You can make this salted milk chocolate caramel at home!

It’s the chocolate candy whose success continues to defy the economic downturn. Once merely a gourmet Parisian treat, salted caramel’s were all the buzz during 2008. Even President Obama has a sweet tooth for this salty-sweet caramel delicacy. Wondering what all the commotion is about for salted chocolate caramels? Cocoa heaven offers up this delicious gourmet recipe, courtesy of Chocolate Epiphany: Exceptional Cookies, Cakes, and Confections for Everyone. Try it out at your place, and see what everyone is talking about. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

Milk Chocolate Caramel with Fleur De Sel

I love eating Carambar, a chewy French caramel stick that is oddly addictive. The texture of these caramels reminds me of it, although they are slightly less chewy, and softer. The milk chocolate is stirred into the sugar and becomes an integral part of the caramel. A sprinkle of fleur de sel, a high-quality sea salt, brings out the sweet notes of the caramel. To keep the caramels from sticking to one another, store them between layers of parchment or wax paper that you will have sprayed with vegetable cooking spray. You can wrap them in candy wrappers, to give some away in a festive manner. It’s a great activity for kids, whose little fingers are perfect for the job.

Ingredients

• Vegetable cooking spray, for the pan
• 1 Cup (232 grams) heavy cream
• 1 Cup (200 grams) sugar
• 3/4 Cup plus 2 tbsp light corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons (10 grams) salt
• 6 ounces (170 grams) milk chocolate, chopped
• Sea-Salt

Directions

Spray a heat-proof 9 x 13 - inch dish with vegetable cooking spray. Line it with parchment paper, leaving at least 2 inches of overhang on each side of the dish, and spray the parchment paper as well.

Combine the cream, sugar, corn syrup and salt in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir, with a wooden spoon, until the sugar has dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, clip a candy thermometer to the pan and cook the sugar without stirring until it reaches 243 degrees fahrenheit on the thermometer. Immediately stir in the chocolate until it is melted and the mixture is smooth. Pour the caramel in the prepared dish, using an offset spatula to spread it in an even layer and smooth the top. Let the caramel cool to room temperature and set, uncovered, at least 1 hour.

Remove it from the pan by pulling on the parchment overhangs. Spray a knife with vegetable cooking spray, and cut the caramel into 1-inch squares. Top each caramel with a few grains of sea-salt. Let them sit for 6 hours, uncovered before storing them in an airtight container. This allows excess moisture to evaporate, and will help the caramels retain their shape.

Line a container with parchment paper, and spray the parchment with vegetable cooking spray. Arrange one layer of caramels on the parchment, then cover with parchment paper spray the parchment. Repeat with the remaining caramels, separating each layer with oiled parchment to keep the caramels from sticking to one another. They will keep, in a cool dry environment, for up to 2 weeks.

This recipe makes about 50 caramels

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Taza Chocolate is a small chocolate maker in Somerville, Massachusetes that uses traditional Mexican stone mills to grind organic, fair trade cacao beans to create a unique and intensely flavored chocolate. The ingredients list pretty much says it all: Dominican cacao beans, cane sugar, Costa Rican cinnamon. That’s it. At least for the flavor we’ll be trying today: Cinnamon. They also offer Vanilla Bean, Guajillo Chili and Salted Almond. It took me awhile to decide which one to try at $4 a pop, it’s a big decision.

Packaging

I’ll admit the packaging is one of the things that drew me to this product in the first place. It’s technically a bar, but round in form. Reminded me of soap! Each flavor featured a different color, the Vanilla was black, Chili green and Almond brown, so Cinnamon is red, natch.

Appearance

Taste
When I opened the package a wall of chocolate and cinnamon hit me. That paper wrapper surprisingly keeps it all in. As I thought, a solid wheel of chocolate candy with the Taza brand name emblazoned on it. Breaking a piece off, I could see the inside and the shiny crystals (like when you break open a rock) of sugar and a rough interior. It wasn’t easy to break a piece of either, this is one solid piece of chocolate.

It smells even more amazing up close. The spicy cinnamon and raw chocolate is a smell I can only hope will be made into a perfume. The first bite filled my mouth with the scent of bananas, oddly enough. Really ripe bananas. Which is odd because I can also very much taste the cinnamon, but since I hate overly ripe bananas, this makes it hard for me to eat. The chocolate itself is very gritty, a component of the stone ground beans, which makes for a nice change in texture. I definitely will be going back and giving vanilla or almond a try. I think the cinnamon version just is a little too much for my tastes.

Leave it to the Japanese to be able to send Kit Kat chocolate postcards through the mail. Nestle hit one out of the park with this marketing campaign, appealing to both the unusual and fun. Who wouldn’t want to get a Kit Kat postcard in the mail? Partnering up with the Japanese postal service, these edible postcards were available for purchase at post offices, intended for Japanese students. The translation of “Kit Kat” in Japanese means “surely win” and was perfect for a good luck charm to send students before exam time.

Apparently the idea went over so well that Nestle and it’s marketing firm JWT Japan earned a Cannes Media Grand Prix award.

A Hershey’s milk chocolate bar studded with black cherry bits and almonds was obtained by wandering the Rite-Aid-esque aisles in Canada recently. Sure I already know what the Hershey’s milk chocolate and milk chocolate bar with almonds tastes like (I’ve had s’mores after all) but what happens with black cherries are added to the mix? And does the French on the wrapper make it somehow fancier?

Packaging
I liked the imagery that the packaging invoked and the whimsical (yet required French) just made it all that more appealing. Also I like cherry flavored anything, so I have got to try this! The wrapper foil is rather thin, so avoiding heat at all is the best way to get the most out of this chocolate candy.

Appearance
From the front, they pieces are broken up into classic Hershey rectangles, the back looks like the Hershey with almonds back with smaller pieces. When broken apart, you can see the almond bits and cherry chunks.

Taste
The milk chocolate was really soft and not as smooth as I would have liked. It kinda stuck on my tongue. The black cherries are overpowering in this chocolate candy bar, especially since the almonds are not whole almonds, but almond halves (or so it would seem). The cherry bits are dried and therefore get stuck in my teeth long after the chocolate and almond is gone. I like cherry flavored anything, but in this instance it’s an overly sweet and like drinking a chunky cherry Icee.

Hitting the shelves a little earlier than the predicted August, Limited Edition Coconut M&Ms are here in your local 7-11s and grocery stores for all the coconut chocolate candy goodness you can handle.

Packaging
Very tropical and a little sexy with the lounging Green M&M. Then of course you notice the Yellow M&M hanging upside down from a palm tree in the background for the hilarity factor.

I dumped out the entire bag (1.50 oz) to see how many M’s you get. The answer is: not many. To be fair they are much larger (twice the size) of a regular milk chocolate M, but still.

Appearance
Giant green, white and brown M&Ms that are either imprinted with the classic “M” or the “M” with a little design. The designs (hard to see in the picture) are a hibiscus flower (I got only one of those in my bag), palm tree, sun and umbrella.

Appearance Inside
These remind me a lot of the Premium M&Ms with a outer layer and a thicker inner core. The shell is a crisp candy though, not like the soft outer layer that Premium M&Ms have.

Taste
The crisp candy shell is the same as always, but the inside is very coconut-y. The milk chocolate is the classic smooth tasty chocolate candy that original M&Ms have but now with a cheap coconut overtone. It’s so sweet and sticky tasting that I feel like I’ve been drinking Malibu Rum all night and it’s the morning after. If you eat enough of them (say 5 in a row) you start getting used to that flavor and then they start becoming tastier. It’s that first initial taste test you have to get past.

But it’s a limited edition! If you like coconut than this is the M for you.

The Wall Street Journal released an article today on a high fueled, no holds bar case battling it out in Europe’s High Court: Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG of Switzerland’s pending patent case on their (if wasn’t before it is now) infamous chocolate bunny. That’s right, lawyers and the highest court in Europe will determine today if Lindt can in fact, patent a chocolate bunny shape. The full article goes into Lindt’s defense, it’s hopping mad hunt to quash imitators (or even those that come within a whisper close) and what this will mean for the European chocolate candy industry.

Personally, I think you should be able to patent an overall design (which is a patent they received in 2001) for their Easter Bunny, a gold foil wrapped chocolate bunny, squatting on its haunches, ears up with a little bell tied to a red ribbon bow around it’s neck. The issue is whether or not they can trademark the squatting on it’s haunches, ear up shape and thus thwart other chocolatiers from also using that shape with their bunnies.

It’s Rabbit Season for Lindt Chocolate

The chocolate candy bunny business is serious business, Lindt has been on a mission all across Europe to protect it’s “intellectual property.”
Earlier this year, Lindt won an injunction against Hauswirth of Austria, who gave away their remaining 300,000 chocolate bunnies to charity.

Terravita of Poland was allowed to continue selling their chocolate bunnies as a court ruled that it doesn’t infringe because the bunny has “Terravita” stamped on its haunch and the ribbon is printed onto foil.

Still pending in the German appeals courts is the Riegelein chocolate bunny, a battle that began in 2006.

Similar patent shape cases have tried and failed, Lego blocks, convex sided bars of soap and rectangular shaped dishwasher soap tablets for example.

Will Lindt succeed? I actually hope not. A rabbit sitting on it’se haunches with ears at a attention is the cutest pose of all and Lindt shouldn’t be the only ones able to capture that in smooth milk chocolate!