Eventually I’ll get the photos/scans for these posted, but I wanted to blog this before it went too long and I forgot what they tasted like.

Nestle Coffee Crisp – Tasty coffee crunchy goodness, would be great crumbled and sprinkled on top of coffee ice cream.

Fran’s Chocolates GoldBites: caramel and almonds in dark chocolate – This was fantastic, the caramel was soft without being liquidy or chewey, and had a nice dark, rich flavor and color. The almonds were whole and crunchy.

Lake Champlain 5 Star Chocolate Bars: Hazelnut (praline, hazelnuts, milk chocolate) and Caramel (caramel, almonds, milk chocolate) were both major disappointments for the price ($4 or $5 for a tiny bar).

The Caramel didn’t hold a candle to the one from Fran’s, with much smaller chunks of almond, and fewer almonds for the amount of caramel. The caramel itself was fine, but nothing special. The texture was very similar to the one by Fran’s, but it didn’t have that dark roasted richness.

The Hazelnut was the worst – no better than Ferro Roche, but with a much higher price tag. Really the only difference is that it had the same texture as the crunchy outside of a Ferro Roche throughout – not sure if that was the praline, hazelnut chunks or both. I was expecting much larger chunks of hazelnut. If you like Hazelnut, you’ll like how it tastes, but for the price I think I’ll stick with Ferro Roche.

Trader Joe’s Belgian Chocolate Assortment – I haven’t tried them all yet, but I’m looking forward to it. These are only slightly lower quality than the Valentines Day Belgian chocolates that Costco carried. Still plenty tasty – but you better like hazelnuts as they’re in three of the seven types, two are caramels, and then there is a mocha and a plain chocolate. The flavors are easily as strong as the Costco ones, but they’re a bit overly rich, much like See’s candies. Which isn’t really that bad of a thing as prevents you from eating them all at once.