The Great Question, Pie VS Sundae

 I do realize that I didn't mention McFlurries, but I'm kind of old school like that.

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Go Grab My Treat Filled Alphabet Book

 

If you're a fan of treats, beasts and English grammar, then I have the perfect book for you. Sure you might already know all the letters in the alphabet, but this will keep you in practice, and it's also tones of fun.

Pickup up your very own copy on Amazon, or at bewarethecheese.com/treatsnbeasts/

Bake It Out

 I've put a lot of candy in the oven, and it's always fascinating to watch it bake. This video proves that almost anything in an oven is fun to watch, the weirder the better.

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Strawberry Borders

On a recent trip to the Nordics I came across one of the greatest examples of how much many countries in Europe hate each other. This may seem like an odd topic for a blog about snacks and candy, but this feud was demonstrated to me via food, more specifically strawberries. Our Nordic adventure took us through Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

After just having enjoyed our stop in Helsinki Finland, Allison and I were planning on what to do for our long ferry trip to Stockholm. We had an overnight ferry booked with breakfast, but we didn't have any dinner plans. We were thinking of just eating on the boat, but the price of dinner was astronomical, and with all the amazing markets and restaurants near the waterfront we thought we would make a picnic dinner and eat it on the boat. We found some wonderfully fresh salads at a local store, and decided that a box of fresh strawberries from the market would be the perfect way to finish our meal.

We wandered through the market until we came across a stall filled with every kind of berry you could imagine. Each berry looked amazing, but a friend had suggested that it was strawberry season, and that would be the way to go. The nice lady at the stand helped us pick a nice box of strawberries that would be ready to eat tonight. We had a bit of a debate about how many strawberries to get, so we thought we would ask the lady what she thought. We told her we were taking these strawberries on the ferry to Stockholm and she instantly changed her tune.

Once we mentioned we were taking these strawberries to Sweden, she congratulated us on our choice to bring Finish strawberries to Sweden, as the Swedish strawberries were awful. She went on for a few minutes about how great the Finish strawberries are and how horrible Swedish strawberries were. It was a weird tonal change in the conversation, and we decided not to tell her that the only reason we were buying these strawberries was because we wanted to eat them on the boat, and we weren't building a stockpile of strawberries to keep us going for the rest of our trip.

I will say that Finish strawberries are tasty. We did enjoy our box of strawberries on the ship, and low and behold a few did make it onto Swedish soil. This isn't the only incident of aggression that we had between these neighbouring countries on our trip. We were talking to a man working at a grocery store about our trip, and he asked us what we thought about Sweden. We told him we liked it, but we also liked Finland too. His entire demeanor changed, and he suggested that he hated Finland.

As a follow up, while we were driving through the southern part of Sweden near a town called Ystad, we discovered a road side stand selling strawberries. The minute we saw the stand we knew that we had to sample Swedish strawberries. Had that lady in Finland not been so aggressive, we might have passed this stand by, but knowing that there was a rivalry, we had to see if the Finish strawberries were actually better than the Swedish. We did buy a box at the stand, and I will say that these berries were different, but just to keep relations equal, I'm not going to talk about which were better.

We tried to find a fruit stand or farmers market in Denmark selling strawberries, but we had no luck. That's probably a good thing since I'm all about keeping the peace, and we don't need any more global conflicts right now.

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Snack Facts Is What You Want

 If you want to learn everything you have to know about the snacks that you love, check out Snack Facts. It's a fun comic adventure featuring Sir Francis Sweetums and Barbara where they explore all kinds of fun snacking history and facts.

Pick up your copy right now on Amazon or at candycritic.org/snackfacts/

Chinese New Year Thoughts

 

As you may or may not know, I have a separate list of treats that are themed to various holidays. It includes Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween and a few others. The one holiday that I've always thought about adding, but really couldn't think of treats that are themed to it is New Years. While posting my latest review I realized that I could actually make a category for Chinese New Year. While the western New Year doesn't really have that many treats available, Chinese New Year has so many, including the treat I tasted this week.

Check out this Chinese New Year Kit Kat bar.

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Reese's Puffs Are Popular

 I've always felt like Reese's Puffs cereal was a gimmick idea that actually turned into something many people love. Now it's a staple on the store shelves. Who would have thought?

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Cut And Paste This Episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!

Paste seems like a really bad way to describe almost anything that doesn't clean your teeth.

To follow all my silly adventures, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

For extra stuff check out my Patreon too.

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Check Out My Comic

 I've got a #comic called #BlueOrchid, make sure to check it out and maybe pick up chapter 1.

You can get it on Amazon or at bewarethecheese.com/blueorchid.

Translation Issues

I do my best to try and get the names of every single candy that I review on candycritic.org. There are times however when I'm pretty sure that I got it wrong... but it's all that I've got. This is one of those cases. I can't read any Korean at all. I don't know anyone who I might feel comfortable asking to translate it. The font on the package is a little difficult for any translation software. The name of this treat is likely not "Big In Your Mouth", but that's all I could get. If you happen to know the real name of this treat, please let me know.

You can read the full review of this mysterious treat right here.

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OCD Kit Kat Cereal

 I just want to snap each finger of each tiny cereal square apart.

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Is Cookies and Cream Better Than Chocolate and Hazelnut?

 I feel like comparing this Cookies and Cream spread to Nutella is a little unfair. They're both very different types of spread. I do believe that many sweet spreads out there in the world owe a great deal to Nutella. While Nutella was not the first sweet (non jam) spread out there, I believe it's probably globally the most famous. I believe the fame of Nutella has allowed for new and obscure spreads to get out into the open market. Cookie butters are very popular right now, but I don't believe that we would have them available in so many places if it wasn't for Nutella. Because of this, I figured it was okay to broaden my search for sweet spreads that might be better than Nutella beyond just chocolate and hazelnut themed treats.

While I'm really glad that spreads like a cookies and cream spread exists, I'll be honest and say that I wasn't really a big fan of this one. The crunchy cookie bits were great, and most of the time I'm a huge fan of cookies and cream things. The problem with this spread is that it's too sour. I believe that many cookies and cream treats have a sour component in order to balance out the sweet and heavy cream flavour of the cream. Sour is a flavour that's common in real dairy products, but as we know if a dairy product is too sour it just tastes rotten. I wouldn't say that this tastes rotten, but it felt like it was heading that direction.

Creatively this is really a great idea, as cookies and cream on toast or even some fruit is a great combination. With just a little less sour, this spread would at the very least be a close runner up to Nutella, but as it stands it's most certainly not better than Nutella.

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Pick Up Treats and Beasts

 Jump on the opportunity to pick up one of my books, it's called Treats and Beasts. It's a fun alphabet book featuring beasts and the treats they love. Pick it up on Amazon at or at bewarethecheese.com/treatsnbeasts/.

Another Review-A-Thon

Once a month I dedicate an entire week to reviewing new treats. Sometimes I post a series of treats from a particular company, country or even variety. Sometimes, like this week, it's all pretty random. One might even argue (as I'm sure many people will) that this first entry into the review-a-thon isn't even a candy. Those people I say... well you're probably right, but I reviewed them and here we are.

Make sure to follow my various social medias to keep up with the review-a-thon.

Also check out the first entry, which is probably technically a cookie.

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Pick A Cereal Side

 I love that you get to choose which flavour you want to eat first, but I feel like many boxes of this cereal were sold and only one side eaten.

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The Best of the Best for 2023

 Here's the best treats I've reviewed in 2023. There are a few surprises along the way, but the number 1 review this year is actually fairly predictable.

Be sure to check out the top treats I've ever reviewed right here.

This Shirt Is 8bit Terrific

Pixelated Red Gummy Bear
by candycritic

 Why not celebrate the fact that you love gummy bears and all things retro tech at the same time?

Retro Candy Is Tough

 

I always have a hard time reviewing retro candy. First and foremost it makes me feel old, particularly when a candy was brand new at some point in my life and it's now considered retro. That means that I'm retro and that's not cool.  The other problem I have is that I'm never really sure if retro candy is still the same as it was back in the day. Recipes as well as standards have changed, so it might not be possible to match a treat from days gone by. The final problem I have with retro candy is that expectations have changed. Artificial flavours have improved, flavours have become more extreme and the choices you have today for treats is vastly larger than in the past. This sometimes makes a great retro candy kind of lame by today's standards.

Check out my latest retro review, see how it held up by today's standards.