Babaevsky Elite 75% dark chocolate bar

This chocolate bar comes to me courtesy of a Russian friend who went home over the holidays and ever so kindly brought me back some awesome souvenirs. In addition to this very large (200 gram) chocolate bar, she also brought me back tea and a Gzhel pottery rocking horse. I couldn't be more delighted, so my review may be tainted... but, probably not. The truth is that I love European candy. It is usually stuff from Western Europe, but Eastern Europe is good, too. I have great friends. I really do.

It's always a bit of a trick for me to track down information on food I get from countries other than Japan, but the company that makes this, Babaevsky, has been around since 1804. I've read that Russians regard this as a very nostalgic treat. I'm guessing it is their equivalent of Hershey's, only, you know, without the low quality that now comes along with America's best known "chocolate" bar. Babaevsky chocolate has, apparently, won many international candy contests.

With all of that positive press to live up to, I had reasonably high expectations of this bar. Since I'm not an enormous fan of dark chocolate, it's sometimes hard to please me on this front. I'm okay with it being bitter, but not too bitter, and I hate it when the bitterness is compensated for by being too sweet. Trader Joe's dark chocolate bar has been one of the few that has kept me happy, though I rarely partake of it much these days.

Because this is dark chocolate, the bar doesn't have much of a sheen on it and the finish is quite dry. The ingredients list is "cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, cocoa butter", emulsifiers, and artificial vanilla flavor. I didn't know what "cocoa mass" was before, but apparently it is the "brown stuff" in cocoa. The white stuff is cocoa butter - that is what makes white chocolate. I'm guessing cocoa mass is used to up the level of cocoa to 75%, and using more of it is the reason this is so dry. However, I'm engaging in idle chocolate speculation here. I really don't know.

What I do know is this bar is not too sweet and not too bitter. It has a fruity aroma which registers when you eat the bar as cherry notes. It's complex enough to be an interesting nosh, but intense enough to satisfy with one square (each block is about 60 calories depending on how you manage to break it off). As dark chocolates go, I really liked this one because it didn't leave the same sort of unpleasant aftertaste that Japanese bars do and it wasn't too strong on the coffee notes. It also didn't have the sense that one was coming very close to eating baking chocolate and actually eating candy - adult, sophisticated candy, but something decadent nonetheless.

I really like this and would welcome a steady supply. I'd rate it as equally good to the dark chocolate at Trade Joe's, but with much nicer complexity and flavor depth. Amazon sells some Babaevsky dark chocolate, though not this particular bar. If you can try it though, I'd say it is well worth your hard-earned cash, especially if you like dark chocolate, and I'm not just saying that because the origin of this gift was a special one for me.

Artek Chocolate Wafers

From my extremely limited experience with Russina sweets--that is, two whole reviews--I have already learned something. If there is a "P" in their writing, it means an "R" in English. That being said, you'll note that the picture of the package shown above does say "Artek". The sides, however, say "Aptek" as does the Russian product information. Look ma! I'm learning Russia through junk food! Who ever said that this stuff is bad for you?

I found this 130 g./4.6 oz. packet of chocolate wafers at Crossroads Specialty Foods. This was the same place at which I procured the tasty Russian butter and cream cookies. Like those cookies, these were very cheap at 99 cents (about 100 yen). Compared to cheap store brand wafers which you can buy seemingly by the pound for about a buck, these might seem a little expensive, but they are cheap compared to other European wafers. The question is about quality.

It should be noted that I am an enormous fan of wafers of all sorts. I like bad ones, sweet ones, bad ones, high quality ones, vanilla, chocolate, fruit flavors, etc. Because of the light, crisp texture and my being a texture junkie, it's hard for a wafer to go wrong with me, though there is absolutely a threshold at which the calories are not worth the experience. If I didn't have the metabolism of a moderately active middle-aged white lady, I'd eat whole packages of wafers no matter how flavorless they were. I can say that with confidence because I had more than my share of experiences in Japan with said types of wafers and making a package of them "dinner". I'm just too old for that now. Neither my metabolic rate nor my digestive system would tolerate such happy nonsense anymore.

Fortunately, these wafers are well worth the 115 calories per half wafer. That may sound stingy, but this package only contains three very big wafers. If you were to divide them into more standard size ones, they'd probably each make three or possibly four more American or Japanese size ones. These shine above the conventional in a few ways. First, the ratio of filling to wafer is very good. Japanese ones were often too stingy on the filling. The filling is flavorful, fatty, and even creamy. It's a bit closer to ganache than your average wafer filling American ones are too sweet and chalky in their filling. The wafers themselves are fresh, crispy and satisfying.

These remind me of the venerable Loacker variety, though those are much more airy than these. There's more heft to these, but they aren't especially dense. The thicker, creamier filling stops them from being too hard. 

I thought these were excellent for a consumer level wafer. If you gave me a selection of all of the wafer cookies I've ever had, including all of the sugar wafers I can try in the U.S., I'd choose these. considering my appetite for wafers, that's a pretty ringing endorsement. That being said, I'm judging these as a wafer among wafers, not as a snack among all other snacks. I'd still take a mont blanc or a good bit of cheesecake over something like this, but it's unfair to hold a cheap consumer level shelf stable sweet up to freshly made pastry.

This line of wafers, though not this particular presentation, is available online from the Russian Table. 

Korovka Butter and Cream Cookies

Cream is in blue and butter is in yellow, as suits the color of butter.

Back when I first started learning to use computers, I felt completely overwhelmed by the volume of things that I did not know how to accomplish. It may seem inconceivable to people who could use a PC before they could make potty somewhere other than their pants, but I didn't even know how to change the sound. In fact, I recall taking my new black and white Powerbook 145b to work and having a Star Trek screen saver installed that kept making sounds. I went into a pure panic when I couldn't work out how to stop the noises that might alert my Japanese coworkers to the fact that I had my own computer there and that it was playing the equivalent of little sci-fi cartoons when it as idle.

Being confronted with a new language or writing system is a very similar experience. The first sense you get is of being overwhelmed and like you have no footing from which to start working things out. When I first went to Japan, this was the space I lived in and it was daunting. The truth is that it's still daunting given how many kanji (Chinese characters) there are, but I muddled through. Now, I can manage dealing with researching and writing about Japanese snack foods. I'm far from perfect, and some critics might even say far from even "adequate" at it, but I feel like I can stumble around and figure most things out.

Dealing with food that is of a completely different origin puts me back at square one. If I review a Korean snack, I have a sense of flailing around in foreign waters without a life preserver. I know zero about Korean and the same is so about Russian. I don't even know if this is Russian for certain. It may be some other Eastern European language which looks similar, but is totally different. At any rate, I'm trying to swim here, but don't be surprised if I end up failing to even doggy paddle my way through this review. It may end up being the equivalent of "mmm, cookies" and little else given my illiteracy in the language of this product.

I found these cookies at a cool shop that is called "Crossroads Specialty Foods" in Palo Alto, CA. I was walking around the area near the dealership that was servicing our car, which was having its fluids drained, replaced, or topped off in celebration of its first birthday, when I saw their sign along the street. The sign is kind of weird and not like what it appears to be on the Yelp page that I linked to. It used to have "World Market" written in the middle in big letters and that was simply painted over so there's a big blank in the middle. Also, from outward appearances, it just looks strange because it doesn't have the feel of a market, but rather of a supply store. I approached with caution because I didn't want to walk in and be asked if I wanted help buying 100 lbs. of basmati rice or a drum of olive oil.

That's "cream" on the left and "butter" on the right, but then you could tell by looking, right?

At any rate, after a careful peek through the door revealed shelves full of cookies and candy, I walked in and was greeted to an excellent selection of European and Middle Eastern food and snacks. The selection included a ton of British chocolate as well as Russian cookies and sweets and things like halvah and marzipan. The prices ranged from cheap to reasonable. Since I'm not especially reasonable and quite cheap, I picked up these Russian cookies for a mere 89 cents per 6.3 oz./180 g. packet.

I was intrigued by the fact that the cookies looked absolutely identical, but supposedly were different flavors. Also, I wondered what "cream" flavor was supposed to taste like and if the "butter" flavor would actually taste more buttery. To test this out, I had my husband do a blind taste test to see if he could tell and he could. This was pretty impressive since he doesn't have as keen a sense of taste as I do.

There is a very distinct difference between these cookies, but they are both very good. The butter one has a very discernible butter flavor. In fact, I think it's a fake flavoring since "margarine" is listed as an ingredient, but butter is not. The "cream" version has a cleaner taste, but has a nice plain butter cookie flavor to it overall. Both are "good", but I preferred the cream one.

With all types of plain cookies like these, it's as much about the texture as the taste. These have a great flaky, slightly crumbly texture and they pair extremely well with coffee or tea. They're the type of cookie that is good to have around for guests or times when you just want a little crispy cookie around that's not too sweet.

I really liked these, but I do like butter cookies and fairly simple tasting things that aren't too sweet. Texture is paramount and what I mainly hope for in a cheap consumer-level cookie like this is that it not resemble a cracker. This is absolutely a proper cookie which has a European feel. Is it the end-all and be-all of cookies? It is not, but it's still a pretty nice cookie and I'd definitely buy it again, especially at the price they are currently available.

I checked online for sources of these cookies, and I couldn't find the exact ones online, but there's an interesting online place for Russian food that sells a variety of these as well as many other products.