Ringlets, satin dresses, that guy in the white tux: your average prom fashion. But what about a dress crafted from 101 candy wrappers? Yeah, Jessica McClintock doesn't sell that. Craftster member Theperilouspopsicle skipped the average poofy or sequinsy dress to instead spend 15 hours on this adorable halter number with Skittle wrapper fringe and matching shoes. We can only hope the deejay played The Strangeloves' hit "I Want Candy." [via CandyAddict]
Says the New York Times: "Mars, the makers of M&M’s, announced a deal Monday morning to acquire the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the chewing gum concern, for about $23 billion. The transaction would create a confectionery behemoth and could pressure rivals into a cascade of other mergers."
Better be careful the next time you dip your hand in a bowl full of jelly beans, 'cause what you thought was coconut-flavored could end up being tasting like... baby wipes. Just look for Jelly Belly's Bean Boozled, which contains two versions of ten colors. You have classic flavors like buttered popcorn, licorice, peach—and then you have their evil twins. Some are just nasty surprises, like black pepper in lieu of plum, toothpaste instead of berry blue—but others are just weird: what do pencil shavings even taste like? Then there's the downright cruel, with vomit replacing peach, ear wax for café latte, and boogers for juicy pear.
If anything, it might make you swear off certain flavors forever by way of these taste associations. [Slog, via The Amateur Gourmet]
I wish these manly jelly beans were real; I've always wanted to know what candy-coated fear tastes like. [via Candy Addict]
M&Ms and Mars candy: There's usually a 10-digit code of numbers and letters, but you only need to worry about the first three. The first number is the last number in the year ... and the next two numbers stand for the week of the year (... 804 would be the fourth week of 2008: February 2008).
Hershey's: There's a 2-character code for the month and year. The year is like the other code, with the number being the last number in the year, the second character is a letter that represents the month. A = January, B = February, and so on. So a code like 9A would mean ... January 2009.
And be sure to visit your dentist in 8J.
Easter's come and gone, and now it's time to take advantage of those Easter candy sales. Candy Addict has an extensive round-up of jelly beans, flavor by flavor. You won't find any Jelly Belly ones, but looks like the offerings from Starburst, Jolly Rancher, Lifesaver, and Nerds are just as satisfying.
Watching this short gumdrops-centric stop motion film by filmmaker/musician Skizz Cyzyk makes me want to eat a big bucket of candy. (And be sure your sound is on; the music is also great.)
Watch the choreographed candy, after the jump.
Plague-themed Peeps, candy molds, and chocolates: they're perfect for Passover!
The ten Passover Plagues in Exodus didn't involve much sugar or butter. If only Moses delivered G-d's demands in candy form, then those gnats and ticks could have been chocolate, not infectious insects! With Passover only three weeks away, here's a few candy homages to the anniversary of Egyptian calamities. Mmm, who wants a sugar high from boils and murrain?
Are you still left with too much leftover Easter candy? Let Jesse Oleson help you breathe new life into your Peeps, jelly beans, and chocolate eggs with her suggestions for utilizing Easter candy leftovers. How about a leftover Easter trifle, or s'mores made out of Peeps? You can also turn a boring bowl of cereal into one dotted with Easter candies. Check out all the sugar-laden suggestions at Cakespy.
Previously
Peep Inside a Chocolate Egg: The Must-Have Easter Candy
Make Your Own Cadbury Creme Egg Ice Cream
Photo of the Day: Irish Soda Bread for St. Patrick's Day
Move Over, Rice Krispies: Cereal Treats Smackdown
Need a last-minute greeting card for Easter? Cybele made some great Peeps-inspired Easter Island postcards for your convenience. And amusement. If only it were real...
Before they took the form of tiny, oval-shaped blobs, jelly beans started off as cylindrical candy-coated bits of Turkish Delights. Learn more about "the secret life of jelly beans" from the Los Angeles Times.
File this under, "Why Didn't I Think of That?": Maple Bacon Lollipops. And I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill Maple Bacon Lollipops, but ones made with sustainable, organic, cured bacon and organic Vermont maple syrup. You can buy four for $10 from lolliphile, but wouldn't you rather be more cost-effective and buy 36 for $52? Yes. [via Neatorama]
Previously:
David Lebovitz's Candied Bacon Ice Cream
How To Make Pig Candy
Snapshots from Asia: Bak Kwa, Chinese Pig Candy
I add bacon to ____
Candyblog awards the Easter candy, Marshmallow Peeps inside a Milk Chocolate Egg, a 5 out of 10, or "Pleasant" on a scale of "Inedible" to "Superb." Guess what it's made of? Just guess!
So yes, this is where Peeps come from—within the thick concave walls of "passable" milk chocolate. Some of Candyblog's commenters pointed out that with some graham crackers and a source of heat, this candy could double as filling for s'mores. Granted, the Peep would die in the process, but it all ends up in the same place anyway.
Previously: DIY Peeps, WaPo Peeps Diorama Contest, Pimp Your Peeps, Ten Plagues of Peeps.
Artisanal candy shop Papabubble in New York City's Little Italy makes fresh batches of creatively flavored and styled candies each day. This video from Cool Hunting brings you behind-the-scenes of the candy-making process with co-owner Fiona Ryan and candy maker Jelly, from pouring out the boiled sugar, stretching the candy base, rolling out the candy, and cutting it into pieces.
Watch the transformation from molten sugar to bite-sized treat after the jump.
Photographs taken by Rachel Ben
How well do you know your candy bar innards? Test your knowledge by taking the Candy Bar Identification Quiz. Whether this is a quiz you want to score high on is debatable.
Candy bar photographer Rachel Been has set up the blog Cross Sectioning to document "the innards of things." [via Slashfood]
I love Cybele's semi-scathing in-depth review of Palmer's hollow chocolate flavored bunny. Yes, chocolate flavored—cocoa is the fourth ingredient. Cybele explains just how much of an effective role it plays in the nuances of flavor possessed by this bunny-shaped mass:
Sometimes I wonder if Palmer is doing the cocoa industry a service by buying beans that would otherwise be turned into compost or rot in the co-op storehouses. I don’t think I’d mind their products if they were sold as “biodegradable decorations” ... but sadly the appearance of a nutrition label seems to indicate they really do think people want to eat it.
"Biodegradable decorations" is my new favorite euphemism for "crappy chocolate."
I love this commercial for Pupurun, a candy from Japan-based Meiji, because instead of highlighting the joy the eater gets from the candy, it shows the candy being ecstatically happy to be eaten. Look how freakin' jubilant this candy is to be dissolved by your saliva! It's practically having an orgasm.
Watch the cuteness after the jump.
According to Business Week, bigwig Western chocolate companies like Nestle and Hershey are trying to please Asian tastes, given a booming chocolate industry there. Say hello to azuki-bean Kit Kats in Japan, green tea Hershey's Kisses in China, and ginseng-enriched confections in South Korea. Here we thought Abba-Zaba was crazy! Check out the article's matching slideshow.
Give your Valentine a box of conversation hearts and watch as their face melts with complete disappointment. But give them a giant, heart-shaped blob of conversation hearts fused together by baking and, oh, those sparks will fly!
Previously: anatomically correct heart sculpture made of conversation hearts.
Candy can be a beautiful thing, but throw Valentine's Day into the equation and suddenly every candy company unloads the kitschiest, tackiest, most undelicious confection onto the shelves. Sometimes it's the thought that counts, but other times, it's just a waste of perfectly good sugar—and, potentially, a relationship killer. We went on a hunt to find the best of the worst so you could see how bad it really is out there.
Add this to the nauseating marshmallow lollipop genre, except ... wait. Serious Eats intern Emily Koh—who probably loves Disneyland and Thunder Mountain and Minnie deep down—wanted no part in the taste-test. And who can blame her? The confection had all the, ahem, subtle aroma of undiluted lemon-scented floor cleaner. Disney should really get a grip on brand image.
Warning: The following link is not safe for work (NSFW). For some of you, it may not even be safe for home. ;) But, just in time for Valentine's Day, here's a set of lollipops in the shape of NSFW. And before you click, did I tell you—NSFW?
Bittersweets are like your standard conversation hearts except they bear awkward, painful, and mean messages. Otherwise, it's the same great taste! [via notcot]
Let Cybele at Candyblog help you build up your arsenal of mostly chocolate and heart-shaped Valentine's Day sweets with her list of 17 Valentine's Day candies.
As much as I love seeing giant balls of chocolate getting bathed in layers of more chocolate, it's the 80's soundtrack of this video that propels it into a higher level of awesomeness.
Turn your volume up and see what I mean after the jump.
What if pills were wrapped in clear cellophane like candy instead of packaged in a boring plastic bottle? Broadhong presents a possibility with Candy Pills. Besides wrapping pills like candy, the designer also tries packaging candy like pills. [via notcot.org]
Life Savers packaging gets a bit of a makeover. A rebranded logo and bold packaging aims for a simpler and cleaner approach, with an oversized image of a single piece of the iconic candy on the new bags. (Don't worry: The rings are still the same size you know and love.) Designers also created a representation of the O-shaped sweets through the clever use of negative space between the "e" of Life and the "S" of Savers.
This Valentine's Day share Mii-shaped chocolate figurines with the one you love. They come packaged in a Wii-shaped box bearing the heartfelt declaration, "Wii belong together, you and Mii." Available for $15 at Paul Pape Designs. [via Yumsugar]
Bacon + dark brown sugar + ground chiles = pig candy! Curt McAdams suggests serving this before Christmas dinner with "sliced pears and brie, or figs and cheddar, or all of the above," for a unique appetizer. Or you could just eat it own its own. [via tastespotting]
Artist Nathan Sayawa specializes in building Lego sculptures, but judging from his heart sculpture made of conversation hearts he can make anything out of small, colorful, even-sized pieces. His inspiration for this sculpture came from his dislike of Valentine's Day: "It can make your heart feel vulnerable. Almost edible." [via boing boing]
The New York Times looks into the candy lobby's role in extending daylight saving time by a month. The lobby believed that the extra hour of trick-or-treating in daylight would increase candy sales and decrease child deaths.
Instead of giving out Snickers bars and Hershey Kisses, why not pop edible candy scabs or poop-shaped chocolate into your trick-or-treaters' bags? Check out Wired's list of the creepiest, craziest Halloween candies for more ideas. Kids will eat anything!
Candyfreak
Candy corn, chocolate ice cubes, candy peanuts, and generic hard candies are patently unacceptable. To me they show a lack of respect for trick-or-treaters everywhere. Photograph from iStockphoto.com
For someone like me, who has a serious sweet tooth and likes to eat a lot, Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. I always loved trick-or-treating, and to me Halloween was always about the candy.
It certainly wasn't about the costumes. I was always the kid dressed up like, well, me. My mother was too busy to think about what costume I wanted or needed to wear on Halloween, so I'd go to Halloween parties dressed as Ed Levine. There was nothing fun, festive, or scary about that particular state of affairs.
For me the candy was king, and not just any candy, either. There were candies I desperately wanted in copious amounts, candies that were sort of OK—"sweet tooth–neutral" I used to call them—and then there were the candies I was desperate to avoid, that I regarded like the plague. I developed a candy hierarchy, along with an elaborate trading scheme in which I would try to pawn off the candies I couldn't stand to unsuspecting friends and neighbors in exchange for a candy bar. Those trades were built around an exchange of quantity for quality.
So consider my baker's (or should I say confectioner's) dozen halloween candy hierarchy.
Since Sera's Ghost Dots didn't come with faces, she felt the need to draw them on herself. X-Entertainment did the same thing after being similarly disappointed by the lack of facial features. if anyone at the Tootsie Roll company wants to make Ghost Dots better, try these modifications:
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
For years, my mom would not allow my brother and me to eat what she called "Western candy." No SweeTarts, Life Savers, Milk Duds, Tootsie Rolls—nothing that had a colorful wrapper and could be bought at a regular supermarket. She had somehow been persuaded by some heartless dentist that eating the same kind of candy everyone else in school was eating (you hear that, Mom?) would give us a mouthful of rotten teeth. Instead, whenever we whined about it heartily enough, she would hand us a stick of candied winter melon (after it had been boiled to death and leeched of all its sugary goodness in barley water) or a handful of honeyed jujube dates and dried longans.
However, if either of us scored full marks on a test, she would bring out the tub of maltose—the same syrup she would use to marinate her char siu (roast pork)—and let us poke a single chopstick in and attempt to twirl as big a glob of the sticky, golden stuff as could be supported on it. The resulting "lollipop" would keep us happy and sticky-fingered for a good 20 minutes—it being a lot more "lick-resilient" than honey.
Sweet World Pez by French design group ATYPYK is a gallery of modified Pez dispensers. The results are creative and slightly (or more than slightly) twisted. [via Boing Boing]
There's still time to book passage to London for this month's U.K. Chocolate Week. Now in its fifth year, the event—which runs from October 15 to October 21—features chocolate-and-whiskey pairings led by chocolatier Paul A. Young, chocolate tours led by the pommy purists from SeventyPercent.com, and lectures given by Order of the British Empire (and food writer) Sara Jayne Stanes. The week is sponsored by Divine Chocolate, the U.K.-based fair-trade operation that sources its cacao from the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana.
All-business-class airline Silverjet sells tickets between New York and London for about a thousand bucks each way on short notice. British Airways and Virgin might be worth a shot, too.
In the future, sidewalks won't be covered with black spots of ancient gum, nor will students hands unintentionally brush against hardened gum wads hidden underneath their seats. Chemists at the University of Bristol have invented a less sticky chewing gum called Clean Gum that can be simply removed with water. Professor Terence Cosgrove explains that by adding a special polymer, the typically hydrophobic gum becomes hydrophilic, allowing water to disintegrate the gum over time or to form a film around the gum, releasing it from whatever surface it would normally stick to. Taste tests have already proven Clean Gum, which is expected to be released commercially in 2008, to taste as good or better than conventional gum. It won't be long before Singaporeans are allowed to chew gum again. [via Candy Addict]
Photograph from cybele-la on Flickr
New York magazine and a few gum-loving volunteers sacrificed the comfort of their jaws by taste tasting 132 kinds of gum in order to bring you the best of the three major gum categories—bubblegum, fruit, and mint. Before you buy your next pack, check out the results—complete with tasting notes from WD-50's Wylie Dufresne and Alex Stupak.
I wonder if Fritz Knipschildt, "Maitré Chocolatier" at Knipschildt Chocolatier, is a nice guy. I'll be lucky if he is—because I stood him up recently.
The thing is that I didn't believe that Fritz—the man behind the chocolate bon bons named for mystery women like Helena, Kelly, Jennifer, and Donna—the provocateur behind a trio of chocolate bars molded in the image of lingerie vixen Eve Kitten—the hopeless romantic behind the $250, 1.9-ounce morsel of Perigord truffle bathed in Valrhona chocolate—was real. Like Häagen-Dazs, the name "Fritz Knipschildt" struck me as the kind of fabrication intended to sound appetizing and vaguely Scandinavian.
Fritz Knipschildt is very really indeed. He relocated to this continent from his native Denmark a decade ago, and he's won nearly every high-brow chocolate honor awarded in this country. I guess I'll have to call him and apologize. Anyone else who wants to have an intimate encounter with Fritz can visit him at his Chocopologie cafe in Norwalk, Connecticut, or fill out the 14-page application to franchise the business.
About the author: Emily Stone, proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh. She's been a movie reviewer, a reproductive health researcher, and an independent bookstore owner. Her writing has appeared in the magazines Budget Travel, Travel + Leisure, and Time Out New York, as well as on the websites World Hum and Epicurious.
This month, Theo Chocolate founder Joseph Whinney shares the limelight with Paul Newman's daughter Nell Newman of Newman's Own Organics, supermarket demagogue John Mackey of Whole Foods Market, and a dozen others on a list of 15 Green Business Founders.
That particular hue of green was bestowed upon the Seattle-based organic and fair-trade chocolate maker by Seattle-based eco-news outlet Grist, which links the Theo profile with enough commentary on sustainability in the chocolate industry that you could spend all day reading up on the subject (and I just might).
One of the fascinating things about the candy industry is that it's rather like fashion. The are the couture confectioners and the mass marketers. The coutures start the trends, create the flavor combinations, and drive the interest in the market by being daring, and, of course, the huge factories take what's up-and-coming and turn out the lowest-common-denominator versions.
The difference, however, is that although people may be interested in trying new things, for the most part they eat the same thing they've eaten since childhood, the same things their grandparents may have eaten. If you look at the top ten candy bars, every one of them has been around for 40 years or more.
I sat in on a session at the All Candy Expo on capitalizing on the hottest premium chocolate trends. Joan Steur was the moderator and the panelists were Michael Antonorsi of Chuao Chocolatier, Jean Thompson of Seattle Chocolates and Jaques Dahan of Michel Cluizel. Each were asked to list their three top three key trends.
Editor's note: This is the first in a short series of dispatches from Cybele May of Candy Blog. She'll be filing notes and observations from her time at the All Candy Expo in Chicago.
If there is such a thing as too much candy, I think I may have seen it this week at the All Candy Expo in Chicago. The show is not open to the public but as a member of the media I've been able to attend the past two shows. This year's was the biggest yet as they moved into an even bigger space at the new McCormick Place West (the area of 14 football fields) which featured 480 exhibitors.
New products are usually the most interesting and there were fantastic previews of items not yet on store shelves. But it's a crowded market already so it's unlikely that you may even see more than a handful of these 2,000 new introductions. A small fraction of the candies introduced stand the test of time. As a comparison, if you look at the list of top 10 candy bars, all are at least 25 years old. With that in mind, perhaps it's the spin-off that has the brand recognition is most likely to succeed.
I sampled a lot of candies and here are a few noteworthy ones:
Sour Death Balls is a short film that shows people's reactions to those megasour jawbreaker candies. It looks like this video has been around for a while, but the first I've seen of it was on Derrick Schneider's Obsession with Food blog just yesterday. I thought some of you who missed it might like it as well.
Whichever you fancy, this Elite-brand Israeli candy bar morphs the wonderful worlds of chocolate and Pop Rocks. Just your average milk chocolate squares at first, but, wait for it—wait for it—an atomic fireworks show in your mouth! The delicious drumfire lingers for a while, too. Even the candy bar's wrapper depicts a half-smirking cow surrounded by explosive ka-boom designs. (He knows what's up).
Though it's not technically Pop Rocks, but chocolate with Pop Rock tendencies, would the exploding tummy urban legend apply here? For all we know, Mikey from the Life cereal commercials actually "died" in Israel after swilling a cola with one these. Let's just assume the cocoa has magical properties, mitigating any stomach swelling. And if not, sorry Mikey, but it's worth the risk. Bring on the pop rock-o-late.
If you've got any friends in Israel (luckily I did), start sucking up to them. Or, know a store with imported Israeli foods? Get over there. This stuff is mind-blowing. Wait, mouth-blowing.
What is so alluring about candy on a stick? Or any food on a stick? I don't care much about simple hard candies, but give it its own built-in handle and it's automatically cuter and more desirable. The stick is also quite handy for when you want to dangle lollipops off of a clothesline.
I'm a sucker for chocolate peanut candies in just about any form. I have a keen appreciation for Goobers, for example. Some people may find them boring, pedestrian even. I find them to be a crunchy, chocolaty pleasure, perfect for movie munching.
Ever since I discovered Newman's Own Organic Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, I have become an even stauncher advocate for the organics movement. Now I have a new chocolate peanut candy to love. An impossibly delicious and satisfying combination of creamy peanut butter blended with white chocolate set on a bed of fresh pecans and enrobed in dark (or milk) chocolate, Cream-Nut Peanut Butter Clusters achieve a perfect balance of creaminess, saltiness, sweetness, and crunch, with the dark chocolate supplying the coup de grâce in every bite.
Robert Molinarius' photo of gummi bears backlit with eerie blue lighting walking through a black void demands a backstory, or at least some sort of caption. What are the bears doing? Is the little bear being taken away to a high-security candy prison? His simple malformed-crevices-for-eyes give off an air of sadness. Why are you sad, little bear? Why not run away from those two gummi bear goons? Just run, run as far as your little nubbin feet can take you, to a world of warm colors and light and...
...This photo is doing funny things to my brain.
Craig Kanarick shows that candies are at their most beautiful when 1) they're skillfully composed into neat, tight-fitting collages and 2) you're so close to them that you can see every little bump and groove on their surfaces. I would love to display his vibrant, nearly diabetes-inducing creative candy photographs on my walls, but as prices range between $850 and $2500 it would be more economical to buy buckets of candy and photograph them myself.
...Or I could forget the whole "creative photography" bit and just gorge on the candy.
Apparently nobody told the Swedish candy company Cloetta that Plopp just ain’t the most appetizing of onomatopoeias. Or else the company just didn’t care. The bite-sized milk chocolate squares are filled with a gooey caramel and become the perfect nibble. Or series of nibbles...
The one I had recently was a gift from a globetrotting friend—how could I resist?
Behold, the combination of two things many parents highly disapprove of: candy and The Simpsons. Candy Addict lists the Top 10 Simpsons Candy Moments to celebrate the release of the upcoming Simpsons movie. While I can't recall every one of these moments, I agree that nothing can beat Homer's gleeful frolic through the Land of Chocolate:
The sight of a orphaned Skittle whose chewy innards have burst out of its candy shell due to being accidentally stomped on is somewhat sad (it surely isn't the way that I'd want to die), but myrique beaumier's photo of multiple squished Skittles shows that the semi-translucent cracked candy pattern can also be beautiful. Check out more Skittles-centric photography in the Skittles Flickr pool.
I love the design of Happy Pills, a hallway-sized candy shop in Barcelona that packages standard gummies in plastic medication bottles labeled with pink crosses and cranky phrases such as, "Against Mondays." It's playful packaging and branding for the post-pubescent crowd who want to indulge in simple sweets. No prescription is required for Happy Pills, so you may as well stock up. [via notcot.org]
If you're tired of building gingerbread houses as as excuse to play with candies and cookies, there's another choice out there: CIRCUIT BOARDS! Follow Evil Mad Scientist's tutorial and you too could transform boring graham crackers, marshmallows, gummies and chocolate bars into non-functioning, sugar-filled circuit boards. [via craftzine]
I probably haven't had a lollipop since I was in middle school, yet after looking at dee_gee's photo of a spherical pink lolly against a bright blue sky, I suddenly want to relive those golden childhood memories.
...Actually, the memories aren't that great, but lollipops help brighten any day.
I've never wanted to make my own gummy candy on a plastic stick until I set my eyes on the eye-searingly vibrant, colorful, happy packaging of Naru-Naru Mi Ni Naru. In Anjali's review of the candy—which she christens the Magical Gummy Wand—she directs us through the process of combining a green plastic stick, various powders and water to make a green plastic stick with baby gummy nodules sticking out of it. And what a magical process it is:
The instructions clearly show Powder 1 being added to the water, but since I had already dumped the powder into the tray so I could take a picture, I added the water to the powder, which caused a silty layer of Powder 1 to remain stubbornly undissolved at the bottom, no matter how assiduously I stirred with the Magical Gummy Wand. For some reason, I thought tilting the tray a bit might help, but all it did was dump some of the water-powder mixture into Powder 2, creating a disturbing bright pink crater which immediately began to coagulate into a gelled mess. I covered it with more Powder 2 and tried to pretend like it didn't exist.
Anjali eventually gets the gummy pods to successfully propagate on her plastic wand, but it sounds like the candy takes some practice to master.
You can read fun Japanese candy reviews every Friday on Anjali's blog, Giant Jeans Parlor.
I wish I could feel as relaxed as Kealoha's adorable green gummy bear, hanging back in a miniature lounger with a miniature glass of some minuscule amount of refreshing gummy bear-approved beverage. It's a good thing he's not sitting outside on my porch right now or else he'd be sweating a bright green mixture of sugar and artificial flavoring.
Brian at Candy Addict just brought to my attention the existence of Fresh from the Factory Twizzlers. Fresh? Twizzlers? You mean the chewy, semi-hard and nearly flavorless candy I used to begrudgingly eat as a child because it was a common item given during Halloween and in my elementary school classrooms, something that I could never comprehend when there were so many better candies out there?
Brian found out that fresh Twizzlers, which are shipped within 96 hours of being made, are much softer and more flavorful than their non-fresh counterparts. Unfortunately, the latest batch of FFTF Twizzlers is sold out. I guess I wouldn't want to be stuck with 5 pounds of it anyway. If only I could try just one piece to erase the sub-par Twizzler memories of my youth...
Handsome Donkey gives us the 5 Worst Candies of all time in this handy video that illustrates typical human reactions to eating such candies:
Who are the sugary perpetrators? Paper Dots , Wax Bottles, Chewing Tobacco (certainly a bad candy since it's not even candy), Circus Peanuts and Necco wafers (tie), and the number one criminal to all candy kind, Giant Jawbreakers.
While I don't necessarily agree that these are the worst candies of all time, I do think that they all suck. Out of everything on the list I've only had the displeasure of eating wax bottles and jawbreakers, probably because they came with goody bags from childhood parties and kids will eat anything artificially colored and borderline toxic as long as it's sweet (me being one of these kids). I distinctly remember chewing on a wax bottle, feeling perplexed because it was missing a property of food that I tend to hold in high regard—that is, digestibility—and then spitting it out, thinking that it would only be worth biting through the inconvenient wax receptacle if the liquid inside were some kind of serum that gave you superpowers or increased brain functionality, which it did not. If anything, it may have lowered my brain activity.
There's a lot of questionable candy out there. Bad Candy knows the horrors of these confections all too well.
More TV-related food news for you: Fans of the CW network show Veronica Mars have been sending Mars candy bars to Dawn Ostroff, CW's president of entertainment, as a form of protest that the show has been canceled.
It's similar to the Nuts for Jericho fan campaign that had devotees of that show sending massive amounts of nuts to CBS.
For Easter, the Washington Post decided to have some fun and so they held a Marshmallow Peeps Diorama Contest. They expected about a dozen or so entries and got over 350 from across the US and beyond!
The grand prize winner was freelance graphic artist and photographer Charles Johnston, who spent two weeks working on his Peeps Are A Girl's Best Friend (above); the WaPo staff was "rendered speechless by the diorama's meticulous craftsmanship -- from Marilyn Monroe's sculpted hairdo (made of clay), to her curve-hugging pink papier-mache dress (her rump is made of a whole Peep), to the fine details of the tuxedoed Peepmen, each made of 61 pieces (their toes are coat hangers bent into L shapes, taped onto a dowel and coated 15 times with liquid spackling compound)."
If you'd like to see more Peeps or are just looking for a totally fun way to kill your productivity, the Peep Show is a gallery of 22 of the staff's favorite entries from the contest. They're all pretty fantastic.
This morning I started my day off right with a milk chocolate Easter egg from Jacques Torres. Do I normally eat breakfast? Nope. Do I celebrate Easter? Double nope. Am I using Easter as an excuse to eat oversized chocolate sculptures of unhatched chickens? Oh yeah.
Rattling from within the white chocolate-streaked egg told me there was a surprise inside. Carefully prying the egg open with a knife revealed five baby eggs made of milk, white and dark chocolate. That's one fertile egg. Full of...delicious babies. The chocolate wasn't the stuff of the heavens, but the balance of sweetness and milkiness made the smooth, mild chocolate dangerously easy to eat without feeling the unpleasant effects of a chocolate coma or a sugar-clogged throat. Go get your own egg at Jacques Torres before Easter hits!
I don't bat an eye at fancy, pricey chocolates any more, but two dollar candies? YuzuMura.com charges $17.50 for a box containing a mere nine pieces of Dragon Beard Candy, which is "made using a 2000-year old technique first introduced to the imperial court in ancient China. A skilled candy-maker repeatedly stretches and doubles a small mass of sugar and maltose until over 8000 fine strands are formed. Finally, the strands are trimmed and wrapped around finely chopped, lightly roasted coconut, peanuts and sesame seeds."
candyaddict.com tried them in 2005 and said they're "very good, a unique taste and texture and definitely one of the most interesting candies I have ever had." If you live near a fair-sized Chinatown, you might be able to get some there too, maybe even fresh!
"For me and many others, the arrival of spring was heralded not by the vernal equinox nor by the springing forward of clocks but by the appearance of Cadbury Creme Eggs in grocery and drug stores. (With global warming messing everything up these days, such material signs might soon be the only evidence of seasonal change remaining.)" Not only did Creme Egg enthusiast Doug Gordon stock up on his favorite Easter candy this year, but he also made himself some Cadbury Creme Egg ice cream, and for that act commited in the pursuit of Serious Eating we salute him.
(This Easter, Brits are getting an official Cadbury Creme Egg ice cream in limited edition for the first time; they already get Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurries every year, as do Canadians.)
"Japan is known for cars, Japan is known for electronics. Japan is known for cute. Japan is also home to some of the best KitKats in the world (okay, and some of the worst, but this is the price of innovation and an example of the bell curve). What else can I say except that the KitKat Bitter is what a KitKat should be all day, every day." Candy Blog talks the KitKat Bitter up so much I find myself wanting to eat one despite the fact that I usually don't care for either KitKats or dark chocolate. Ah, the power of food bloggers.
Bacon Flavored Mints: "Each one of these mints tastes like a delicious slice of crispy bacon with just a hint of mint flavor to give it that extra punch! It may sound weird but once you taste it, you'll see that mint and bacon is a match made in China." $4.95 for two tins, 100 mints in each.
[via Neatorama]
Candyblog reminds us that Easter candies are now on store shelves by reviewing one of Cadbury's latest offerings, the Royal Dark Mini Eggs: "The little chalky looking eggs are a smidge darker on the outside, more vibrant than the Cadbury Mini Eggs and don’t have any speckles. Even though they’re dark chocolate (well, there’s a little milkfat in there) they smell particularly milky to me, or at least freakishly sweet but with a smoky chocolate undertone."
Candy Addict on Valentine's-Themed Peeps: "This year, they have Vanilla and Strawberry Creme flavored Hearts, regular marshmallow Pink Hearts, and a Decorating Kit, where you can personalize 4 Peep Hearts with cake icing. But what really impressed me this year is their offer of recipes and craft projects with Peeps as major ingredients. Check out the Peeps I Love You Bouquet, Sweetheart Lollipops, and Strawberry Cupcakes."
"Sometimes when you don't want the artisanal chocolate and you don't want any cheese that's 30 years old that's been made by monks in Latvia, you need things like sour Sunny Bears."
MORE EDIBLES
Edibles: Scarfin' the Scharffen Berger [Thursday, January 25, 2007]
Edibles: Getting Cheesy [Wednesday, January 24, 2007]
Edibles: Stockholm Slices [Tuesday, January 23, 2007]
Edibles: Palapa Azul Mexican Ice Cream [Monday, January 22, 2007]
All Edibles
