Summer Candy Giveaway Winner!

Due to extreme heat conditions, I forgot to pick a winner yesterday for the Summer Candy Giveaway. But never fear! The lucky person who gets $15 worth of sweet deliciousness from Blair Candy is ... addictivecreative! Congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered. More sweetness on the way!

Ye Olde Candy Giveaway!

Happy Fourth of July! On this day back in 1776, no doubt our Founding Fathers celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence with a hearty licorice whip or perhaps a chunk of sugar carved from one of those funky colonial sugar cones. Here at Candy Yum Yum, we've decided to celebrate our freedom with a crazy summer giveaway!
Thanks to our friends at Blair Candy, one lucky winner will be picked to receive $15 worth of candy. Nice, right? So here's what you have to do to throw your tri-corner cap in the ring: Leave a message here telling me what candy says "summer" to you. Maybe you have a childhood memory, or perhaps there's a favorite candy you like to buy from the ice cream man. Whatever the case, leave your answer here, along with a way for me to contact you. Continental U.S. only, please. The lucky candy recipient will be chosen on July 11, noon E.S.T.

A bit of fluff

My piece on local candy here. Oh, the sweet days of summer! Only now you need to save an entire summer's allowance to buy a bag.

Nutcracker Sweet

I've learned over the years that writing about candy is a good way to a) keep your cupboard stocked  with sweets and b) ensure that you'll never lose weight, but it's not the best way to fund a lavish lifestyle of random dollar store visits and twice-a-year haircuts. No, for that, I write a weekly newpaper column about, well, food and booze. So I've got all three food groups represented in my writing portfolio. In any case, for this week's newspaper article, I decided to write about candy, since June is National Candy Month. I'll post my dissertation here after it goes to print. But check out this treasure I found outside one of the candy stores I visited:

A Nutcracker pillow. In June. On the sidewalk. I don't know about you, but I know that when I go walking downtown, I always like to take a festive pillow with me, just in case I start feeling a little snoozy. I had a grand vision of photographing the pillow's progress (would someone move it to the bench? Would it get kicked to the curb?), but when I went back the next day, it was gone.

Hershey's Air Delight

Let's try this whole "aerated" chocolate thing again, shall we? A couple of weeks ago I posted about the new Hershey's "Air Delight" Kisses. I wasn't thrilled with them. They seemed too small to get that whole air-n-chocolate experience. Plus, after I ate a few more, I realized that the paper flag kept sticking to the Kiss and I'd have to extract it from my mouth. Not fun.

Since then, I stumbled upon the Hershey's Air Delight bar at Walmart. I wasn't particularly excited, given my disappointment with the Kisses, but I figured, here goes nothing.
Much, much better. If you're going to do air, this is the way to do it. Because the bar was more substantial, you could actually see the bubbles and experience the combination of chocolate with that melty, texture thing that happens from the bubbles. I enjoyed this. However. (You knew there had to be a however.) This is plain old Hershey's chocolate, like you'd get in a regular bar, which weighs 1.55 oz. The aerated version is 1.44 oz. So I'm getting less chocolate because ....? I'm certainly not paying less. Am I the only one who feels like I'm being a bit duped here?

Dear Readers, Forgive My Ignorance

I'm trying to figure out how to write this post without totally offending a certain candy company while giving a left-handed compliment to another. There's no easy way around it. I'm just going to have to dive in and suffer the consequences.

There are some confections in the candy world that get mocked. Often, it's because they're made of "mockolate," or fake chocolate. These greasy, oily chocolates are often very inexpensive and holiday themed. I avoid these like the plague.


So when I recently received a large box full of samples from what I thought was the offending company, they sat around for longer than usual before I actually tried them. Then, one night, desperate for something sweet, I popped open a box of Palmer's Peanut Butter Crispy Yums.
I was shocked. They were tasty! They weren't at all the mouth-coating, flavorless chocolates I feared. I looked at the ingredients. Real milk chocolate. Real peanut butter. Real molasses. (And yes, admittedly, some partially hydrogenated bad stuff, too.) But the taste was there. The little pillows were filled with smooth peanut butter studded with little crispy bits. I was impressed. This company seemed to be taking a step in the right direction.
But then I looked at the logo. It didn't seem right. No, something was amiss. I did some Googling.
Holy cats.
After all these years, I've been confusing two candy companies. There's Palmer's Candies, out of Sioux City, Iowa, and R.M. Palmer out of Reading, Pennsylvania.
Oh my.
So, here it is, folks, my admission of guilt and my apologies for any negative "Palmer" references. Please tell me I'm not the only person in the candy universe who's made this mistake. On the bright side, there are two other types of candies waiting to be sampled. I hope they're as good as the Crispy Yums.

Air Supply

All I have to say is, thank goodness the Sweets & Snacks Expo took place last week, because it has been so dull out there in candy land lately. You know it's bad when I don't even get excited to go into supermarkets in other states because there just hasn't been anything new on the shelves lately. So I present to you:

A big batch of new products! Hooray!
The first thing I ripped into from my show samples was a bag of Hershey Kisses Air Delight "aerated milk chocolate." The bag describes them as, "The Hershey's milk chocolate you love gently blended for a light, airy texture that melts effortlessly in your mouth."

There are several "aerated" chocolates on the market: the British Aero, Bubble Chocolate, and I'm sure there are others. I used to particularly like Nestle Choco'Lite, but that's been gone for a while now.
So how do the Kisses stack up? It's kind of hard to tell, actually. The weather's been really warm here, and so it's difficult to tell if the Kisses are really that much more melty naturally, or if it's just from the heat. They taste good enough. I mean, it's Hershey's chocolate; it's exactly what you'd expect. But I think because they're small, as opposed to a bar, you just don't get that big, airy experience. These are fine. Would I pick them over regular old Hershey Kisses? No. But would I refuse a handful from a candy dish? Of course not!

I Knew My Future at a Young Age

This weekend we celebrated Bazooka Betsy's 50th birthday, and a family friend came equipped with the stuff memories are made of. She had a project she'd done in grammar school called "The Prescription For a Good Life" in which she interviewed all of us, many, many, many years ago. Here was my contribution:

I'm not so sure about Glen, but I'm definitely sticking with the candy.

Clodhoppers for dessert!

I realize I've fallen way behind in all matters candy-related. My apologies. Number one, I've been really busy writing about all things edible except candy, and number two, I've got to say, there hasn't been much candy news that's jazzed me lately. Is it me, or is something going on? Is there some sort of candy dry-spell happening? Did all the fun candy get raptured when we weren't looking? Where are the new products? The oldies-but-goodies? The Sweets & Snacks Expo is happening later this week in Chicago and, while I won't be going, I'm hoping that some fun things pop onto the candy scene.

Actually, one fun thing did happen last weekend. We were up in Vermont and having dinner at Ninety-Nine. The kid's meal came with dessert, and one of the options was a package of Clodhoppers. These little bits of graham cookies mashed up in chocolate are made in Canada and they are a rare find. I was psyched to see them on the menu. I managed to stash them in my bag before the Sugar Baby knew what was going on. (For the record, he busy devouring everyone else's desserts.)

And speaking of the Sugar Baby, did I show you what I made for his class? A giant Rice Krispy Treat! The kids were surprised that it was so crunchy. See, that's why homemade RKTs are so much better than the prepackaged ones, which are much too soft and squishy. The perfect RKT is crunchy, a little crumbly and chewy. Yes, I could've eaten that whole 5 myself.

TMI: Good chocolates, acupuncture and fudge

Would you look at that? Perhaps the most beautiful chocolates ever. The photo, of course, doesn't do them justice. That one in the top left is actually a tiny chocolate tea cup filled with espresso cream. Then there's Kaffir Lime & Ginger, Blood Orange, Olive Oil & Sea Salt ... This was a gift from my friend Marisa. She's an acupuncturist and I helped her out with some PR for her new business. If I knew I'd be getting chocolates in return, I would've done a better job.
Marisa and I know each other from our days long ago when we worked at a chocolate shop together. I took the job seriously. (I was, after all, a college student with bills to pay.) She, on the other hand, was still in high school (I think; or maybe just graduated and wasting her days working at a chocolate shop), and was able to appreciate the multitudes of fun that the job offered. Like the time she was working the night shift with the only boy who worked there. I'll keep the story brief, but it's one that lives in infamy. (Stop me if you've heard this before.)
As a joke, Chocolate Boy took a giant piece of chocolate fudge and molded it into a certain shape, then dropped it in the toilet at work. He then called Marisa into the bathroom to see his handiwork. They had a good laugh, then flushed the toilet. Fast-forward to the next morning when Your's Truly was on duty. I had no knowledge of the prior evening's festivities, so imagine my surprise when, later that morning, I used the facilities and suddenly there was an enormous flood in the back room. The manager had to call her husband to come fix the damage and of course I was standing there red-faced, looking like the obvious culprit.
The best part is, Marisa never told me any of this until last year. Nice, right? Yet she remains a shining beacon in my life. She has the most positive outlook on life and is the world's greatest acupuncturist. Check out her website: www.healingpointtherapeutics.com. If you're in the Boston-ish area, give her a call and set up an appointment. Ask for the Chocolate Fudge discount.

Rainbow Cupcakes!

 

Someone has a birthday coming up, so I've been trying to figure out if I should do a cake or cupcakes for the big "5."  Then I got a review copy of "The Big Book of Cupcakes" (Wiley Publishing, 2011) and I started experimenting. I made the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" cupcakes, using the cheater's recipe. I took a box of white cake mix, prepared it, then divided it into six different bowls. Then I added food coloring to each and began the process of pouring a little bit of each color into each muffin cup. I was really expecting that all the colors would blend together and I'd end up with some nasty-looking grayish brown cupcakes, but as you can see,

Voila!

Beautiful rainbow cupcakes. They were quite impressive, I must say. However, I've decided not to go that route for the Sugar Baby's birthday. I felt kind of icky using all that food coloring in the cupcakes. I've been more in-tune to color additives lately, since The Connections have been tracing their daughter's recurrent hive issues to Red Dye #40. So I'm thinking it's going to be vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. (It's merely a coincidence that that's my favorite combination.) Stay tuned for my pre-birthday cupcake jitters.

Happy Easter!

I hope the Easter Bunny was good to everyone this year. In the House of Yum, the Easter Bunny went kind of easy on the candy since he knows that the Sugar Baby has a second appointment this week to get some cavities filled. Apparently he did a lot of shopping at Trader Joe's, too, as there were TJ's gummy bunnies, malted milk eggs, peanut butter eggs and jelly beans in the basket, along with some Lindt chocolate carrots. And with that, we say good-bye to candy season as things start to wind down. From here on out, our holidays are mostly candy-free and more focused on burgers and potato salad. It's the circle of life, folks.
But what about you? What was in your Easter basket?

Behind the scenes at Lindt!

This weekend I went up north to visit Kristina-formerly-of-Florida-now-from-New Hampshire. Mission: find a wedding dress. But who cares about that? The real news is that Kristina works for Lindt, so we got to do some fun things, like:

Check out the Gold Bunny Car! (I suggested she use this as her "going away" car for the wedding)




And, of course, taste some chocolate! After dinner, we did a sampling of some Lindt Excellence bars. (Which, I learned, are pronounced "Eck-sell-ahnce." Ooh lala.) We tried Intense Orange (which I've been anxious to try; I didn't realize they contained almond slivers as well), Black Currant and Chili. We also sampled a bar from their Passion line: orange and pistachio with milk chocolate. It's nice to see a bar with pistachios in it; that's almost as rare as finding a black currant-flavored candy in the U.S.

Kristina trusted me enough to send me home with cases of chocolates for her family and friends. I did have to pull over on the way home to take a break and yes, dig into a bag of chocolate eggs. Hey, at least I kept it all in the trunk so I wouldn't be too tempted.

Candy News: Giant Tootsie Pops (sort of) and Grape Pop Rocks!

Two items of note popped up in my e-mail this week. The first that caught my attention was this: Giant Foot-High Tootsie Pops to debut!
I was like, wow, that's pretty cool! Turns out, though, that it's a 12-inch-tall lollipop-shaped CONTAINER that holds 10 assorted-flavor Tootsie Pops. Nary so exciting.
The other item is that Grape Pop Rocks are coming back in honor of their 35th anniversary! Woohoo! What's scary to me though, is that not only do I remember grape Pop Rocks, but I didn't realize they weren't being made anymore. Apparently there's a gap in my memory there. Seems like just yesterday I was buying a pack of them. I can still feel the painful little snaps on my tongue.

Dove Barnyard Truffles: Extreme Cuteness!

I've been meaning for weeks to try making these adorable barnyard truffles created by the folks at Dove Chocolate Discoveries. They kindly sent me some chocolate to try out my mad candy-making skills, but I haven't had a free second. In any case, I wanted to post the recipe so you all can maybe try making these before Easter. I will get to mine soon, hopefully; maybe in time for the Sugar Baby's Easter party at school. My fave is the little lamb. For the recipe, go to the Dove Chocolate Discoveries Facebook page here. (PLEASE NOTE: updated link!)