Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Once upon a time, long, long ago, a dear friend bought me a box of dark chocolate sea-salt caramels for my birthday. He'd found them at a local farmer's market, made by a woman who was cooking batches in the early morning kitchen of a late night bar and grill. They were exquisite. I spoke to her on the phone and ordered something like 40 of the things and got all my friends addicted. I ordered and shared. Ordered and hoarded. Ordered and reveled in their perfection. It was a glorious season of salty, chocolate-y goodness. Then, one day, tragedy struck. The phone was disconnected, the website unanswered. My phone rang off the hook from my legion of chocolate junkies wanting to know "When?" "Where?" "Whyyyyyyyy." The mystery was never solved. I have theories, of the conspiracy sort. I'll keep them to myself for now but suffice to say that I've been left unsatisfied by most available sea-salt caramels since. Fran's are delicious, but in that fussy, precious way that Tiffany gifts are. One or two others were close. So very close. I even tried making my own but if the caramels turned out perfect, the chocolate didn't temper correctly. If I perfected the chocolate, I mis-timed the caramels into either gooiness or hard candy. These aren't the same, but they have a similar feel. A certain roughness to the chocolate, a distinctly bold saltiness. Not for the faint of heart. The caramel is different. Darker, smokier than the pale gold carmelized caramel of my holy grail, but I like this version. It gives them their own character. If they'd been an exact match, it would have been like kissing the cute boy just because he looked like the boy who broke my heart. Too much the same without being the same. I've already assembled the boxes for the junkies. There shall be rejoicing.