Get Them Beasts Eating Treats

 If you’re into treats and the beasts that might love them, pick up my fun alphabet book called Treats and Beasts. 

You can get your very own copy right now at bewarethecheese.com/treatsnbeasts/ or on Amazon.

A Little Disappointment

I think the candy world might be one of the few where price often doesn't guarantee success. It's not to say that there aren't any great expensive candies or treats, it's just saying that there are many great very inexpensive treats. I've eaten candies that cost more than their weight in gold, and I've eaten candy that seems like they couldn't possible be making a profit selling the candy on the price of the package alone. In both of these categories I've tasted some amazing treats. I've also tasted some treats in both of these categories that I'd like to forget about.

Check out this latest review, which falls more into the category of I'd like to forget about, but I did pay a premium for it.

Candy Commercials?

 I've been sharing candy commercials on this blog for years, and I've realized that there really not making many candy commercials anymore. It's too bad.

Most Underrated Dessert at Cheesecake Factory

I’m going to suggest something that might seem a little strange, but I believe it to be true. The most underrated cake at the Cheesecake Factory is not a cheesecake at all. The most underrated cake at Cheesecake factory is in fact their carrot cake. This is extremely high praise in my opinion because I’m a huge fan of their cheesecakes. I like their simple classic cheesecakes and I like their extreme cheesecakes. I think I’ve gone on record as saying that their most underrated cheesecake is the banana cream pie cheesecake (as suggested by a waitress in upstate New York, and I can’t thank her enough). 

However, if we talk underrated, I don’t think anyone goes to the “Cheesecake” Factory to get something other than cheesecake for dessert. I don’t blame you for not going outside the box on this, but one day I decided to do just that. I did it because seeing the completely uncut carrot cake at Cheesecake Factory during one of my visits started making me think a little about carrot cakes. More to the point, it made me think about how I’ve never had a bad carrot cake in my life. I’ve already written that blog, so I want to expand on the idea that the carrot cake at Cheesecake Factory is well worth trying.

To start off, how do I know that the carrot cake is unpopular? I’ve been to a few Cheesecake Factories in different parts of the world, and each and every one of them has had carrot cake. On all of those visits I’ve actually noticed that I’ve never seen a slice taken out of the display carrot cake at any Cheesecake Factory ever. While there may be a secret carrot cake in the back that they’re actually taking slices out, I’m betting that it’s more likely that they just don’t sell many slices.

That’s total common sense, as I said before, who goes to a place called Cheesecake Factory and not order the cheesecake?

So we’ve established that it’s likely not very popular, and due to an odd curiosity I once got a slice. Here’s the next level of this story, I’ve bought the carrot cake again since. I’ve probably had at least 3 or 4 slices of Cheesecake Factory carrot cake in the last few years. I don’t get it out of curiosity any more either, I really like it. While I’ve said that I’ve never had a bad carrot cake in my life, I’ve also said that it doesn’t always mean that carrot cake is the best choice at many restaurants and bakeries.

The thing is, after tasting that carrot cake at the Cheesecake Factory the first time, I’m kind of hooked. I have ordered cheesecakes since as well, but I’ve probably had more carrot cake than any one flavour of cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory over the last few years. In my opinion, the great thing about Cheesecake Factory is the variety of cheesecakes. No matter what your mood when dessert comes around (except when you’re so full you’re going to throw up), they have a cheesecake for you.

I love a good variety, and I often love the various flavours of cheesecake available. However, sometimes I can’t pick and it’s not because I’m stuck between two different cheesecakes, it’s because I’m not sure I even want cheesecake.

Now let’s look at what makes this a very good carrot cake. Cake wise it’s very moist and fairly fluffy. I’ve had fluffier carrot cakes in my life, but they tend to be very dry. This one seems to balance fluffiness and moisture out perfectly. The fruits and vegetables in this carrot cake (carrots and raisins) are fine too. There doesn’t seem to be any other fruits hidden in this cake (which I generally don’t like). Both of these elements are well distributed and work well in the cake. 

Now here’s the part where this cake shines, the icing. If you think about it for a minute, it totally makes sense that Cheesecake Factory might have one of the best carrot cake icings in the world. The reason is that traditionally carrot cake uses a cream cheese frosting. Cheesecakes are also traditionally made with cream cheese. So put that together and you get probably the best cream cheese icing I’ve ever eaten. Better still, they don’t skimp on this icing, it’s almost another layer of the cake. One might argue that there’s too much cream cheese icing on this carrot cake, but I don’t agree. I have no real argument about this other than to say that I really love a good cream cheese icing.

I’m never going to tell you not to get the cheesecake at Cheesecake factory, because it’s literally in the name. However, if you ever find yourself undecided, and you can’t figure out what you want, give the carrot cake a thought. Sure if you don’t like carrot cake, you’re not going to like this one, but if you love carrot cake and in particular the cream cheese icing, I feel like you might discover the most underrated cake at Cheesecake Factory. I’ll keep an eye open for you, after all I’ll know if you’ve been around if there’s one slice missing from the carrot cake in the display case.

I Sometimes Eat The Same Candy Twice

 Today I talk about the ways some stores trick me into reviewing the same candy twice.

Some Snack Facts For You

Did you want to learn some fun facts and history about your favourite snacks? Pick up my comic series called Snack Facts!

Get your very own copy at candycritic.org/snackfacts/buy.htm or on Amazon.

Candy Before Christmas

I will admit that as time has gone on, I've become less and less interested in holiday themed treats. It's not that I don't like having treats over the holidays, I'm just finding more and more often that I don't want my treats to be holiday themed. I also find it challenging to find treats that are really unique for the holidays when I'm living in South East Asia (in a country that's mostly Buddhist). Maybe when I eventually move back home I'll find more holiday treats that interest me, but for now I feel like a bit of a Grinch when it comes to holiday treats. Having said that, make sure to check back on December 25th.

Check out my latest review, that has nothing to do with the holidays... sorry.

McHolidays?

 I'm always amazed that McDonald's used to have so many commercials around the holidays, yet they never (as far as I know) have offered a holiday themed food item. I want to eat a McTurkey burger!

Candy Experiment - Coca-Cola VS Oreos VS Coca-Cola Flavoured Oreos VS Oreo Flavoured Coca-Cola

 When Coca-Cola and Oreo do a collaboration, it gets very confusing. Here's my attempt at sorting it all out, and maybe coming up with some kind of idea about how well this collaboration worked.

Get Yourself Some Blue Orchid

In case you didn't know, we've got several issues of Blue Orchid available, as well as t-shirts and even a few free downloads.

Pick up your Blue Orchid comics or merch right now at bewarethecheese.com/blueorchid/ or on Amazon.

Why Do We Call It Dark Chocolate

This week's featured review got me thinking about the words "dark chocolate". While it is a fine enough description, it doesn't really tell the whole story. The koala cookies from this latest review describe it as both "black" and "bitter" chocolate. I have a bit of a problem with the word "black" used to describe chocolate, only because I've never actually had black coloured chocolate. Even the most cocoa filled chocolate I've ever eaten still had a brown tinge to it. Bitter chocolate on the other hand is a really good decryption. It not only describes the flavour well, but it also focuses on the feature that most dark chocolate lovers appreciate most. I've also seen dark chocolates that are only dark in colour, but actually really sweet in flavour. So dark chocolate might not be the thing everyone wants, but bitter chocolate is often the popular flavour note.

Check out the full review of this bitter chocolate treat.

Coca-Cola Is Tied To Christmas

 If you're ever looking to ruin Christmas traditions, just do some research about how Coca-Cola is tied to Christmas. While it might seem innocent enough, you'd be surprised at how much Christmas lore is based on the fact that people weren't drinking Coca-Cola during the holidays.

Japanese Sugar

On a recent trip to a Japanese grocery store I came across a collection of flavoured sugars. While I can’t read the packages my assumption is that you’re supposed to sprinkle this sugar onto toast (likely with butter) to give plain toast a sweet boost. While I think this is a good idea, I feel like there’s more you can do with these sweet sprinkles, and toast is only the beginning. So I picked up 3 of the flavours and I’ve decided to do a taste test and not only see which is best, but which one works beyond toast.

To get started I figured I would taste test them with toast as intended.

The first flavour I picked up was Melon-Pan. Now I don’t have a history of enjoying melon flavoured... well.. anything, but the one exception is Melon-Pan (or melon buns) from Japan. I not only enjoy these melon flavoured buns, but I seek them out every time I visit Japan. The main reason I love them is that they really only have a hint of melon, and the rest is a wonderful buttery flavour.

This Melon-Pan Toast flavour on the other hand is very melon heavy. I’ll be honest, I was kind of expecting this, but I figured I’d give it a try anyways. I’m sure if you slathered your toast with even more butter the flavour would die down a bit, but at this point I find it to be a little too melon forward for my liking.

Next I decided to try the Vanilla Sugar flavour. This one seemed like the simplest of them all and also seemed to be the most versatile. It even feels like the kind of sugar sprinkle you could use for baking in a pinch. The real trick of this particular sugar is that the quality of the vanilla has to be fairly good for it to work. A cheap/fake vanilla flavour might be a little off putting.

On toast the vanilla seems pretty good. I’m not entirely confident that it’s pure vanilla extract, but I feel like it might be a blend of fake and real vanilla. There appears to be some black spots in it, which could be vanilla bean. The flavour works well on this toast, however I wonder if the flavour of the whole wheat bread is helping it out a bit.

Finally I went with the most ambitious of all of these sugar sprinkles, Caramel Cinnamon. This is either going to be the best of the bunch, or it might disappoint. The flavours are fairly common with this kind of treat, after all cinnamon and sugar is probably the oldest sweet toast powder out there. I’m just worried that they might over do it and it might just be overly sweet.

On the toast this one kind of disappoints. The problem isn’t the cinnamon, but the caramel. In hindsight I should have thought about that before getting it. Caramel is really just a form of sugar, and hardened caramel can sometimes just taste like brown sugar. If you don’t burn the caramel a little in this case, the flavour can be too subtle and lost. That’s pretty much what we have here, it really just tastes like cinnamon sugar. Not that it’s a bad thing, but there’s nothing really special about it.

Now it’s time to expand the tasting and see if these sugar sprinkles work on other foods. I decided to start with apples.

The Melon-Pan sugar just didn’t work at all. I thought maybe there would be a hope, since they’re both fruit, but the melon is just too fake a flavour and it really clashes with the real apple. I’ll be honest, I don’t have much hope for the Melon-Pan at this point, but I’ll keep trying.

The vanilla is fine, but with the real apple flavour it seems to highlight how strong or possibly fake the vanilla flavour is. Again, I’m fairly certain there’s real vanilla in these sugar sprinkles, but I’m not convinced it’s all real vanilla. There’s just something odd about the flavour of this apple and the vanilla.

Cinnamon, sugar and apples, it’s a match made in heaven, and works here as well. It’s a fine flavour combination that’s been around forever. Again, the caramel doesn’t really come through, but I really enjoyed this as it was anyways.

I’ve decided to stay with fruit, and I went for a banana next.

Melon-Pan didn’t really have a hope of working with a banana. I guess if you really like this fake melon flavour, and don’t really like bananas, then you might enjoy this. The melon flavour is just too strong and doesn’t work with the banana, but covers it up instead.

The Vanilla is surprisingly good. I’ve used banana and vanilla together in baking, but I’ve never thought of just putting vanilla on a banana before. It’s doing what vanilla often does in baking and making the banana taste a little better.

I thought the Caramel Cinnamon would work, but I’m wrong. I can taste the banana, and I can taste the cinnamon (still no real caramel flavour) but at no point do they really merge into their own flavour combination. It’s as if they’re each fighting to be the dominant flavour, rather than working together.

Popcorn seems to make sense... right?

I’ll be honest, I don’t hold much hope for the Melon Pan sugar. It’s not surprising that melon flavoured popcorn isn’t that great. As I’ve said before, if you like fake melon flavour maybe you’ll like this, but I do not. I didn’t have much hope of this tasting good and I was rewarded as expected.

While the Melon may not be great, the Vanilla keeps surprising me. As it turns out, vanilla popcorn kind of works. Like the banana, the vanilla doesn’t just add a flavour, but it seems to bring up the original flavour of the popcorn. I’ve said it before, but I believe vanilla is the most important flavour in all of snacks and candy. This latest experiment is only proving it more true.

The Caramel Cinnamon was fine. I would not be disappointed if I was given a bowl of this popcorn, but I’m not sure I’d ever order it myself. The biggest problem is one that’s been happening this entire time, and that’s the lack of caramel. My popcorn was a little sweeter with a hint of cinnamon. Tasty enough, but nothing worth shouting about.

Melon is the last hope.

I’m pretty sure that you can guess that I decided to try using a melon in hopes that it might merge or even improve the real melon. Unfortunately it does not. It also disproves a theory I had about why I don’t like most fake melon flavoured treats. I used to believe that the key to a melon flavour working the refreshing texture you get with a real melon. However after tasting this I don’t believe that to be true anymore. The fake melon flavour is not improved with a real melon texture.

Vanilla is continuing to be the super hero of this taste test. I thought that it might be fine, but it’s actually blowing away the competition. I’m starting to think that I might start keeping a jar of vanilla flavoured sugar on hand, just to improve all kinds of snacks. While the melon wasn’t my favourite treat, it was improved with a little vanilla.

Cinnamon just doesn’t really work with melon. I don’t think I was expecting it to, but I might have been hoping to be pleasantly surprised. While it wasn’t gross, it also wasn’t great.

Get Some Treats and Beasts Right Now!

If you love treats, beast and/or the alphabet, then I have the perfect book for you.

Pick up my fun illustrated book called Treats and Beasts right now at bewarethecheese.com/treatsnbeasts/ or on Amazon.

Dairy Milk Is Just Good Chocolate

I've reviewed a lot of Dairy Milk bars on candycritic.org, almost 30 of them, but I'm probably going to continue to review more. The main reason I keep reviewing them is that there's one very important consistent, quality of chocolate. I know that if I eat a Dairy Milk bar, not matter what the extra ingredients might be, I know that the chocolate is likely not going to ruin it. It makes tasting these bars a little more fun, because I know that whatever they put into the bar, the chocolate is only going to make it better.

Check out my latest Dairy Milk bar review.

Every Year I Post This

 I post this commercial every single year around this time because it just makes me happy.

Quick List - The Best Candies For Each Letter of the Alphabet - L-P

A quick list of the best candies from each letter of the alphabet. This time we're going to be checking out L through P.

Check out all my review for every letter of the alphabet right now at www.candycritic.org/alphareview.htm

Learn Some Snack Facts!

If you want to learn some fun facts about the snacks you love, why not pick Snack Facts. It's a collection of comics featuring Sir Francis Sweetums and his assistant Barbara as they explore the snacking world.

You can pick up all things Snack Facts at candycritic.org/snackfacts/ or on Amazon.

Potato Chips and Candy Critic

I thought I would use today's review to highlight one of the biggest complaints I get about this site. Many people tell me that since I'm writing a site dedicated to reviewing candy, that I should not include potato chips. I will not argue with anyone that potato chips are not candy. The thing is, I just couldn't leave them out. While they're not technically candy themselves, I think we can all agree that they're kind of similar in many ways. In stores the chips and and candy are often close to each other. The times we eat chips and candy are often the same.

Check out my latest potato chip review, and stop complaining that they're not candy.