This Week In Candy

Welcome to another week of candy good times here at Candy Critic.  This week around the Candy Critic office we're going to be writing.  As you may or may not know I'm working on a book about the history of chocolate.  It's been a long time in the research, but I'm finally starting to piece things together and the writing is going to be flowing like crazy this week... I hope.  If you have any fun tidbits of information that interest you on the history of chocolate, please share, as any information or encouragement helps.

On the blog later this week we're going to have our second in a series of posts about our recent trip through Europe.  This week we're going to look at our stops in the UK... Or is it Britain?  Well it was England and Wales, so it might be both.  We had a really great time touring around and sampled some pretty awesome foods along the way.

This week on our Instagram feed Snack Facts we're going to look at a classic American treat, the Charleston Chew.  In the past we've compared the best temperature to eat your Charleston Chew, and now we'll look at a few other fun facts about this great American snack.  Make sure to follow us on Instagram to have our fun Snack Facts delivered to you every day.  If you don't have Instagram, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Twitter feed and our Facebook page as well.

Our new review this week is a twist on one of our favourite chocolate bars, the Chunky Kit Kat.  These "twists" can sometimes be great, but they can also be failures as well.  This week I feel as though it's more of a fail than a win.  But we have to give them credit, they just keep trying don't they.  Click here to read about the latest Kit Kat we've tasted.

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Old Candy Critic Articles - Dancing the Charleston

I've decided to take down several old articles from the candycritic.org and re-post them here on the Candy Critic blog.  This week I'm posting an article I wrote when I learned about freezing a Charleston Chew.

People are very passionate about their favourite treats. I get e-mail after e-mail about treats I've reviewed, particularly if people disagree with my opinion. I've even been vilified on other web sites,  because someone disagreed with my opinion on a particular candy. For the most part I don't really react. If you e-mail me, I'll respond to your comment but I'll never change a review. Then one day I got an interesting e-mail that changed my mind on this subject, it was all about my "Charleston Chew" review. I was told that I had not tried the bar in it's optimal way, and I must tell you the letter was very passionate. My review will never change, it say's nothing on the package about saying it has to be eaten frozen, but it does recommend trying it. With a passionate e-mail and a suggestion from the creators, I figured I should taste a frozen and smashed Charleston Chew. Then I thought why not try it both ways and do a comparative review of each, this way we can truly know if their that much better frozen or if your wasting time and energy freezing these treats. So here is a Charleston Chew frozen VS and Charleston Chew room temperature...

First - Room Temperature:

This bar is full of chocolaty fun. The taffy is different since it's a little fluffier than most taffies, its not bad, just different. The chocolate on the outside is a nice touch, even though its milk chocolate on chocolate taffy its still not too overpowering. Honestly every time I bite into one of these things I expect my teeth to be all sticky, and think I'm going to be fighting with it just to get a bite out of it, but with the whipped-type taffy it's never like that. As I said in my review, this bar's fine it's just not spectacular.

Second - Frozen:

Wow, I have to say I'm impressed. The Charleston Chew is a different kind of treat when you eat it frozen. Well, it is for a bit, eventually after chewing it for a while it does turn back into the warm version of itself, but it starts out really nice. It reminds me a little of Astronauts Ice Cream, those not lucky enough to try this snack should go and join your local astronaut camp or whatever you call it when you become a space man/woman. The one thing I truly liked about this snack is the fact that the flavour was a little more subtle when it was frozen. It  builds up to a bigger flavour as you chew, but at first it's a nice subtle chocolate flavour. If they could some how freeze dry this bars, I really think it would be an improvement!

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