the sweet scrapbook

I'm a big fan of rum and chocolate combinations so, whenever I see a new rum chocolate, I have to try it. That's how I got to try the Everyday Selection Moka-Rhum - a milk chocolate with rum cream filling. I had never heard of Everyday Selection before and I still don't know much about them. All I've been able to find is that they are a brand of Colruyt Group.

They also had Praline and Banana versions. But I don't like bananas and I'm not a hazelnut fan either, so I didn't find those ones interesting.

Kaffee. A coffee shop I had no idea it existed until four weeks ago when I accidentally saw it after leaving the bookstore with two heavy bags full of books. Doesn't that sound familiar? And I found no information on the internet. Anyway, it was raining, so I thought I should go in and see whether they have some nice cakes as well (I know, it's becoming quite a tradition... leave the bookstore with a lot of books, go somewhere I've never been before to see if they have cakes). I don't drink coffee. When I was very little, my parents and my dad's parents used to let me drink coffee whenever they did. And then I grew up and I didn't need it anymore. Same goes for alcohol. I do enjoy a glass of fruit liqueur a few times a year, but that's all. Most of the alcohol my taste buds meet now comes from chocolates. So whenever I go into a coffee shop, I go in hoping they also have cakes, not only coffee.

Joe is a Romanian brand currently owned by Nestle. Its story began in Timisoara in 1994. At first, they only made hazelnut-flavoured Manner-like Neapolitan wafers. I obviously knew nothing about Manner back then, but I remember they were marketing the Austrian connection heavily. The first time I ever bought Joe wafers (it must have been '94 or '95 because I remember being in the fifth grade) was because they had a contest that had as prizes Austrian bicycles and a trip to Vienna. I obviously didn't win anything (well, it's not like I've ever been able to ride a bike, anyway), but I'll probably never forget how that contest introduced me to Joe wafers. They were good, better than most of the other wafers I had tried up to that point.

In 2000, Joe was bought by Nestle. Over the past two years, their product range has expanded. They've created Joe Joyz, Joe Caramel, Joe Lemon, Joe Apple & Cinnamon, Joe Rum. All of these were still wafers or at least wafer-based products. But two weeks ago, I came across the first Joe product that is not a wafer and not even wafer-based...

Vel Pitar is a Romanian bakery that was founded in Ramnicu Valcea ten years ago. They make bread, pretzels, swiss rolls, mini-cakes, biscuits, wafers, pastry, pound cakes, doughnuts and muffins.

I didn't know about the muffins until two weeks ago, when I accidentally saw them in a supermarket where I usually go because they have interesting Swiss and German chocolates. They had both the Vanilla Muffin and the Choco Muffin, but I'm usually not that attracted to packaged muffins (even though I thought the wrappers for these muffins were really pretty), so I only bought the Choco Muffin.

15th of October, another visit from my parents.
"Anita, here, take this..."
"No, I've tried them, they're with peanuts..."
"How about this?" and my mother took something small and yellow out of her bag.
"Yes!" and I grabbed it fast.

I had tried them before, but still I wanted to taste them... again.

Loacker. I first discovered their products some five-six years ago. I thought they were good, very good.

The company was founded 85 years ago by Gotzis-born Alfons Loacker in Bolzano (that's the city where they have a very well preserved ice mummy in the Museum of Archaeology). Loacker wafers soon became famous in Northern Italy and, in 1979, they went international. In 2002, they launched the chocolate delicacy line Gran Pasticceria - this was the first Loacker range I tried. Loacker have been the wafer market leaders in Italy since 1985. Their logo represents the Schlern mountain, one of the landmarks of the region.

In addition to producing their own sweets, Loacker also distributes Ritter Sport chocolates in Italy. Which probably explains this bar (picture source).

On a Saturday, at the beginning of June 2005, I went shopping with B., my boyfriend at the time. Of course, we both wanted something sweet. He suggested the Casali Original Rum-Kokos (the milk chocolate version). I was (and still am) a big fan of chocolate and rum combinations so I had been curious about those rum-filled chocolate balls ever since first seeing them. However, I had always been unsure about the coconut component and about their weird shiny look. But B. said they were very good... And that's how I first tried something from Casali. Hello, Koko!

I would later learn that the Casali story began almost 220 years ago in Trieste (at that time, a free port within the Habsburg Empire) when Joseph Casali began producing Rosolio (a liqueur made using rose petals), rum and punch. The business was relocated to Vienna in 1810. Casali would step into a new territory, that of confectionery manufacturing after being sold to the Beer family in 1913. 1955 was the year that Casali was sold again, this time to Franz Andres, the man who had founded Napoli in 1949. Casali Napoli thus became Austria's second largest confectionery manufacturer - the first being Manner (founded in 1890 in Vienna). In 1970, Manner (who, by the way, make some awesome gingerbread and wafers*) took over Casali Napoli.

Nature Bio Chocolat Lait Superieur 40% de Cacao. First of all, I'm not even sure about the name, I just put exactly what was written on the wrapper. I don't even know who makes it, I just know it is a certified bio product and that it is distributed through Cora hypermarkets (that's where I bought it from) and Match supermarkets.

There was also a similar bio dark chocolate bar, but that evening I thought a 40% cocoa milk chocolate would be more interesting.

Davinia. Who are Davinia? I still don't know, I haven't been able to find much about them on the internet. They're from Belgium, and they also make some truffles called Royal Truffles, some Milk Mini-Chocolates and some spread called ChocoDuo.

I first saw three of their chocolate bars two weeks ago. They seemed interesting, so I tried two of them (Milk Chocolate with Praline Filling and Dark Chocolate with Praline Filling) a week later.

Ulpio is a brand owned by Supreme Group, who also own Primola. Most of their products are biscuits (plain butter biscuits, sandwich biscuits, biscuit mini-tarts, chocolate coated biscuits, cream-filled biscuits), but they also make jaffa cakes, croissants and mini-cakes. I like some of the stuff they make... I'm not so crazy after some other products like the mini-cakes, croissants or biscuit mini-tarts.

Out of everything that had Katy written on it, the chocolate bars seemed the most interesting. I picked three I thought I would like best (yes, all of them dark): Noir Orange (70% dark chocolate with candied orange peel), Noir Poire Amande (47% dark chocolate with pear pieces and caramelized almond pieces) and Noir Truffe (48% dark chocolate with fantasy truffle filling and caramelized cocoa nibs). The first two were 100g bars, while the third one was a 150g bar. The packaging looked a lot more promising than for the other Katy products I had tried before.

Halloren Balls (German original: Halloren Kugeln). Three boxes. I bought them on the same day as the Halloren Pralines de Maitre Paul.

The three varieties I chose were the Irish Cream, the Whipped Cream & Cocoa and the Choco & Rum. The Irish Cream balls are covered in milk chocolate, while the other two are covered in dark chocolate.

I had heard some French Bakery advertisements on the radio, but I had never tried anything from them. I did not even pay much attention to those spots, so I didn't even know where I could find their shops. Until one rainy day when I found one by accident - I went into a bookstore and, when I came back out, I saw it just across the street. I crossed the street and I went in, curious to see whether they had cakes. But, even though they had some very nice looking cakes, I walked out with...

I also found this when I went into Kaufland. But this was not a brand that was owned by Kaufland and it wasn't new to me. No, I knew that logo very well. But I did not know that particular product. It was the most interesting and also the last product from Kaufland that I put into my cart that day.

Coppenrath-Wiese. It's been almost six years since I first discovered them. But I had never visited their website before. It is wonderful. As a programmer, I love that they really seem to care about functionality. As a girl who enjoys pretty things, I love that they have detailed (and delicious-looking) pictures of their products and I like very much the overall appearance of their website. As an extremely curious creature, I love that they take you through their history, that they have detailed information on the sources of their ingredients, on the production process (baking, freezing, packaging); I also like that, for each product (and they are many), they have a dedicated page.

Katy. That Kaufland owned brand again? Yes, I boughts lots of sweets that day. Today, two types of biscuits (Cocoa Biscuits with Cocoa Cream and Cocoa-Coated Biscuits with Cocoa Cream... I know, similar names for two very different products) and one wafer - Wafer with Chocolate Cream Partially Covered in Cocoa Cream.

Jaffa Cakes? Yes, please! Jaffa Cakes are one of my favourite products to try. I like chocolate, I like fruit jelly, soft cake is fine sometimes. There are things that can go wrong. The chocolate may be too waxy. The jelly may be flavourless, have a generic taste - that's why I like to buy more (all, if possible) varieties from the same brand and do blind testing. The cake may be dry. The ratio of jelly to cake may be way below of what the wrapper promises.

Katy. They have Soft Cookies written on their wrappers, but they're definitely Jaffa Cakes. I found them when I recently went into Kaufland (I bought lots of new sweet stuff then, I don't know when I'll get through them all). They were about half the price of Milka (picture of the ones I tried more than a month ago, I'll also put them in the scrapbook if I have the time), Ulpio, LU Pim's (the range in the picture is not the range we get here in Romania, but a screeenshot from their French website was the easiest alternative for this lazy girl; the Jaffa Cakes we get here are the classic orange and raspberry ones plus the cherry one and the apricot one) or Tago Jaffa Cakes. Suspiciously cheap, the cheapest Jaffa Cakes I ever bought. "I have a feeling I won't like them..." I thought as I took them off the shelf. But I just have to try every Jaffa Cake I can find.

Saturday, the 2nd of October.
"Do you want them?"
"I suppose so..." I had been thinking about trying them anyway, but I just kept delaying. I took them from my mother's hand and put them on a kitchen shelf. And then I left to see Ozzy. And I left my parents. I was going to come back and see the inside of The Black Church in my bathroom - daddy had caused an explosion which set my bathroom on fire. (In case there's anyone who didn't get it, The Black Church also survived a fire - that's why it's black! And I never went inside, but I suppose it's just as black as it is on the outside... and just as black as my bathroom was that night.) Everything else in the house was under a layer of ashes. Including this box of wafers.

What box? Well, it was a blue box that had Family written in the middle, the image of some cocoa wafers below and the image of... a family (I guess) above. I hadn't paid too much attention to it, not while I kept seeing it in supermarkets and not while my mother was showing it to me. But after wiping the ashes off it, I noticed two more things. First...

I almost never go into Kaufland. All their hypermarkets are out of my way most of the time and, when they happen to be in my way, I don't have the time for going in. So when I recently went into one of their hypermarkets, I had no idea that they had their own ice-cream range. Ice-cream? Must try!

What they had didn't really look that appealing to me. I thought I shouldn't take any chances and just buy some flavours, that I "tradionally" like, flavours that I grew up with, flavours that I've already tried in really crappy versions - chocolate and fake tiramisu. Perhaps I should explain what fake tiramisu means to me. For me, real tiramisu is the one with mascarpone... which I am not touching because I don't like cheese. Fake tiramisu is a cheap version, without mascarpone and sometimes even without coffee, which gets replaced by cocoa (and that's something that I also like). I also decided to try another flavour that I've only discovered two and a half years ago - cookies & cream... seemed safe enough. I was also looking at the amarena cherry and the lemon varieties for a little while, but I decided not to take any chances.

I've been seeing the Halloren Balls (German original: Halloren Kugeln) in a couple of supermarkets for years, but I had only bought one box before the beginning of this month, when, not only did I buy three such boxes, but also two boxes from another Halloren range, Pralines de Maitre Paul: Creme Brulee and Kir Royal. I was not able to find this range (which also includes another variety, called English Toffee, I'm thinking about trying that one as well) on their website. However, looking through their products, I found out that they also make Laroshell (a liqueur filled chocolate range that I've discovered seven years ago) and Bohme (I didn't even know they had dark chocolate coated jellies, I'd wish they sold them here as well). And that they also own Movenpick Chocolates (link, image 1, image 2). I want Movenpick back! I first discovered them seven and a half years ago. But about two years later they were gone. And I haven't seen them since. Also, from their website I've learned that their history goes back to more than 200 years ago (thus being the oldest chocolate factory in Germany), that the Original Halloren Kugeln (the Whipped Cream & Cocoa) is 60 years old and that in 2005, they have produced the largest chocolate cat tongue in the world.

Ice-cream must be my favourite sweet thing. Anything new and having a flavour that I find acceptable is a must try. As soon as possible, of course! So, less than two weeks ago, when I first saw in Auchan two new flavours in their ice-cream range, I knew it wouldn't be long before I tried them. I was right.

What I find interesting about the Auchan ice-cream range that we get here is that part of it is produced in Italy, for the Italian hypermarkets. Those have the text in Italian (some of them also in French) and have a hexagonal shape. The others have the text in Romanian and have a rounded rectangle shape (like this one).

I seem to have gone a little muffin-crazy lately. I've tried... let me think... ten muffins in about three weeks. The last ones I've tried were from Princess. Unfortunately, they don't have a website that I can link to (or at least I haven't been able to find one), so I'll try my best to explain a few things about them. Princess are a chain of pastry shops that first appeared in 1996 in Hungary, in the centre of Budapest. Over the course of the next seven years, the business expanded all over Hungary. And then they went international - they can now also be found in the underground stations in Prague and Bucharest. I remember first seeing them in Bucharest about five years ago. They were present only in two underground stations back then - now they are present in five underground stations (photo). Most of their products are mini-strudel-like and strudel-like products. I remember also seeing croissants and miniature croissants, spirals and miniature spirals. And maybe they have more pastry products that I simply haven't noticed. They also sell sandwiches, soft drinks, chewing gum. And, at the end of this September, I noticed for the very first time that they had...

I mentioned earlier that probably won't be trying any other coffee ice-creams... at least not in the near future. The day before trying those three scoops of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream, I had bought two boxes of ice-cream. They were on sale and they were quite cheap. They are produced by Antarctica, a Romanian ice-cream producer. I must confess I didn't know anything about Antarctica before buying these two boxes (when I finally looked at the label for some info... and I found an e-mail address). I had tried other products from them in the past and they were decent, though most of them had nothing that would make want to try them again either. I thought the Blue Ice Chocolate-Brandy and the Blue Ice Caramel and Vanilla were awesome and so was the Premium Chocolate Cream. I also liked the Jordi Chocolate Ice-Cream Covered in Chocolate, the Premium Caramel & Walnuts and the Rony Vanilla & Chocolate Sandwich. But I had never thought to look for info about them on the packaging. And just a Google search never helped - I could only find. And I actually managed to do some harm there. You see, from a distance, their logo looks a little like...

It took me almost a year to try something else from Starbucks after the unpleasant Cinnamon Roll experience, but then I tried that delicious Chocolate Loving Cake and I wanted to try more of the sweet things I had seen on display. And they had enough things to choose from - doughnuts, brownies, tarts, more cakes, muffins, cookies, Viennese specialties. Which to to choose, which to choose? So many that looked interesting... But I had to choose something as I couldn't try all at once. I finally chose...

Paul, again. I find their products horribly expensive, but, after trying that wonderful Macaron au Chocolat, I just had to try something else. This time it was Viennoiseries and one of their tarts (as I had heard positive opinions about those). I chose...

The Kandia name is almost 100 years old. In 1890, a chocolate factory opened in Timisoara. 27 years later, the factory was given the name Kandia (see the old Kandia logo). In 2004, the factory was bought by another Romanian chocolate producer, Excelent from Bucharest (see the old Excelent logo/ the new Kandia Excelent logo). The headquarters of the newly formed company was moved to Bucharest. Shortly after, the factory in Timisoara was closed and Ambasador (the wide and probably best known chocolate range from Kandia was discontinued. I did get to try about twenty Ambasador chocolates before that happened). Kandia-Excelent was then bought by the Julius Meinl Group. But the Kandia name stayed. During the next three years, Kandia-Excelent launched a lot of chocolate bars under the Kandia label. Kandia had a diversified basic range during that time (see another collage). And there were even more bars in the basic range - I distinctly remember there were three biscuit bars, more than one plain dark bar, there was also another filled dark bar, there were fruit cream bars... In addition to that, they also had a premium range called Kandia Moments, a range of small bars, a range of boxed chocolates plus quite a few special editions like the Kandia Ice-Cooling Special Edition (a summer edition which returned for a second summer in slightly different wrappers and which I am now sorry I never tried... because back then, I wouldn't touch white chocolate), the Kandia Yogurt or the Kandia White Chocolate Yoghurt Cream Special Edition.

Primola is a brand of Supreme Group (yes, I'm finally starting to post pictures of Romanian sweets as well). I discovered it some seven- eight years ago. Back then, I really liked their Brandy (which they've taken out in the meanwhile and... damn! I cannot even find a picture of it on the internet) and Caramel (link, presentation photo) chocolate bars. A few years later, they introduced a Dark - Liqueur & Cherries (Romanian original: Amaruie - Lichior & Cirese) bar which I also really liked, unfortunately, didn't last long (but at least I could find a picture of it - low quality, but I guess it's better than nothing...). Last Christmas, they put out a box called Cherry in Liqueur (link, presentation photo) - I was really excited as I was hoping it would be something like the bar (even though the bar did not contain whole cherries). But I was going to be disappointed. They either changed the recipe or my taste buds have got pickier over the years.

It was not the first time I had got to that conclusion. About eight months before, I had tried the Caramel bar again. And I did not like it anymore. So, is there anything from their current range that I actually like? Well, they have decent cereal chocolates. A Cereal & Cocoa Cream bar (link, screenshot) and chocolate box (link, screenshot) and a Cereal & Whipped Cream bar (link, presentation picture) and chocolate box (link, presentation picture). And two or three years ago they've launched a premium range called Primola Supreme - I particularly like the Chocolate Mousse (link, screenshot).

I first discovered Haagen-Dazs in May 2008. The flavours we get here are most of those that can be found in Germany. I tried nine flavours (Cookie Dough Chip, Cookies & Cream, Dulce de Leche, Pralines & Cream, Macadamia Nut Brittle, Vanilla Caramel Brownie, Choc Choc Chip, Baileys and Belgian Chocolate) and they were all good. My favourites were the Baileys (sadly, this one has disappeared from our supermarkets since) and Belgian Chocolate.

I heard people talking about Paul bakery and I didn't pay much attention. I passed by a few times and I didn't care much. And then, one day I happened to notice something...

As I've mentioned in the previous post, my first Starbucks experience, the Cinnamon Roll (oh, I feel so stupid right now - why didn't I google that before trying it? I certainly wouldn't have touched it knowing it had cheese) was a very unpleasant one. So unpleasant that I didn't feel like trying anything from there for almost a year. But one morning (well, it wasn't exactly morning, but I didn't wake up exactly early either) I went by and I saw...

I kept hearing positive opinios regarding Cinnabon products, so I thought I'd give them a try, though I'm not usually crazy about this kind of sweets, which I see as some distant relatives of bread. You can guess I'm not crazy about bread either. The pigeons seem to love it, though and I love watching the pigeons and what better way to get close to the pigeons is there than to feed them? Which offers some consolation if I try some bread-related sweet thing and I don't like it - the pigeons will still enjoy it, right?

I was a bit lost when I got there. They had lists of products (which included a lot of beverages as well), both in printed form and on electronic displays, but there were no pictures with those list and the products they had on display had no labels so I had to ask for help. They had the Classic, the Pecanbon and the Chocobon rolls in various sizes. Seeing them in front of me... well, they didn't look as tempting as in other people's descriptions and that's why I only got one - better safe than sorry. My choice was...

Looks like it didn't take me long to get back to ice-cream. This time, another brand that I had never tried until recently - Ben & Jerry's. It was a bit of a surprise, I had read about them on the internet, but I didn't really think I had a chance to find them here. I was wrong. Last Thursday I went into a Leonidas shop and they had Ben & Jerry's ice-cream. A lot of flavours even, but most of them were a little to weird for me and contained things I don't like - peanut butter, marshmallows, cheese, mint, coffee... and if I could stand coffee cream in a chocolate, it just so happened that I went into the Leonidas shop the day after trying the first and probably the last (or at least the last for a very, very long time) coffee ive-cream in my life. Yes, I'll make an entry about that too.