Thursday, December 31, 2015

The Most Memorable Reviews of 2015

I was going to post a list of the highest and lowest rated treats that we've posted on candycritic.org this year, but then I realized something.  Just because a treat gets a high or low review, doesn't really make it "better" or "worse".  Sure it may taste great, or horrible, or it maybe super lame, or an amazing new idea, but that doesn't really make it better or worse.  When people ask me what my favorite candy is, I often say it's something new, something memorable, even if I don't like eating it.  So below are the top 5 reviews that I posted this year.  These didn't necessarily get the highest review scores, but I can tell you that I won't soon forget them.

The first snack on my most memorable list is Dutch licorice.  I actually reviewed several Dutch licorices this year, as well as managed to eat a piece of Dutch licorice every day for more than a month.  My goal was to try and gain a taste for this very polarizing candy.  As you know people either love licorice or hate it.  I fell under the hate it category, but I started to see the appeal of the flavour.  I never grew to "love" it, but I understand it a little bit better.  The fact that I spent so much time thinking about Dutch licorice made it one of the most memorable treats that I sampled all year.


Three of the snack son this list made it to this list because of the package.  This was one of them.  I loved the way that the whole package was themed.  It was super cheesy, but really fascinating at the same time.  Most interestingly, the treat itself turned into a bit of a surprise, a tasty surprise.  I would actually consider buying these again in the future.  It's not common for a fun gimmick to turn into a good snack, but this one works.  Sure the snack has nothing to do with the gimmick, but the two of them together made Space Raiders fairly memorable for me.


This is another snack that made it on the list because of the package.  Not so much the theme, but most about the description of the treat.  The word "Chocoblobs" is a good indication that the people writing the text on this package aren't familiar with English words used to describe food you might want to eat. The word "Extruded" doesn't help either.  There are certain processes in the candy making world that make you hungry, popped, melted, or baked are just a few of the good ones.  Extruded falls into the category of words that don't make you hungry.  The snack itself was just OK, pretty tasteless and forgettable, but who can forget the words "Extruded Chocoblobs".



I don't think I'll ever forget these durian cream chocolates.  Even though I just reviewed them a few weeks ago, years from now when I look back I don't think I'll have forgotten them.  They are easily the worst smelling candy I've ever reviewed in the history of this site, or any time in my candy eating career.  Strangely I found something appealing about them, but it took a great deal to get over the smell.  As far as candy eating experiences go, this will likely be the most memorable, yet it still isn't the most memorable snack I've reviewed all year.


When I first spotted this bag of chips, I thought it was too good to be true.  I also thought that I would see them again, and at the time we were driving across Southern Africa, and in a bit of a rush.  I spent the rest of our time on this trip trying to find them again.  Then, by a stroke of luck I came across them at one of the last stores we stopped at before heading home.  Monkey Gland Sauce Potato Chips are truly one of those snacks you'll never forget... Sort of.  The problem with these chips is that the flavour itself is somewhat forgettable.  

The true wow factor of these chips is the name.  That is unless you were born in South Africa.  As it turns out Monkey Gland Sauce has no monkeys in it at all, and as far as I can tell at no point was it used on monkeys.  It's simply a chutney often used today on hamburgers and other barbecued items.  I will say that when I first posted a picture of these chips online, people thought I was crazy for trying them.  As it turns out the durian candy was much more risky.  But I'll never forget the day I saw them at a gas station on the Botswana/South Africa border.


This year I noticed something interesting, more than half of the memorable reviews are salty snacks... sort of.  Two of the five snacks were also some of the more disgusting snacks I've ever eaten.  There also isn't one snack on this list from North America.  I guess that comes from all of the traveling I did this year.

CC

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

A Work Out Fashion Candy Thing

All this month we're featuring some of the cool jewelry from our friends at KanDi Jewelry.  Any of these would make the perfect Christmas gift for any candy lover in your family! I'll tell you why I need this headband. The holidays are over and I've eaten a lot of dessert.  I need to work out, but I need something to catch all the sweat at the gym.  Thing is, I want everybody at the gym to know that I love candy.

Check out their whole store right here!

CC

Monday, December 28, 2015

This Week In Candy

With the holidays behind us, I can safely tell you that I managed to eat more cookies in one week than I have in my entire life.  I'm not sure why, but cookies were truly the theme for the holidays this year.  I can't complain about that though.  Cookies allow you to have a lot more variety than cake or pies.  You can pile many varieties of cookies on one plate and no one looks at you as if you were some kind of dessert hording glutton. You can also go back for seconds on cookies on the grounds that you didn't get to taste a particular type of cookie.  For some reason if you do that with cake people seem to frown upon it.

This week at Candy Critic we're preparing for the new year, and what a year it's going to be.  We're already gearing up for some new adventures this year, travel wise.  We're preparing for a trip to Thailand in the near future, and have other trips planned later in the year.  The new year is also going to bring the return of Junk Fud, the official Candy Critic podcast.  With a new format the show will go live in January, and we hope to have 3 or 4 episodes going online every month. We'll also be continuing some of our other new segments in the new year, including the monthly Candy Critic Dessert Club, that's posted on this blog each month.  We're also going to see an increase in candy review-a-thons since we have a huge backlog of reviews to post.  This is were we post 5 or 7 new candy reviews in a week instead of just one.  All this and we'll still be continuing our regular weekly segments like our Candy Thing, Candy in the Media, and in January Snack Facts (our Instagram feed) returns.

This year we're also going to be focusing on more writing projects outside of the website.  We've got three projects waiting to go out, and we hope to have several of them out by the end of the year.  So it's going to be a busy year, and we hope you'll be along for the ride.

Speaking of busy years, 2015 was a pretty crazy year for us as well.  Later this week we'll be posting our top 5 most memorable candy reviews, and today we're posting a new candy review from our most memorable trip.  Our trip to Southern Africa was pretty intense, and a whole lot of fun.  We tried all kinds of amazing foods from wild game to not so wild candy bars.  Today's new review is a snack we found in South Africa that really made us excited, that was until we ate it.  Click here to check out the new review.

CC

Friday, December 25, 2015

Candy in the Media


All this month we're posting videos about my favorite Christmas candies. While this certainly isn't my favorite Christmas candy (I hated a few of the chocolates in this box), the commercial brings back fond memories for me.

CC

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Christmas Themed Gummy Ideas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

During this holiday season I've been snacking on all kinds of amazing holiday treats.  From fruit cakes, cookies, and a huge variety of chocolates, I've been stuffing my tummy full of all kinds of sweets.  There is one sweet however that's been noticeably absent from my holiday munching menu, gummies.  It seems like gummies, the most versatile of all candies, has been left out of the holiday selection.  There are a few out there, but not that much.  I believe that there's plenty of room for gummies during the holidays, and so I've decided to design a few fun gummy holiday treats myself.  These gummies aren't just guimmies shaped like elves, Santa, or any other Christmas themed tchotchke.  These treats use the gummy texture to their benefit.

As always, I invite any candy maker out there to use my ideas for free. All I ask is that if you make any of these, please be kind enough to send me some to try.
The first gummy treat on this list I'm surprised no one has thought of yet, gummy Christmas ornaments. Hanging candy on a Christmas tree is already a thing with candy canes, so why not go further.  With gummy ornaments you also don't have to worry about broken glass.  If one of these hits the floor you'll just get a subtle splat sound.  Sure you might not eat any of the ornaments that have hit the ground, but you don't eat most of your candy canes either, so it's no big deal.
The next gummy idea for the holidays is gummy ribbons.  Tearing open a gift on Christmas morning is one of the best feelings ever.  The only thing that really gets in the way is the ribbon.  You can't gracefully remove a ribbon from a Christmas gift.  In fact I'd say that the ribbon is more of a frustrating challenge, and who wants that on this day that should be full of happiness.  Gummy ribbons would be much easier to break through, and it would give you some sugar energy as you're opening all of your other gifts.
The last holiday gummy ideas is not gummy gingerbread men, it's gummy gingerbread men icing.  Recently I tried to bake some gingerbread cookies, and it all went pretty well, until I had to ice the cookies.  As it turns out, icing things with any kind of accuracy is not an easy task.  Gummy gingerbread decorations would simplify this task greatly.  You simply bake your cookies, and lay on the decorations.  If the cookies are a little bit warm the gummy should melt just a bit and stick to the cookie.  You could use all kinds of flavours and colours of gummy to make so many different designs.

So there you have it, gummies for Christmas.  Maybe you'll see it in a store near you next holiday season. If you do see any of these, let me know.

CC

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

A Sentiment Candy Jewelry Thing

All this month we're featuring some of the cool jewelry from our friends at KanDi Jewelry.  Any of these would make the perfect Christmas gift for any candy lover in your family! I like this bracelet because not only does it have a gummy bear on it, but it tells people how I feel about it.

Check out their whole store right here!

CC

Monday, December 21, 2015

This Week In Candy

Merry Christmas all you candy loving people out there.  I sure hope that Santa drops all kinds of sweet treats into your stockings and under your tree.  I hope at least one of you gets a Toblerone bar so big that it takes two people just to unwrap it.

Later this week we're going to be posting an blog post all about Christmas gummies.  What's that you say, you don't really know any "Christmas gummies"?  That's exactly the problem, a problem that we hope to fix with a couple of cool Christmas gummy ideas.  None of these ideas exist yet, but hopefully they'll be something you see on the shelves next year.

Here at the Candy Critic offices, we're watching a lot of the television show "Flash", that has nothing to do with the work we should be doing, I just thought the series deserves a plug.  What we are working on is the new and improved Junk Fud podcast, set to debut in January.  The first episode is ready to go, and the second will be ready by the end of the week.  We hope to have at least three episodes going up each month.

The only thing we're not doing over the holidays this year is Snack Facts.  We have to give up some time to bake all of the delights we're taking to the parties we've been invited to, and this just cuts out the time we use to update Snack Facts every day.  But don't worry, Snack Facts will be returning to our Instagram feed, Twitter feed and Facebook page in the new year with all kinds of fun facts about the snacks we love.

Today's new review is a Christmas classic, although I'm not convinced it was designed that way.  After all the first version of this treat was a chocolate apple, not a chocolate orange, and that's not very festive at all.  I've been in front of the building where these were invented, and the famous "Terry's" logo is still etched into the facade, event though it's now a jewelry store.  Make sure to check out the latest review perfect for the holiday season, the Terry's Chocolate Orange.

CC

Friday, December 18, 2015

Candy in the Media


All this month Today we're posting videos about my Allison's favorite Christmas candies. When I asked her what her favorite Christmas treat was, she said her Grannies Rocky Roads.  Apparently she put fewer marshmallows in, because Allison doesn't really like marshmallows.  I guess I should learn to make them for her.

CC

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

A Kind of Realistic Candy Thing


All this month we're featuring some of the cool jewelry from our friends at KanDi Jewelry.  Any of these would make the perfect Christmas gift for any candy lover in your family! Of all of the jewelry available at KanDi Jewelry, this is the one I most want to eat, although I'm told by the folks at KanDi Jewelry that eating it is a bad idea.

Check out their whole store right here!

CC

Monday, December 14, 2015

This Week In Candy

This week Allison and I taped our first episode of the Junk Fud podcast segment known as "Junk Fud on the Road".  Each month we're going to talk about a place we've visited (or maybe are visiting right then) and we're going to look at some of the food we tried.  Our first episode, coming out in January, will be all about Canadian snacks and junk food.  We thought we would start with a look at the food from our own country, although I have a feeling there will be followup episodes about Canada in the future.  We'll be posting our episodes on this blog, as well as our various social media sites.

This week on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we're going to be looking at candy canes.  Probably the candy most associated with the holiday season, it's a pretty fascinating subject.  Check our Instagram feed every day this week for a new fact about this striped candy.  If you don't use Instagram, don't worry, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Twitter feed and Facebook page as well.  Next week will also be the last Snack Facts installments until the New Year, we're taking a bit of a break over the holidays.

This week's new review comes to us from our good friend Candice.  She picked up these little golden packages of fun on a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur.  After eating them I'm not sure if she's really our friend, or just trying to torture us.  Click here to find out why this treat is so insane.

CC

Friday, December 11, 2015

Candy in the Media


All this month we're posting videos about my favorite Christmas candies. As an adult, M&Ms became a regular staple of my Christmas collection.

CC

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Candy Critic Dessert Club – Something For The Holidays - Gingerbread Snowmen

What says happy holidays better than a plate full of gingerbread cookies?  These might be the only cookies that are exclusive to this holiday.  Shortbread cookies, the other holiday cookie, are also fairly popular at other times of the year, but you don't really see gingerbread in the summer, spring, or fall.  When I first thought about making these cookies, I figured that I would have a simple batter cookie recipe, with a few extra spices added in, I was wrong.

The ingredients:

1 Cup of brown sugar (Granulated worked for me)
1/3 Cup vegetable shortening
1 and 1/2 cups of molasses (dark for a richer cookie, light for a lighter tasting cookie)
2/3 cups of cold water
7 cups of Flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt

Frosting
4 cups powdered sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons half-and-half
1 drop blue food colouring
The first things you have to do is blend the brown sugar, shortening, molasses and water together.  I thought it would be "faster" to use a beater to do this. I thought that the shortening would blend better with the other ingredients using electric beaters, I made a horrible mistake.  The water and molasses blend gives you watery molasses, and the minute my beaters were turned on in this mix, I coated everything within a 5 foot radius with small brown spots of molasses. Even after I tried to continue to blend this mixture, I found that the shortening didn't really "blend" at all, but it kind of turned into very small clumps of vegetable fat floating in brown liquid.  So I would just suggest using a spoon and a little patience.

After these ingredients are fairly well blended, add one cup of flour and the baking soda, and mix until incorporated (using a spoon is fine).  Then add the ginger and one cup of flour, and mix until incorporated.  Then add the allspice and one cup of flour and mix until incorporated. Then add the cinnamon and one cup of flour and mix until incorporated. Add the ground cloves and one cup of flour and mix until incorporated. And you guessed it, add the salt and one cup of flour and mix until incorporated.  Finally gradually add the rest of the flour.  This system allow each ingredient to be mixed in fairly well.  The last bit of flour might be easier to mix in with your fingers instead of a spoon.
Take your very large lump of gingerbread cookie dough and put it in the refrigerator for a few hours.  After it's rested in the refrigerator, take it out and decide how many cookies you want.  For me, this makes at least two batches of cookies, so you can return half of the cookie dough to the refrigerator or freezer for future use.  On a flowered surface knead the dough you have out a little, then roll it flat, about 1/4 of an inch.

To cut out the snowmen shape, Allison came up with the brilliant idea of using a glass, and several drink measuring tools.  We cut out each shape using these glass and drink measures, and smooshed the circles together.  It made for slightly squashed snowmen, but that made them more realistic.  Put your snowmen on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.
Let the cookies cool for at least 30 minutes, and while they're cooling you can make the icing.  This icing is very simple to make.  Take the powdered sugar, vanilla, and half and half, and mix in a bowl.  You can add a little extra cream if you find the icing to be a little too thick.  Add the one drop of blue food colouring to give the white a slightly frosty feel, and stir it all up.
When the cookies are cool, use a piping bag and decorate your cookies.

This recipe worked really well for us until one point, the icing stage.  I've studied art for many years, I've worked on award winning projects, shown my work in galleries all over the world, but I can't for the life of me control a piping bag.  Our snowmen looked pretty sad.  I think many of the people who ate our cookies found the slightly lame snowmen to be childish and cute, I was just frustrated.  If anybody has tips on how to use a piping bag, I'm all ears.
The other thing to note is that this is not an easy recipe.  Most cookie recipes I've done take less than an hour to prepare, these took about 5 with all of the cooling stages.  The dough is also pretty hard to work with, so weak arms don't work in your favour.  The results however were worth the work, and Allison and I bonded a little more going through the process, that's what the holidays are all about.

CC

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

A Classic Candy Fashion Thing

All this month we're featuring some of the cool jewelry from our friends at KanDi Jewelry.  Any of these would make the perfect Christmas gift for any candy lover in your family! Do you have hair (if you don't then you can stop reading)? Do you like your hair to stay in place (if you're an 80s rock star you can stop reading)? Then this is the perfect gift for you for the holidays.

Check out their whole store right here!

CC

Monday, December 07, 2015

This Week In Candy

Christmas is certainly approaching.  We've got all of our decorations up, and we're now just trying to figure out what kind of candy we'll have around the house for this holiday season.  While I'm always a sucker for a candy cane (no pun intended), I do like chocolates too, in fact I like almost every holiday treat.  The two exceptions are figgy pudding and some fruit cakes.  We have lots of fun things planned for Candy Critic over the holidays, so stay tuned.

Not only is this month going to be full of holiday cheer, but every Wednesday we're also featuring some really cool jewelry from our friends at KanDi Jewelery.  They take the great shapes, colours, and designs of the candy world, and turn it into funky cool wearables.

We're also going to be posting a new entry of our dessert club.  For the holidays we've decided to make gingerbread cookies.  Later this week we'll post our recipe, as well as our experiences making this classic Christmas cookie.

This week on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we're looking at the history of cocoa.  It's one of the most prevalent ingredients in the candy world, second only to vanilla and sugar.  So check our Instagram feed every day for a new fact, if you don't use Instagram, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Facebook page and Twitter feed as well.

This week's new review was decided by you, the candycritic.org followers.  I asked you guys all week on our social media sites (including Periscope) which flavour of Fla-Vers you wanted me to review.  It was close, but lime chipotle won. So click here to find out what I thought.

CC

Friday, December 04, 2015

Candy in the Media


All this month we're posting videos about my favorite Christmas candies.  I wanted to start with the one candy that truly makes Christmas for me, Toffifee.

CC

Thursday, December 03, 2015

Star Wars Candy Ideas

With all of the hype over the Star Wars the Force Awakens opening later this month, it got me thinking.  There are a million cool toys, games, and even clothing tie-ins with this movie, but I haven't really seen that much when it comes to candy.  Sure there are a few brands that are putting characters on their packages, but no one seems to be making special candies that relate directly to the movies.

I've decided that I'm going to solve this problem myself.  My only problem is that I haven't seen the new movie, only 5 or 6 trailers.  So I've decided to stick to what I know and design some candy treats themed to the older movies (original 3 in fact).  Maybe when I see the new movies I'll be inspired to design even more treats, I'm guessing that BB-8 will probably work as some kind of gumball, but we'll see.

Before I start I just want to say that I'm giving these ideas away for free.  If you're a candy maker, feel free to use any of these ideas.  I have one stipulation though, send me some.  Don't just go off making millions of dollars without letting me sample one of my own creations, that's just mean.
My first idea is simple, and is based on one of the most popular character in the entire franchise.  Best of all, we know for a fact that Chewbacca will be in the new movies, so you'll be fine selling these now.  The key is to make this treat look like a square cube of fur, yet also make it chewy.  The recipe is simple, take a caramel cube and cover it with spun sugar. You can make it a dark caramel with a nice burnt flavour, as I'd imagine that a Wookie would have a slightly toasted nutty taste.  This would work best for all those high quality chocolatiers out there wanting to take part in this movie franchise.  Why not fill your case with something fun for this movie, I bet the kids will go "nuts" for them... Come to think of it, some nuts mixed in would really ad to the "Wookieness" of this.
This is the one candy that I'm surprised no one has made yet, gummy Jabba the Hutts. In fact, why stop there, with so many gelatinous looking characters in the franchise, I'm really surprised there aren't a bunch of jelly/gummy Star Wars tie-ins.  Jabba would work best though because you could pretend that you're a spiteful frog getting his revenge on the evil Hutt for eating his brothers. This would take a little bit of effort to make at first, but once you have the mould it would be easy to make millions more.
This was not my idea, my friend Raph came up with the name.  I just came up with how one would deliver a candy called "Light Savers".  I think having them break off a hilt would be the best idea.  You could also have an LED light at the base of the hilt so the Light Savers would glow.  What could be more fun than having sword fights with your friends, then eating your sword.

There you go JJ Abrams/Disney Corp, while I'm sure you'll be making more money on action figures and other toys, I think these candies could earn you enough money for a new summer home at the very least.  Check back after I see the movies (which I imagine will be soon after it comes out) to see if anything from The Force Awakens inspires anything else.

CC

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

A Giant Blue Gummy Bear Thing

All this month we're featuring some of the cool jewelry from our friends at KanDi Jewelry.  Any of these would make the perfect Christmas gift for any candy lover in your family! Nothing would be greater than getting two of these bracelets, they'd make the sweetest (see what I did there) gift for a couple of BFFs.

Check out their whole store right here!

CC