Ube Love

 There are certain dessert and sweet ingredients that one associates with certain countries around the world. Turkish delight, Swiss chocolate, Thai Mango Sticky Rice just to name a few. The Philippines however has an ingredient that is not only popular there, but even grows there. In fact this ingredient was first discovered growing there and is considered the place of origin. This is actually fairly rare for treats to be native and still considered their native dish. I’m talking about ube, and it’s a pretty amazing sweet treat.

Ube translates to tuber, and as you might of guessed is a potato. It’s a sweet potato that has one amazing feature, it’s really purple. I don’t know if there is any other natural food in the world that is this purple. It’s such an amazing hue of purple that I’m surprised it’s not one of the most Instragramed foods in the world. It’s beautiful, and it keeps its colour no matter what application you use it.

This ingredient is everywhere in Filipino cooking, particularly in desserts. You won’t find a menu at any restaurant or bakery that doesn’t have something that’s bright purple in the Philippines. Whether you bake with it, or use it as a sauce, it has such a unique stamp that you know for sure what’s going on. The other advantage is that it actually tastes pretty good as well. On its own it has a fairly sweet flavour with a slight nuttiness. This makes it a great flavour for so many desserts and gives a bit of sweet that isn’t too overpowering.

Probably the most common way to enjoy ube is in a jam form. This jam is often used inside baked goods from croissant to mochi. You can also get the jam on its own, which I imagine you could even spread on toast if you like. Honestly I’m not sure what the traditional uses for ube jam are, because today it’s just used so many ways that it’s hard to pinpoint down an exact history.

While the jam is the most popular, there are many other uses for this purple potato. There are several different ice cream brands that offer an ube flavoured ice cream. There’s even one that makes a chocolate covered ice cream bar, but they also add ube to the chocolate to give it a nutty flavour and very purple colour. I also recently tried a rice porridge (like a rice pudding) that was ube flavoured. It was really great because the nutty flavour of the potato cut through the sweet flavour of the rice porridge really well. I feel like there are endless ways you could use this ingredient, and I think it’s about time Kit Kat came up with an ube bar.

When you first see this purple potato, it kind of shocks your system. It’s so bold and bright that you expect one of two things. You either expect it to blow your socks off with the flavour, or you expect it to be all show with no flavour. The good thing is it’s neither. Ube is a wonderful, slightly sweet flavour with a wonderful nutty kick. If you ever find yourself in the Philippines (or in the presence of a good Filipino cook) and they offer you something bright purple, go for it, you won’t regret it at all.

Candy In The Media - How They Make Kit Kat... Or At Least Where They Get The Ingredients

It's pretty amazing to see what goes into making one of the best chocolate bars ever.

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Candy Critic Dessert Club – The Simplest Recipe Ever - Banana Ice Cream

This is probably the simplest dessert you'll ever make, it's not necessarily a fast dessert, particularly because you have to wait for it to chill, but the ingredients can be very simple.  The part where this recipe can get complicated is totally in your control.  The base ingredient, banana, is all you "need", anything after that is up to you, and can be as complicated as you want.  The other great thing about this recipe is for those out there with lactose intolerance, it's ice cream with no cream.

The Ingredients:

2 or 3 heaping tablespoon fulls of Nutella, or 2 or 3 heaping tablespoons of peanut butter, or a generous amount of coaco powder, or half a cup of walnuts... pretty much anything you can think of that would work to flavour ice cream.
5 Bananas

You'll also need a blender.

That's it.

The first part of this recipe is probably the most complicated part.  There are two things that might make this harder than it needs to be.  The first is your bananas, the riper your bananas the better.  If you find yourself with a bunch of bananas that seem to be going bad, but you don't have time to make this recipe, I recommend peeling them, and putting them in the freezer.  Then when you're ready to make your banana ice cream, thaw them out and put them in your blender.  If you're making this with "fresh" ripe bananas simply put them in the blender.  The consistency of your bananas is key for the first part of this recipe.  If your bananas are not ripe enough you'll run into some problems with your blender.  If your bananas aren't that ripe, but you still want to make this ice cream, chop up your bananas and ad them to your blender.  It may take a little while longer to blend them, and you may have to push them down a few times before everything starts to come together.

The second "difficult" part of this recipe is all about what you put in it.  If you love bananas, stop after you've blended the bananas and you're good.  If you want to ad more to the recipe there are several options.  My favorites are peanut butter and Nutella.  Both of these ingredients ad a lot of flavour to the ice cream and blend really well.  If you're worried about sugar, you can simply ad cocoa powder, and that works fairly well.  I've never tried this, but vanilla, berries, or anything soft would probably work as well.  Once you've got the soft ingredients blended to a soupy consistency, you can ad anything for texture, if you'd like.  Crushed walnuts or hazelnuts work, marshmallows might be fun too.  Blend your hard ingredients, but only for a few pulses of your blender.  You could also just mix them around with a spoon or spatula if you'd like as well.

Once your ingredients are all mixed together, take the wonderful banana soup and put it in a freezer friendly container with a lid.  Put the container in your freezer, and in a few hours, depending on how cold your freezer is, you'll have ice cream.  If your freezer is really cold, it may come out very hard (since there's no air injected into it).  If that's the case, simply microwave your ice cream for about 15 to 20 seconds to soften it up.  No matter what you'll taste banana in this ice cream, but with some nice additional ingredients it can be so much more.

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The 3rd Episode of the Junk Fud podcast is Here!

The third episode of the Junk Fud podcast is here, and for this episode we're talking ingredients.  Since recording this episode several of the guests have complained to me that they've been suffering with post podcast confusion as to what exactly an "ingredient" might be.  So check out this fun episode of Junk Fud where me and my friends look at "what is an ingredient".

Click here to check it out.

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Friday Candy Video

I think candy companies should be required to make their ingredient lists rhyme.  That way I could sing fun little songs about all the stuff in my junk food.

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Classic/Creative Candy Advertising

It looks like she's about to smear this mars bar all over her face.  I wonder if this is how I look when I eat a really tasty chocolate bar?  I do really like the ingredient list, with photos, on the bottom of the ad.  I also really like the old Mars bar package, I wonder if they'd consider bringing it back?

I found this ad here.

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Halloween Link-O-Rama Part 5

Unreal candy has made some Halloween treats with no extra ingredients.

So why do you think you might be getting a poison chocolate bar or a razor blade in your apple this year?

Another awesome demon Halloween cake, this one with 100% more horse awesomeness.

I like the idea of candy corn being such a big influence on other foods, I'm a little baffled though because so many people hate candy corn.

USA Today has a list of the most popular Halloween candy in the USA, did your favorite treat make the list?

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Cheez Whiz Ingredients

 I'm working on an art project right now that involves collecting as many spreadable food products as I can find.  You can read more about it here.  One  of the products I used was Cheez Whiz.  It's been years since I've eaten Cheez Whiz, and I have to confess, it tastes pretty good.

 I was however, a little shocked when I read this on the label.

While I won't put this product down as being gross, because it's kind of tasty, I'm not 100% sure that it contains "no artificial flavours or colours".

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Tuesday's Candy Links

What is "value-added or functional confectionery"?  It sounds to me like a great way to ruin candy and deceive people into believing their eating healthy food.

Here's a great look at how expiration dates work, but what I want to know is, why don't more candies have expiration dates?

Proof that candy stores do a lot of good, a whole lot of good.

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Monday's Candy Links

Maltesers is going to release some cool retro commercials to celebrate 75 years of candy making.

Flavoured beers are strange, almost as strange as other things that are flavored like beer.

You think you know the food you're eating?  Well what's the main ingredient?

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Thursday's Candy Links

New Coke can design seems like the Voltron of coke cans.

Big companies are looking to go more natural with colours and flavours, or so says the research.

Speaking of more natural ingredients, a company called Simply Eight seems to have a really great idea on how to keep treats more natural.

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Why I Think Organic and Natural Candy Is Good

I'm not going to say that I like all organic and natural candy, however I will say that more often than not these candies are good.  I don't believe, however, that the ingredients are the key to this candies success.  I think the key is the fact that most organic and natural candy manufacturers tend to worry about small details more than the companies that don't go natural.  They have to in order to be able to market as natural or organic, so you often find that the quality is very high.

Click here to read about one such company.

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New Kit Kat Bar "Chunky3"

I just read a description of the new Chunky3 Kit Kat bar and I'm baffled by one particular portion of this description:

"Nestlé has launched a new addition to its Kit Kat range, the Kit Kat Chunky3, which features the brand's signature wafer, topped with three breakable chunks containing three separate textures - fudge, crisp and sauce."

What the heck is "sauce"?  I consider gravy to be a kind of sauce, so does it have gravy?  I also consider getting sauced to be valid, so is there booze in it?

Click here to read more.

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This Ice Cream Tastes a Little Woody?

That's because there's wood pulp in ice cream.  Yup, scoop up a big ball of smooth, cool, creamy, wood filled delight.  Wood pulp is used in ice cream to economically create the texture that most people love to eat.  Personally I don't mind chewing on wood in my food, but I'm a compulsive pencil chewer too.

Click here to read about what's in your ice cream.

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