and undeniably good.
8/10, am going to end up going back to this place and getting a bag of Crabs.

http://i.imgur.com/DJMw1D1.jpg
Do Re Mi Bomboane are a thin inch long bar consisting of a layer of fruit jelly over crushed (hazel?) nuts and coated in chocolate. Less delicious than that sounds; the jelly was mostly flavorless and the chocolate was low quality and maybe a bit stale.
https://madein.md/bomboane/do-re-mi-bucuria
6/10, not bad exactly but neither memorable nor particularly worth trying again.

http://i.imgur.com/GznZixZ.jpg
Crazy bee is a gummy lump with a gelatinous interior. They apparently come in different flavors but this one had a sharp grapefruit citrus gummy flavor and a sweet nectar center. The gummy was mellow but the center was a tad cloying; even so I wouldn't mind trying the full flavor collection.
https://roshen.cn/en/product/crazy-bee-fruity/
7/10, could see giving this one another go.

http://i.imgur.com/R0WVRrC.jpg
Milky Splash fooled me. I assumed it was a garden variety caramel but nestled in the center is a lump of somewhat gooey condensed milk stuff that promptly coated my throat. The taste was like rimming a stick of butter. I gagged and spat it out on the street.
1/10, hard pass.

This thread is basically me every time I visit an east London corner shop

yeah I pretty much did this when I went into a Georgian store a couple of weeks ago

Crabs are pretty good.

Anything made by Roshen will be Ukrainian (former President Petro Poroshenko’s company).

Look for Belochka chocolates in a little green packet with a squirrel on it if you go back.

I am so, so jealous of you. I had a girlfriend in high school whose parents were both Polish, and they'd bring back these chocolate covered plums from Poland when they'd visit, or find them at a specialty shop in LA. just impossibly delicious. thirty-odd years later I got to go to Poland and the day before flying from there to england I had enough time in Krakow to find a supermarket -- turns out these plums are an old-folks staple sweet at Christmas, and it was early December, so I hit the jackpot. sooooo good.

Would eat a candy called forksclovetofu

Great thread. That apricot thing sounds fucking amazing.

For Brooklyn-adjacent people interested in visiting and getting your own haul, here's the address
http://www.kensingtonbrooklynblog.com/2007/11/dans-select-meats.html

http://i.imgur.com/xomu0zC.jpg
This is very much like the first one that I posted, except that instead of an almond inside it, the apricot has chopped candied cherries on top. I prefer the flavor of this one and the texture of the first one but I will happily take either of these. JCLC, these are clearly the same species as your chocolate covered prunes... which I think I have several of in this pile waiting for me.
8/10, total keeper

Great thread.

Would love to see photos of the unwrapped candies next to the wrapper.

http://i.imgur.com/oYDo8SI.jpg
A thin finger of chocolate-coated fudge with ground hazelnuts mixed into the filling. As with many of these so far, the flavors are strong, the mouthfeel is unctuous and a little goes a long way. Five minutes later, I'm still picking out infinitesimal grains of hazelnut from between my teeth. A bit of diabetic shock in green and nearly worth it.
7/10, needs a warning label to eat no more than half.

I will start adding pictures of the candies in the next batch.

http://i.imgur.com/hlZAkbz.jpg
A small chocolate covered square. When you bite in, it's tri-colored: black currant jelly up top, a thin layer of french marshmallow and a citrus jelly below that. Decent chocolate, distinct flavors for each of the jellies and a nice overall pairing but i'm not much for sheet gelatin treats without the gummy chewability.
6/10, nice if you like that kind of thing

I hope you've got plums in chocolate somewhere in that bowl

http://i.imgur.com/30PdyNq.jpg
This little foil-wrapped button is the size of a gumdrop. Imagine a big glass jar filled with these! I had assumed this would be something soft and gentle, maybe a simple chocolate bonbon or a caramel. Instead what I got was a thin chocolate coating over a super-dense pink sugar blob of... well, i'm not sure what. Hardened nougat? Dry fondant? Suffice it to say it's hard enough where you can't bite through it with your molars so you have to chip away at it while it dissolves in your mouth. I guess this is meant to keep children busy as a suck toy/choking hazard? Truly a weird and unique candy memory but I dunno about doing this more than twice.
9/10 for the packaging, 2/10 as candy, 7/10 as a one time experience

http://i.imgur.com/RiLiOrL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/F8xqJZE.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/pB9xx6m.jpg

Lazy Cow is a thickly rectangular, chocolate-covered slab of styrofoamish wafers partitioned by thin sheets of supersweet vanilla milk frosting. Outrageously filling and a bit oversweet.
4/10, all-in-all just a bit too much.

This is my fav thread rn

Lazy cow looks good to me.

forks, I'm worried for you if you've eaten these all today.

lol i am definitely done until evening!

is there a nurse standing by

this stuff is distinctly non-FDA approved

The gelatin one sounds a lot like those kosher-for-passover chocolate jelly things (which I don't much care for) - know what I'm talking about?

Roshen is a big Ukrainian company fwiw, and I notice some of those have cyrillic letters meaning they are probably not polish.

I want the apricot one so bad.

These do seem like Ukranian candies rather than Polish ones. But they are next to each other after all.

The apricot one looks like Polish.

Also, I looked up Bucuria (the "DoReMi" candy) and apparently it's Moldovan.

Yeah, first one is Polish.

you're right about the jelly passover candies MA; it's in the same family.

Now I have A Big Bowl of Polish Candy. That's probably not right. Much of it is not Polish, it hails from Moldova or Spain or other places whose name doesn't appear on the label. But for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to consider it A Big Bowl of Polish Candy.

(incidentally the apricot treats have chopped walnut inside, not almond; my bad)

Great thread. I've seen a few of these in my trips to Atlanta -- the Buford Hwy Farmers Market has a good-sized Eastern European section, including its own deli/cheese/bakery cases. They have most of an aisle of Polish/Ukrainian/Moldovan/Russian/Czech/Belarusian/etc candy and biscuits.

xp - lol goddamnit, I don't read anymore!

Love this thread. This is reminding me of when I was fifteen and on a school exchange in Russia, and they took us on a tour of the Red October candy factory, which seemed to mostly make little bite-size oblong wafer-and-chocolate candies. It was like a kid's fantasy of being let loose in a chocolate factory; you could just reach out and grab chocolates off the conveyor belts. But they cleverly took us past the cheapest, sickliest chocolates first, so that by the time we got to the truly wonderful dark chocolate truffle wafers at the very end, we were all too full of bad milk chocolate to eat more than one or two.

Cant help but notice a lot of this supposed polish candy is clearly of ukranian manufacture

can't believe nobody has mentioned Juggalo candy itt yet

If you bought it in America it’s American candy

if you bought it in Uruguay is it Uruguay candy or Myuguay candy

Now I have A Big Bowl of Polish Candy. That's probably not right. Much of it is not Polish, it hails from Moldova or Spain or other places whose name doesn't appear on the label. But for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to consider it A Big Bowl of Polish Candy.

if the first picture is the entirety of the candy you bought am genuinely amazed that 25 dollars got you that amount. seems insanely expensive.

I am so, so jealous of you. I had a girlfriend in high school whose parents were both Polish, and they'd bring back these chocolate covered plums from Poland when they'd visit, or find them at a specialty shop in LA. just impossibly delicious. thirty-odd years later I got to go to Poland and the day before flying from there to england I had enough time in Krakow to find a supermarket -- turns out these plums are an old-folks staple sweet at Christmas, and it was early December, so I hit the jackpot. sooooo good.

Yes, those are classic Polish grandmother treats:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/j_JzS84k9SB3LXKA-7BEcVyY4zc2ACvYSJ6bq0z5vvM_MNBCCsxAPEEU-vpEyWag7ULpVnd3vtEdzkVrdbZ5TAyb4f18IfGBjQlCu0O4roQnUU0OTnhkTVYwdCpfI4ylhMmE_bX5weZGPSwSauEerVWqHz7ew15Jjfw-FyT_0SpEnDBz8i5sMpIXkLMZXnZpp7WoLXknu3XrE3cU1SY3rU7r82f3zg

damn, my polish grandmother would just give us unwrapped free cookies from the boat casino, claiming she'd baked them.

excellent thread, forks. looking forward to the next surprises. I can't criticize what my kids watch on youtube anymore -- I get it.

seems insanely expensive.

the polish aisle in my local supermarket is a favourite because it's significantly cheaper than english chocolate (and often nicer). polish particularly fond on wafers and coconut things based on the stock there.

tons of polski skleps locally too, but i'm never sure of the vegetarian status of things so...

(UK obviously closer to poland than the US)

I am somewhat addicted to Kucharek Universal Vegetable Seasoning but have never tried Polish sweeties, there are certainly plenty of opportunities to try them here!

http://i.imgur.com/4DL74lY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YtXJ1Dq.jpg
Here's the much requested chocolate covered plums. Well, prunes really but that makes them sound a lot worse than they taste. They do indeed hold up to billing: soft, juicy fruit and reasonable quality chocolate add up to a flavorful and tangy little morsel that anyone would love.
8/10, could definitely see having a small cache of these for visitors.

Next time I go to Poland I’m going to have to try the ice cream version:

https://i.postimg.cc/15DSRxNk/BE85-B858-FED5-4-EDF-9-D2-A-9-BC4-EF01402-D.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/N2QFBA9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wzv6SQe.jpg
The taste of the chocolate-covered Pomawka Poweh soft nougat filling is disarming: lightly floral, as telegraphed by the packaging, but mostly grainy, sugary caramel with a whiff of alcohol on the tail end. It's strong with remarkably long legs and coats your throat like congealed honey.
5/10, might be more into this if I could completely identify the flavor.

http://i.imgur.com/6o1ep5j.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mYqCyJn.jpg
The by-now expected thin layer of soft chocolate gives way to a coarse tile of leathery halvah-like substance, a milky and rough slab of dense protein bar. You could probably live on four of these a day.
5/10, north of gross but south of enjoyable.

http://i.imgur.com/SgQ9dcA.jpg
Surprisingly delicate lump of puffed rice and nut butter filling in a chocolate-covered puffed rice shell embedded with tiny pellets of crushed nuts. Sort of a peanut butter flavored Ferrero Rocher with a vaguely coconut aftertaste? I'm into it.
7/10, nice find!

the roshen Pomawka Poweh things are described as

"A Crème Brulee fondant filling with cacao and cognac flavoring coated with a chocolate glaze. Imported from Ukraine."

it’s actually “Romashka Roshen”, because Cyrillic - meaning Chamomile Roshen (those Ukrainian candy guys again)

translating the names makes for some interesting results - would you say the name “Ladybug Soufflé” makes the milky and rough slab of dense protein bar above a) more or b) less appetizing?

The chocolate covered chocolate thing looks pretty good to me.

btw this thread surprises me. for many, many years I had Polish chocolate down as bad quality stuff, based on the specimen I was offered one time. it might be time to re-examine.

“Ladybug Soufflé”

The word for ladybird (Korovka) has the same root concept as it does in Irish - ‘little cow’ or ‘God’s little cow’, so this would be ‘little cow soufflé’, which is at least 6% more appealing.

I have Polish coworkers - whenever they visit our American offices, they only bring fancy boxed chocolates, never any of these exotic novelties

makes sense, was wondering why there cows and daisies on the wrapper but no actual ladybugs

xp

apparently daisy is also ромашка in Ukrainian, is that correct? a very flexible word indeed!

I had a day on the ground in Krakow a couple years ago. I was very tired, and in a weird emotional space, and my train only got there at 3-ish and I had to fly to England the next day. For my Dad's funeral. Still, I spent my downtime in Krakow finding a supermarket so I could buy as many of those plums as my luggage could hold.

Cognac and chamomile could definitely be the mystery flavor! Not sure that makes it any more palatable though...

"Ladybug Soufflé" is sort of the perfect name for that milky protein bar.

The word for ladybird (Korovka) has the same root concept as it does in Irish - ‘little cow’ or ‘God’s little cow’

I learned this just yesterday! Someone who came to dinner at my house mentioned it.

How do you say "...and garnished with lark's vomit" in Russian?

it’s the same in Dutch, come to think of it:
sweet lord’s bug (“little animal”).

the Dutch word for daisy appears to be derived from sweet virgin, in reference to Mary.

(Mary is also being the “lady” alluded to in the bug’s name - German and the Scandinavian languages make this explicit)

“daisy” was originally “day’s eye” btw!

xp

apols for this etymology overdose, probably time for some new eye candy

being

http://bella.media.mit.edu/people/foner/Fun/gravity.html

I am totally going to stop at the one little euro market in town and grab some sweets, which I usually avoid because I have no idea what the hell is going on in any of those boxes. Will ask for help finding choco covered plums! Then will proceed onward to tummy ache and will blame this thread!

http://i.imgur.com/wIZZjny.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/90F0LAs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Jd0nCHp.jpg
This is the biggest candy in the stash; I'm posting the cyrillic info on the back for folks that can translate. It's roughly the size of a chips ahoy cookie and three times as thick. It tastes like a fruity mallomar: a thin soft chocolate shell dotted with some tiny fragments of crushed nuts over a puffy and yielding marshmallowy base that yields floral and sweet aftertaste over vanilla top notes. As with a lot of these candies, a bit more subtlety would likely make this more palatable but it's the sort of thing you could split with a kindred spirit and share a moment.
6/10, a bit too much of a good thing.

http://i.imgur.com/RC2MkuS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GQfn0Ym.jpg
Korvika Roschen is a fingerlike slab of grainy, buttery caramel in spectacular packaging. I get the sense these would be better fresh and this one was most definitely not. Even so, the flavor intensity far surpasses Werther's, though the mouthfeel is stale.
4/10, I think I got a bum steer.

http://i.imgur.com/G73EpZe.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7EBq7TR.jpg
Amazing packaging makes the Kapa-Kym Poweh a seductive looking treat. The payoff is a finger of oily soft dark chocolate with mystery crunch crumbs and a soupçon of hazelnut/sesame flavor that evokes smokiness or - less pleasantly - burning. Not as bad as it might sound but not as good as the label promises.
6/10, the camel isn't lying but he's not all he's cracked up to be.

http://i.imgur.com/iTFkMX7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/X73SveF.jpg
The slightly psychedelic poppy wrapper belies the taste and consistency and presentation, which is all more or less exactly the same as the Kapa-Kym, minus the vague nuttiness. By the fourth of these candies my tastebuds are kinda fried, so maybe there's something else going on with flavor... but I doubt it.

5/10, not much to get excited by.

in ascending order:

Червоний Мак: “Red Poppy” (indeed)

Кара-Кум: “Karakum” (the Central Asian desert, so yes, camels - the sesame in particular makes this one sound very promising)

Korivka: “Cow”

Зефир - сладкие истории (зефир ванильный с орешками с шоколадной глазури):
“Marshmallow - Sweet Stories (vanilla marshmallows with nuts in chocolate glaze)”

this post was sponsored by G**gle Translate

I like how accurately forks’ descriptions match the candy’s name in some cases. I mean:

a bit more subtlety would likely make this more palatable but it's the sort of thing you could split with a kindred spirit and share a moment <<iow>> “Sweet Stories>>

lol, you would think i work in marketing or something

http://i.imgur.com/WYBwNcC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/j0kNdN3.jpg
Chocolate covered apricot filled with a dense marshmallow. The apricot is sour, the marshmallow is a bit sickly and the overall impression is of spoiled fruit. Gah!
1/10, now I am dying.

http://i.imgur.com/CMi22UB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NnDpH5F.jpg
Frying pan to fire: this swan sweet is thin chocolate over a block of marshmallow with the consistency and wan resistance of pork fat. Not much flavor and what's there is pretty poor. Ended up spitting this one out too.
1/10, perhaps the local butcher doesn't like me?

wrong image:
http://i.imgur.com/oe1w5ki.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Spa4UnZ.jpg
Another marshmallow bar but this one has better quality chocolate and filling and a bit more snap to the coating. There's a mix of graham cracker and coconut aftertaste. Following the prior two gutter candies, this is a vast improvement but not much to write home about.
4/10, distinctly okay at best.

Леди Ночь: “Lady Night”

order more here

http://i.imgur.com/vuXlgdr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aIJ2C1D.jpg
Brown wad of presumable caramel, uncuttable by knife and resistant to chewing. Best I could do was scrape off the sides like a lump of wax. Flavor is used sugar. Not a good day of exploration.
1/10, better as a building material than a candy.

lady night has been canceled

tough showing for polish marshmallow

The whole ‘ptichye moloko’ (birds’ milk) genre of chocolate-coated ‘milk soufflé’ is not great, tbh.

say more? that's a thing?

Yes, it’s a famous Polish sweet that has copycat versions across Eastern Europe. It’s generally lighter and less chewy than classic marshmallow.

The 4/10 one has the Bird’s Milk name and the 1/10 one, I’d guess, doesn’t have the trademark in Russia so it’s called something like Marvellous Bird, but they’re essentially the same thing.

I don’t like them at all but had a colleague who was absolutely addicted to them.

http://i.imgur.com/0v70T1j.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gyBBjzz.jpg
A thin chocolate covered finger of extremely creamy hazelnut nougat, studded with orts of ground hazelnut. Delicious but flavorful to the point of overdoing it, coats the throat with a sugary residue.
7/10, sort of like freebasing Nutella.

http://
http://i.imgur.com/1y92t9B.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZrpmKAp.jpg
These Roshen Mont Blanc chocolates appear to have different fillings based by color but I only ate the one. As you can see, the design is a mountain in miniature, tipped by a white chocolate snowbank atop a milk chocolate base, studded with ground nuts and filled with a somewhat indeterminately flavored chocolate cream center. I gather this is the brand's upscale option; it's one of the only chocolates I've had from this bunch that isn't overpoweringly sweet or fatty on the tongue. It's a lot closer to mid-upper end American chocolate.
7/10, definitely the choice if you're bringing a gift home to Grandma.

http://i.imgur.com/rccfgc3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iF1dxDb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9QaSTAx.jpg
Biting into this ivory button reveals a quarter-inch thick waxy shell surrounding a grainy lump of citrusy sugar paste. It tastes a bit better than it sounds but not by much. This may be past its sell by date.
3/10, probably worth avoiding.

Uh, dude, not sure if you noticed this, but that writing does not appear to be Polish

this has been gone over multiple times including the OP

http://i.imgur.com/2OqarkM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/66U1tKc.jpg
Chocolate coating over a generous dollop of macaroon-style shredded coconut with a core of the dreaded "bird's milk" marshmallow. Surprisingly that dubious treat in the center didn't do much to dissuade my enjoyment and only served to amplify the sugary flavor. Coconut covers a host of sins.
6/10; if you think Mounds aren't sweet enough, this is your candy

Now I have A Big Bowl of Polish Candy. That's probably not right. Much of it is not Polish, it hails from Moldova or Spain or other places whose name doesn't appear on the label. But for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to consider it A Big Bowl of Polish Candy.

xp - lol goddamnit, I don't read anymore!
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, July 13, 2021

some of that non-Polish for the first one:

ліщина lishchyna = hazel
цукерки tsukerki = sweets

http://i.imgur.com/l7aCwUv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YCyszYJ.jpg
Well, I knew before I bit it what I was getting into: chocolate coated "bird's milk" marshmallow in strawberry and vanilla flavors, which is not unlike gnawing on a lump of sweet congealed pork fat.
1/10, this marshmallow stuff is very much for the birds.

oh lol, i did the hazelnut one already. Same score too!

All the ones I think look good you hate :(

Though I guess on some level they all look good to me.

🖼
🖼
Biting into this ivory button reveals a quarter-inch thick waxy shell surrounding a grainy lump of citrusy sugar paste. It tastes a bit better than it sounds but not by much. This may be past its sell by date.
3/10, probably worth avoiding.

fun thread! forks, what's a 10/10 candy iyo? I'm curious what your base of comparison is

10/10 over the counter chocolate candy for me might be skor, three musketeers, mounds? It's not great candy but it consistently hits the spot and that's more the scale I'm grading on, not gourmet chocolate.

I really do think a lot of these are stale as fuck, so bear that in mind and bump up the score accordingly if you find them on sale fresh in the wild! Would love this to be the rolling "i tried unfamiliar candy" picture thread for comparison scoring.

(every day i do this, i get a slight stomach ache... even though I'm only eating half the candy at this point!)

second showing for Леди Ночь/Lady Night, second 1/10

let’s declare a marshmallow moratorium

I would support that!

Look, I really don't know what your point is, and I'm not going to bother to "read" your "replies," but I know the Cyrillic alphabet when I see it.

ЛОЛ

O'ryllic?

Look, I really don't know what your point is, and I'm not going to bother to "read" your "replies," but I know the Cyrillic alphabet when I see it.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, July 28, 2021 3:35 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Is this a serious post?

I can't tell anymore around here.

skor, three musketeers, mounds

is this a serious post?!

what over the counter US mass-produced chocolate candy is your 10/10?
i would add reese's to that list

NB: it's a steep grading curve for that stuff; i am not out here heavily stanning 3 musketeers! But it's what I buy if I get chocolate craving at a cvs.

I haven't had a 3 musketeers in years maybe decades, but Skor def punches above its weight iirc

adding reese's makes it more relatable. feel like none of the other 3 will crack the top 3 as 10/10 standbys when steve harvey throws it to the board.

selection of mounds over almond joy and 3 musketeers over snickers does help us calibrate our levels, though

'select 3 items from A Big Bowl of Polish Candy' will be a new branch of psychoanalysis

I think there's a widesoread belief over here that American chocolate is weird and terrible.

Well…

I'm wondering if these 'Polish' candies might be a little sweet for American tastebuds.

If there's one thing your average American chocolate lacks, it certainly isn't sugar.

these are all WAY sweeter than I'm used to!

the man alive special:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0007/9744/2107/products/npblossomgel_400x.png?v=1620405350

anyways you're right in noting that i don't like peanuts or almonds in my candy as a general rule

If there's one thing your average Eastern European chocolate lacks, it certainly isn't sugar.

I grew up in Scotland, where the concept of something being too sweet doesn't exist. I mean this stuff should probably be illegal on dental health grounds at least:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_(confectionery)

btw pom:

Tablet is almost identical to Québécois sucre à la crème.

I think there's a widesoread belief over here that American chocolate is weird and terrible.

― Wouldn't disgrace a Michael Jackson (Tom D.), Wednesday, July 28, 2021 4:52 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well…

― pomenitul, Wednesday, July 28, 2021 4:53 PM (four minutes ago)

definitely true at the level of a Hershey's bar, but you can, of course, get nice US-made chocolate

I think Hershey's is US chocolate to people outside the US.

I've never tasted it.

you can, of course, get nice US-made chocolate

Oh yeah, you can nice US-made anything (or very nearly). I was thinking in terms of the typical, ubiquitous stuff.

As for sucre à la crème, yeah, it's blindingly intense and I'm all for it – just not more than maybe twice a year? I'll definitely try Tablet when I get the chance.

Anyway my Eastern European candy/chocolate challop which I'm allowed to state point blank is that 95% of them suck and are only worthwhile as exotic artifacts. The desserts are where it's at.

absolutely, just want visitors to know it's okay to eat the fancy chocolate lol

isn't Hershey's not technically chocolate or something?

As for sucre à la crème, yeah, it's blindingly intense and I'm all for it – just not more than maybe twice a year? I'll definitely try Tablet when I get the chance.

You'd have to go to Scotland to try it, no-one else is insane enough to make it and feed it to their children.

Proper link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_(confectionery)

I'll be on the lookout for it once I get there – it's a question of when not if.

I've never had Tablet or sucre à la crème but the image in that wiki article looks a lot like burfi, which is the only Indian sweet I really like

tablet sounds like the babyface candy stuff upthread

ILX struggles with Wikipedia links that feature closing parentheses, so you have to copy/paste it.

2xp

Fuck me, that link doesn't work either. Anyway, you can feel your teeth rot as you eat it etc. Indian sweets are even worse though!

Evan ate a bunch of these leftovers and lived to tell the tale

Indeed! Not so bad. Lots of various waxy textures iirc

I got a bag of wrapped candies from the Swedish company Sockerbit. They’re good! Much better allocation of sugar than the last pile so I can eat a bit more in one sitting without feeling poisoned.

http://i.imgur.com/fw6UCGh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZrjiAxM.jpg
Gingerbread Caramel - Outrageously strong gingerbread flavor, tastes just like one of the gummyish corners of a tray of fresh gingerbread. Absolutely outrageous, totally delicious. Would eat a pile of these without noticing, probably lucky that I can’t immediately find these for sale on their own on the website. 10/10.

http://i.imgur.com/W5X373Y.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ql6WNA0.jpg
Fransson’s Polkakola - Peppermint taffy with a slightly creamy flavor and consistency. Nothing exciting but the freshness and natural taste made it a treat. 8/10

http://i.imgur.com/1CVO5Sk.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UBxIWjd.jpg
Grahn’s BRAVO - Thinner-than-Starburst-sized individually wrapped bits of flavored toffee. The Gräddknäck flavor is vaguely ginger and coffee, the Lakrits is a pungent but not unpleasant licorice and Choklad is exactly what you would expect. The size and relative kick of flavor makes me think that a jacket pocket full of these would be great to have for blood sugar emergencies or to pacify kids… or just me. 7/10

http://i.imgur.com/KZBhpKC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lbKKsf7.jpg
Kick Original - Billed as “My Soft Licorice Toffee” on the wrapper, it delivers exactly that. Creamy after chewed and without the tannic leather flavor I associate with lower quality black licorice. It’s not going to win any converts but if you like that flavor, this is a great option. 7/10

http://i.imgur.com/dLVeiBn.jpg
Kolafabriken Lemon Toffee - Harder than many of these other taffies but possessed of a subtle, enjoyable citrus flavor. There’s lots of different flavors, but this is all I had at the moment. 7/10

http://i.imgur.com/txevX5E.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/w7Xq2nx.jpg
Hem-Kola - Starburst-sized wrapped squares of toffee. Hasselnötter original is caramel, Chokolad is chocolate. Both are fine and would easily surpass most of the “original” big bowl but in this company it’s middling at best. 6/10


http://i.imgur.com/YBHcBgW.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/w5Qc27W.jpg
Marianne - Thin white peppermint shell over a chocolate shell for the red ones and over caramel for the blue ones. The blue ones are fine but it’s the red ones I love. The temptation is to crunch these, which makes them into lightly chocolate flavored peppermint candies but trial and error has taught me to breath them as lozenges to suck on. The peppermint is mild and sweet and eventually gives way to a now mostly liquid core of chocolate that gets much more flavorable now that it’s body temperature. I just bought a quarter pound. Blue ones are 6/10, Red ones are 10/10

http://i.imgur.com/bvj1Wjv.jpg
Pim Pim Klubba - Mellow strawberry flavor lollipop. Super-dense candy, not a chewing lollipop but a legit sucker. Not bad, but not the way I prefer to consume candy. 6/10

does removing this from Poland kill the interest? Who woulda thought.

I've a swedish colleague that occasionally brings back marabou bars. The black saltlakrits are particularly great. I've read and enjoyed these updates.

no, this is gold. xp.
always wanted to try maleco pastellfiskar.

I find the soft, salty licorice things smell faintly of urine, like the sheep kidneys in Ulyesses

This thread is great... thank you for sharing these candies.

i am avoiding the salt licorice stuff tbh; i've tried them once and it was like eating shoe leather in curdled piss. not something I'm looking to repeat.

lol

but do u like regular black licorice?

standard licorice, when either mild or particularly raw anise, is fine by me. That licorice thing upthread was pretty tasty!

as long as i have your attention: where can i get grab bags of foreign candies online? Or better yet, buy them for me and then send them to my home. I will eat them for your amusement.

https://www.candywarehouse.com/international-candy

??

not sure if they sell samplers tho

Not so much. Once Omicron blows over, maybe I can start going to places in the city.

Polkakola is my favorite name, but I would love to try the Mariannes.

my mom got me 6 months of universal yums for xmas and the first month is polish. i haven't opened it yet, though.

http://i.imgur.com/MSaBkyc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pzTuRKK.jpg

This elegant looking, ballet branded block of candy is sold as kinda premium chocolate and it mostly lives up to the price hike: silky chocolate, ground hazlenuts, no chemical aftertaste or overly harsh sugar flavor. Sort of a milder, richer Ferraro Rocher. 7/10 would eat again but could probably get better for the money.

http://i.imgur.com/0dAwh1C.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/fs8BcK9.jpg
Another sort of hazelnut whipped, airy chocolate center, somewhat sweeter but without chemical aftertaste. 7/10, good and better than a lot of prior offerings in this thread but a little undistinguished.

http://i.imgur.com/aesbaPb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/qvjNHUn.jpg
Chocolate-enrobed lemon creams. As you might imagine from past reports, the lemon is outrageously sweet and somehow creamy. It avoids the dreaded evocative scent of floor wax, but really only barely. Its tastier than I'm giving it credit for but the INTENSITY of the goddamn thing is such that half of one might be a better snack. Eating a whole one (and they're the size of your first pinky knuckle) coats your throat in saccharine citrus. 6/10, a little goes a long way.

are you ready for the next one? I wasn't.

http://i.imgur.com/wtpyXW3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/F6GFEYF.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ocEAjxm.jpg

At $12 a pound, wrapper and all, the Boletto Premium was the most expensive item in the candy counter and, if not for this thread, I surely would've skipped it. But curiosity set in, so I got one. Imagine my surprise upon opening this treat to discover that the external advertising was all too accurate. This thing looks just like a mushroom and slips out of the cellophane with a pre-moistened glisten of lubrication. Alas, it turns out to be made out of the aforementioned and generally disgusting "bird's milk souffle" marshmallow, a dense and coagulated lump of oversweet hog fat. The "head" is covered in thick milk chocolate and the "stem" is inexplicably crawling with a generous smattering of poppy seeds and then split up the middle. This is presumably to allow for sharing but the effect is near-pornographic. 1/10, everything here is a bad idea and i feel bad for eating the little bit that I did.

Oh no.

Creamy mushroom souffle, hat covered with chocolate glaze, leg sprinkled with poppy seeds.

Unfolding the wrapper you will see just a 100% copy of this fungus)

Very original design.

A wonderful idea.

Incredibly delicate taste.

I don’t think it’s meant to be sweating like that.

it was not very inviting

IRL LOLs, thanking u

harbl, you need to post pix