Beautiful Fake Food

 Japanese fake food is the best in the world, and this man is a master.

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Candy In The Media - Cake Or Not

These cakes are so convincing, I'm not convinced they're cakes.

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I Love Candy That Looks Like Other Food - Burger Gum "Ketchup - Like Liquid Filled"

The thing about candy that looks like other food, is that it has to look good too. Looking good does not mean that it has to look exactly like the food it's trying to imitate. I'm okay if a candy looks like a cartoon version of a food, anything, as long as when I see it I think about whatever food it's trying to imitate. Sometimes the package over hypes a candy that's supposed to look like another food, then when you open it up, you're  wondering how anyone would think that this candy looks like anything other than a candy.

Click here to read this week's review of a candy that is supposed to look like a food.

Also be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to find out about other things we're eating.

Be sure to check out our Patreon page too.

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Candy In The Media - It's Fake, But It Still Makes Me Hungry

Even though I know all these tricks on how to make food look good for advertising, I still fall for every single time.

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A Cool Candy Thing

What could be more fun for kids than pretending to make ice cream cones?  How about making ice cream cones?  Maybe you could use this as a training tool for your kids if you want them to work up to a career at a malt shop.

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Candy News

Canadians busted... smuggling Kinder Eggs.

I've always wanted to try a cronut, but these spam donuts don't seem so appealing.

Huffington Post has a list of amazing ice cream sandwich ideas perfect for keeping you cool this summer.

There's a new Mars store opened at the Paris airport.  I always love the way Mars themes these stores, and I'll be sure to snap a few pictures if I find myself in Paris again.

Here are 4 really good tips for making a great ice cream sandwich, using toast instead of a cookie is still up for debate.

Tired of all of the berries available from mother nature, why not make up your own?

There's a new kind of chocolate in town, and it's called Blond.

Police in Thailand nab chocolate thief, apparently there's not much else going on.

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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A Cool Candy Thing

I have a love hate relationship with food themed erasers.  I love them because they look so cool, and they even make me a little hungry.  However I hate them because I'm always too afraid to use them, and they make me hungry.

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This Week In Candy

Have you been to IKEA lately?  Have you seen these new plush desserts that they sell?  I'm not sure if I want to own a set of these for myself.  While they look really great, every time I look at them I'll just be disappointed that I can't eat them.  The other thing I don't get about these is how a child is supposed to play with them.  I guess for tea parties they could come in handy, but they're not really as creative as Play-Doh for making fake desserts.

This week on the blog things are going to be a little bit slow.  As you read this I'm out of town visiting bellissimo, Italy.  I'm sure I'll post something about it when I'm back, and depending on my internet connection, I may even post a thing of two on our social media pages as well.

Although we won't have a new review posted this week, we'll still have some of our regular posts going up later this week.  Maybe I'll make up for the lack of new review with a review-a-thon next week.

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A Cool Candy Thing

All I can say about this bucket of Play-Doh candy making equipment is: "Stop making Play-Doh look so tasty!  It's hard enough not to eat it as is!".

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A Cool Candy Thing

I have mixed feelings about Play-Doh food themed play sets.  I think that they're really fun to play with, and I've spent hours enjoying myself doing just that.  The problem I have with them is the temptation to bite into anything that I make.  Play-Doh smells so good, and when you make it up to look like yummy food, it's just too hard to resist.  Unfortunately Play-Doh doesn't taste as good as it looks or smells.

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Old Candy Critic Articles - The 'Key Lime' Conspiracy

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 we an old article I wrote when I found out that many companies didn't use real key lime juice in their key lime candies.

Lies, lies, it's all lies. One of the worst things in the world is a lie, and in the candy world it’s no different. One of the worst lies has to be the great 'key lime' conspiracy. Simple it is, but evil? You better believe it.

One of the most interesting flavours used today has to be lime. Sometimes it’s used instead of lemon just to give a treat a bit of originality. It's great especially when it’s real limejuice because real limes do have a great unique flavour and can always add a great twist to any treat. But there are bad people in the world. People who feel it is okay to lie. These evil people think that everybody out in the world are idiots, morons all of them. That's what some of these candy companies think, when it comes to.... What the heck was I talking about? Oh yeah, limes.

Have you ever enjoyed a treat that was labelled “key lime” and thought to yourself, "I guess key limes are just like any other lime." or maybe that “key lime” is probably just a style of flavouring for pie. Well, its not! A key lime is a unique lime with a special flavour, and people you are getting ripped off. I'm here to blow the whistle on candies that claim to be “key lime” flavoured but don’t actually have a drop of key lime in them.

People... read the label. If it says “key lime”, check the ingredients. If there are no key limes in it, you are getting ripped off. Stand up and unite against the fake key limes. Key limes are so good and it’s about time we got what we paid for.

If you ever do get the chance, you should try a fresh key lime and if you're even luckier you might find a candy with real key lime in it.

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My Carob Experience

This giant 5 inch bean, is a bean that many chocolate fanatics despise.  This is a carob bean, and carob is most often used as a chocolate substitute.  I'm sure, if you're like me, you're wondering why in the world someone would want to substitute real cocoa for something fake.  I'm guessing it has to do with either the high price of cocoa, or maybe some people are allergic to cocoa (although I've never met anybody in my life with this horrible affliction).  On many occasions I've been lucky enough to sample cocoa, in many forms, including full toasted beans.  But I can't say that I've ever even seen a carob pod before.  So once I saw this glorious bean on a market shelf, I knew I couldn't pass it up.

Before I bought it, I asked the nice lady selling them exactly how one goes about eating a carob pod.  She went on to tell me about a few cooking methods, but I'm sure the confused look in my face led her to tell me that you can just eat it as is as well.  Frankly this giant bean didn't really look that appetizing at all, but it did have a nice smell, so I bought the bean, and took the nice lady's advice.  After my first bite I wasn't really convinced that you can simply bite into a dried carob pod and enjoy.  There was a certain chocolate like flavour, but the pod was really tough and woody.

Inside the pod I found several of these little hard beans.  In most cases the bean is much tastier than the pod, and I figured that once I bit into one of these little beans, I would be in fake chocolate bliss.  As it turns out these little beans are rock hard and impossible to bite through.  It could be that they are the most flavorful part of this bean delight, but I wasn't going to know, because I couldn't crunch it without doing some serious damage to my teeth.  I did try sucking on the little bean for a little while, but it was still as hard a marble.

Is a carob bean tasty?  The flavour that I did manage to extract from this bean wasn't that bad at all.  I can see why it could be used a chocolate substitute, and it might even have flavorful applications on its own.  I am however convinced that the lady at the market really wanted to sell me this bean.  I don't think people actually eat these beans as is, the texture is just too woody, and the beans are impossible to chew at all.  Maybe if I soaked it, or maybe if I boiled it, I might have had more luck.

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Spreads - Cheez Wiz

I just finished an art piece for bewarethecheese.com's fine art gallery "Senses". For this piece I had to photograph, and eventually eat more than 40 different spreads.  I've decided to post a little something about each spread that I sampled.

I can't say that I really love Cheez Wiz, but I can tell you that I do crave it now and again.  I rarely crave it on bread however, occasionally I want it on a stalk of celery, and sometimes I want it on some natchos.  I'm not really sure how much cheese is actually in Cheez Wiz, but I'm pretty sure there must be some.

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Monday's Candy Links

$30 Million in Maple Syrup stolen in Canada, Prime Minister Harper, I believe this qualifies as a national emergency.

You would think a US soldier giving a kid in a war torn country a little sweet treat as being a nice thing to do.  Well apparently it's not.

More news about artificial sweeteners being bad for you.

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Classic/Creative Candy Advertising - Just Bite It Already!

Do you know what bothers me about candy advertising, the fake bite.  I hate it when you know for a fact that the person eating the treat in the advertisement didn't bite down at all.  You know the minute they took the picture this kid pulled the bar out of his mouth without much more than a few teeth marks in it.

Ad found on Vintage Ad Browser

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Monday's Candy Links

Ever been to Sherman Oaks?  Me neither, but if I did I would be sure to visit Rocket Fizz.

Another company is introducing another fake chocolate, will it pass the taste test, or is it impossible to make a good tasting fake chocolate?

Do you know where "Shorewood" is?  If you do, then you might want to check out Sweet Tooth.

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Super Tiny Un-meltable Chocolate Chips

I just read about this new scientific invention. It's a chocolate chip like ingredient that is about the size of the head of a pin.  This chocolate like substance doesn't melt when baked.  The idea of the product is to allow creators of chocolate flavoured products to say that they're product contains "chocolate".  I can't say I'm happy with the idea of misleading consumers by saying that it has "real chocolate" when it only contains a micro amount.  However I would love to see and sample a bag of this stuff.

Click here to read more of the disappointing science behind it.

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No More Candy Smokes

It's official, candy smokes are officially banned. If you want to pretend that you're cool and eat candy you're pretty much out of luck.

Click here to read more about it.

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The Truth About Fake Sugar

Do you ever wonder if sugar substitutes are really ok for you? Are they better than sugar, or are there more problems that can come up. I often question products that claim to be "healthy" when they use fake sugars and maybe I'm right to do so.

Click here to read more about fake sugar.

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Japanese Astronaut Food

Boing Boing has a great little piece about Japanese space food. I’ve tasted and even review Astronaut ice cream in the past but just knowing that there’s more where that came from is exciting.

Click here to check it out.

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