I have only recently discovered Candyblog, but I love it. The candy always looks so yummy and the reviews are extensive and helpful.
As I was perusing the site, drooling as per usual, I found this recent post about a limited edition Snickers bar that they had just gotten samples of. It's the Rockin' Nut Road Bar, and they gave it a really good review (an 8 out of 10). Candyblog didn't get any press materials with the samples, so they have no idea if/when the bar is available. However, the amount of samples they got was astronomical, so they're giving the samples away! Just head on over to Candyblog to see how you can win some Snickers candy. Hope this will help perk up your weekend!
And you thought the green-beret'd Girl Scouts and their cookies were enterprising little kids?
In Victorville, CA, the latest trend at schools is an underground sugar trade. With candy and other "bad" snacks banned from school campuses, kids are selling contraband Snickers and Twinkies right out of their backpacks.
According to Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville, it's become quite a lucrative business for the dealers. Kids bring things like candy bars, soda, and even energy drinks from home in their "sack lunch" and turn around and sell them for a healthy profit, with some kids walking around school with upwards of $40 in cash.
While I understand this is a bit of a problem for the schools and parents, I have to hand it to the kids -- at least we can count on them to be very good businesspeople when they grow up.
I am a fan of the discussion board www.Chowhound.com and have been a regular there for many years. Lately I have been checking in on a thread about candy. It is about "worst tasting candy ever!!!!" but has evolved into a discussion about favorite or disliked candy from your childhood. I have chimed in several times about my likes and dislikes, and been pleased or disturbed to hear others views. The opinions are all over the map, one persons desire is another's pet peeve.
Some of my favorites as a kid were C.Howard's violets, Circus Peanuts (stale of course), Smarties, Reese's peanut butter cups (I tasted one recently and they have definitely changed the recipe, for the worse), Broadway red licorice, Twizzlers, malted milk balls, Sixlets, the original Rowntree KitKats from England, tangerine and tropical fruit Lifesaver's, the original Swedish fish, Smith Brothers honey cough drops, Hot Tamales, and many more.
Some candy I didn't care for were Jordan Almonds, Good and Plenty (but I love them now), chocolate covered cherries in syrup (gag!), Necco wafers, root beer kegs, and 99% of all gum. (I never understood gum chewing, as a kid or now. If I have a piece it is for a minute or so to clean my palate, then discard rapidly.)
It seems that this is a topic with strong emotions attached. There are even collectible books called Remember When about candy you ate as a kid. So what were your childhood favorites? What made you gag? Have your tastes changed?
Chocolate Easter bunnies are a tough call. They look cute peeking out over the edge of an Easter basket, but they aren't always made with the best chocolate and sometimes they are full of creme, caramel or marshmallow fluff. Which one to buy?
The editors over at AOL Food have devised a way to help you out of your bunny conundrum. They've lopped the ears off of dozens of chocolate bunnies (which all cost $10 or less), searching for the best and worst of the confectionary menagerie. Head over to their slideshow to see more!
This next Sunday is Easter and no holiday basket is complete without a Cadbury Creme Egg or two rounding out the assortment of jelly beans, malted eggs and gummy treats. With so many formerly seasonal foods and candies now available year round, there is something special and appealing about a treat, no matter how sickeningly sweet, that is only available for a few weeks a year. My sister and I used to be allowed to have only one of these a year and we would make them last for days, nibbling at the chocolate and lapping at the fondant before sealing them up in plastic containers to save for the following day's snack time.
This picture comes to us from Flickr user Fuzuoko and is a delicious representation of the classic Easter candy. Makes me want to run out to the drugstore for one right now!
Cybele over at Candy Blog just had an all-egg week, eating and rating candy Easter eggs for your benefit. Read her opinions on Melster Marshmallow Eggs, Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs, Wonka Golden Creme Eggs and more, with a 1-10 rating and a chart of prices and calories per ounce. There are also a few posts on high-end chocolate bunnies and a diatribe against "mockolate" - the nasty fake chocolate so commonly used in cheap holiday candy.
Sample obsessive detail: Peeps that come inside the special chocolate eggs are softer than the Peeps from the box, Cybele says, probably because the shell seals in the moisture. Personally, I like the firmer feel of stale Peeps, sometimes even puncturing the cellophane and leaving the box in the pantry for a few days until it reaches the desired texture. But when it comes to Easter candy, I'll take a Cadbury Creme Egg, cracked open and eaten with a spoon.
It's Leap Day, and zoos and animal organizations across the world are kicking off "Year of the Frog," which aims to highlight the impact of global warming and pollution on our amphibian friends. In honor of the cause, here's a rundown of some notable frog-themed foods (though nothing containing actual frog, that seemed a bit crass):
Freddo Frog - An Australian treat since the 1930s, this chocolate cartoon frog is made by Cadbury and comes in different flavors and fillings. Weird note: I bought an aquatic frog from the pet store when I was seventeen and named him Freddo, with no knowledge of the Australian candy connection. Guess it's just a good name for a frog. Freddo's still alive.
Haribo Frogs - the white, marshmallowy underbellies are my favorite part of these lime-flavored German gummies.
Frogaroni - frog-shaped pasta, in regular and spinach green.
Frog Cake - Little sponge cakes coated in fondant and decorated with froggy features are a specialty of the South Australian city of Adelaide.
How is it that I've never heard of these new Chocolate Mix Skittles until this very moment, when I popped them out of a vending machine? The bag features s'mores, vanilla, chocolate caramel, chocolate pudding and brownie batter Skittles, in various shades of cream and brown. This is the kind of stuff that gets sugar freaks like me all excited.
The vanilla and brownie batter flavors taste a bit off to me (and since when is vanilla a chocolate flavor?), but the s'mores, chocolate caramel and chocolate pudding are tasty. Similar to Jelly Belly jelly beans of the same flavors, but with a Skittle's crunchy outer coating.
Candy Addict gives a good rundown of the flavors. They describe the brownie batter as "someone took fake, store-bought chemical-y brownie mix and blended in a tablespoon of cold butter."
Now if Mars would just bring licorice Skittles to America (they have them in Italy, in a black bag, with flavors like aniseed and licorice mint), I'd be thrilled. If anyone knows somewhere in the US or online that carries these, I'd be grateful for the info.
Remember the good old days? You'd lounge out on the porch in the summer, licking away at your Slo-Poke Sucker, Jr.? Sadly, I'm too young (my summers days were spent at sleep-away camp, divided into organized activities like volleyball and instructional swim) -- but if you do have nostalgia for foods or sweets that are no longer easily available, check out Hometown Favorites, a site dedicated to selling food items that are currently difficult to find.
The site features a grocer, a gift center, and a candy store that lets you search by decade (though admittedly, there's a lot of overlap). Some of the items are pretty recent and others I don't think really qualify as hard to find, but it was still fun to scroll through and see what the store has to offer.
My favorite "oh yeahhhh..." moment was when I spotted Maypo oatmeal -- my dad loves the stuff and used to make it all the time when I was little. What do you think, any old favorites? Other sites offering similar products?
OK, I admit it. I like some Nestle products. I know I shouldn't. I am a pretty big chocolate snob. But I, like a lot of people, grew up with these candy bars. It's hard to get over that. I still enjoy the occasional KitKat bar. I'd like it even more if I were in Japan. There, Nestle Japan has come out with a new variety of the wafer bar, and they are just my style.
The new variety is called KitKat Lucky Little's. They are bite sized versions of the original and they are pink! Well,pink and white. Pink just happens to be my favorite color and I pretty much can get drawn in by anything that color. Apparently the color is meant to represent blooming cherry blossoms.
Not only are the snacks completely adorable, Nestle Japan has created a cute game to go with them. You just buy a bag of the candy (of course) and count how many pieces of each color you got. Then you go to their website, and have your fortune told based on those numbers.
Though I suppose this would be an ok snack for the super bowl, the pink and white coloring of the candies might not be the best fit. Maybe they'd be better for the next big holiday coming up. But I guess that point is moot if you're in the U.S. I want to go to Japan!
We've talked a lot about bacon here recently, and for many readers bacon (or even just the taste of bacon) is sort of a religious experience. This post is for you.
The Sublime Stitching site held a Sublime Stitchmas contest over the holidays, and this contestant made one that Slashfood readers might like. It has a picture of a pig, with each body part separated by dotted lines and the words "the candy of meat."
Regular readers will remember this recipe for a few weeks ago.
When I was in elementary school, we had a neighbor who made her own candy for Christmas every year. She mostly made black and white marbled chocolates in the shape of Santa and snowmen, that she would put on sticks for easier eating. One year she branched out and made her own hard candy lollipops. I had never seen lollipops (or suckers as they called them back in Oregon) that didn't come from a store and so I was totally intrigued by the idea that you could make such things at home, on your own.
I haven't thought about homemade lollipops in years, until I spotted this post over at Make and Takes in which Marie made her own for the holidays. She's got some fun vintage molds, but says that you can use the plastic ones available in the stores or even do them without a mold. It sounds like a fun seasonal project to me.
It's been a long day here at Slashfood, though with such a sugar high off all the candy we threw at you, it probably seemed to go by fairly quickly! To round out our day of candy in honor of Halloween, let's have a dessert made in the spirit of one of many people's favorite candy, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- chocolate and peanut butter in one.
To make this cupcake, I baked chocolate cupcakes. To be quite honest, whatever chocolate cake recipe that works for you, works for me because in the end, the most crucial part of the cupcake is the Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting. I've made peanut butter based frosting before, but I used a slightly different recipe this time
Combine ½ c. softened butter with 1 c. creamy peanut butter (if you like crunchy, use crunchy, which is what I've done before). Add 2 c. powdered sugar (sifted after measuring), and up to ¼ c. heavy cream until you get the consistency you want.
Frost your cupcakes, then top with all those leftover Reese's Peanut Butter Cups!
Well, you knew that at some point, the mass producers of cheap, grocery store chocolate were going to have to do something about hopping aboard the "chocolate is healthy" train. Let's face it, even with the claim that yes, chocolate is healthy, no person in his or her right mind would actually try to justify eating a Snickers bar, a bag of M&Ms, or a handful of Hershey's Kisses by saying they were doing it for his or her health. It's dark chocolate that usually has all the health benefits, and I'm still pretty sure that the tiny Special Darks inside the bag of Hershey's Miniatures doesn't count either.
I saw the bag of Hershey's Antioxidant Milk Chocolate at my local grocery store when I was hunting around the shelves for -- I must confess, a bag of Twix. They're not actually in the same place, so I have no idea how I cam across this new stuff from Hershey's, but I did. Even though the packaging says "Natural Flavanol," I was pretty sure that the flavanol was very much unnaturally added to really up its antioxidant power. Health claims thus far have been for dark chocolate, so how would they have it in Hershey's milk chocolate version?
I am a fan of the discussion board 
Cybele over at 
It's Leap Day, and zoos and animal organizations across the world are kicking off "
We've talked a lot about bacon here recently, and for many readers bacon (or even just the taste of bacon) is sort of a religious experience. This post is for you.
May is National BBQ Month and National Hamburger Month
Cupcakes, not for dessert (unless beef is your idea of a treat)
Because eating French Fries in the car is so tough
