Zingerman's Handmade Candy Bars

It probably comes as no surprise that the first step to making a really good box of chocolates is to use really high quality chocolate. Here are a few ways you can suss out quality, without an advanced chocolate degree.

Good chocolate is glossy.

Avoid any chocolates that are dull or dusty. The chocolate likely bloomed, meaning that the crystalline structure of the chocolate has gone out of whack due to storage issues. This happens to all chocolate eventually, so if you have good chocolate it’s best to eat it within a few months or so. After chocolate blooms, it’s not unsafe to eat, but it has a gritty, dry texture and the flavor is diminished.

Good chocolate has a nice snap to it.

Cheaper chocolate is waxier. It bends before it breaks. (You can try an experiment to see this for yourself: get a good, bean-to-bar chocolate bar and a Hershey’s bar, and try breaking off a square of each. Pay attention: how does each chocolate feel? How does it sound?) After that initial snap, better chocolate should melt evenly on your tongue. By contrast, poorer quality chocolate often feels sticky or tacky in your mouth.

Good chocolate has full, complex flavor.

It should complement the flavor of any fillings, and the flavor should last in your mouth for a long, long time.

Fillings also matter!

What you put inside of a chocolate bonbon is just as important as the chocolate itself. Sometimes, that means focusing on just one filling. When you have something really special, like the extraordinary aromatic citrus of Calabria in southern Italy or the notably rich and nutty walnuts of Périgord in southwestern France, a coating of good chocolate can make them swoon-worthy. That’s not to say you can’t find good boxes of chocolate that have mixed flavors – a few of our favorite chocolatiers making great assortments are J. Patrice, Chocolat Moderne, and Grocer’s Daughter.

Check the ingredient list.

It’s always a good bet to look at the ingredient list when you’re evaluating any food. Boxes of chocolate are no exception. Artificial ingredients like vanillin are suspect, as are any unpronounceable ingredients. One exception is soy lecithin, which is widely used by excellent chocolatiers in very small amounts to help the chocolate keep a smooth texture. You generally want to avoid added fats, too, though you’ll want to make an exception if there’s a cookie or caramel component to a filling where butter might be in play.

Don’t hang onto them for too long.

Store chocolates at room temperature away from the potential melting power of sunlight. Try to eat them within a few weeks – or a couple of months, tops.

The base flavor of candy – sweetness – comes from sugar. Technically sugar is in the form of sucrose, glucose and fructose. These are basic molecules. But just because the chemistry may give the impression that one sucrose is the same as another sucrose, don’t let that fool you. Not all sugar is created equal.

Sugar can come from many sources. Corn (for corn syrup), sugar cane, and sugar beets are three of the most common sources. At Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory, we stick mostly with cane sugar – more on that in a moment. But there are other sources, too. For example, it’s traditional to make sugar made from maple tree sap that has some of the wonderful flavor you find in real maple syrup.

Brown cane sugar is the most common sweetener at Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory. But not all brown sugars are the same, either! Standard supermarket brown sugar is fully purified white sugar coated with molasses to make it brown. The purification process involved many filtration stages involving phosophoric acid, calcium hydroxide and activated carbon or bone char. I don’t even know what bone char is, let alone why it’s part of making brown sugar! You can spot the ruse when you rub some between your fingers. The molasses will come off and the crystals will show their white underbellies.

The brown sugar we use, called muscovado, goes through minimal processing. Essentially, it is refined to the point where it isn’t totally dark (molasses sugar) and not yet white (white sugar). The flavor difference between it and the standard varieties is immense.

You can buy both types of sugar and taste them at home. The standard brown sugar will be sweet with little flavor. The muscovado will be sweet, but it will also have the wonderful aromas and flavors of molasses. Its flavor will last longer too.

When we make caramel at Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory, we can choose which sugar to use. Muscovado is more expensive, but the caramel resulting from using muscovado is richer and more complex so we use that. You really can taste the difference. Large candy bar companies cut costs and use cheaper sugar – for caramel, usually flavorless refined white sugar cooked til golden.

A final quick note. We also use corn syrup (regular, not high fructose) to make caramel – for texture. It makes the caramel very smooth.

Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory has been crafting delicious confections for fifteen years with a focus on traditional American candy. Each sweet treat takes days to make, and has remarkably full flavor. Here are two factors that make Zingerman’s candy different than your average grocery store find.

Made by hand, not by machines

Instead of massive industrial cookers mechanically churning out literal tons, we still make our peanut brittle, nougat, and caramel by hand in big pots on a stove.

“Made by hand” might sound like a throwaway marketing line, but it actually does translate to taste. Making caramel in smaller batches means we can caramelize it more for richer, deeper flavors. Those huge commercial vats hold about 50 times more, so they can’t cook as long without burning the caramel on the bottom.

We also hand-pull our peanut brittle, carefully stretching and pulling the melted nut and sugar mixture before it cools. Most companies, even smaller ones, rely only on the little bubbles from baking soda for an airy, crisp texture. But hand-pulling puts bigger air pockets into the mix for an even flakier bite—and it never sticks in your teeth.

Especially flavorful ingredients

We use high quality ingredients for each candy component. Take the peanuts. Instead of the typical
small runner peanuts, we source big Virginia Jumbo peanuts for better crunch. Industrial makers will
buy roasted nuts to save time, but they quickly lose flavor and texture. By roasting in house, we get the
freshest flavor and we control the salt and roast levels. We grind our house-roasted nuts to make
our own nut butters instead of pulling a jar off the shelf with added sugar and other filler ingredients. And that’s just the nuts. We use just as much care in selecting our chocolate, our sugar—even our raspberry preserves!

Looking at the ingredient list on a mass-produced candy bar, you’ll notice something we don’t add: preservatives. It’s cheaper to add preservatives because companies can make more candy at one time and hold onto it for longer. Think about a regular candy bar in the grocery aisle. Do you have any idea when it was made or how long it’s been sitting there?

With ours, you do. It’s likely no more than a few weeks old when you receive it. You’ll want to eat it within a couple of months for best texture and flavor. You really can taste the difference.