The pros: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar Caramels have lots of fun textural elements. It's not a scary tasting as it sounds. If you totally embrace the sweet/salty combination you'll probably like these. I could not detect any raw vinegar taste.
The cons: If you don't care for the sweet/salty dessert option, then please skip this. Expensive considering you are only getting 7 candies in the box.
The verdict: For $3.49 you get 7 caramels that you shouldn't be afraid to try. I looked at the box of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar Caramels and thought it was an odd flavor combination. Then again, I think back to a cooking class I took and realized my instructor was right. We were making pesto and he had everyone try the pesto. It was flat. We added salt. It was still flat. What do you do to brighten up flavors when they seem relatively flat? Add an acid. That's exactly what Trader Joe's is doing here. You get a nice crisp chocolate square cup. In which it gets a nice chocolate cap so you don't see the caramel. The dark chocolate is on the sweet side so just be aware of that if you enjoy the bitterness that dark chocolate can have. That cap has a good amount of sea salt. It adds both salt and texture. I initially thought to myself these were going to be very salty, but they weren't. I like the textural element here. The caramel is where the malt vinegar is placed. If you are wondering, no, it didn't taste like vinegar at all. It was a caramel that has a small amount of acid to brighten it up. If the box didn't tell me there is malt vinegar in it, I probably wouldn't have known. The amount of caramel in these is minimal too, so don't expect to take a bite and have a big string of caramel hanging. It was a tasty treat, but not for $3.49 for just 7 caramels. I loved the textures on this one. The caramel was small and there just wasn't enough of these to justify the price. So while I enjoyed them, I probably won't buy them again.
The box:
The nutritional information:
The ingredients:
Out of the package you get 7 chocolates in the package:
One close up:
Would I buy this again? If Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar Caramels were a $1.99 per box, yes. At $3.49 they are a bit pricey for what you are getting. They are tasty and a bit of a novelty with great textural elements. The chocolate was good, but the caramel was minimal. So for me this is a no.
Want to see more items I've reviewed from Trader Joe's? Click on Thoughts & Reviews of Trader Joe’s for a searchable list.
Did you try it? Let me know what you think in the comments section!
I always wants to try these, but they give me sticker shock 😂
I actually haven't seen these in a while. I think that was something on the "new items" than never quite worked their way over to the chocolate aisle, but I'll have to check again.