February 2012

Ready for the Cadbury Bunny?

"This springtime tradition is the size of a traditional egg."

Easter is just around the corner, which means it's time to stock up on your favorite seasonal treats. For many people, myself included, the Cadbury Creme Egg is the most coveted candy of the Easter season. There is nothing better than waking up on Easter morning to find a bunch of these chocolate eggs resting in your basket. They are messy to eat and no fun to share.

Mmmm....I'm drooling just thinking about them.

Dubbel Zout (Double Salt) Salty Black Licorice

It's so salty, the saltiness overpowers the licorice flavor

This Dutch treat is somewhat legendary among candy aficionados. The hilarious folks at Bad Candy referred to DZ as "inexcusable." It is, as described, salty licorice. And out of all the salty licorice, this particular brand is the saltiest.

I have actually toyed with ordering it online several times. But the shipping fees are what always get me. Why pay five bucks shipping for something that I'm sure I won't like, just in order to satisfy my curiosity? That's a lot of money to drop on a silly quirk, don't you think?

Top 3 Weird Ice Cream Flavors That Are Actually Yummy

I’m lactose intolerant so ice cream has to be really tempting to get me to try it. I mean, it has to be good to warrant dealing with the tummy ache later. So, what weird flavors are worthy?

1. Haagen Dazs Ginger: Part of the original cast of Hagan Daz Five, a line of ice cream with just five relatively wholesome ingredients, this Ginger ice cream is now discontinued. It was pretty darn good, not overly sweet. More like a green tea ice cream that you get at some Japanese restaurants. My four year old would fight you for a pint of this; it’s her favorite.

The Best Flavors at The Cheesecake Factory

The restaurant that is best known for its dessert is probably The Cheesecake Factory. In addition to having a dining menu that is the same size as a small novel, they also have a cheesecake list that takes a good 15 minutes to read and digest.

Whenever I dine out at The Cheesecake Factory, I make sure to bring a lot of friends. Since a slice of cheesecake may throw you back $7-$8, you need to have a group that is willing to order several different varieties. If you don't want to test out the entire list on your own (not recommended by heart surgeons), consider trying a few of my favorites on your next visit.

Paul Rudd, Candy Freak, Wins The Daily Show

Jon Stewart is awesome, but clearly knows nothing about candy

I'm a fan of the Daily Show, which I kind of half-watch every morning as I'm getting ready for work. I should admit that I have somewhat mixed feelings about the show, because even though it's awesome, there is a puzzling and largely-unacknowledged but severe gender bias in its guests, over 80% of whom are male (and the majority of female guests are actresses promoting a new movie).

But this morning I heard some things that really made me stop and think, "WHOA WHOA WHOA Stew-beef, walk it back!"

Paul Rudd's interview was all about candy literally from the minute he walked on stage. He brought out the candy bowl from the green room, and started tossing fistfuls of candy to the audience. By the time he got to Stewart's desk, the bowl was nearly empty, and the sugar rush was on.

Peepsters

Nothing like Peeps, but still pretty good

Read more about Peepsters

The idea behind Peepsters (I gather) is to take Peeps up-market. But in doing so, they have pretty much abandoned everything that made Peeps great and distinctive and so very very sugary gritty pastel colored awesome. Peepsters aren't bad - in fact, they are pretty tasty - but I am a little bit scandalous that they use the Peeps name in this way, for such an un-Peep-like product.

I wasn't really paying attention when I bought the bag at the store. I saw Peeps, I didn't recognize it, I bought it, end of story. So you can imagine my surprise when I got it home and opened the bag to find… things that were not Peeps. The bag was full of candies each about the size of a Dove chocolate, individually wrapped in pastel-colored foil.

Peepsters are shaped like large gumdrops, or perhaps like a slightly plump Rolo. I bought the milk chocolate version, and the milk chocolate is also very Dove-like. It made me wonder if they actually contracted with Dove to use their chocolate, or if they simply were able to mix up a mock-Dove chocolate recipe of their own.

6 Meditations Upon The Butterfinger

Better not lay a finger on my Butterfinger! Or I will hurt you.

I bought a few Butterfinger bars yesterday to nosh on while celebrating the 500th episode of The Simpsons. It had been a long while since I ate a Butterfinger, and I found myself getting nostalgic.

In high school we had a proper candy machine. (I specify because I was at a high school recently, and there was no candy machine. You know, with the health food and all.) There was a brief fad of competitive eating, as we attempted to nibble the chocolate off an entire Butterfinger bar. If your bar broke, you lost. If there was any chocolate left, you lost.

8 Facts About Jolly Rancher Candies

All true; some opinion-based

1. If you bite into them quickly enough, they shatter nicely and you can chew them like most other crunchy candies. But if you wait even a second too long, you get a lot of sticky bits that are then even more difficult to suck on than the original, solid single piece would have been.

2. In humid climates, you want to either eat your Jolly Ranchers quickly, or store them in a ziplock bag or something. They get all gross and sticky within a few days. No one likes that texture. It's hard to peel the plastic off, and then the outer layer of the candy is, like… gluey.

Jolly Rancher Awesome Twosome Chews

I must say that these are, as advertised, both bold and tangy.

I have to admit, I'm stumped by these. I still have trouble with the first impression they made, which is "those two words don't rhyme." I keep picking at the combination of "Awesome" and "Twosome," and I can't help myself. Are they supposed to rhyme? Or is it just like a visual rhyme, the way the last four letters of each word are the same?

Then again, I am the sort of person who is driven mad when songs and poems attempt to rhyme words like "move" and "love." Those words are spelled the same, but they don't rhyme. THEY DON'T. And I can't stop thinking about it when I encounter it. Which happens more often than you would think.

Why eat Dessert last?

A lot of us like dessert but we have to wait until after our meal in order to eat it. But sometimes, wouldn’t it just be fun yet naughty to eat it first? But then, you still have to eat the main course afterwards which maybe is not as enjoyable, so why not leave it for last and have something great to look forward to? Of course, you can choose to eat your food in whatever order you want.

In looking in the past, we can see that this was a common thought to those before us. This may be due to the fact that they did not have storage methods like we do now and food did not last. When they killed something, they had to eat it before it went bad, and depending on how long it took, it may have started to taste pretty poor by the end. For this reason, they would end their meal with something sweet that would take that taste out of their mouth and let them enjoy the rest of the day.

Review of Domino's Chocolate Lava Crunch Cake

The other night, neither my husband nor I wanted to cook anything for dinner. Instead, we did what any other true American family would do and ordered pizza. I chose to place the order online through my local Domino's Pizza - I'll do anything to actually avoid talking to someone on the phone. The online system is pretty smart, too. As I tried to check out, the system attempted to upsell my order by asking if I wanted to add an order of Chocolate Lava Crunch Cakes for only $2.99.

Of course, I could not say no to a chocolate dessert to accompany my pizza, and I quickly clicked to accept. I've tasted several pizza franchise desserts in the past, so I was not really expecting anything great. Needless to say, I was more than pleased with the quality and taste of these little chocolaty treats.

Kellogg's Krave Chocolate

"Part of a nutritious breakfast" in the way that anything is, if you eat it with a nutritious breakfast.

My first reaction, on trying a few nuggest of Kellogg's new Krave Chocolate cereal, was "I'm not sure if this cereal makes me proud to be an American, or embarrassed."

If you have ever contemplated tossing a handful of chocolate chips into a bowl of Cap'n Crisp, then you have the core concept of Krave down pat. It's basically a chocolate chip stuffed into each little pillow of Cap'n Crisp, coupled with a notable improvement in texture. The outside of each pillow is gently fibrous, like a smoothed out Triscuit.

Dessert Report

Cakes, pastries, pies, and everything else that makes you say yum: recipes included!

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