Ritter Sport

Well, chocolate fever is catching on and now my friends have begun supplying me with new and unique chocolate products for me to blog about. They've come through yet again, this time with Ritter Sport.

Ritter Sport is a company founded by Alfred Ritter in 1912 in Germany. It has stayed in the family ever since and has stood out with its unique bars. Just about every company who makes chocolate makes a standard chocolate bar. Ritter Sport bars stand apart because the bars are hollow and filled with one of chocolate's best friends such as nuts, marzipan, or cappuccino.

The bar that I have is milk chocolate with a butter biscuit. When biting into the bar I can see the molded chocolate shell with the biscuit inside. It is then filled with more chocolate. The biscuit reminds me somewhat of a graham cracker and is a delightful crunch inside the smooth chocolate. The chocolate itself is pretty sweet.

While the bar itself is huge, (3.5oz/100g) it's high in calories and saturated fat - Not meant to be eaten in one sitting, but if you know me I probably could.

There are over 25 varieties of bars, with some fillings as unique as cornflakes, raisins and hazelnuts, and yogurt. I'd be interested to try some of the other varieties.

Overall a 7 out of 10 on the Chocolate Emergency! scale.

Choco For Breakfast

Breakfast is my favorite (and most important) meal of the day (besides dessert). So of course I have to find some way to have chocolate for breakfast.

Thanks to my friends at Kellog's for making chocolate fudge Pop Tarts! The outside is a chocolate graham cracker with sweet chocolate frosting on top. However, the inside is my favorite part. It's a gooey chocolate fudge which tastes an awful lot like brownie batter.

I've never been one for the outsides of Pop Tarts, even on the fruity kinds. They tend to get a little dry. So I pulled the edges off this one and just ate the rest. Pretty satisfying. Very chocolatey.


Try it in the freezer for a cool treat, or put it in the toaster to make the inside even gooeyer (if that's a word). I like 'em hot!

Earns itself an 8 out of 10 on the Official Chocolate Emergency scale.

IKEA

I'm sitting here on a Saturday morning listening to some King of Pop. Happy Birthday M.J.!

Anyways, Brittany brought me some chocolate from Ikea the other day. If you know me, you know that I LOVE IKEA! I could spend a whole day inside Ikea and not get bored. Funny, I always find something there that I need - even if it's just coasters or dish towels or a picture!

So when I find out that there's a giant bar of chocolate from Ikea waiting for me, I'm pretty stoked. This is Swedish chocolate produced in Germany (oddly enough). The label says "Choklad Ljus".



It's very good. Not too rich, but delightfully creamy. The taste is a little buttery. But for just a dollar a bar (it's a big bar), it's well worth it. I'd say it's pretty true to the well-known Ikea ways - simple. No fancy packaging, no crazy fillings or additions. Just good chocolate.

I'd really like to try the dark chocolate next time. The hazelnut doesn't look so bad either; although, I'm partial to Godiva's hazelnut praline; it will be a tough one to beat. Ikea milk chocolate earns a 10 on the chocolate emergency scale for great chocolate. Yummm

Go NuGO

Recently I've been trying little things here and there to go green.So I thought to myself, self, why not go organic? My first step is a little one and it obviously involves chocolate. Duh.

I've picked up a NuGo Organic Double Dark Chocolate Bar which is actually vegan as well. It says it's made with real dark chocolate. Usually with chocolate granola or protein bars the chocolate {spoiler alert!} isn't real chocolate. It's chocolate flavored vegetable fat. Now I will eat a lot of things if they are covered in chocolate. But vegetable fat... not so much. So this is actual dark chocolate and it's actually quite tasty.

The bar itself is quite appealing, covered entirely in chocolate - and it smells even better. The soy crisps in the middle are delightfully crunchy but not as crispy as I would have expected. The chocolate is delish.

This one is hard to rate because it's not exactly what you would pick up for a chocolate emergency. It's more of a healthy chocolate snack. So on the Healthy Chocolate Snack scale it earns a 10. Eat this instead of something out of the vending machine next time.

Chocolate's Best Friends

While you can't go wrong with solid milk, dark, or white chocolate, most of the time if people are eating chocolate, they're eating it with something else. What chocolate is mixed with could make all the difference in taste.

I'll eat anything if it's covered in chocolate. Although, here are my top three favorite chocolate companions:

1. Strawberries - Godiva Chocolatier gets the award for best Chocolate Dipped Strawberries. They fly in huge HUGE berries from California and dip them fresh. But eat 'em quick; these fresh berries only last 24 hours before going bad (if you can wait that long).

2. Almonds - Landies Candies in Buffalo, NY gets this award for their dark chocolate bar with almonds the size of the "return" key on your keyboard. Very good.

3. Caramel - Once again the award goes to Godiva for the Dark Caramel Embrace. Gooey or chewy doesn't matter. I like the dark caramel because it's not too sweet for a normal vanilla caramel. It's chocolate caramel wrapped in dark chocolate. Perfect texture, perfect taste.

Rounding out the top ten would have to be peanut butter, pretzels, toffee, raspberry, rice krispy treats, coffee, and hazelnut.

Did I miss any? Leave a comment with your favorite chocolate companion. Who's hungry?

Reason #16 why I hate the English language

There are exceptions to every grammar rule.

A dancer is one who dances. A writer is one who writes.

An officer is one who offices???

Gah!

My latest indulgence

During a rather stressful morning in the office, a friend of mine turned it around by dropping off a little gift on my desk. It was a rocky road brownie from Au Bon Pain.

While I'm not much for Walnuts, there wasn't an overwhelming amount of them in there. The brownie itself was pretty good. I like my brownies pretty fudgey, but this was more cake-like without being dry. My favorite part were the butterscotch chips hidden inside. The edges were nice and crispy, yet still chewy.

Absent were the marshmallows. Perhaps these treats would have scored a perfect 10 had there been some marshmallows but still very tasty. 9 out of 10. Highly recommend it.