Amazing Christmas Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Pickles And Pork

 

Not only will these candy canes show the world that you're an out of the box thinker, they're actually Christmas coloured, so no one will suspect anything.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Pagan Breakfast God Mask

For all your breakfast worshipping needs.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Bacon Bandage

I've always thought that my first aid kit was lacking in pork products, now all we need is a pulled pork salve.

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Unusual Candy For Your Tree - Bacon Candy Canes

It would be very un-Canadian of me to put these candy canes down. After all, bacon is our national meat... or it should be... if we have a national meat. I think the bacon flavour could work in candy cane form, particularly if the sweet is a nice maple flavour. Then I can hoist my Canadian flag up and celebrate Christmas properly. The great thing about this candy cane is that the best way to eat these is on Christmas morning with your pancakes.

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Cooking With Candy Critic - Chocolate Covered Candied Bacon

In a perfect world there would be a sweet indulgent treat that would take almost no skill, and almost no time to make.  This treat would make people really happy and have them begging you to make more, since there's no way it's easy enough for just about anybody to make.  Ladies and gentlemen, I have such a recipe.  This recipe takes little effort, almost no skill, and everybody I took these to demanded more.  One person even stole the extras to take home to his family.

What I'm talking about is chocolate covered candied bacon.  It sounds decadent, yet down to earth, but more importantly it sounds way more complicated than it actually is to make.  You'll need a few basic ingredients that most people are very familiar with. Bacon, brown sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate chips. You'll also need two baking pans, and either parchment paper or silicon baking sheet liners. To start off, cut your bacon in half, or thirds, or don't cut it at all. It all depends on how you plan on serving these treats. I chose to cut them into thirds since I was planning on taking these to a public place with a few people around and I wanted them to be easy to eat by hand.

After you've cut the bacon, lay it out on your baking tray that is lined with the parchment paper or silicon tray liners (I prefer the tray liners myself). Then cover the bacon with brown sugar, you want your bacon to have a good solid layer of brown sugar because it's going to melt, and a bunch of it will run off. Then sprinkle on a little cinnamon, this is totally optional, and you can put on as much as you like. Heat your over to 350, and once it's heated put in the tray with the bacon and brown sugar.

After seven and a half minutes, take out your bacon, flip it, and coat it in more brown sugar.  You'll likely need some tongs to do this, although a spatula might work. Put your bacon back in the oven for another seven and a half minutes.  Once it's cooked, take the bacon out and let it cool for about 15 or 20 minutes.  You basically want the bacon to firm up a bit.  When the bacon is just about cooled, take about one cup of chocolate chips for every 5 slices of bacon, unless you really like chocolate, in which case go nuts.  Microwave your chocolate chips for about one minute on high.

When you take the chocolate chips out of the microwave you might notice that they don't look very different, that's OK.  You'll also notice that the bowl they're in is pretty hot, and some of the chips at the bottom are melted.  Quickly stir your chocolate chips, after a minute or so you'll notice that your chocolate chips are melting pretty well.  Keep stirring and don't be fooled about putting the chocolate chips back in the microwave.  This technique tempers the chocolate perfectly for this recipe.

After you've stirred your chocolate chips to the point when they're melted into a smooth milk chocolate, it's time to cover your bacon.  You could try and dip the bacon, but I've had a pretty hard time making that work.  I imagine if you added some cream to the chocolate chips it might be smooth enough to get a good dip, but since we're only using the chocolate, it's still too dense. So what I suggest is to use a spoon or a piping bag and just dump the chocolate on the bacon.  I like to poor it on half of the bacon, and lay it on fairly thick.  If you're more of a bacon fan than a chocolate fan, you might want to go a little lighter, maybe a fancy drizzle on the top.

After you bacon is decorated to your liking, let it set for about 30 minutes, then refrigerate.  If you really like what you're seeing, you can pretty much eat these immediately after you pour the chocolate on them, but the chocolate will be pretty gooey at this point, not that that's a bad thing.  If you let them set in your fridge overnight, they'll be much easier to transport, and a little easier to eat. So there you go, simple chocolate covered candied bacon.

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A Cake Covering Bacon Thing

Does you cake need a little more bacon?  If I wanted to ad bacon to my cake, I'd probably candy bacon and sprinkle it on top, or bake it into my cake.  I'm not sure bacon frosting is really the solution.  Unless you wanted to do a super bacon cake.  You could use bacon fat as your oil, bake in bacon bits into the cake. Then you could frost your cake with bacon icing, and top the cake off with candied bacon bits. Now that would be a heart stopping cake.

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A Thirst Quenching Bacon Thing

Every so often I come across a treat that I'm just not sure about. Most of the time when I see a treat that's new to me, I have some kind of idea weather or not I'm going to like it.  My "idea" isn't always right, as I've been known to hate a few things I thought I would like, and like a few things that I thought I would hate.  But once in a while I'm faced with something that I'm not really sure about.  Bacon flavoured soda pop is one of those things.  It could be really nice, it might have a strong maple cured bacon flavour, sweet with just a bit of salt.  It could also be like drinking a cold cup of bacon grease.

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You Say Hello, And I Say Dubai...

After spending 4 days in Dubai, I can say one thing for sure, Dubai is a really strange place.  It's not strange in the regular ways things are strange, it's not creepy strange like Las Vegas, or it's not scary strange like Halloween.  Dubai on the surface is a very nice place, in fact it's one of the cleanest most beautiful cities I've ever seen in my entire life.  The thing that makes it strange is all about cultural geography, or lack there of.  Dubai is the kind of city that really has no culture of it's own to speak of.  Traditionally it's simply a small village in the middle of the desert, but with the amount of money that's been thrown into building massive buildings and malls, it could also be almost any place in the world as well.  A good way to understand how this city is different is to look at the snacks, food and candy of Dubai.

The one thing that strikes you about Dubai when you're shopping for food or eating at a restaurant is the huge selection.  The selection of foods in Dubai aren't unfamiliar to most westerners either.  Restaurants such as The Cheesecake Factory, Tony Romas, and Olive Garden can be found just about anywhere.  Even Canadian chains like Tim Horton's and Eggspectations can be found in Dubai.  If you're traveling from just about any corner of the globe, you'll find a bit of home in this city.  This also extends to candy as well, at the grocery stores I visited I found plenty of Hershey's, Cadbury, and Nestle chocolate.  I also found just about every brand of gummy and hard candy. I felt like a kid in a candy store, literally.  There was one thing however that I really had to hunt for, local foods.

 If you want to taste a bit of the true UAE culture, Dubai may not be the best place to visit.  The foreign chains have all but eliminated the local cuisine from the tourist path. There are a few restaurants that seem local in the old section of town, but its hard to tell.  The main parts of the city, the malls and giant buildings, have no restaurants that clearly show off UAE cuisine.  The only time I can say that I was pretty sure I ate something close to traditional food is when I took a desert safari.  At this safari we ate food that seemed pretty close to what you would expect for this part of the world.  Things like eggplant dips, cooked meats, curries, and flat breads.  I'm not convinced that this food was 100% authentic, since it's geared towards tourists, but the theme seemed fairly close.

The only other oddity about the food is the strict rules regarding food.  For the most part gum is not encouraged, or completely banned from indoor facilities.  You can't ride a subway or walk through a mall blowing bubbles. Food and drinking is also banned on their public transportation system as well.  While these rules may seems harsh, the results can't be argued.  The city is one of the cleanest I've ever seen.

The other strange rule regarding food, for westerners at least, is the lack of bacon.  This is a Muslim country and according to the Muslim religion pork is a no-no. They do compensate with beef and turkey bacon (I didn't see any chicken bacon, strange no?), as well as other beef replacements.  The good thing is the quality of the beef and other meats is fantastic (although it's expensive) so you don't really find yourself missing too much. And if you're really craving some pork, some grocery stores to sell it. 

Dubai is really a great city, it has just about anything you might want to eat, except maybe something local.  While I did miss the local food, I was very well distracted with all of the huge selection of North American and western restaurants and foods.  Candy wise I found a few interesting things that I probably can't get in many other cities, like camel milk chocolate and awesome chocolate covered dates, but I really had to search for them. I did however find some classic bars that I haven't had in a while, so I left a happy boy.

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Candy News

How do you feel when you eat a Kit Kat bar?  Maybe the best way to find out is to scan your brain.

Who knew that the Disney theme parks had so many choices when it came to popcorn?

Do you smell chocolate?  Do you have an urge to spend money?  According to science there's a link.

Apparently those gummy vitamins you see at the drug store, may not really be that great for you.

Here's a great explanation into the differences between ice cream, gelato, sorbet, and many other cool treats.

If chocolate really works that well as a medicine, I may find myself getting sicker more often.

I'm a huge fan of TCHO, and in particular I love the way that they do business.

Dear people at Hostess, please tell me that this article is completely untrue and that the new Twinkies are exactly the same, or maybe even better.

Is the chocolate/bacon/taco really a good idea?  You bet it is.

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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Stuff I Want To Try

Soy-Bacon Chocolates  -  Marich - Because I think it's important that vegetarians and our Jewish friends to enjoy the glory that is chocolate and bacon. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

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Stuff I Want To Try

Bacon Ice Cream Sliders  - Sweet Rose - It's like 3 great things squished together as one. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

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Thursday's Candy Links

Have you ever needed a nut butter on the go, well you're problems are solved.

It's come to the point where every restaurant in the USA will have a bacon sundae.

The original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is one of my all time favorite movies, now I realize how much Gene Wilder contributed to it.

Have you seen the "Peanut Butter Cup Bandit"?  He's been stealing hundreds of dollars worth of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from gas stations in Ohio.

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Monday's Candy Links

Last week I complained that the special edition Jubilee M&M's didn't have crowns on them, even though (in the USA) you can get whatever you want printed on your M&Ms... Now I know why.

The secrets of the Oreo cookie test kitchen, and maybe a preview of Oreo cookies to come.

My friend Chetan and I were talking about how much the world needs bacon ice cream, he then found this article answering all of his prayers.

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Stuff I Want To Try

Lay’s Classic BLT potato chips  - Frito-Lay - Fact, the BLT is one of my favorite sandwiches. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

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Thursday's Candy Links

Bowling and fried candy, that's a guaranteed great night out.

Burger King now has bacon ice cream, is the bacon fad over now, or is it picking up steam?

There's an attempt to ban candy flavoured tobacco in Canada, I don't like this because it tells the world that candy is only for kids.

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Tuesday's Candy Links

Queen City Bacon Schnecken, I know what bacon is, but I'm not sure what a Schnecken is, either way it looks tasty.

Does chocolate control your very emotions, here's some science to help you answer that question.

I always prefer my food to be squishy and in the shape of a perfect sphere, here's the science behind it.

Here are some post Easter links:

Looking for a quick way to spruce up some Cadbury Creme Eggs after Easter?

So you're staring at your Easter load that the bunny brought you, here's "Nine Things You Didn’t Know About Your Easter Candy"

Here's some information on how your Easter candy stays fresh... you may or may not want to read this.

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Stuff I Want To Try

Bacon Candy Canes - Made by: ? - Why: There isn't enough "Bacon" representation over the holidays. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

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Tuesday's Candy Links

Doritos creator dies at 97.  Mental Floss felt it appropriate to celebrate his life with a gallery of "cute animals eating Doritos", and I couldn't agree more.

Fruute, a sweet shop on the West Coast in the US has one of the best looking stores/websites I've ever seen.

Bacon sundaes are taking over, it's the most popular new topping, even at the county fair.

Taiwanese group of cooks makes special treats for folks with gastric cancer.

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Chocolate Covered Bacon

Sometimes I like to talk about a particular subject and point you to a related article.  Sometimes I write a brief description of an article and then post it below.  This time I'm just going to tell you the headline of the article and you can choose for yourself if you want to check it out.

"Have you tried: Chocolate-covered bacon at Wassi's Meat Market in Melbourne"

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Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

I've never heard of this "Big Gay Ice Cream Truck" but after reading an article about it on "Serious Eats" I'm intrigued.  The truck looks like a simple ice cream truck, but the ice cream treats they're producing sound original and tasty.  Take for example their Choinkwiches, an ice cream sandwiches wrapped with bacon.  And that's just the beginning of their creations.  The good news is, apparently they're putting out a cook book, so if you can't make it to New York you can always try making their treats yourself.

Click here to read more about it.

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