"liquorice" news and stories

It's easy to get into the spirit of fall produce -- what's not to love about fresh apples and beautiful root vegetables? But it takes a true fall-lover to embrace the all of the candies of fall as well. You have to take the candy corn with the caramel apples, the liquorice with the maple sugar candy. Liquorice it seems, is a pretty divisive candy. If you hate it, you hate it. I love it, and here are some yummy variations that I've spotted across the web.

Liquorice Root Tea from Teaviews

Liquorice Altoids, reviewed by Candy Addict

Liquorice Caramels from the Vermont Country Store

Liquorice Pudding from Epicurious

Very Salty Liquorices from Dutch Sweets

Liqource Cupcakes from Apple & Spice

Liquorice Ice Cream from Chow

Chocolate Licorice from Chocolate Heaven

In the pantheon of "acquired tastes" - natto, Scotch, chitlins, bitter melon - salty licorice definitely deserves a throne. This northern and western European favorite, also known as salmiak, doesn't really taste like anything else I associate with the word "food." That's not to say it's bad - after years of licorice-eating, I've come around to its acrid, ammonia-laced punch. But I've only recently learned what makes it taste the way it does.

It's not salt. Well, it's not NaCl - sodium chloride - the stuff that's in our salt shakers. Despite the name "salty licorice" and the definite saline flavor, the "salt" in salmiak comes from ammonium chloride, also known as sal ammoniac, a mildly acidic salt of ammonia. It's pungent, peppery stuff - a bag of strong salmiak smells like something wafting out of test tube in Chem 101.

Popular type of salty licorice include diamond-shaped Dutch double salt disks, Dutch cat-shaped drops, soft Finnish salmiak bars, and hard Swedish "Turkish pepper" pastilles.

Forbes magazine recently announced their top 10 healthiest candies. Chosen for taste and nutritional benefit, some of their picks are not really candies at all. An apple, which might be considered to be a treat by many people, is not and never will be candy.  A candy is a sweet, a confection and something that should not be confused with a piece of fruit, as the Pop'ems chosen by Forbes surely are; the combination of fruit and nuts, even if called a treat, should never be confused with candy. Taste-wise, a Larabar is a better option if you are going to count fruit as candy, because at least the spicy, complex, adult-tasting Cocoa Mole flavor has a good amount of cocoa powder in it.

Forbes is not off base on all of their choices, but candy still needs to be something at least a little special. Here are Slashfood’s 8 picks for healthiest (or least unhealthy) candies:

• Cocoa Via - Formulated to promote a healthy heart and even lower cholesterol, Cocoa Via chocolate bars are also fortified with nutrients like calcium, folic acid, B6, B12, C and E. The fruits and nuts in the bars make them a little something different, too.
• Adora – Sure, it has fifty percent of your daily recommended calcium, but that doesn’t mean that Adora tastes like it’s healthy. The smooth, rich chocolate comes in dark and milk flavors and will satisfy any sweet tooth in addition to strengthening bones.