Hu Kitchen 72%, Almond Butter + Puffed Quinoa, and Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding

Hu Kitchen is an interesting place -- it's a restaurant, but they also make their own chocolate bars.  The bars use coconut, and you can sort of tell, but the "Simple" 72% was still pretty good and chocolatey.  The Almond Butter + Puffed Quinoa bar was less appealing -- too heavy on the almond.

But the surprising star was the Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding.  I love pudding.  Especially from Puddin'.  But since going vegan, my options have been severely limited.  My previous two attempts did not go so well.  The vegan creme-freche or whatever it was they put on top was actually pretty good.  What interfered were the candied walnuts.  Look, I like candied walnuts.  Throw them on a salad.  Bam!  More delicious salad.  Because sugar.  But I am eating chocolate pudding, not salad.  Candied walnuts are not an upgrade from what I already have in my cup.  They are in the way.  So, when you order, I recommend asking them to hold the walnuts.

Bottom Line: Worthwhile in general, including for chocolate, and especially for the chia seed pudding.

The Humbug at Liddabit Sweets

The Union Square holiday market is in full effect, complete with lots of overhyped, artisanal goods.  I hope you are ready.  I wasn't.

I should have been.  I've had other Liddabit Sweets products before, and they are very good.  They have a line of honeycomb bars.  They have some pumpkin things.  Good times all around.  But I was still not prepared for The Humbug.

It's some sort of chocolate truffle with crushed peppermint in it.  We love that here.  But doing it in a truffle instead of a chocolate bar is really some next level magic.

Bottom Line:  A crispy, mint-flavored, chocolate truffle.  Holiday magic is real.

Storm Rations B2: Nibmor 65% "Crispy"

I am totally on board with the vegan thing.  Against suffering.  Check.  Me too.  Hate suffering.  But if you hate suffering so much, why do you deprive yourself of even raw sugar?

Crispy chocolate?  What could go wrong?

So yeah, this bar does that.  A lot of bars do now.  It's, like, popular.  Now, I can stand the raw thing.  Leila isn't as into it, but I'm fine with it.  Raw chocolate is different and interesting.  But there is a reason we have been using sugar for as long as human society has -- because it tastes amazing.  Nibmor sort of misses that piece of historical trivia with this bar.  So yeah, consider this my plea: stop with the agave.

It already doesn't look crispy.

The other place that Nibmor misses here is with the rice crispies.  There aren't enough of them, and they aren't crispy enough.  They almost taste soggy.  Even Hershey's knows how to do this right -- I can't imagine it's that hard.

I can't really complain about the quality chocolate used -- it's definitely good, and the taste is nice.  But it's hard even to appreciate that taste when 30% of the bar is agave nectar.

Bottom Line:  Every day and in every way, you can do better than this.