First, a brief word on nomenclature: when I say “chocolate,” I’m talking about something in which the presence of cacao is unmistakable: strong, slightly bitter (depending on how much sugar has been added), dark and rich. When I say “candy,” it means that there might be chocolate in there, but it’s mostly an excuse to get sugar into your body. So, with that in mind, here’s a couple of chocolate candies to think about.
Freia Lys Kokesjokolade: My handy-dandy online translation service tells me that “lys kokesjokolade” translates as “light semi-sweet chocolate” — the label on this bar is in Norwegian, as is the Freia Web site. The candy is from Norway’s premier manufacturer of sweets, Freia, founded in 1889. The company was purchased by Kraft Foods in 1993, and remains one of the pre-eminent purveyors of chocolate and other candies in Scandinavia, best known for its Melkesjokolade — and I don’t need a translation service to know that means “milk chocolate.”
This is a 100g bar, which is about 3½ ounces. It’s a little sweeter than I would expect for a “semi-sweet” chocolate, but not obnoxiously so. (Full discolosure: I’ve gotten habituated to dark chocolate, around 70% cacao. This one is 30%.) There’s not a lot of subtlety in this one — the taste is sweet chocolate, without much in the way of grace notes. The texture is fairly firm, with good body — it’s quite pleasant to chew on.
Cloetta Guld Nougat : Cloetta Fazer is another major Scandinavian candy company, formed in 2000 from the merger of the Swedish candy company Cloetta with the candy division of the Finnish corporation, Fazer. The two companies were separated in 2008.
The Guld Nougat bar is just that: a chocolate coated bar of hazelnut nougat. It’s a very soft bar, and the overriding sensation is sweetness, with just a hint of hazelnuts. The sweetness overrides just about everything else. If I hadn’t read the label, I would have missed the chocolate part — it’s indicative that the cocoa mass in the list of ingredients comes after sugar and hazelnuts. There’s no indication of the amount of cacao in the bar, which is pretty much irrelevant anyway. I can only take this as a candy for someone who needs a sugar rush right now.
