A Big Bowl of Polish Candy

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
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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.

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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!

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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

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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
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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.

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http://i.imgur.com/1y92t9B.jpg
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These Roshen Mont Blanc chocolates appear to have different fillings based by color but I only ate the one. As you can see, the design is a mountain in miniature, tipped by a white chocolate snowbank atop a milk chocolate base, studded with ground nuts and filled with a somewhat indeterminately flavored chocolate cream center. I gather this is the brand's upscale option; it's one of the only chocolates I've had from this bunch that isn't overpoweringly sweet or fatty on the tongue. It's a lot closer to mid-upper end American chocolate.
7/10, definitely the choice if you're bringing a gift home to Grandma.

http://i.imgur.com/rccfgc3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iF1dxDb.jpg
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Biting into this ivory button reveals a quarter-inch thick waxy shell surrounding a grainy lump of citrusy sugar paste. It tastes a bit better than it sounds but not by much. This may be past its sell by date.
3/10, probably worth avoiding.

Uh, dude, not sure if you noticed this, but that writing does not appear to be Polish

this has been gone over multiple times including the OP

http://i.imgur.com/2OqarkM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/66U1tKc.jpg
Chocolate coating over a generous dollop of macaroon-style shredded coconut with a core of the dreaded "bird's milk" marshmallow. Surprisingly that dubious treat in the center didn't do much to dissuade my enjoyment and only served to amplify the sugary flavor. Coconut covers a host of sins.
6/10; if you think Mounds aren't sweet enough, this is your candy

Now I have A Big Bowl of Polish Candy. That's probably not right. Much of it is not Polish, it hails from Moldova or Spain or other places whose name doesn't appear on the label. But for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to consider it A Big Bowl of Polish Candy.

harbl, you need to post pix