A Big Bowl of Polish Candy

if the first picture is the entirety of the candy you bought am genuinely amazed that 25 dollars got you that amount. seems insanely expensive.

I am so, so jealous of you. I had a girlfriend in high school whose parents were both Polish, and they'd bring back these chocolate covered plums from Poland when they'd visit, or find them at a specialty shop in LA. just impossibly delicious. thirty-odd years later I got to go to Poland and the day before flying from there to england I had enough time in Krakow to find a supermarket -- turns out these plums are an old-folks staple sweet at Christmas, and it was early December, so I hit the jackpot. sooooo good.

Yes, those are classic Polish grandmother treats:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/j_JzS84k9SB3LXKA-7BEcVyY4zc2ACvYSJ6bq0z5vvM_MNBCCsxAPEEU-vpEyWag7ULpVnd3vtEdzkVrdbZ5TAyb4f18IfGBjQlCu0O4roQnUU0OTnhkTVYwdCpfI4ylhMmE_bX5weZGPSwSauEerVWqHz7ew15Jjfw-FyT_0SpEnDBz8i5sMpIXkLMZXnZpp7WoLXknu3XrE3cU1SY3rU7r82f3zg

damn, my polish grandmother would just give us unwrapped free cookies from the boat casino, claiming she'd baked them.

excellent thread, forks. looking forward to the next surprises. I can't criticize what my kids watch on youtube anymore -- I get it.

seems insanely expensive.

the polish aisle in my local supermarket is a favourite because it's significantly cheaper than english chocolate (and often nicer). polish particularly fond on wafers and coconut things based on the stock there.

tons of polski skleps locally too, but i'm never sure of the vegetarian status of things so...

(UK obviously closer to poland than the US)

I am somewhat addicted to Kucharek Universal Vegetable Seasoning but have never tried Polish sweeties, there are certainly plenty of opportunities to try them here!

http://i.imgur.com/4DL74lY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YtXJ1Dq.jpg
Here's the much requested chocolate covered plums. Well, prunes really but that makes them sound a lot worse than they taste. They do indeed hold up to billing: soft, juicy fruit and reasonable quality chocolate add up to a flavorful and tangy little morsel that anyone would love.
8/10, could definitely see having a small cache of these for visitors.

Next time I go to Poland I’m going to have to try the ice cream version:

https://i.postimg.cc/15DSRxNk/BE85-B858-FED5-4-EDF-9-D2-A-9-BC4-EF01402-D.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/N2QFBA9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wzv6SQe.jpg
The taste of the chocolate-covered Pomawka Poweh soft nougat filling is disarming: lightly floral, as telegraphed by the packaging, but mostly grainy, sugary caramel with a whiff of alcohol on the tail end. It's strong with remarkably long legs and coats your throat like congealed honey.
5/10, might be more into this if I could completely identify the flavor.

http://i.imgur.com/6o1ep5j.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mYqCyJn.jpg
The by-now expected thin layer of soft chocolate gives way to a coarse tile of leathery halvah-like substance, a milky and rough slab of dense protein bar. You could probably live on four of these a day.
5/10, north of gross but south of enjoyable.

http://i.imgur.com/SgQ9dcA.jpg
Surprisingly delicate lump of puffed rice and nut butter filling in a chocolate-covered puffed rice shell embedded with tiny pellets of crushed nuts. Sort of a peanut butter flavored Ferrero Rocher with a vaguely coconut aftertaste? I'm into it.
7/10, nice find!

the roshen Pomawka Poweh things are described as

"A Crème Brulee fondant filling with cacao and cognac flavoring coated with a chocolate glaze. Imported from Ukraine."

it’s actually “Romashka Roshen”, because Cyrillic - meaning Chamomile Roshen (those Ukrainian candy guys again)

translating the names makes for some interesting results - would you say the name “Ladybug Soufflé” makes the milky and rough slab of dense protein bar above a) more or b) less appetizing?

The chocolate covered chocolate thing looks pretty good to me.

btw this thread surprises me. for many, many years I had Polish chocolate down as bad quality stuff, based on the specimen I was offered one time. it might be time to re-examine.

“Ladybug Soufflé”

The word for ladybird (Korovka) has the same root concept as it does in Irish - ‘little cow’ or ‘God’s little cow’, so this would be ‘little cow soufflé’, which is at least 6% more appealing.

I have Polish coworkers - whenever they visit our American offices, they only bring fancy boxed chocolates, never any of these exotic novelties

makes sense, was wondering why there cows and daisies on the wrapper but no actual ladybugs

xp

apparently daisy is also ромашка in Ukrainian, is that correct? a very flexible word indeed!

I had a day on the ground in Krakow a couple years ago. I was very tired, and in a weird emotional space, and my train only got there at 3-ish and I had to fly to England the next day. For my Dad's funeral. Still, I spent my downtime in Krakow finding a supermarket so I could buy as many of those plums as my luggage could hold.

Cognac and chamomile could definitely be the mystery flavor! Not sure that makes it any more palatable though...

"Ladybug Soufflé" is sort of the perfect name for that milky protein bar.

The word for ladybird (Korovka) has the same root concept as it does in Irish - ‘little cow’ or ‘God’s little cow’

I learned this just yesterday! Someone who came to dinner at my house mentioned it.

How do you say "...and garnished with lark's vomit" in Russian?

it’s the same in Dutch, come to think of it:
sweet lord’s bug (“little animal”).

the Dutch word for daisy appears to be derived from sweet virgin, in reference to Mary.

(Mary is also being the “lady” alluded to in the bug’s name - German and the Scandinavian languages make this explicit)

“daisy” was originally “day’s eye” btw!

xp

apols for this etymology overdose, probably time for some new eye candy

being

http://bella.media.mit.edu/people/foner/Fun/gravity.html

I am totally going to stop at the one little euro market in town and grab some sweets, which I usually avoid because I have no idea what the hell is going on in any of those boxes. Will ask for help finding choco covered plums! Then will proceed onward to tummy ache and will blame this thread!

http://i.imgur.com/wIZZjny.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/90F0LAs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Jd0nCHp.jpg
This is the biggest candy in the stash; I'm posting the cyrillic info on the back for folks that can translate. It's roughly the size of a chips ahoy cookie and three times as thick. It tastes like a fruity mallomar: a thin soft chocolate shell dotted with some tiny fragments of crushed nuts over a puffy and yielding marshmallowy base that yields floral and sweet aftertaste over vanilla top notes. As with a lot of these candies, a bit more subtlety would likely make this more palatable but it's the sort of thing you could split with a kindred spirit and share a moment.
6/10, a bit too much of a good thing.

http://i.imgur.com/RC2MkuS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GQfn0Ym.jpg
Korvika Roschen is a fingerlike slab of grainy, buttery caramel in spectacular packaging. I get the sense these would be better fresh and this one was most definitely not. Even so, the flavor intensity far surpasses Werther's, though the mouthfeel is stale.
4/10, I think I got a bum steer.

http://i.imgur.com/G73EpZe.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7EBq7TR.jpg
Amazing packaging makes the Kapa-Kym Poweh a seductive looking treat. The payoff is a finger of oily soft dark chocolate with mystery crunch crumbs and a soupçon of hazelnut/sesame flavor that evokes smokiness or - less pleasantly - burning. Not as bad as it might sound but not as good as the label promises.
6/10, the camel isn't lying but he's not all he's cracked up to be.

http://i.imgur.com/iTFkMX7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/X73SveF.jpg
The slightly psychedelic poppy wrapper belies the taste and consistency and presentation, which is all more or less exactly the same as the Kapa-Kym, minus the vague nuttiness. By the fourth of these candies my tastebuds are kinda fried, so maybe there's something else going on with flavor... but I doubt it.

5/10, not much to get excited by.

in ascending order:

Червоний Мак: “Red Poppy” (indeed)

Кара-Кум: “Karakum” (the Central Asian desert, so yes, camels - the sesame in particular makes this one sound very promising)

Korivka: “Cow”

Зефир - сладкие истории (зефир ванильный с орешками с шоколадной глазури):
“Marshmallow - Sweet Stories (vanilla marshmallows with nuts in chocolate glaze)”

this post was sponsored by G**gle Translate

I like how accurately forks’ descriptions match the candy’s name in some cases. I mean:

a bit more subtlety would likely make this more palatable but it's the sort of thing you could split with a kindred spirit and share a moment <<iow>> “Sweet Stories>>

lol, you would think i work in marketing or something

http://i.imgur.com/WYBwNcC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/j0kNdN3.jpg
Chocolate covered apricot filled with a dense marshmallow. The apricot is sour, the marshmallow is a bit sickly and the overall impression is of spoiled fruit. Gah!
1/10, now I am dying.

http://i.imgur.com/CMi22UB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NnDpH5F.jpg
Frying pan to fire: this swan sweet is thin chocolate over a block of marshmallow with the consistency and wan resistance of pork fat. Not much flavor and what's there is pretty poor. Ended up spitting this one out too.
1/10, perhaps the local butcher doesn't like me?

wrong image:
http://i.imgur.com/oe1w5ki.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Spa4UnZ.jpg
Another marshmallow bar but this one has better quality chocolate and filling and a bit more snap to the coating. There's a mix of graham cracker and coconut aftertaste. Following the prior two gutter candies, this is a vast improvement but not much to write home about.
4/10, distinctly okay at best.

Леди Ночь: “Lady Night”

order more here

http://i.imgur.com/vuXlgdr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aIJ2C1D.jpg
Brown wad of presumable caramel, uncuttable by knife and resistant to chewing. Best I could do was scrape off the sides like a lump of wax. Flavor is used sugar. Not a good day of exploration.
1/10, better as a building material than a candy.

lady night has been canceled

tough showing for polish marshmallow

The whole ‘ptichye moloko’ (birds’ milk) genre of chocolate-coated ‘milk soufflé’ is not great, tbh.

say more? that's a thing?

Yes, it’s a famous Polish sweet that has copycat versions across Eastern Europe. It’s generally lighter and less chewy than classic marshmallow.

The 4/10 one has the Bird’s Milk name and the 1/10 one, I’d guess, doesn’t have the trademark in Russia so it’s called something like Marvellous Bird, but they’re essentially the same thing.

I don’t like them at all but had a colleague who was absolutely addicted to them.

http://i.imgur.com/0v70T1j.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gyBBjzz.jpg
A thin chocolate covered finger of extremely creamy hazelnut nougat, studded with orts of ground hazelnut. Delicious but flavorful to the point of overdoing it, coats the throat with a sugary residue.
7/10, sort of like freebasing Nutella.

are you ready for the next one? I wasn't.

http://i.imgur.com/wtpyXW3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/F6GFEYF.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ocEAjxm.jpg

At $12 a pound, wrapper and all, the Boletto Premium was the most expensive item in the candy counter and, if not for this thread, I surely would've skipped it. But curiosity set in, so I got one. Imagine my surprise upon opening this treat to discover that the external advertising was all too accurate. This thing looks just like a mushroom and slips out of the cellophane with a pre-moistened glisten of lubrication. Alas, it turns out to be made out of the aforementioned and generally disgusting "bird's milk souffle" marshmallow, a dense and coagulated lump of oversweet hog fat. The "head" is covered in thick milk chocolate and the "stem" is inexplicably crawling with a generous smattering of poppy seeds and then split up the middle. This is presumably to allow for sharing but the effect is near-pornographic. 1/10, everything here is a bad idea and i feel bad for eating the little bit that I did.

Oh no.

Creamy mushroom souffle, hat covered with chocolate glaze, leg sprinkled with poppy seeds.

Unfolding the wrapper you will see just a 100% copy of this fungus)

Very original design.

A wonderful idea.

Incredibly delicate taste.

I don’t think it’s meant to be sweating like that.

it was not very inviting

IRL LOLs, thanking u

harbl, you need to post pix