‘Tis the holiday season! That brings to mind many things about this special time of year. For many it means dinners, parties, gifts, overspending, travel, etc. One thing it means for me is sweets, specifically the ones my Mom makes. She has so many cookies, cakes, and pies she cooks for when the family all gets together. One of these special sweets she makes is homemade toffee, and let me tell you, it’s really wonderful stuff. So imagine my excitement when See’s sent me some Holiday samples in the mail and I saw this beautiful red box of their Victoria Toffee. It was as if Christmas came early!

The box weighs in at a pound and is decorated in a beautifully festive red box. Red is such a gorgeous, vibrant color, and I think it looks its best at Christmas. One the front you see a beautiful image of the toffee, a hint as to what’s inside. A nice presentation of the confection, bravo See’s.

I was greatly impressed when I opened the box, as the slab of toffee inside is just enormous. It’s one giant piece! I had to grab the block of it in my hand, using the protective plastic that keeps it nice and safe, and try to break a corner off it. This toffee is easily almost an inch thick, so that might sound easier than it was. I managed to get a small piece off to taste.

You can see big chunks of almonds in the toffee, which is very attractive. The toffee is buttery and sweet and crumbles beautifully when you chew it. The chocolate that covers it is very sweet and compliments the toffee with extremely rich, chocolately notes. The chopped almonds on the outside are fresh and crunchy, but at the same time makes it easy to chew when you take a bite. The flavors all together is a very rich and flavorful. The butteryness of the toffee mixed with the salty almonds and sweet chocolate is just a heavenly combination.

Overall I was very impressed with this toffee. I think if you don’t have time or know-how (when in fact it’s really easy) to make your own, this is an excellent substitute. A treat that will be appreciated by many!

Rating: Will Eat Again

Links See’s Candies Website

These are another part of the free Easter samples I received from Wonka, the Exceptionals Eggs. These eggs are based off of two of their regular chocolate bars which are sold all year ‘round. The first is the Scrumdiddlyumptios bar, and the other is the Chocolate Waterfall. These eggs are individually wrapped and then packaged in a box to keep them safe from bumping around too much. The box is festive, but the colors are much more muted than I would have expected. Especially since these bars are normally dressed in bright purple wrappers that have an iridescent and almost hologram like sheen to it. 

Time to open once up and see what we have here. These are sold chocolate half eggs, no filling or decor, just a hunk of chocolate. The pieces are large, as they’re bigger than a traditional chicken egg. I’d say they are about two inches long and weight in at .9 OZ. Each egg has the word “Wonka” carved into the surface with swirled designs.

Scrumdiddlyumptios Egg: Smells sweet and not much of chocolate the chocolate tastes sweet and creamy but you immediately taste the peanuts and the toffee bits in it. the pieces are small and they’re very crispy. Because of this you get a nice salty/sweet play here and it’s very tasty.

Chocolate Waterfall Egg: This egg is beautiful to look at once it’s unwrapped. It’s a milk chocolate base with white chocolate ripples in it. As for the aroma, it just smells sweet. The flavor is this wonderful mix of the milk and white chocolate. Thankfully the white chocolate’s flavor doesn’t get lost in the milk chocolate. You can distinctly taste its buttery, milky, sweet flavor. Very tasty, I’m a fan!

These were tasty and the chocolate is presented here in a more friendly, single serve manner. These would be a great addition to any Easter basket, as the size is big enough to be fun but not small enough so you feel jipped by the Easter Bunny.

Rating: Will Eat Again

Links Wonka’s Website

Today we have yet another Vosges bar (starting to see a trend here?) that I’ve recently encountered. This flavor pairing sounded more tame than their other offerings, that use curry, teas, mushrooms and seeds for flavor. Everyone knows and understands toffee for a flavor in candy, so I’d like to think that this is more of a gourmet candy bar, as opposed to a gourmet adventure, which the stranger flavors tend to be.

This bar is a dark milk, at 45% cacao, and it’s mixed with sweet butter toffee with walnuts/pecans. The bar is a nice milk chocolatey brown colors (lighter than most) and you can see the bits of the toffee and nuts int here. The bar smells creamy and a hint of butter.

The flavor on this one is incredible. Your first taste is the very smooth creamy milk chocolate, then a burnt of buttery toffee comes in. In the middle there’s a rise of saltiness from the nuts and toffee which really gets mixes well with the sweetness of the chocolate. Then the flavor gradually melts away leaving behind a buttery, smoother flavor that lingers on the tongue. The toffee and nut bits are small and crunchy, so none of them get stuck in your teeth.

This is a really great gourmet bar for anyone who is too squeamish to try any of the other more unusual flavors that Vosges offers. Sometimes the simplest flavors are the best.

Rating: Hoard

Links Vosges Website

This I believe is another holiday limited edition flavor put out by Vosges this year. I have seen more popularity surrounding the gingerbread flavoring in recent years, so it seems only natural that Vosges would find a unique way to incorporate it into their chocolate. I admit, I haven’t encountered anyone yet who has infused gingerbread flavoring into toffee so they can put it into chocolate. Very creative!

The gingerbread spiced toffee is paired with a 65% dark chocolate. Milder that most dark chocolates but still it’s not going to be too sweet for the infused toffee bits. The color is a pretty rich brown with a high gloss and red undertones to it. It smells sweet and slightly spiced.

The flavor is wonderfully complex. It stars off very sweet with buttery tones of the chocolate, which is very mild and rich for a 65%. Then you taste the toffee bits, which start off salty the and blossoms into a rich, buttery, spicy flavor of gingerbread. The gingerbread toffee is soft and slightly crispy so it adds a level of texture to the smooth creaminess of the chocolate. This bar had a wonderful play of sweet/salty, smooth/crispy and buttery/spicy. Really yummy!

Rating: Will Buy Again

Links Vosges Website

In my family, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange is a traditional Christmas treat. They’re a perfect stocking stuffer and me and my sisters and I always enjoyed opening on by whacking it hard on the coffee table and enjoying it with coffee as we spent Christmas morning with our family. Over the years it seems that Terry’s Chocolate Orange was hard to find at points, as I recall a few years where we went without them. I’ve seeing them resurface in recent times and I always feel the impulse to purchase them when I see them now. That is why this new variety of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, the Toffee Crunch, caught my eye when I saw it at my local Target.

One of the things that makes a Terry’s Orange so much fun is the fact that they’re interactive. You have to “whack and unwrap” them, because the segments are fused together by a chocolate center. You need to whack them loose in order to eat them. It’s pretty fun! So I whack the Toffee Crunch orange and start to work on the wrapper.

Once unwrapped, the orange smells surprisingly…like orange. I was expecting more toffee here, hence the name, but I guess I’m mistaken. Then popping a slice into my mouth, the orange flavor soon transformed into a creamy toffee flavor. The toffee flavor is very buttery with a nice toasted caramel flavor and blends beautifully with the creamy chocolate. There’s also a texture element at play here, as there’s bits of toffee mixed into the chocolate that provide a crunchy stickiness. It’s really delightful, as it’s not as cumbersome as a Heath or Skor bars where the toffee is ample enough to cement your teeth together.

This is a tasty remix of a classic. I really enjoyed it, and this is a good addition to any holiday tradition.

Rating: Will Eat Again