Hammond’s Chocolate Bars
September 6, 2017
Once again we get to my birthday, and here come the gifts of chocolate!
Yay, I have new chocolate bars to try and this time they are made by Hammond’s Candies in Denver, CO.
According to their website, www.hammondscandies.com, Hammond’s has been in business for more than 90 years. In 1920, Carl T. Hammond, Sr. founded Hammond’s Candy Company in Denver, Colorado. His first candy creation was the Honey Ko Ko - a chocolate topped with shredded coconut.
Today’s chocolates and candy offerings are vast. There’s an interesting line up of chocolate bars with varieties such as Pigs N’ Taters, Malted Milkshake, S’mores, Cookie Dough, and Red Velvet.
The two bars I have are Bourbon Pecan Pie and Sea Side Caramel. The Bourbon Pecan Pie is a milk chocolate with a bourbon pecan caramel filling and the Sea Side Caramel is a dark chocolate with a salty caramel filling.
In both bars, the soft caramel filling is covered by a thick chocolate shell with a crisp snap. This impresses me because I’d rather have more chocolate than filling.
Bourbon Pecan Pie
The Bourbon Pecan Pie is sweet, with small bits of pecans (the label says “pecan flour”) and a natural bourbon whiskey concentrate. I would agree that there is essence of bourbon in the filling, but it reminds me more of a butterscotch spiked with some kind of clear spirit.
The caramel and the sweetness somewhat overwhelms the bourbon and the vanilla and the pecan flavors, but doesn’t cover them completely. Please note: it is much more recognizable as a bourbon flavor filling than the Ghirardelli Bourbon Caramel I blogged about a couple months ago!
The chocolate is milk, which adds a nice impact of cocoa and harmonizes well with the sweet caramel but does make the overall sweetness level very high. The caramel is soft and runny which I prefer to the chewy type of caramel (you know, the stick to your teeth until you can’t open your mouth properly type of caramel)!
Sea Side Caramel
The Sea Side Caramel is also sweet with a strong butterscotchy flavor, but the dark chocolate tones down the sweetness. The chocolate shell is the best part!
Although the shell is thick and the filling sparse, the caramel is the strongest flavor. I taste a little caramelized sugar, like a burnt brown sugar, but it’s not offensive. The salty aspect of the caramel is nice with the dark chocolate.
Overall, I enjoyed parts of both bars. I’m glad I tried them side by side so that I could taste the similarities and differences of the caramel fillings. I think my ideal bar would be to switch the filling with the shell – Dark Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie.
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