So what’s the next big candy trend? Here’s what the National Confectioners Association has to say in their 2009 trend report:

• Confections will have healthier options and fortified benefits.
• Chocolate isn’t just for dessert. Providing the most surprising flavor combinations, chocolate and cocoa will be used as a key ingredient in main courses.
• Sweet and savory duos like chocolate and bacon, and chocolate and cheese will be popular in stores and on menus.
• International spices and ethnic flavors will also have a large influence on new U.S. products and flavor development overall, especially Asian and Latin flavors.
• Intense new flavors and interactive experiences will dominate children’s candies.
• Eco-friendly manufacturing efforts, like recyclable packaging, will influence product development and consumer purchasing.

Lucky for me, I found some at a local New Haven cheese shop, Caseus, when I popped into pick up some Vosges bars for my next Calhoun College chocolate tasting.  They had the 60%, 70%, and 80% bars, but I only bought the latter because, at around $8 a pop, they weren’t cheap (even if it was Calhoun’s money that I was ultimately spending).

Taza is notable because they’re one of the few U.S. chocolate makers that make their chocolate from bean to bar. They’re also special because the chocolate is stone-ground, which yielded an interesting texture. I found the unusual texture intriguing and novel and interesting.

It was quite grainy, almost crunchy, and the whole thing kind of explodes in a burst of grit after a few chews. Our Associate Master remarked that it would probably make her 5 year-old son cry. Another taster likened the experience to eating sand. I thought the latter characterization was a bit of a stretch, as the grit wasn’t that rough, and I’d happily eat sand if it tasted as good at the Taza bar did.

The bar smells kind of acrid and plasticy - not exactly appetizing. Surprisingly enough, however, it tastes nothing like it smells. It’s actually quite bright and fruity, enjoyably so. I took home the remainder of the bar, and I couldn’t stop popping the pieces because they were so texturally entertaining. If it were cheaper, I’d buy it all the time. But alas, small-batch, artisanal chocolate doesn’t come cheap, so I’ll only be buying this as a rare splurge.

I’d only known of praline as a truffle filling. Since I received this box, I’ve read more about them on Wikipedia. In America, a praline can also refer to candies made from nuts and sugar. In New Orleans, pralines are made with pecans and extra cream. My assorted box included regular, rum, and chocolate pralines made with pecans and a coconut praline with no additional nuts.

They came in a pretty box with nice seal. Unfortunately, either the box was poorly sealed on the bottom or got damaged a bit in transit - the bottom flaps didn’t fully close, and sugar scattered everywhere when I picked it up. That made me sad for two reasons: the resulting mess and the loss of candy!

The original praline featured brown sugar and pecans. Depending on the chunk you bite, it’s either a great sugar-coated pecan in which the nutty pecan flavor comes through wonderfully, or it’s pure brown sugar overload.

I originally identified the rum praline as maple. Visually, it looks just like the original, but the sugar has lovely maple notes to it. In fact, I’m not actually sure which praline is which. It could be that this is the original while the brown sugary one is rum. At any rate, I like this one better, as the maple lets the pecan flavor cut through better, and the praline is less cloying overall.

Coconut was basically just brown sugar and coconut. It was dried coconut rather than fresh, but it tasted genuine and was pretty good.

Finally, the chocolate one was my favorite. It doesn’t taste strongly of chocolate, exactly. Instead, it imparts a nice, deep cocoa flavor to the sugar, which really adds to the complexity and makes the praline quite enjoyable.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m now going to go into sugar shock from eating all these pralines.

Apple and chocolate aren’t an unheard of combination, but I’ve not enjoyed it in the past. In the Kit Kat iteration, it’s less bad, but it’s still not good.

Visually, it seems just like a normal Kit Kat. Though it smells strongly of Fuji apples, it initially tastes mostly of chocolate. Then the apple comes in. It’s weird and unpleasant and kind of earthy, more like an apple core than an apple.

Next up, Muscat grape. Or, more specifically, Muscat of Alexandria. I don’t really know if a Muscat grape is any more special than the white seedless grapes you’d pick up at your local supermarket, and I also don’t know what makes Muscat of Alexandria special enough to warrant its own wikipedia entry. Or its own Kit Kat flavor.

I also don’t know why people thought grape flavored chocolate would be worth making. This bar is white chocolate with a pale green tinge, at once pretty and alien. I think it smells more like lychee than grape, but the taste is white grape all the way through. Would you want to eat grapes and white chocolate in the same bite? I wouldn’t, but I did try this bar, and I didn’t like it.

Finally, the mystery flavored Kit Kat. I don’t know Japanese, but I know some Chinese, and there’s a lot of character overlap. I could make out the characters for “university” on here, which didn’t help at all. I guessed that it was candied sweet potato with black sesame seeds. Cassie had no clue, and my boyfriend thought it may be tofu. We consulted my friend Michael, who lives in Kobe. Turns out I was sort of right; it is sweet potato and sesame.

The “university” part was to signal that it was a limited edition bar, released for exam session when Japanese students test to get into universities. Just goes to show you how candy can teach you about other cultures. Can you imagine an SAT Kit Kat being sold in the U.S.?

This was another white chocolate bar, tinged pale yellow. It was slightly nutty with toastiness that may have come from the wafers. I don’t really get sweet potato, exactly. The white chocolate is the most prominent flavor.

Thanks for the flavor adventure, Cassie! I enjoyed tasting them, even if the flavors weren’t that enjoyable. Guess there’s a reason they’re not widely available outside of Japan. Now, if only I could find a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat…

I think the Symphony line is supposed to be notable for the creaminess of the milk chocolate. I don’t quite get the name, especially since they make a plain milk chocolate Symphony, and the word Symphony conjures up images of complexity, but I do appreciate the effort of the packaging, with horizontal lines are probably meant to evoke the lines of a music staff. I wonder if the word Symphony could have been rejiggered to have a treble cleff as the S.

Underneath the wrapper, the bar has the big, traditional HERSHEY’S block logo on it, with what I consider to be the classic Hershey’s Almond bar shape - the rectangle with the arched curve to it. You can see the bits of almond and toffee in the cross section.

The bar was extremely nutty smelling thanks to the almonds. Unlike the Skor and Heath bars, which are toffee with chocolate, this was chocolate with toffee. And nice chocolate, too! The chocolate was creamy with a thick melt and a fruity finish, definitely different and superior to regular Hershey’s milk chocolate.

The almonds were in pretty big chunks and few and far between, so I didn’t come across them too often. The toffee added a bit of flavor but contributed more in texture, with a nice, cleaving crunch. Overall, it was a pleasant combination of tastes and textures, and I wonder why the Symphony line doesn’t get more cred.

Based on the packaging, this bar was either strawberry or strawberries and cream flavored, both pretty standard flavor combinations that go well with chocolate. I’m guessing that it’s strawberries and cream, based on the bar’s lovely, creamy shade of pink. All the boxed Kit Kats Cassie bought came in packs of four fingers separated into two individually sealed packs of pairs. Good for freshness; bad for the environment.

Like all Kit Kats, this was chocolate over crisp wafers. The strawberry was white chocolate that smelled lovely and floral. The strawberry flavor was sweet and genuine, which I appreciated, even though I found it overly sweet. I think others may like it, though.

The Kit Kat Cookies that Cassie brought me was just one long, slightly larger finger. After I tasted it, I wished that I had a four pack of them. It was my favorite of the bunch, basically a normal Kit Kat with an extra layer of chocolate cookie.

The milk chocolate was nice and dusky, making me think that Nestle treats the Japanese better by selling them nicer chocolate. While the cookie layer doesn’t add much to the texture, it really deepens the cocoa flavor of the bar. Highly enjoyable.

Though they’re ostensibly for Easter, the bars’ packaging didn’t seem that Easter-y to me. It had the requisite daisies and pastel eggs on the wrappers, but I think the shiny hot pink and silver foil wrappers went against the Easter mood. The packaging exhorts you to “bring the spring feeling home,” but they just don’t look like spring to me.

The Minis are perfect little squares (about quarter-sized) of pink-tinged nougat covered in dark chocolate. The nougat is typical 3 Musketeers nougat, soft and fluffy. The packaging promised “whipped up, fluffy chocolate-on-raspberry taste. ” They smell medicinally fruity, and they kind of taste that way too, with a seedy, artificially and overly sweet fruitiness that mingles with the mild dark chocolate coating.

I didn’t particularly care for these myself, but that’s a personal taste preference. I also wouldn’t care for a See’s version of the same thing. The people I shared these with liked them, and one of my friends even remarked that they taste remarkably high-end for a Mars mass-produced product. So if chocolate covered fruity-nougat is your thing, by all means, add these to your Easter basket.

First up, another shot at their Dark Chocolate Promises. This time, I got a much larger bag that arrived in fine shape. The individually foil-wrapped bite-sized chocolates had a lovely melt that was thick and creamy. It had a dusky finish with slightly dry overtones, making it solid, affordable, and portion-controlled snacking chocolate.

Dove also sent along a big bag of their Almond Dark Chocolate Promises that were packaged for Valentine’s Day. The Promises were heart shaped and wrapped in gold and pink heart-printed foil, and the messages inside these were more romantically themed than their usual inspirational fare. The pieces of almond inside were tiny, which I appreciated, as it meant they were too small to get stuck in between your teeth. The Dove dark chocolate was the same as in the Dark Chocolate Promise, and it paired nicely with the nutty, roasted almond flavor.

Dove also sent along their Tiramisu Promises (at my request) and their Blackberry Caramel Promises (a nice surprise, not at my request). As you can see from above, both are square dark chocolates with a gooey caramel inside. The caramel of the Tiramisu had a strong coffee liqueur flavor that was quite tasty, if a tad on the sweet side.

The caramel of the Blackberry Caramel (possibly packaged for Valentine’s Day? It seems strange that it would always be patterned with hearts) had an overarching bright sweetness to it that tasted a bit seedy and a bit artificial. This wasn’t for me, but friends of mine enjoyed it.

Dove’s Promises can’t compete with the high end truffle makers that charge upwards of $50 a pound, but they definitely hold their own against the usual riff-raff that clogs the seasonal aisle of the supermarket around Valentine’s Day. They’re a solid buy and quite worth their pricetag (especially when they’re free).

That, dear readers, is a Giant Gummy Bear on a Stick that’s 88 times the size of a regular gummy bear (by the way, if you can’t tell, that’s Vat19’s photo, so those aren’t my man hands. I don’t have man hands). If you like regular gummy bears, would you like the Giant Gummy 88 times as much? Maybe not, but it’s still pretty neat.

The Giant Gummy Bears on Sticks come in three flavors, blue raspberry, green apple, and cherry. I requested the green apple, as it’s the only flavor out of the three that I normally like, so I can only comment on that one. Basically, it tasted just like your standard green apple gummy bear, nicely sweet and mellow. It’s a soft gummy, more Trolli than Haribo, but it still has a bite to it. And it’s ginormous. I’ve polished off most of the head, and I feel a bit ill/sugar overloaded. Now I have a headless Giant Gummy Bear on a Stick.

I’m a little uncertain how to rate this. It tastes just fine, but not exceptional. Clearly, the attraction is the size. I definitely appreciate that the Giant Gummy Bear didn’t compromise taste or texture in blowing up the bear. I wouldn’t buy it for myself just to eat, but it’s a great gag gift. I also see centerpiece potential for candy themed parties or weddings or something. At $9.99 a bear, I think it’s worth it. After all, a bag of regular gummy bears will run you about $2-3, the Giant Gummy is equivalent to at least two or three bags, and the extra mark-up is for the novelty factor, yeah?