What candy bar tastes like a Trader Joe's milk chocolate pound plus bar?

@Kyeh I was thinking the same thing, it’s the least we can do!

@ircon96 @Kyeh They are good!

@ircon96 @Kidsandliz I believe you! Just haven’t gotten to Trader Joe’s yet.

@ircon96 @Kidsandliz @Kyeh I prefer the 72% dark, and we just grabbed one yesterday. We are now officially in Chocolate Overload, and in danger of reaching Chocolate Critical Mass if we don’t eat some quickly.

@earlyre Unfortunately, what is sold in the US as “chocolate” (Looking at you Hershey and Nestle) cannot be legally sold in the EU precisely because they do not contain the legal minimum required cocoa content.

Instead, Hershey’s figured out they could eliminate the expensive cocoa (i.e. Dutch process) powder and replace it with more of the cheaper cocoa butter (aka “white chocolate”) which means artificially more of the fats than the alkaloids that combine as “chocolate” when fermented and dried cocoa nibs are normally processed, and not processed for separation and then reformulation in different proportions.

@mike808 what you may have missed Mike, is that the TJ’s bars in question are imported from Belgium.
Not American chocolate, which makes our combined posts true.

@earlyre Ah, it seems I missed the descriptive of TJ’s being Belgian chocolate. And the Cadbury’s you get at Gatwick or Heathrow isn’t the same as the US Cadbury’s formulations at your local grocer.

Having extensively sampled Belgian chocolate in its native Brussels setting, I believe we are in vehement agreement.

I will say that my favorite is Neuhaus.

@mike808 of course the Cadbury’s you get in the US is different…Hershey’s makes the US market product…

@earlyre @mike808 Huh, I thought the problem was that they took out the cocoa butter and replaced it with cheaper soy lecithin and other fats (palm oil, for example).

@earlyre @mike808 @mossygreen

I thought the problem was that they took out the cocoa butter and replaced it with cheaper soy lecithin and other fats.

Hershey did that to the Special Dark back in the '80s, and it’s been waxy crap ever since. I guess Cadbury doesn’t think the US market can tell the difference, if Hershey has been getting away with it for almost 40 years. Of course, in reality, Hershey has been missing the sales to those of us who know the difference for all that time. I used to go through a couple of their big slab bars of SD per month; I hardly ever buy any of their products now. Even at Halloween, I get a couple of bags of Mounds so that I don’t end up having to eat leftovers I despise.

@earlyre @mossygreen @werehatrack
It started as shifting to more of the cheaper cocoa butter, but executive pay increases forced them to make even shittier cheaper candy, so the replacement of the cheaper cocoa butter with even cheaper soy and palm oil sourced ingredients. Add in more stabilizers and you have today’s brown wax with hints of Gotye’s chocolate you used to know.

For Halloween, they might as well be transparent and call it ghost chocolate.

@earlyre @mike808 @mossygreen And if they had simply kept the quality up, I’d likely be buying higher-price-per-gram bars from them instead of the Lindt and such, with a net result of more profit in their pockets than they are realizing from peddling crap.

@earlyre @mike808

And the Cadbury’s you get at Gatwick or Heathrow isn’t the same as the US Cadbury’s formulations at your local grocer.

Of course! That’s why we a bring suitcase full of stuff home from every trip to England. Even something simple like KitKats are a wonderful delight compared to the US stuff.

To be honest, I prefer Galaxy bars (Mars) to Cadbury. And Galaxy Minstrels (kind of grown-up M&Ms) are an addiction.

@earlyre @mike808 Yeah I noticed that when I worked in the UK. Same name, better chocolate bar.

@earlyre @Kidsandliz @mike808 Also true elsewhere in the world; the Cadbury in NZ is decent, though not a patch on the local Whittaker’s brand, and not even in the same category as Hogarth’s.

@earlyre @Kidsandliz @mike808 And for a hyperlocal chocolate in the Blenheim area of the South Island, Makana Confections.

@blaineg Hmm. Must have been something both were looking for in the other when Amazon bought Whole Foods. The corporate cultures are a good fit too. TIL.

@blaineg @mike808 The prior owner of Whole Paycheck was always just looking for the money. El Jeffe wanted a turnkey widespread food chain. What he bought was a place that shamelessly sold snake oil to the well-heeled as its main cash cow. It still does, and the attempt to poach downward with the 365 stores was not a stunning success.

@macromeh Hmm haven’t seen them around here, but then again I haven’t gone to the upscale grocery store that doesn’t accept snap. I’ll have to check that place out to see what they have next time I am in that part of town.

@Kidsandliz @macromeh Around here, Target and WallyWorld both carry Lindt, Ghirardelli, and some other decent midrange-price bars.

@werehatrack But those midrange bars don’t taste like the one I like. That is what I am trying to find - a taste substitute. Trader Joes has hidden well enough who exactly makes this for them other than one of 300 or so Belgium chocolate makers that I can’t just try to find the “name brand” substitute.

@Kidsandliz @werehatrack The Hageland bars are listed on both WallyWorld and Amazon websites, but usually are out of stock (and much more expensive). Grocery Outlet (or Groc-Out as my kids call it ) carries a lot of overstock or near expiration date items, usually at a pretty good discount.