This Week In Candy

I think we're officially in the summer schedule of things here at candycritic.org. I'd like to apologies for me posting this late, but frankly I think I'm just going to accept that the schedules here are going to be nuts over the summer. The other problem I have is cookies on the brain.  I can't seem to get my mind off of cookies for the last few weeks.  I have two projects in mind involving cookies, and I hope I get them done over the summer.  The first is a project where I want to look at the what makes for a good cookie ingredients.  We'll look at chocolate chips, nuts, and other unconventional cookie toppings in this article. My other idea is to create the perfect Canadian cookie for Canada's 150th birthday.  This is inspired by a new maple leaf shaped cookie cutter I've recently purchased. If you have any ideas about "Canadian" cookie ingredients, let me know.

This week Allison and I have decided we're going to try and record a few episodes of Junk Fud On the Road, so we don't fall behind again. I think it's also about time to clean out the candycritic.org candy drawer.  That means anybody that runs into me in the next few weeks will likely be offered some kind of candy.  I'll likely post about the clean out process on our Facebook and Twitter feeds as they happen.  Maybe I'll even shoot a live Periscope feed while I'm doing it.

This week's new review is our first Ice Cream review of the year.  I'll be honest, it's a review I wrote while I still lived in Pakistan, but I was saving it for a summer back home.  It reminds me about one of the great discoveries from my time in Pakistan, and reminds me not to judge a place's food before I eat it.  Click here to find out why.

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Holy Cow! It's a New Episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!

In this episode Chris tries the drink made famous in the television show Lavern and Shirley, Pepsi and milk. Find out if this is a bad idea, or something we should all try.

Click here to find old episodes of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!

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Candy In The Media

Some interesting information about the Slurpee, in particular why they all taste the same.

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This Week In Candy

This weekend Allison and I decide to take a quick road trip to Montreal. Montreal is a great place to visit, with lots of fun food options most notably our inevitable stop at Schwartz Deli for a smoked meat sandwich.  For some reason Allison and I also have a love for the IKEA in Montreal. We find it has a few things not available at other IKEAs, and the layout seems a little better.  While visiting the IKEA I came across these special IKEA cookies (pictured above).  As you can see, instead of featuring all of the letters of the alphabet they only have the letters I, K, E, A. That got me thinking, I wonder how many words, other than IKEA, one can spell with these letters?  I wonder if there are more words in Swedish that you can spell? Send us any words you come up with (you can use the same letter as many times as you want), and we'll try and make a master list.

As you may have noticed we're a little late with This Week In Candy, this is both because we're now on our not so reliable summer schedule, and because of Victoria Day. Victoria day is a holiday here in Canada where we celebrate the Queen that gave Canada its independence. Speaking of which, as you may or may not know, Canada is turning 150 years old this year, and we're on the hunt for special editions treats to celebrate this occasion.  We've found a few, some we even plan on reviewing. Make sure to keep up with all our Canadian snack finds on Twitter and Facebook. This week we're also going to post a new episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!, so stay tuned.

Going with the IKEA theme, this week we have a special review-a-thon going on.  Every day this week we're posting a new review of some candy we came across at IKEA.  You don't always associate candy with do it yourself furniture, but they actually have a pretty awesome collection.  I'm not sure how much of it is authentically Swedish, but I don't really care either.  Click here to read the first  IKEA candy review, and make sure to check back here every night for a new review.

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Candy In The Media

So that's what happened to the world's largest hamburger (and other food).

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Cooking With Candy Critic - Chocolate Covered Candied Bacon

In a perfect world there would be a sweet indulgent treat that would take almost no skill, and almost no time to make.  This treat would make people really happy and have them begging you to make more, since there's no way it's easy enough for just about anybody to make.  Ladies and gentlemen, I have such a recipe.  This recipe takes little effort, almost no skill, and everybody I took these to demanded more.  One person even stole the extras to take home to his family.

What I'm talking about is chocolate covered candied bacon.  It sounds decadent, yet down to earth, but more importantly it sounds way more complicated than it actually is to make.  You'll need a few basic ingredients that most people are very familiar with. Bacon, brown sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate chips. You'll also need two baking pans, and either parchment paper or silicon baking sheet liners. To start off, cut your bacon in half, or thirds, or don't cut it at all. It all depends on how you plan on serving these treats. I chose to cut them into thirds since I was planning on taking these to a public place with a few people around and I wanted them to be easy to eat by hand.

After you've cut the bacon, lay it out on your baking tray that is lined with the parchment paper or silicon tray liners (I prefer the tray liners myself). Then cover the bacon with brown sugar, you want your bacon to have a good solid layer of brown sugar because it's going to melt, and a bunch of it will run off. Then sprinkle on a little cinnamon, this is totally optional, and you can put on as much as you like. Heat your over to 350, and once it's heated put in the tray with the bacon and brown sugar.

After seven and a half minutes, take out your bacon, flip it, and coat it in more brown sugar.  You'll likely need some tongs to do this, although a spatula might work. Put your bacon back in the oven for another seven and a half minutes.  Once it's cooked, take the bacon out and let it cool for about 15 or 20 minutes.  You basically want the bacon to firm up a bit.  When the bacon is just about cooled, take about one cup of chocolate chips for every 5 slices of bacon, unless you really like chocolate, in which case go nuts.  Microwave your chocolate chips for about one minute on high.

When you take the chocolate chips out of the microwave you might notice that they don't look very different, that's OK.  You'll also notice that the bowl they're in is pretty hot, and some of the chips at the bottom are melted.  Quickly stir your chocolate chips, after a minute or so you'll notice that your chocolate chips are melting pretty well.  Keep stirring and don't be fooled about putting the chocolate chips back in the microwave.  This technique tempers the chocolate perfectly for this recipe.

After you've stirred your chocolate chips to the point when they're melted into a smooth milk chocolate, it's time to cover your bacon.  You could try and dip the bacon, but I've had a pretty hard time making that work.  I imagine if you added some cream to the chocolate chips it might be smooth enough to get a good dip, but since we're only using the chocolate, it's still too dense. So what I suggest is to use a spoon or a piping bag and just dump the chocolate on the bacon.  I like to poor it on half of the bacon, and lay it on fairly thick.  If you're more of a bacon fan than a chocolate fan, you might want to go a little lighter, maybe a fancy drizzle on the top.

After you bacon is decorated to your liking, let it set for about 30 minutes, then refrigerate.  If you really like what you're seeing, you can pretty much eat these immediately after you pour the chocolate on them, but the chocolate will be pretty gooey at this point, not that that's a bad thing.  If you let them set in your fridge overnight, they'll be much easier to transport, and a little easier to eat. So there you go, simple chocolate covered candied bacon.

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This Week In Candy

Spring has sprung, and I know this because my alergies are gonig nuts. You can tell they're going nuts because of the fact that I didn't change the weird way I spelled "allergies" and "going" above. Having said that I misspell a lot on this site, more than I want, but it seems to happen.  This spring has been a little crazy for me, I've been doing a lot of spring cleaning, home repairs, and preparing.  Preparing for what you may ask?  Well that's a secret for now, but I'll probably have some news for you guys later in the summer.  Because of this craziness going on, I've decided that this summer we're going to be playing it a little loose over the summer, and that means we'll be posting things a little more randomly.  Such as posting This Week in Candy at 10pm instead of 10am on Monday.

This doesn't mean we're going to be posting less, in fact we might be posting more fun things on candycritic.org, it's just going to get posted whenever we can find the time.  Take what we're posting this week for example.  We've got a couple of great posts going up on our Instagram feed for the Doughnut Project.  We've also started to post some of the great Canada 150 treats we've been coming across lately on Facebook and Twitter. Not to mention we're hoping to get a new episode of Junk Fud On The Road up this week.  All of that, and we have a new Candy Critic recipe in the wings.  I think we might also start to post some random new reviews here and there, just because we can.

So don't worry, just because things are happening randomly doesn't mean we're slowing down. Judging by that list of things we're working on, it seems we're posting even more than usual.

This week's featured review is an interesting milestone, but likely only in my head.  This is the first review. It's not the first review we've ever posted, we've got hundreds of reviews online, this is the review that is at the top of every page that it's featured on.  Its name starts with the lowest number of any candy we've reviewed.  So no matter which category page we post it on, it's on top (see).  So click here and see if this top level treat is worth the rank.

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Candy In The Media

Watching popcorn pop in super slow motion is one of the most beautiful things in the world.

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This Week In Candy

This week I discovered something really surprising, it was a happy surprise. This week while wandering through a grocery store, as I'm apt to do, I came across a box of special edition Froot Loops celebrating Canada's 150th birthday.  Then I came across a box of maple cookies (one is picture above) that was sporting a special red colour, also for  Canada's 150th.  I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the snack food industry for this holiday, but the two things I've seen so far impress me.  While the maple cookies didn't surprise me, the Froot Loops really did.  It's made me wonder about what other food companies are going to create special treats for this grand celebration, and more importantly, how they plan to do it.

I think over the next few weeks I'm going to be out on the prowl for special treats celebrating Canada Day this year. Make sure to keep up with our Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr feeds to see what we find. This week I've also decided to celebrate one of the most iconic Canadian desserts on our Instagram feed Snack Facts.  We're going to be posting fun facts about the butter tart all week long. I'm also hoping to record, and post the latest episode of Junk Fud On The Road this week, however it might actually go up next week for reasons.  This episode is going to be about our adventures in Poland.

This week's new review is a Japanese treat, that tastes like Tonkatsu.  The problem with this treat is I'm not really sure what it's called.  The wrapper isn't very clear, but if you know, or can decipher more of the wrapper than I can, let me know so I can adjust the review.  Click here to read the review, and let me know if you can tell me what it says.

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Candy In The Media

Listen to this old school Fry's Turkish Delight commercial's theme music get turned into modern techno.

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This Week In Candy

I've had a recent thought about candy flavours, and it's all about fresh figs.  You don't really have that many fig candies in the modern candy world, and it's a shame.  Likely the most famous sweet with figs is the Fig Newton, and that's just sad.  Mostly because Fig Newtons make people think about figs as dried up brown fruit, and not a juicy red fruit.  When I lived in Greece, I became obsessed with figs, particularly fresh ones.  Now that I'm back home I really miss eating them, and unlike other fruits, I can't even get my fix of fresh figs in the candy world.

I think it's about time some candy companies started to use fresh figs and the base for more candies.  I think a fig gummy, or fig lollipop would be a great way to start.  The fig gummy would be particularly perfect because gummies are also soft like figs.  You could ad some little candy bits to simulate the seeds, and it would be perfect.

I've noticed lately that we've been neglecting our Instagram feed, and haven't had a Snack Fact or entry in the Doughnut Project in a while.  I think this week I'll collect some content and get that ball rolling again.  I've also been on a bit of a baking/candy making kick, so you should expect some new recipes over the summer.  Next weekend I'm thinking of experimenting with a really bizarre baking ingredient that I've recently acquired.  I'm also planning on shooting a new episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with all of this fun stuff as we do it.  I'm also thinking of live streaming a few things on Periscope as well.

This week's new review has the word "fun" in it, but frankly I'm not really sure why.  These are by no means fun at all.  I think even if you like these snacks, you'd probably agree that they're not really fun.  Click here to see why we didn't find these to be fun at all.

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