"candy" news and stories

"Peanut butter and chocolate just got better!" claims the promo for the new Snickers Peanut Butter Squared campaign. But did they? We Slashfooders ran out for a bag of the new candy bars (each a 1.78-ounce square) as soon as they hit the store shelves today. I mean, it's a Snickers, the classic chocolate bar. What's to improve?

Turns out, not much. "I'm not getting the peanut," said one editor. "The nougat flavor is overwhelming." "I wanted more peanut butter," said our resident candy fanatic. "I feel like I've been duped!" And our resident candy curmudgeon said, "It's kind of a mess."

The verdict? Keep it classic, Snickers, with just the peanuts (singular) or up the ante on the peanut butter. But we still love you.

Happy National Hard Candy Day!

According to blogger -- and maker of the cinnamon hard candy pictured above -- A Stove With A House Around It, "The taste of the sweet and flavorful hard candy is one of those tastes that instantly transports me back in time." During the early 19th century, lemon or peppermint flavored hard candies were prominent and popular, but these days, they exist in nearly any flavor imaginable: maple syrup, butterscotch, even jalapeno. But if you are boosted by some serious holiday spirit, there's one clear choice: Make your own candy canes for this season's ultimate hard candy.

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Diane Campbell wore many hats before donning the metaphorical purple stovepipe to become the Willy Wonka of San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood: She was a cook, a fundraiser, and a marketer for a dot-com, among other things. Her passion, however, has always been candy. As a little girl growing up on Long Island, she used to buy big sacks of the sweet stuff from the supermarket, carry her haul home on her bike, and repackage the candy into goodie bags for her family and friends. She turned this lifelong love of candy into a career five years ago when she and her husband opened what has since become the city's premier sweet shop, known simply as The Candy Store.

Read more about Diane and The Candy Store after the jump...

Happy National Candy Day!

Pillowy, chewy, hard or gooey -- candy spans the rainbow in terms of colors and textures, as the term broadly Includes any sweet confection with a sugar base. The first candy known to man was direct-from-the-hive honey, but the treat has come a long way since its ancient beginnings. When sugar was first manufactured during the middle ages, it was a pricy luxury reserved for the wealthy, but as the production increased and prices dropped, it became a regular commodity by the seventeenth century, a time when hard candies boomed-and they have proven to be barely the tip of the iceberg. If you've ever taken a stroll down your grocery store's candy aisle, Willy Wonka's confections don't hold a candle to the crazy ones available these days.

And as the listed of marketed candies continue to increase, their secrets are coming out of the bag, too: It's possible to make most varieties in your very own kitchen, thanks to Anita Chu's Field Guide to Candy: How to Identify and Make Virtually Every Candy Imaginable. You can thank us or curse us in the comments!

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• Top Chef star Stefan Richter is everywhere: two new Santa Monica restaurants and an Entourage cameo.
• The candy from the half-century-old La Zamorana is also a slice of Mexican-American history.
• Black bean hummus is a spicy twist on the usual chickpea blend.
• Crisp autumn nights are just right for cuddling up with this "big, gentle bear" of a wine from Umbria.