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We first encountered Desiderio Chocolates at the Chocolate Expo in May. A line snaked around the booth where row upon row of elegantly crafted chocolates were on display. Though they were offering samples of several flavors, the crowd favorite was clearly the salted caramel. So, later, when we were offered the chance to taste the full array of these beauties, we were all over it.

The chocolate is created by Vanessa Metalli Dionne, who runs a shop out of Longmont. If that sounds far away, never fear: she'll ship straight to you. And that's how they came to us, practically glowing up at us from the box. Vanessa's background in art inspires an array of different shapes, designs, and metallic shimmer in her chocolate work, making these a treat for the eye as well as the tongue. And if you're a health-conscious chocolate chomper, Desiderio might be just what you're looking for. Made without hydrogenated fats, high fructose corn syrup, or preservatives, they're meant to be savored in a timely fashion.

We employed a couple extra candy tasters for the task at hand and got to work finding our favorites in the batch.

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When the Candy Girls caught wind of a chocolate therapist in town, we knew this was something we were destined to investigate. Turns out Julie Pech is an author and lecturer living in Denver who has launched a career speaking to groups about the health benefits of chocolate. Additionally, once a month she pairs with local chocolatiers and/or wine makers and hosts a tasting designed to showcase particular pairings between the two. Chocolate? Wine? Sold!

The one we attended was an international affair, with chocolates and wines from countries spanning the globe. The first part of the class focused on fine-tuning our tongues with the international chocolates. We thought we were pretty chocolate savvy, but we admit this was the first time we were encouraged to explain what we were tasting with descriptors like woody, leather, tobacco, olive, pepper, and sour. But once you have that vocab in front of you, it's amazing how those exact flavors can come out. We found the Swiss Lindt had sour notes, the Spanish Valor was infused with a leathery taste, while the Plantation chocolate from Ecuador had a distinct buttery flavor. Our least favorite of the bunch, Green and Black from the UK, managed tobacco, leather, and sour notes. You'd think we were in Bertie Botts territory here. But once we knew what we were looking for, it was hard not to distinguish between the varieties.

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It's no secret around here that Liz has been obsessed with frozen treats lately. Specifically, with finding Denver's contribution to the growing Korean-style frozen yogurt movement, popularized in LA with the Pinkberry chain and then scores of copycat stores across the country. The first Pinkberries popped up in 2005, back when she was living in New York and happy enough with her Tasti-D. But upon moving to Denver, it become clear the soft-serve choices were going to be a bit more limited. In New York, you can't go two blocks without stumbling into a bodega offering a Tasti-D wannabe. In Denver, not so much (on the bodega or soft-serve front).

In fact, when the temperatures started to rise this summer, and she inquired whether Denver had such a Tasti-D or Pinkberry clone yet, the question was met with laughter. "Frozen yogurt!" they laughed. "That junk from the 80s?" Eyes rolled and her insistence that this was a national craze! that fro-yo was back! was met with scepticism.

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Both of the Candy Girls love the original Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and since we're pretty fond of caramel as well, we thought this might be a wonderful flavor combination.

First Reactions:
In the store, the wrapper didn't strike us as particularly unusual, but upon closer scrutiny, wow, it really is ugly. Something about the traditional Reese's colors of electric orange, brown and yellow combined with more subdued butterscotch hues -- meant to, we suppose, evoke a caramel splash -- does not make for appetizing candy packaging.

Liz: The cups look exactly like the original ones. Except this one is leaking a blob of caramel.
Aubrey: Only the wrapper is distinctly worse. It looks like somebody ate the 70s and vomited them back up all over the wrapper.

Taste:
The chocolate is very soft and when we broke a cup in half, there was a visible gooey caramel layer. Yes! Unfortunately, it turns out you can only really taste the caramel if you make a specific effort to lick it separate from the peanut butter layer. Boo!

Aubrey: They're good, but not really different.
Liz: I think regular cups use the chocolate as the sweet contrast to the salty peanut butter. The caramel here just gets lost in the chocolate.
Aubrey: I might like them more than regular Reese's Cups, but only if I make a point of eating the caramel layer. Otherwise it all kinda melds together.
Liz: Do you think they cut back on the peanut butter to add the caramel? Because that would upset me.

Conclusions:
Aubrey: Remember those old commercials in the 90s that said, "There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's." Only, in the case of these suckers I think the only right way would be to eat the bottom layer of chocolate with the thin caramel coating first. Because that's the only way you are ever going to taste the caramel.

Rating: 4 out of 5 (but only a 2 out of 5 for effort)

This week, the Candy Girls decided to try a few of the limited edition flavors released by the Mars candy company to celebrate the release of the first Indiana Jones film in almost 20 years. The Snickers Adventure Bar promises to "Satisfy your taste for adventure! Rich Chocolate. Crunchy nuts. And a cliffhanger kick of exotic spice and a hint of sweet coconut flavor." The Mint Crisp M & Ms packaging fails to make any lofty claims, so we'll just have to see how they taste for ourselves.

Snickers Adventure Bar

First Reactions:
With a name like "Adventure Bar," we are excited to learn more about the promised "exotic spices" and "new flavor kick."

Liz: Aside from a picture of Indy on the wrapper, the candy bar itself doesn't seem too exciting.
Aubrey: It just looks like any other milk chocolate covered candy bar. I'm not feeling the adventure yet.

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"Melts on your tongue, pops in your mouth"

First reactions:
At first glance, the Pop Rocks Milk Chocolate Bar appears just like a Crunch bar. You can see what look like crunchy bits of rice buried inside the milk chocolate, but the truth of those innocent looking morsels soon becomes apparent once you take a bite. This candy really does have "a kick," just as the wrapper advertises. At first you don't really notice the pop rocks having an effect, but suddenly your whole mouth is filled with popping and fizzing mania! The bar is scored into three neat cubes.

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This week, the Candy Girls went out on assignment to Dietrich's at 1734 East Evans Avenue in the University area. Having heard of the shop's rich, decadent treats, we had to do a sampling of all of the fresh, homemade chocolates that owner Erich Dietrich makes at his store. Dietrich has been in Denver for 32 years and making candy for over 40 years, so surely he must know a thing or two about what goes into a rich delicious truffle or chocolate-covered goodie. Here's our review of what we sampled:

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This week we have a special guest commentator, J "I love grandpa candy" Kellermeyer. That's not really his middle name, but it sure is what we like to call him. J is a connoisseur of all sorts of candy that you probably thought they stopped making in 1953. He's been known to eat Bit-O-Honey and Mary Janes, and not just because that sweet old lady up the street was offering. He actually goes out and buys the stuff.

So, naturally, who better to help us with the Peanut Chew. Especially since not only is J an expert in obscure candy, he also spent many years on the East Coast, which is where the Peanut Chew hails from. This can make the Original Peanut Chew tricky to hunt down in Denver, but since it just happens to be J's favorite candy he had a friend bring him a stash from Powell's Sweet Shoppe in Boulder.

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I love cereal, I love milkshakes. So when Carl's Jr. introduced their new Cap'n Crunch Milkshake, I was immediately putty in their hands. Or I should say I wanted to be putty. The trouble was twofold: 1) I don't much frequent Carl's Jr. and 2) I accidentally caught a glimpse of the nutritional information on one of those bad boys, and at 740 calories and 35 grams of fat I became paralyzed at the thought of downing the shake.

But then I got to thinking, how hard could it really be to make a Cap'n Crunch milkshake? I could even use lower fat ice cream or non-whole milk if I wanted. The ingredients were easily accessible! There'd be no way for me to calculate nutritional info! Guilt assuaged, I got me some original Cap'n Crunch and headed over to a friend's party, which just happened to be ice-cream-themed. It's like the planets aligned for this.

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Can a candy with a malted center ever really be milkshake-flavored? Wouldn't it automatically be malt-flavored? This obviously isn't a question the marketing people at Hershey's worried themselves over, and it certainly didn't stop us from picking up a giant pink pack of the candies when we spied them in a dollar bin at Walgreens. Doesn't all the best candy come out of the dollar bin? And by "best" we mean "weird and probably recalled."

First reactions:
The balls are very light pink, almost white. We expected a more PINK! pink. The scent is almost overpowering.

Liz: They smell like Barbie.
Aubrey: No, like the Strawberry Shortcake dolls!
Liz: Oh yeah, totally.

Taste:
The coating is waxy and softer than your average Whopper. Our tongues are immediately bombed with an intense fake-strawberry flavor that should be disgusting, but actually evokes some nostalgia.

Aubrey: This is the exact same flavor of a McDonald's strawberry milkshake.
Liz: They taste pink.
Aubrey: It's not bad, just exactly like every artificial strawberry flavored thing you've ever had.
Liz: Really pink.

Conclusions:
Would we finish the box? No.
Would we purchase this candy again? No.
Would we make Steve the receptionist eat one without disclosing what it was, only to find out he loathes Whoppers? Yes.
Rating: 2 out of 5

- Liz and Aubrey

If you've got a sweet tooth, you've come to the right place. Welcome to Candy Girls, where we, your faithful candy enthusiasts, Aubrey and Liz, will review a new sweet treat every Friday. We'll be on the lookout for oddball delectables, out-of-the-ordinary confections, and all those bizarre sweets you always see but hesitate to buy. In addition to checking out mainstream goods, we'll also be scouring Denver to test what local candy-makers and chocolatiers have to offer the Mile High City and surrounding areas.

We're hoping all this gorging on behalf of our candy-loving readers won't have to lead to "Stomach Crunches Wednesday" or "Jog Around the Office Monday" blog posts. Because who wants to read those?

We will be rating thusly:

1. Inedible
2. Not awful, but not worth your $1
3. Mediocre--a lazy attempt at deliciousness
4. Yummy
5. Oh my god, do these come in bulk?

Now that you're primed and ready to go, let's have at our first candy!