A Cup Full Of Chips

I feel like the trend of sweet and savoury is starting to become completely normal. When I was a kid the idea of mixing sweet and savoury was something totally new. There were only a few salty snacks that you would see in a sweet form, and almost every time you'd see them the salt would be removed. Things like popcorn and peanuts would be in both, but you'd almost never find salty popcorn or salted peanuts with anything sweet. I feel like chocolate covered pretzels and potato chips were the first to cross over. Then, as people got used to it, these treats became less special and more mainstream. Today I feel like there's enough sweet and salty treats out there that I should dedicate and entire section of candycritic.org to this combination of flavours.

Click here to read my latest sweet and salty review.

Also be sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to find out what other salty things I do.

If you really want to be sweet, make sure to follow my Patreon as well.

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Time To Dip

Some Aid You Can Lick T-Shirt
by candycritic

Fun Dip, or Lick-M-Aid is a treat that I don't ever search out, but it finds me, and when it does I'm always game.

Check out my cool Zazzle store for even more cool candy styles.

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I Don't Think I Like Menthol

Fairly often I find that I've discovered a new candy or kind of candy that I love, rarely do I find one that I don't like. While I don't hate all menthol candies, I'm finding that recently more and more candies using this cool ingredient seem to be using it wrong. It has got to a point where if I find a candy that has the word "cool" or "menthol" on it and it's not mint, then I'm a little nervous about trying it. I understand what Hershey's is doing here with the menthol flavour, but I just don't think it works. It's almost as if they saw the design of this bar on paper, then didn't bother to actually taste it when it was done.

Click here to find out why this menthol bar didn't work.

You can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and find out how cool I am already.

If you want to be extra cool, join me on Patreon too.

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Japanese Candy All Week - Charge Pop "Lemon"

We're kicking off this week's candy review-a-thon with something a little sour, a little sweet, and strangely a little salty. The theme for this week's review-a-thon is Japanese treats, a subject we've done a few review-a-thons about in the past. I have to say that Japan is one of the countries that seems to have a limitless supply of candies to write about, so it's pretty likely that this won't be our last Japanese candy review-a-thon either.

Check out the first entry in our review-a-thon here.

Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to keep up with all the entries in our review-a-thon this week.

You can also check out our Patreon page since we're previewing a new fun project we're just finishing up.

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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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We're Feeling The Burn - Skittles "Sweet Heat"

I don't think I'm a big fan of the overly spicy food trend that's going on right now. I'm not saying that spicy food doesn't have its place in food, I'm just wondering why some things have to be spicy, like these Skittles. I also don't like intense spicy for the sake of being intensely spicy, but that's like because I'm a spice wimp.

Click here to read about these Skittles that are spicy for no reason.

Also be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram because it's the right thing to do.

Speaking of doing the right thing, why not check out our Patreon page too.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Froot Loops Candle

Have you ever thought to yourself, I could go for a bowl of Fruit Loops, but I'd rather set it on fire and just smell it, as opposed to eating it? Me neither, but here we are.

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Candy In The Media - Make It Rain Cotton Candy

This is probably the most unique and beautiful way to sweeten your coffee.

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Candy In The Media - It's Like Pulling Taffy

Marisa Wu is a really fascinating person with a really great business. Next time I'm in New York, I think I might try and get some of here Salt Water Taffy.

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My Favourite Pocky - Part 4 - My Main Squeeze

Make sure to check out our earlier posts this week where we featured some of our favourite Pockys that we've reviewed in the past. We're in Japan right now, hopefully finding some new Pockys to try. Today's entry is a really interesting Pocky, that's because it's a flavour of candy that you don't really see very often, grape.  Let me clear that up, you do see plenty of hard candies in grape, but you don't often see chocolate based treats in grape, and you certainly don't find too many grape cookies. But that's  not the only thing that makes this Pocky unique.

The flavour itself  was pretty interesting too, it wasn't that fake grape you might expect, it was a slightly tart, slightly more realistic grape. In my opinion, grape is an underused flavour, particularly when you're talking about a real grape flavour. That's what I like about candies like Pocky that keep coming out with different varieties, eventually they get desperate and start to explore flavours that aren't commonly used. Sometimes this ends in a wonderful disaster, but sometimes you get something really interesting. I've said it before, I'd rather try a creative disaster than a sure thing that's boring.

I've seen one other flavour of these Pocky Squeeze treats before, I forget what flavour it was, but I'm hoping to see more. I would be really keen to try this in a raspberry or maybe something interesting like a dragon fruit.

Click here to see what we had to say about this Pocky.

If you want to find out what we're up to in Japan, make sure to follow us  on Twitter and Facebook.

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When Great Ideas Fail - Inafcn "Salt & Sour"

If you're a regular reader of this blog (than you're not my my mother, seriously mom, you could check it out now and again), then you'll know that I love innovation. If you ask me what my favourite candy or snack is my answer is almost always "something new and creative that I haven't had before". There is however a second part to that answer, "it's also important to pull off your new idea". This is an example of what should have been an amazing idea, but they failed so badly at pulling off the goal that disappointment was all I had.

Click here to find out how these chips failed me.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to find out about our upcoming review-a-thon.

You can also follow us on Tumblr to keep up with all our new reviews before we post them here.

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We've Just Posted A New Candy Review! - Hart Beat

The review's we're posting this week have a theme, and this theme comes together to form a clue. The clue is the answer to a question I choose not to answer, but I imagine you'll figure out at some point or another. Don't you love cryptic puzzles?

Click here to read this review, and make sure to look for clues.

You might figure out  what I'm talking about if you follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

You might also figure it out if you follow us on Tumblr.

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Another Apple Treat To Review - Johnny Apple Treats

Last week we posted a review of a very disappointing Hostess Apple Pie, this week we thought we'd start off with another apple review. I thought that the idea of doing a whole month themed around apple reviews would be fun, but then I realized that I don't really like apple flavoured candies. My next move was to check our archive, to see if there were any old unpublished apple candy reviews, but there wasn't anything. So I guess that means this is not going  to be a month filled with apple themed treats, but two new reviews in a row with an apple theme.

Click here to read this OK apple candy review.

Do you like fake apple flavours? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

You can also follow our Instagram feed because this week we're featuring Snack Facts about Dragron Fruit.

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It's A New Sweet and Savory Review

The problem with sweet and savory foods is that there's a balance. The balance is obvious, sweet and savory, however how to do it right is not so obvious. That's very apparent in today's review, and the saddest thing is it could have worked perfectly.

Click here to read why these potato snacks didn't work.

And click here to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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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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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 Critic Dessert Club – Our First Experiment - Apple Pie Pizza

Today represents our first ever experimental dessert. I have a few references for this creation (namely I've looked up a few apple pie filling recipes), but for the most part I'm winging this. The prep for this recipe is probably the most time consuming, and it should be done well ahead of time.

Ingredients

3 Apples (peeled and sliced into small pieces)
2 tables spoons lemon juice
2 cups of water
1 cup of brown sugar
1/8 cups of corn starch
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of grated cheddar cheese
Pizza dough (make your own or buy it, it's up to you)

For prep you have to make pie filling, and to make the apple pie filling you first have to prep your apples.  Peel your apples, take out the core, and quarter them.  Then slice your quarters into fairly thin slices.  As you cut your apples put them in a bowl with the lemon juice and mix them around.  This will keep your apples from going too brown. You can skip the lemon if you like, but it makes the apples more presentable.

When the apples are done, put your two cups of water on the stove and turn on the stove to start the boil.  Immediately (before the water boils), ad the brown sugar, corn starch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt.  Stir this mixture together constantly over the heat.  It should boil fairly quickly and then immediately it should start to thicken up.  When it's just starting to thicken up, take it off the heat and ad the apples.  Put the pot back on the heat and stir it around until it warms up again. Then turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 5 minutes (or until the apples are just getting a little soft).

If you want you can cook these apples until they're completely soft, but for the pizza it's nice to have a little apple crunch.  Once the apple are done, remove them from the heat and pour them into a bowl. Let the apples cool a bit, and either store them for later, or use once cool.  While you're waiting for the apples to cool, you can grate your cheddar cheese, how much cheese you use depends on your taste.  Some people don't really like the idea of cheddar cheese on an apple pie, so you might even want to skip this step entirely.  If you love cheddar cheese on your apple pie, go for the whole cup, if not just lightly sprinkle it on.

Once your toppings are ready, you just have to choose how you want to bake it.  I suggest baking the crust slightly before putting on the ingredients.  In this case it was decided to bake the pizza on the BBQ (a great way to bake pizza I might ad).  Roll out the dough if need be, then put it in the oven or on the barbecue until it's fairly cooked.  Once after it's cooked, put on the apple pie filling, and sprinkle on the cheese. Return the pizza to the oven/BBQ until it's warmed up and the cheese has melted.  Since all the ingredients are cooked already, there's no need to worry about cooking anything you just have to warm things up.  Once the cheese is melted, remove from the over, cut and serve warm.

This recipe worked out fairly well.  I did however have to drain some of the juice from the pie filling before adding it to the pizza.  What I suggest, is put the filling on the pizza dough with a slotted spoon, then if the pizza seems dry, just poor on the extra liquid from the topping as needed.  The cheese was a pleasant surprise, I didn't know if it would work, but it did.  The cheese added just a nice amount of savory to the sweet pie filling. I went with a little less cheese, mostly because I was sharing this pizza with friends and some weren't adventurous foodies. The filling made enough for at least two pizzas, since it stores well, I froze the second half.  Dessert pizzas aren't a hit with everybody, but the group that ate this one seemed pretty pleased.

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Wish They Still Made It - Part 5 - Lay's Cinnamon Bun

This was a treat that was pretty much guaranteed to be discontinued.  Last year when I saw the variety of flavours on offer from Lay's annual chip flavour competition, I was pretty sure that Cinnamon Bun wouldn't win.  It's just too strange a flavour for the market, and that's a little sad.  I think these chips deserve a second chance.  I loved them, and I'd easily make them a regular flavour in my chip rotation.  I think if more people actually tried them, they too may have been surprised.

Most of all I like the idea of these chips.  It's about time that chip companies started thinking savory and sweet as well.  Many candy companies use salty flavours to tremendous success, so why can't chip companies use sweet flavours?

Here's my poem on the subject:

Sweet and savory is a great combination,
For a salty snack, a new transition.
Please Lays, oh please, bring these chips back,
I'm really craving, this sort of snack.
Sweet flavoured chips are the future, a hunch,
I want banana bread chips to munch, munch and, munch.

Click here to read the Candy Critic review.

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Candy In the Media

I'm a big fan of using candy and snacks in your daily cooking.  I'm also a big fan of trying something new, unique, and something that probably won't work, but is fun to try.  However, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you do not try this recipe.  It just sounds so very horrible, and it sounds like a waste of perfectly good nachos, chicken, and Mountain Dew.  While I think the nacho/Doritos on chicken would work really well, to me the Mountain Dew is really the deal breaker in this recipe.  If for some reason you decide to try this out, and if it actually turns out that it's really tasty, let me know.  If enough people can convince me, I just might try it... maybe.

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