Is Maple The Official Flavour of Canada

As a Canadian I struggle to define the flavours of my own country. I've given several answers to the question about our national dish. I've told people it's poutine, baked potatoes, and even ketchup chips. The one thing however that most of the world associates with Canadian food is maple syrup. The problem is maple syrup isn't really a dish as much as it's an ingredient. I also get a lot of push back from Americans in Vermont. So what do you think is Canada's national dish, and does it even have maple syrup in it?

Check out my most recent maple flavoured Canadian treat review.

CC

Subtle Flavours Should Be Cherished

So as you may or may not know, there is a possibility that I have Covid right now (I don't know for sure as in Canada the only people that can be tested are vulnerable people and those working with vulnerable people). At this point my symptoms are mild and in general I'm still able to do almost everything I did before, except go outside. Today's candy review did remind me that some people lose their sense of taste. This makes me a little nervous because treats like these marshmallows require not only a basic sense of taste, but the ability to taste subtle flavours. I have set up a few fail safes if I was to ever get sick or lose my sense of taste (temporarily). I actually have many candy reviews done in advance that I can post at any time. While we live in crazy times, I always want to make sure you can read a new candy review each week.

Check out this subtly flavoured treat that I'm thankful that I'm able to taste.

If you want to keep up with the day to day lockdown adventures, make sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter too.

For extra stuff, including what I'm taste testing right now, join me on Patreon.

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Candy In the Media - Nature's Candy Turned Into Something Amazing... Or Horrible

This is either the greatest idea ever thought of, or the worst abomination ever conceived, either way I'd be happy to give it a try.

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It’s Our Monday Morning Breakfast Thoughts From Japan!

In this special episode Chris is at KFC in Japan, and he’s enjoying a biscuit. The thing about these biscuits is they’re good, really good, maybe better than the biscuits you get at KFC in the USA.

Check out the video here, and make sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter to keep up with all our travel videos.

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Candy In The Media - Apparently Waffles Was A Thing

I must have missed this when it originally came out, but frankly I can't see how. It's entertaining and I pretty much agree completely with the sentiment of the song.

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This Week In Candy

Winter is in full force, and here in Ottawa (where I'm living right now) Winterlude is on.  Winterlude is a celebration of snow and ice, or as I like to call it a desperate attempt to make the cold weather fun.  The good thing is that Ottawa does a great job at making it fun, and after a day of walking around town bundled up, I almost forgot about the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers. One thing that I came across on our Winterlude adventure was a treat that truly represents the cold days of winter, and has no relation to Christmas or Valentine's Day, and that's tire d'érable. Tire d'érable is boiled maple syrup pored on snow and frozen into a tasty treat. I'm not sure if this is a thing anywhere else in the world (Vermont maybe?), but to me it represents winter in Canada perfectly.

Speaking of winter treats, this week we'll be releasing our three winter themed candies we'd like to see.  Check back later this week for our ideas on treats with a winter theme, one of them might even help you out on these cold days.  Today we're going to go through all of those Superbowl commercials, and tomorrow we'll post our favorite candy/snack themed ones.  So far it looks like it's all the regular Superbowl advertisers, and frankly I haven't seen anything that's blown me away, but I have a few more to go through still.

This week's new review is from our friends at Weaver Nut, Sweets, and Snacks. They sent us a box full of interesting treats, but we thought these Pure Milk Chocolate Buttercrunch With Almonds squares looked the most interesting. Check out our review here.

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This Week In Candy

This is a busy week here at Candy Critic because we've got a lot of content to put together for the rest of the summer and early fall.  Why do you ask is all of this prep-work necessary?  Well we're moving... again.  Although many of you have no idea where we are right now, all I can say is that we're in Asia somewhere.  The thing is, we're going back home, to Canada, and we're leaving sometime this summer.  We'll have a stop over in Florida as well to enjoy the happiest place on earth Disney World. What that means for this blog, and Candy Critic is that we have pre-prep a lot of content.  We don't want things empty while we're moving.

Our first goal, which has been met, and that was to make Candy Critic portable.  We can now update Candy Critic, and this very blog (as well as our video show and podcast) from just about anywhere with an internet connection. Our next step was to get our regular posts ready to go while we were in transition, that's done too.  So while we're moving you'll still see our weekly regular posts including our Candy Thing and Candy In The Media.  Our last goal, which will be working on this week, and likely next week, is to get future episodes of our podcast Junk Fud, our video show Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!, and some special posts for the blog read to go and pre-posted as much as possible.  All this and we're still writing and keeping up things for this week as well.

Speaking of this week, on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we'll be looking at my favorite Canadian flavour, maple syrup.  All this week on Snack Facts we'll be posting fun facts about the greatest sugar in the world.  You can follow Snack Facts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

And just because we're super busy,  doesn't let us off the hook for today's new review.  We've decided to post a classic Canadian candy in honour of our homecoming.  It may not seem like a classic Canadian treat, but all Canadian kids are very familiar with any of the Maynards gummies.  Click here to read this great review.

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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.

CC

This Week In Candy

Over the last 6 months or so I've become very interested in ration packs. As it turns out I'm not the only person with such an interest.  In fact since writing the articles I've talked to several people about these random packages of food specially designed to keep soldiers fed.  I've also been offered more ration packs to write about.  So every day this week I'm going to review a different ration pack for lunch.  The thing to keep in mind about ration packs is that they're designed to last.  Most of them have a shelf life of 3 or 4 years, and can survive in very cold or very hot environments. Because they're designed to last, you never really know how tasty they'll turn out, it's always a surprise (good or bad). I'm having my first ration pack lunch today, and I'll have another tomorrow, all the way till Friday.

Some of you who have listened to our podcast Junk Fud, may know about our good friend Mark who has appeared on the podcast several times.  Mark has suggested that we update the podcast, and the two of us are looking to re-format the whole show.  We've been spending the last month brainstorming some ideas for the show, and we hope to have it online soon.  If you have any ideas you think might work, let me know, we're also looking for guests to interview about candy, snacks, or fast food.

This week on our Instagram feed called Snack Facts, we're looking at sugar.  We're looking at several kinds of sugar, and we're going to post a fun fact about the sweet stuff every day.  So check out our Instagram feed daily and find out something new about the sweet stuff.  If you don't use Instagram, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page as well.

Last week was my birthday, and I ate a lot of cake. In fact I went to a buffet for my birthday dinner so I could specifically sample as many cakes as possible at one time.  So I thought it would be appropriate to review a fun cake themed treat this week on Candy Critic.  Who would have thought of crossing Peeps and birthday cake?

CC

Canadian Candy List - Part 8 - Most Canadian

Over the last few years I've been living away from my home country, Canada.  I've been traveling the world exploring all kinds of snack foods, junk foods, and sweets, but my heart is still in Canada.  I'm going to be back home for an extended period, and I've decided to compile various lists on the theme of Canadian candy and snacks.  Each week, for the next several weeks, I'll be posting a different list of Canadian candies I've reviewed in various categories.  Some of these treats may be available in other parts of the world, some are exclusive to the Great White North, but in my mind all of them are Canadian.

Some Canadian candy tastes great, other candies are fun to eat, but some Canadian candies are truly Canadian.  These candies represent everything it is to be Canadian, some are obvious, some are cultural things only locals would know.

 Some Canadians might argue that a chocolate bar from one of the Toronto Maple Leafs isn't really Canadian, it's more Torontonian.  Well since my Canada includes Toronto (mostly because it's my home town) I'm going to include this bar.  Frankly the bar itself was nothing special, but the idea that a hockey player "endorsed" it is what makes it Canadian.

Click here to read the Doug Gilmour 'Celebrity Candy Bar' review.

I'm pretty sure that just about every single Canadian has some kind of fond memory of eating maple sugar.  I have many, but almost all of them are associated with the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.  We used to go every year, and it wouldn't be a proper visit without a taste of maple sugar.  It's also very Canadian when you consider that most of the worlds maple syrup comes from Canada.

Click here to read the Maple Sugar review.

 I posted about the Oh Henry "Oh Canada" bar on my earlier list of best Canadian variety treats.  All I can tell you is that eating one of these bars is the closest you can get to eating a Canadian flag.  It's easily the most Canadian patriotic candy bar I've ever tasted.

Click here to read the Oh Henry "Oh Canada" review.

If you think about Canada, you really think about down home people.  Canada is full of people who welcome everyone and are always super polite.  However, if you want to know where this is the most true, few provinces can beat out Prince Edward Island.  When I visited this awesome province every single time I crossed a street every car would stop (even when I was jay walking).  People would always welcome you into their homes, and the food was simple and very tasty.  When I eat a bag of PEI potato chips I'm reminded of how nice a place Canada is to live.

Click here to read the Prince Edward Island Potato Bag Chips review.

One of the great things about Canada is that it's a country of innovation.  No candy represents Canada, and innovation better than this Canadian Maple candy floss.  It takes a sweet treat that's been around for hundreds of years, and spins it into something brand new.  Unfortunately this particular brand of candy floss is no longer being made, but I'm hoping that another company takes this idea, because it's really great.

Click here to read the Organic Candy Floss "Canadian Maple" review.


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Another Update Of My Canadian Adventures

Well it's been a while since I've been able to sit at my laptop and collect my Canadian candy/junk food/treat thoughts, so this post is going to be a long one.  Some of these experiences have been mentioned on our Twitter feed, Facebook page, and Tumblr page already, but I'll get into a little more detail.  A few of these fun adventures are new as well. This first photo is of a peanut plant, and I can't say that I've ever seen one before.  It's on my friend's organic farm, and hopefully he'll send me a photo of the crop once it's ready.

For the next few photos I'm going to talk a little bit about the fast food that I've sampled on this journey.  This first photos is of the new Wendy's pretzel burger.  I'm not really sure why they call it a pretzel burger because the bun isn't really pretzel like at all.  I guess it kind of looks like a pretzel, but that doesn't cut it for me.  I think the dough should have been much more dense, and maybe a sprinkling of salt on the top would have worked.

This next treat is what I consider to be the best and worst idea of the trip so far.  Some might argue, but I'm pretty sure that Toronto has the best quality street hot dogs in the world.  Those that argue that New York has better street hot dogs are delusional.  The meat and topping selection in Toronto street meat is second to none.  While I do believe that Toronto hot dogs are the best, they will still often lead to indigestion.

Another important stop for us whenever we're in Toronto is Burrito Boyz.  Toronto has had a big influx of burrito places over the last few years, and I'm sure some might say that there's better burritos out there. The thing is Burrito Boyz is pretty tasty, and it's been our favorite burrito place since we first started going out.

This pizza is the thing of legend. No we didn't take a side trip to Chicago, this is all Hamilton Ontario.  There's a little place hidden in the backstreets of this steel town called "Chicago Style Pizza" that offers what I can only describe as the best pizza in the world.  It's full of cheese and ingredients, and will make you regret eating it the minute you stand up.  The meat lovers version of this pizza is called "No Self Respect", and it's true.

You can't visit Canada and not eat copious amounts of meat, it's un-patriotic.  I'd just like to ad that only 4 people pretty much polished this platter of dead animals off in one sitting.  We weren't proud, but we were full.

This place has the best sign ever, and being a photographer I love the name too.  Unfortunately it's out of business.  I've noticed a few grilled cheese places out of business on this trip.  It appears that I've completely missed the grill cheese craze.  Was it good, was it something worth doing, or was it just a silly fad?

The person that thought of mixing Jamaican and Italian cuisine together is either a genius or a monster.  The place was closed when I walked by it the other day, but I sense I might have to check it out later.

We decided that a road trip to Niagara was in the cards this past week, and no trip to Niagara is complete without visiting Maple Leaf Fudge.  This is probably my favorite fudge shop in the world. They had a few new interesting flavours on hand to sample including peach, butter tart, and maple bacon.  I decided that I would just go for a simple slice of chocolate nut, but I'll be back.

Allison told me that I couldn't have a full bowl of Froot Loops. She did agree that I could throw a few on top of my Cherios though.  As it turns out a few Froot Loops sprinkled in a bowl of Cherios is pretty good.  The sweet fake fruit flavour is well balanced with the nutritious grain flavour. If you're the type of person that normally sweetens their cereal with a little sugar, you may want to consider sweetening your healthy cereal with sugary cereal instead.

I'm not sure what I think of this "World's Largest  Hershey's Kiss".  It's not really a giant Kiss, and more of a thin shell of chocolate, holding a bunch of regular Kiss's.  I was thinking of picking it up, but in the end I decided that it just seemed like a rip off.  If you're going to sell me a giant Kiss, it better be solid and covered in foil.

On our trip to Hamilton Allison informed me that there was a Tim Horton's that sold a particular style of Timbit.  This style of Timbit is only available in 6 Tim Hortons around the world. The question is, was it worth searching it out...

The answer is yes.  In fact I encourage ever  Tim Hortons to carry this awesome Timbit, that way I don't have to travel so far to get it.  What you have here is a vanilla sour cream Timbit, covered in  chocolate glaze.  Here's a tip from Allison, while this Timbit is tasty fresh, as a day old it's even better.  The glaze gets a little crunchy a day later, and the sour cream dough is still soft.  It adds an interesting texture to this already tasty donut.

Speaking of Tim Hortons, did you know  that they have rules as to how many donuts they can fit in each bag.  Personally I don't think you should ever put any donut in this bag if it has icing.  I'm tempted to order 10 Timbits one day, and see if they'll put it in a bag anyways.  Then I'll complain to the management.

One night Allison and I visited Allison's family at their country home.  Every few years this farm produces some maple syrup from the local trees.  I was asked if I wanted to make some maple candy with their home made syrup, and being who I am, I couldn't refuse.  I learned a few interesting facts about maple syrup that night.

First of all I learned that you can freeze maple syrup.  Now any syrup experts out there correct me if I'm wrong, but all you have to do is put your syrup in the freezer, then when you're ready to us it, just let it thaw.  The crystals will simply break apart and in no time you have perfectly tasty syrup ready to go.  The second thing I learned is that I'm not really great at making candy, but I'm still good at eating it.

A couple of days ago we spent some time with our friends Adriana and Alessandra. Adriana is a former pastry chef (and often advisor for this blog), and her daughter Alessandra has tasted Nutella on more things than anyone I know (I'm told that it's surprisingly tasty on flank steak).  We spent a few days hanging out with them, playing board games, and most importantly talking food.  Alessandra introduced me to microwave cookies, made in a mug or ramekin.

It's a similar idea to cooking cake in  mug (which I highly recommend  you try), so you have to be sure not to over cook it.  If you're siting at home right now, and you want a cookie, than all it takes is a few basic ingredients, a microwave, and a mug.  It's really tasty, and with a scoop of ice cream, it will satisfy all of your sweet cravings.

Finally Adriana gave me a pie.  When a pastry chef gives you a pie that they made at home you might as well kill yourself when you finish eating it, because it's all down hill from there.  This pie made from fresh berries was amazing.  Best of all she let me help her make it.  Adriana is so good at making pies that she will often substitute money for her desserts, and it works.  Imagine paying for your gym membership with pie, that's how good her desserts are.

Well that's it for  now from my adventure in Canada.  I'll try to post another entry later in my journeys.

CC

Sweeter Than Sugar?

There are so many products in the food industry that try to replace white refined sugar with something more "healthy". White refined sugar has become public enemy number one to many people, but yet people still want their food to be sweet.  This has created many movements and industries with the simple goal of eliminating refined white sugar while keeping our food sweet.  I can't say that I'm against these changes,  I even tend to use more natural sugars when I bake.  I also drink many diet beverages using these synthetic sweeteners.   I'm not saying that I don't like refined white sugar, I'm just saying that I like variety, and I'm convinced that you can have too much sugar in your diet.

The thing I'm not convinced is that these substitutes  be it natural sugars or sugar replacements, can replace white sugar all together.  There are certain foods, drinks and sweets that I'm not sure would work with these replacements.  One thing I recently realized is that I'm not really sure what many of these substitutes taste like compared to white sugar.  So I've decided to sample a nice wide range of sugar replacements and see how they compare to the pure white stuff.  For this taste test I'm going to sample the sweeteners on their own, and stirred into iced tea.  I've decided to use iced tea because I think it has a fairly neutral flavour that will allow the sweeteners to shine.  So here's our selection of sweet replacements:

White Refined Sugar - This is pretty much the standard, I know I like it well enough, but I'm not sure if it'll be my favorite.

On it's own refined white sugar has very little flavour other than sweet.  That's the main advantage to using it when you're cooking, it doesn't change the flavour, it just adds sweet.  Notionally this is what you'd want from any other sweetener as well, unless you're also looking for an additional flavour as well.

In iced tea the sugar eliminates the bitterness of the tea, and adds a nice sweetness.  The problem one gets with sugar however is that you can over do it very easily.  Too much sugar can overpower, and that can lead to headaches, sore teeth, and stomach aches.  Sugar also doesn't mix into cool liquids very well, and even with a great deal of stirring, you're bound to have a sugary sludge at the bottom of your glass.

Stevia - This is the latest trendy sugar replacement, I have it in a powdered concentrated form.

If you sample Stevia powder on its own you're in for a pretty shocking flavour.  Stevia has a really bitter flavour that coats your taste buds.  It's not that pleasant at all on its own.  According to the research I've done it's one of the most powerful sweeteners and that is obvious by it's very strong flavour.

The strange thing about Stevia is once I added it to my iced tea the bitterness goes away.  I was left with a super sweet drink after only adding a very small amount.  The great thing about this stuff as a sweetener, in powder form, was how well it dissolved in the iced tea.  It took a few stirs to get rid of a couple of lumps, but once stirred I didn't get any traces of it, except for a really sweet iced tea.

Splenda - This is the classic sugar replacement, it's apparently made from sugar, but I'm not really sure why it's healthier.

I can't say that I remember ever having sampled Splenda on its own before.  I know that I've had it in baked goods and sweet treats in the past, but just tasting it is new to me.  Most surprising was how tasty it is.  I was expecting a chemical taste, but it was just sweet.  It wasn't the same kind of sweet as the white sugar, but it was very close.

In the iced tea it was the best, better than even the white sugar.  It sweetened it up really well, it didn't have much of an after taste, and it dissolved instantly (even faster than the Stevia).  I've had a few baked treats in the past with Splenda, and I've noticed a bit of a metallic flavour, but in iced tea it wasn't that bad at all.  Also, unlike the Stevia, the flavour was not overpowering, and it acted more like sugar in the amount that I used.

Honey - This is a nice quality locally made honey, I like using it on my yogurt in the mornings, and I often bake with it.

Honey is one of my favorite sweeteners to use in many desserts and baked goods.  I usually replace any sugar I'm supposed to use when I bake breads or cake and I use honey instead.  To me honey is go to ingredient when I don't want to use sugar.  Most importantly when cooking, honey dissolves a lot faster than sugar, so it's a little easier to use.

In the case of iced tea however, honey is pretty useless.  The only problems with honey is that it has a slight flavour (unlike the sweeteners or white sugar) and it only dissolves with heat.  Since the iced tea was cold, it didn't seem to dissolve at all.  So my iced tea was pretty much not affected at all, except for a few gobs of honey on the spoon and on the bottom of my glass.

Maple Syrup - If I didn't include a nice high quality maple syrup, I'd probably have to renounce my Canadian citizenship.

Right after honey, maple syrup is my second go to sweetener when baking.  It reacts pretty much the same as honey, only with a bit of a stronger flavour. The flavour can be best described as a sweet woody flavour.  Fortunately for me I love this flavour, and I think it goes well with many baked goods.  If you don't want the woody flavour however, maple syrup really isn't that great to use.

As far as in iced tea I was really surprised at how much I like it.  I didn't expect the flavours of the tea and the maple syrup to work well together, but they do.  I think it's because tea has an earthy flavour, and so does the syrup.  Even more surprising was how well the maple syrup dissolved into the iced tea.  I was expecting it to react similarly to the honey and stay as a single glob.  The maple syrup dissolved instantly, and after a couple of stirs it was fully incorporated.  The flavoures it added to the tea were great, and it blended perfectly.

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