A New Episode of Junk Fud And You Is Online

On this special episode of Junk Fud, I had the honor of chatting with Ming Chen, star of AMC's Comic Book Men.  Ming is not only a comic book fanatic, but he loves to eat.  He travels around the US seeking out restaurants and local "holes in the wall" to experience all the flavours he can.  In this episode Ming talks about how comics and candy are linked together, and how to find a great local eatery.

Click here to listen to the lastest episode of Junk Fud And You.

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Candy in the Media

The chip clip and cookie fork trick are both pretty awesome.

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A Button Pushing Candy Thing Part 4 - Chew On This.

Exactly how many pieces of gum would you need left before you pushed this button?

Every Wednesday this month we're featuring a snack themed Dash Button from Amazon. Dash Buttons allow you to order your snack fix with the push of a button.

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This Week In Candy

This is a week full of potential.  This week is feeling like a giant jaw breaker, it could be filled with gum, or it could be filled with an infinite number of candy layers.  Either way it's going to be an adventure I'm sure.

In the next 4 or 5 months I have two adventures planned, both are pretty epic, one is going to change my life... again.  The epic adventure that's not life changing is happening soon, and it's going to be a trip to India.  India is a country known for flavour, and spicy food.  I'm excited about the flavour, I'm terrified of the spicy food. Any suggestions for must try meals and treats are greatly appreciated.  The second life changing adventure?.. You'll hear more about that when the time is right.

This week we're going to be doing a little prep work for the Indian adventure, booking hotels, and making sure the plants here don't die.  We'll also be doing some podcasting this week.  It looks like we'll be recording two podcasts this week (if everything lines up), one will be our monthly look back at what's been going on in the junk food world in what we call Junk Fud News.  The other is a special episode of our not so regular series called Junk Fud And You.  If all goes well you'll be pleasantly surprised with some entertaining talk about junk food.

As always we're working on lots of articles for the Candy Critic blog as well. We're going to be recording a new episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! featuring a pretty strange looking basket of brown randomness.  We're also working on a new series of articles that we hope to have up later this summer, we're going to look at the many versions of classic treats that some candy companies come up with.  We're also going to start work on a new video series where we'll look back at classic treats and re-review them.

This week on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we're looking at one of the most famous sandwiche in the world, the hamburger.  Ever day this week we're posting a fun fact about the BBQ specialty.  You can follow Snack Facts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

This week's review-a-thon is part 3 of our epic Candy Review-A-Thon-A-Thon.  This week we're going to post a new review every day from a country you may not think about when you talk about candy, Pakistan.  Every day this week we'll post a new candy review from a place that is mystirious, beautiful, and in the news a lot.  Today we're starting with a bar where the main ingredient is a complete mystery to me.  Click here to read the review, and if you can help me identify the ingredient, that would be great too.  You can keep up with all of our new review's for this epic Review-A-Thon-A-Thon by following  us on Facebook, Twiiter, Tumblr, Google +, or Pineterest.

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Candy in the Media

Cheesecake is probably the cake with the most regret.  You want to eat 13 slices in one sitting, but you know after the second you'll only feel regret.

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A Button Pushing Candy Thing Part 3 - What's Popin' Orville?

I think it would be ironic to use this Dash Button to order popcorn that you would then pop in a pot on your stove. It would be old and new school snacking together at last.

Every Wednesday this month we're featuring a snack themed Dash Button from Amazon. Dash Buttons allow you to order your snack fix with the push of a button.

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A New Episode Of Chris Why Would You Eat That?!!

We just posted a new episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! where Chris "enjoys" a candy coated nut of some kind... likely an almond.

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This Week In Candy

Good morning all.  It's another week of sweet tooth fun here at candycritic.org.  It's also another week of review-a-thon fun with our on going review-a-thon-a-thon.  A regular review-a-thon is a week were we'll post a new review every day for a week, a review-a-thon-a-thon is where we post new reviews every day for 4 weeks.  Last week was fun reviews of gummy treats, this week we're featuring a particular candy, Original Champion toffees.  These are toffees that we collected on our trip to Southern Africa, and we just haven't gotten around to posting these reviews since.  There are 5 different flavours of Champion Original Toffee, and we've reviewed each and every on of them.

This week we'll also be posting a new episode of our "hit" YouTube show, Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!.  This week I sample a sugar coated nut that although weird, wasn't as gross as I thought it would be.  This is a problem I've thought about on this show.  Since everything I sample on Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! is something I've never eaten before, what happens if I like it.  This week's treat I could hardly call something I "like", but it wasn't too bad.  We've got a few more treats, snacks, and general foods coming up, and we're also thinking about inviting special guests for future episodes.  Make sure to follow us on YouTube so you'll know exactly when we post a new episode, as well as new episodes of our podcast Junk Fud.

Allison and I are also planning another adventure, an adventure that might have an on the spot episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! I don't want to say where we're going yet, but I will tell you that it's a place with very polarizing foods.

This week on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we're looking at Japanese candy.  Probably one of the most popular nations for producing weird candy, Japan has changed the way we think about snacking.  Make sure to check back every day this week for a new fun Japanese candy fact.  You can follow Snack Facts on our Instagram feed, as well as our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

As mentioned above, this week's new review is the first in our Original Champion Toffee review-a-thon.  Today's flavour is pretty strange as toffees go, and it didn't really work out.  You can click here to read why this candy didn't really work, and follow us on any of our social media sites to keep up with this week's review-a-thon. (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google +, and Pinterest)

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Candy In The Media

I could watch people make candy all day long. This is one of the best videos I've seen on the subject.

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New Episode of Junk Fud History Is Online!!!

This week's episode of Junk Fud History takes a look back at an American classic, the Jolly Rancher candy.  It's probably one of the least fancy candies, yet it's a real classic.

Click here to check out the latest episode, as well as some of our past episodes.

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Candy Critic Dessert Club - Inventing a Cookie That I Call Frank.

Or at least I think I invented a cookie.  Yesterday I woke up with an idea, I wanted to invent a cookie.  Nothing ground breaking, but just something that I've never tried before.  You might read this and say "hey, I've made that cookie before it's called a "insert name of cookie here"".  The thing is, I haven't.  I've never eaten or heard of a cookie that is like the one I invented.  I took some cookie basics, switched a few things up (both in ingredients and in process) and baked my heart out.  I asked my friends what I should call this cookie, and only one person responded, so until I get a better idea this cookie will be known as "Frank".

Ingredients

2 1/4 Cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup of unsalted butter (soft and warm)
3/4 cup of white sugar
3/4 cup of maple syrup
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup whole walnuts
175 grams of dark chocolate (Lindt 70%)

You'll also need two average sized bowls, one mixing bowl, a mixer, a cookie sheet, several things to stir with, measuring cups, and tinfoil. There may be a few other things you'll need, but I'll cover those below.

In one of the small bowl mix the flour with the salt and baking soda.  This is simple enough and requires a quick stir and nothing else.  Set that bowl aside. Then take your dark chocolate and put it in a Ziploc bag and beat the hell out of it with a meat tenderizer or hammer.  You want the chocolate to be as small as you can get it, and let out a little frustration while you're at it.  Second, take the walnuts and chop the heck out of them in your food processor.  You can chop them into dust, or if you get bored you can leave a few chunky surprises, but for the most part pulverize those nuts.  Empty the nuts into your second average bowl and put the pounded chocolate into the food processor and pulverize them as well.  Again you can leave a few chunky bits as surprises, but you want most of it to be very small bits.  Ad that chocolate to the bowl with the walnuts.

Next, take out your mixer on a low setting and ad the butter, start whipping it a little and slowly ad the white sugar.  Keep going until the butter and sugar are bonded well (creamed), and then add the maple syrup.  Keeping mixing with your mixer until the maple syrup is mixed in, then ad your vanilla.  Then ad one egg at a time, keeping the mixer at a fairly low speed.  Once everything is nicely mixed together, in other words once it becomes one mass as opposed to being made up of ingredients, start adding the flour mixture slowly.  Keep mixing until all of the flour has been added and is mixed in well.  You'll probably need a spatula to work the sides, unless you have an awesome mixer.

Once it's all one glob of cookie greatness we'll no longer need the mixer.  Remove the mixer from the equation and slowly stir in the nut and chocolate.  Simply stir in these bits using the spatula you used to clean the sides of the bowl while you were mixing.  If you have a really awesome mixer you'll have to dirty a spatula.  Once the chocolate and nuts are mixed you'll need a really small spoon.  I recommend something smaller than a teaspoon, but bigger than one of those coffee spoons they used to give you at McDonald's in the 80's.  For my cookies I used an egg spoon, and it worked perfectly.

Now spoon the mixture onto your tinfoil covered baking sheet.  Keep them small, because lots of little cookies are awesome.  Bake each batch of cookies at 375 degrees for 7 minutes.  Many people might argue that it would be simpler to make one giant cookie, and it would look so very cool.  I argue that little cookies are so much better, and here's why:

First of all they take a lot less time to cook, and the less time it takes from those cookies to go from being ingredients to going into my mouth the better.

Secondly, if you cook one giant cookie, people will know if you sampled a bit while you're cooking, because there will be bite marks.  Bake little cookies and you can sample a little from each batch, and there will be so many cookies that no one will notice that you ate 17 of them.

Finally, little cookies are cute.

Once the cookies are done, let them cool on the rack for a few minutes, and if possible serve immediately. They will last a few days, but they'll taste best right out of the oven.

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A Button Pushing Candy Thing Part 2 - Doritos Fix

If you regularly need Doritos, then you should pick yourself up a Doritos Dash Button from Amazon.

Every Wednesday this month we're featuring a snack themed Dash Button from Amazon. Dash Buttons allow you to order your snack fix with the push of a button.

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This Week In Candy

You may not know this, but we have a whole bunch of reviews written and ready to go online, we keep them for a rainy day.  By rainy day I mean we keep them for weeks when I'm sick or on vacation.  The problem is my archive of reviews to post has started to grow to well over one hundred reviews.  While it's nice to have a few reviews ready to go just in case, over one hundred is just way too many.  To help work this list down, we sometimes have a review-a-thon, where we review a candy every day of the week, instead of just Monday.  I've decided however that this list needs some quick extreme trimming, so prepare for the review-a-thon-a-thon.  For the next four weeks we're going to post a new review every weekday.  Some week's will have great themes (like this week), likely at least one's theme will be random candy.  You can follow our weekly review-a-thon-a-thon on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, or Google +.

Just because we're posting a lot of reviews doesn't mean we're just taking the week off either.  This week we're continuing our podcast series Junk Fud, with the latest episode of Junk Fud History all about Jolly Ranchers.  But that's not all, we're also going to post a new episode of our YouTube show Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!, where Chris (that's me) enjoys a really creepy looking candied... something or other.  We don't stop here because all this month on our regular Candy Thing blog segments (that goes online every Wednesday) we're posting snack related Amazon Dash Buttons, a thing that we're still not really sure isn't a joke.  We're not stopping here though, this Thursday we have our regular monthly post for the Candy Critic Dessert Club. This week we're making "Frank", a cookie invention that we made up ourselves, and we're giving you the recipe.

As you can tell there's a lot going on this week, so hopefully you'll still have time to keep up with Snack Facts, our Instagram feed.  This week Snack Facts is going with the gummy theme with a look at Gummy candies.  Check back every day this week for a fun fact about these stretchy treats.  You can follow Snack Facts on Instagram, our Twitter feed, and Facebook page as well.

For the first week of our review-a-thon-a-thon we're going to look at gummies as well.  So every day this week we'll be posting a new review of a fun gummy treat.  Today's review is a strange one, so strange that you might not even be able to call it a real gummy.  Click here to find out why.

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Candy In The Media

Baby Metal makes their American television debut on Colbert with Gimme Chocolate.  If I ever meet them I shall give them chocolate.

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A Button Pushing Candy Thing Part 1 - Bite Into A Slim Jim

Are you familiar with Dash Buttons? At first I thought they were some kind of prank put on by Amazon, but now I've learned that they're a real thing.  A Dash Button is a small button that when pushed will automatically order a particular product from Amazon and send it to you within a couple of days.  I'm not sure how I feel about them yet, but I have to admit, I am curious.

Today's example of a Dash Button is the perfect choice for anybody who needs regular Slim Jim fixes.

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This Week In Candy

This weekend I went to a local festival and I had the opportunity to sample some sugarcane juice.  I haven't had sugarcane in such a long time I forgot how sweet it is and how hard it is to finish a whole cup.  My favorite part of the process was watching this amazingly decorated machine spin as it crushed the cane into a fine green juice.  They added a dash of lemon to the juice to balance out the super sweet flavour. Snacking at local festivals is always great.

This week on the Candy Critic YouTube channel we released episode two of our series Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!  We've got a few questionable treats lined up for future episodes, including a twist on a very popular chocolate spread.  We're also posting all of the episodes of Junk Fud (our almost weekly podcast) on YouTube as well.  Make sure to check later this week as we'll be posting the 4th installment of Junk Fud On the Road, all about France.

Speaking of Junk Fud On The Road, we're currently planning a few travel adventures right now.  We're thinking about India, and the USA.  Two very different places, but both really well known for food.  We're still working out the details, but as usual we'll be posting all about the trip during and when we come back home.  Stay tuned for more details.

This week on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we're looking at Snickers bars.  Probably one of the most well known candy bars in the world, and likely the most well represented candy (behind Doritos) in Superbowl advertising.  Make sure to check back every day to learn something new about this meal in a bar.  You can follow Snack facts on our Instagram feed, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.

This week's review is a result of last week's episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!  You can watch the video to see our initial response to the Cambodian Banana Candies, then read this week's review to get a more detailed look at this very strange chewy treat. Click here to read the review.

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Candy In The Media

This is making me re-think the way I should write candy reviews.

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