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.

It's Just Sugar In A Straw... Or Is It.

Pixy Stix are probably one of the most mocked candy out there. The general assumption is that it's just sugar in a tube. While I can't deny that these are very sugary, and they are in a tube, there's something a little more to these. I'll be honest, I've eaten a few honey and maple syrup based candies that one could also argue is just sugar in a straw, but because Pixy Stix use dry sugar they get a bad rap. I'm not really here to defend Pixy Stix, I just feel like they don't deserve as much mocking as they get.

Ready my full Pixy Stix review.

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Cereal As Candy

 This Sugar Crisp commercial not only brags about their candy coating, but even suggest eating it as a candy.

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Sweet Cereal Commercials Used To Be Weird

While I do enjoy watching these old sugary cereal commercials, I don't think they make me want to eat cereal.

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Candy in the Media - This Is My Kind Of Candy Game

This game looks amazing, and I highly recommend supporting the release.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Bob Ross Cereal

Last week we featured Bob Ross Energy Drink, this week it seemed appropriate to show you the Bob Ross Cereal. One might imagine that Bob Ross ate a lot of granola, so a cereal makes sense. A sugar cereal doesn't make as much sense, but I'd be more likely to eat it.

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My Candy/Junk Food Chrsitmas Wishlist - Lucky Charms

Lucky Charms has been the cereal that has managed to get away from me for my entire life. I went from being a kid with a mother that  refused to buy it for me. To being a teenager who thought that I was too cool for Lucky Charms (they were also way out of my poor teenager budget). Now I'm old enough to buy them myself, and I'm married to a woman that insists that I stay alive, so she keeps them away from me.  I'm hoping on my death bed I'm given a giant bowl of Lucky Charms, then I can die happy.

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Candy In The Media

A simple way to find out how much sugar you've been eating.

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This Week In Candy

Yesterday was my birthday, and for the most part I managed to hold off on the extreme eating portion of this celebration. That was until the night of my birthday.  A group of friends invited me out to an Indian buffet restaurant. I did not know that it was a buffet before we left, but I was pleasantly surprised when we got there.  Then I learned that this Indian restaurant had a pretty decent dessert section at this buffet.  After a big plate of food I figured it was safe to indulge with a few desserts. I made sure I was filled right up, after all it's my birthday.  Then the cake came out, yup, my awesome friends got me a classic birthday cake,it was yummy, the entire quarter of this cake that I ate.  I made it through the whole day without overindulging on my birthday, then my great friends had to ruin it for me. As soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to go lie down for a while.

As for what to expect here at candycritic.org this week, I can tell you that you shouldn't expect much more today, my stomach hurts too much and I just want to go to sleep.  Later this week however you can expect a new episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! Just in case my stomach wasn't sore enough already.  I'm also working on a special article in my head about sugar taxes.  I was inspired by a study done in Berkley on the subject.  You can check back here to see all this stuff, and keep up with our day to day activities on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

This week's new review is a really unique candy.  I'm not sure if these gummies are something new, but they are new to me. Crunchy Gummies caught my attention, but the candy itself delivered. You can read our latest review right here.

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The Pefect Gift For The Sweet Tooth On Your List

Give them smoked sugar, and maybe they'll make something for you.

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This may shock you, but I support Jaime Oliver

I believe that people eat too much sugar. I believe there is an obesity problem, and I believe it's getting worse. No I haven't decided to retire from Candy Critic, and this isn't written to be sarcastic or ironic. I truly believe that we have to worry about our weight and sugar is one of the biggest enemies.

So how can I say this without being a hypocrite? I believe that candy is not the biggest enemy in this battle, at least not always. Neither is junk food, at least not always.

Let's start with candy. Candy is sugar, or at the very least it contains a lot of sugar. Candy (most of the time) does not hide this fact. You don't walk into a store called "Sugar Mountain" and not know what you're getting yourself into. I believe that enjoying an indulgence now and again is not a problem. Eating an entire king sized chocolate bar is not enjoying an indulgence, that's pigging out. I believe that it's fine to enjoy something sweet, as long you exercise portion control.

Junk food (things like hamburgers and pizza) are another indulgence, but one where you can eat, as long as you know what you're getting. I support fast food restaurants giving out information about what's in their food and whenever possible using less sugar and saturated fats. While these places aren't perfect, some are getting better.

So where is the problem in my book? Hidden sugar. Walk into any grocery store and you will find "healthy" foods that are loaded with sugar. Cereals, granola bars, and pre-made meals loaded with sugar, sometimes more sugar than the candy bar in the next aisle. Worse yet, many of these foods claim to be healthy because they don't contain fat or other "bad" ingredients. It's as if they're saying it's OK to eat a lot of sugar, as long as you don't know about it.

I also believe that healthy low sugar options have to be available everywhere. Schools and workplaces need to offer quick healthy food such as nuts and vegetables. They can offer something for the quick indulgence, but healthy options must be available as well. We must also educate kids and adults about healthy eating. Your first lesson, 90% of what I feature on this site is full of sugar and should be eaten in moderation.

I believe enjoying candy responsibly is fine, and responsibly depends on you and your lifestyle. Between the occasional sweet treat you must get balanced meals and even a few healthy snacks. Celebrate sweet treats and junk food the same way you celebrate a birthday, not every day. Get the best sweet indulgence you can because you shouldn't do it all the time.

The Candy Critic supports Jaime Oliver and his #FoodRevolution.

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Candy Critic Dessert Club – A Classic Square - Rice Krispie Treats

When I was a kid Rice Krispie Treats were a complete mystery to me.  At the very least I completely misunderstood how they were made.  I don't think my mother, or the media helped in my misunderstanding either.  Until I was a teenager, I always assumed that Rice Krispie Treats were really complicated to make.  Maybe they were easy to burn, or at the very least there must have been some kind of added ingredient that I was completely unaware of.  The fact that Kellogg's started selling Rice Krispie Treats pre-made didn't help either. After all if they were easy to make, why sell them pre-made?

There is a little truth to this, there is a trick, however it's not a skill as much as an ingredient.  The trick to making Rice Krispie Treats is butter, and best not to cut back on it.  Butter is what keeps your marshmallows from sticking to everything, as well as adding just a slightly salty flavour, and this is a good thing.  As any great dessert aficionado will tell you, to make sweeter better, add salt.

The ingredients:

About 20 large marshmallows
3 cups of Rice Krispies cereal
1.5 tablespoons of butter

This might prove to be a very short recipe, as I mentioned before, it's super easy.  First coat a baking pan or pie plate with butter.  Set this pan aside, you'll need it  later.  Now take the 1.5 table spoons of butter and melt it in a non-stick pot.  Make sure to move the butter around, and try to coat the sides of  the pot as well. Once the butter is melted, turn your stove to a medium to low heat.  Add the  marshmallows to the butter.  This is probably the trickiest part of the whole recipe, stir the marshmallows.  Keep stirring until your marshmallows go from 20 individual marshmallows into one giant glob.  You want to be sure that there are no lumps left.

Once the marshmallows are melted, add the Rice Krispies.  If for some reason you don't have, or don't like Rice Krispies, you can pretty much use any cereal you want.  Even granola would work.  Add the cereal to the marshmallow glob and turn off the heat.  Stir the cereal into the marshmallow until it's evenly distributed.  Now take the marshmallow/cereal mix and dump it into the buttered pan from earlier.  With a wet spoon (or wet fingers) push the marshmallow cereal mixture into the pan.  Once it's fairly level, let  the Rice Krispie Treats cool, and voila, you're done.

To say that this recipe is  fool proof is a bit of a lie.  I've seen these fail twice, and once was by my hands.  Keeping your heat low is the first important step.  Marshmallows love to melt, but once they go past melting, they burn.  So keep the heat low so you don't get to the burning stage.  My failure with these happened with stale marshmallows.  If you have marshmallows that have been sitting in your cupboard since the first Ghostbusters movie came out, they won't work.  They'll just turn into a hot sticky brown, lumpy mess.

If you really hate marshmallows, some people use other sticky treats to make these.  Caramel cubes would work well, so might some syrups.  In fact a maple syrup  square with granola might be pretty tasty.  The trick in all cases is keep the temperature low, and make sure nothing burns.  If you're using a liquid syrup (maple or otherwise) you may have to use a candy thermometer to make sure you don't overheat the syrup into a rock hard lump.

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Candy Themed Valentine's Day Cards

Love Cake Greeting Card by bewarethecheese
Design your own card at Zazzle

We're posting some new candy themed Valentine's cards for that special someone in your life made by our sister site bewarethecheese.com.  Pick up a card, make that special someone in your life a little happier.

For more greeting card options click here.

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The Origins Of Lucky Charms or Circus Peanuts Cereal

A few months ago I was doing research for Snack Facts (our Instagram feed). I was researching sugary cereals, in particular I was reading about Lucky Charms. Lucky Charms are the king of sugar cereals, and in my house were always the example of a cereal that isn't healthy. I'm pretty sure my mother never once bought us a box. Fortunately my grandfather had a different perspective and when we would visit him there would always be a box waiting for us.

While researching the cereal that proves grandparent’s love their children more than their parents, I came across an interesting fact. When the creator of Lucky Charms wanted to find out if marshmallows would work in a cereal, he took a bowl of Cheerios, cut up Circus Peanuts, mixed them together, and added his milk.  So that means technically if someone asks what was the original marshmallow in Lucky Charms, you could say chopped up Circus Peanuts.

Seeing as I am still not allowed to have Lucky Charms in my house (I'm sure it's some kind of wife/mother conspiracy), I decided to take matters into my own hands.  You see, Cheerios are perfectly acceptable in my house, and I managed to acquire a large amount of Circus Peanuts.  So I decided that it would make perfect sense to make my own, old school, Luck Charms.  Although I don't know if you can really call them "Lucky Charms" since I don't believed sliced bright orange peanut can be found in any leprechaun fables.

The first thing I did for this experiment, after photographing Circus Peanuts in various set-ups with Cheerios, is slice up the Circus Peanuts.  When I read this history there weren't any specifications as to how the Circus Peanuts should be included with the Cheerios.  My best guess was to slice them up to roughly the same thickness as I remember the Lucky Charms Marshmallows.  This was a little difficult because I did not have any Lucky Charms as reference because as mentioned before, my wife cares a great deal about my health.

I was also unsure about how many Circus Peanuts to chop up.  The bowl I was using is rather large, it holds about two servings of cereal, and it looks really cool.  I have a long story about why this is the best cereal bowl in the world, but I'll get into that on another blog post sometime.  For two portions of cereal, I started with four Circus Peanuts, it seemed like it needed a few more, so I added three more Circus Peanuts to a total of seven.  I stirred the cereal and Circus Peanuts together before adding the milk.  If not all of the "marshmallows" would have floated to the surface, and what fun would that be.

After mixing them up, I loaded up an old episode of one of my favourite Super Hero cartoons (Super Friends), sat in the living room, and prepared to be brought back to days at my grandfather’s house.  The cartoon was awesome, but the cereal was the real surprise.

My thoughts before doing this was that the "marshmallow" Circus Peanuts might just melt into oblivion the minute the milk hit them.  I assumed this because they kind of melt on your tong when you're eating them.  I wasn't sure if that was because of the heat of my mouth or the saliva.  If these were in fact quickly water soluble, I was expecting a bowl of Cheerios in orange coloured overly sweet milk.  Fortunately I was wrong, as it turns out Circus Peanuts are not really water-soluble. In fact they stayed fairly dry for a long time while floating in my milk.  That information was both pleasant and disturbing.

Flavour wise I was a little worried about how well the orange, yet banana flavoured, Circus Peanuts might go with the Cheerios.  Surprisingly again, it was actually very pleasant.  The milk and cereal really watered down the banana flavour of the Circus Peanuts.  Instantly I was surprised at how similar this combination was to regular Lucky Charms.

After my first bowl, I have to say there was only one "gross" part of this experience.  The milk afterwards had gone fairly orange, and it was super sweet.  Some people like the sweet milk left after a bowl of sugary cereal, but I really don't like it at all.  I actually dislike it so much that I will often eat my sugar cereals with no milk in the bowl, just a glass on the side.

My suggestion to any fan of Lucky Charms, or anybody who's not allowed to have sugary cereals, is to give this a try.  It's not that bad, and it's pretty close to the Lucky Charms experience. I would even say that this is probably the best experience I've ever had with Circus Peanuts.  I'm normally not a big fan, but the additional texture of the cereal, and the fact that this knocks the strong flavour of banana out of the Circus Peanuts, makes them fairly tasty.

I'm not saying that I'm a creative genius or anything, but I think if anybody making Circus Peanuts is listening, making a Circus Peanuts cereal might be something to look into.  And for those of us that aren't allowed to have sugar cereals, this might be a way to get around this rule.

Candy In The Media

This history of sugar, and why we may be addicted to the stuff.

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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?

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Candy News

Serious Eats examines sugar, and it's a pretty sweet article.

Here's an interview with Gene Wilder where he mentions his stipulations for playing Willy Wonka.

According to a new study, men's brains crave coffee, and women's brains crave chocolate... I'm not sure I agree.

The BBC looks at why Nutella went from small time spread, to a major global player.

Hershey has decided to spread the love that is Peanut Butter Cups to Brazil.

If you want to keep up with all of the daily candy news that we come across as it happens, follow us on Twitter.

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New Junk Fud Podcast Is Online!

This is my first attempt at a solo podcast, it could be me just rambling, or you may be able to work out a point, I'm not 100% sure.  The subject is about how I feel that the candy and junk food industry is getting a worse rap than it deserves when it comes to the obesity problem.

Right click here to download the show.

Click here to check out some of our past episodes of Junk Fud.

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Today I Post My 861st Review

One of the things that I always mean to keep track of, but almost never do, is how many reviews I've posted.  I've been doing this site for some time now, and when it started I had no kind of regular schedule for posting reviews.  I also occasionally do review-a-thons, and other special review days, so unfortunately it's almost impossible to figure out how long the site has been up based on the number of reviews, or vise-versa.  But just knowing that I've tasted more than 800 different candies, and written about them, is a pretty big deal to me.  It got me thinking, I wonder what my 1000th review will be, and I wonder if I'll even know that it's happening.

Click here to read my 861st review.

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Candy News

Here are a few treats that you can only get in the USA, because some of the ingredients are banned in other places.  But don't worry, chances are you can get Kinder Eggs where you are.

Did you ever imagine that there would be a recipe that would call for a quarter of a cup of Pop Rocks?

The debate continues, is high-fructose corn syrup that much worse for you than regular sugar?

I keep hearing news of chocolate companies developing better non-melting chocolate, do people really want this?  Isn't the fact that chocolate melts one of its benefits?

Are there really people out there that believe that sugar free gum is "good" for you?

See's Candy has recalled it's chocolate covered raisins. Why?  Well they may contain nuts or eggs. So I guess if you're OK eating nuts or eggs you can pretty much ignore this.

Here's a sugar substitute that I can get behind, dried fruit powder.

Mars launches egg-less Snickers bars in India... Wait a minute, Snickers bars have egg in them?

Is "birthday cake" a flavour?  What flavour is it?  I'm thinking vanilla cake with a little extra happiness.

If you want to keep up with all of the daily candy news that we come across as it happens, follow us on Twitter.

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