When I’m at the local mall and I feel like a sugar fix, I can almost always find a Sweet As store to run wild in. A vast majority of my reviews here are done from candy I bought there, as Sweet As is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) candy superstore here in Melbourne. The stores all have a Great Wall of Sweets which literally reaches from floor to ceiling and is jam-packed with new and classic candies. With seven stores operating and two more on the way, this is some serious candy loving going on for the people of Melbourne. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Cheree Smith, one of the family members who run Sweet As. Considering that Australia is often described as “America in the 1950’s” it was interesting to see if this applied to candy trends as well.
A Candy Conversation: 10 Questions for Sweet As
Categories: Candy, Foreign (non-US) CandyCandy Recipe: Chocolate Covered Caramelized Matza Crunch
Categories: Candy, Candy Recipes, Chocolate Candy, Holiday Candy
Even if you are not Jewish, you must RUN to your nearest place-where-there-are-Jews and buy a box of matzah. You must then RUN home and make a giant batch of this stuff. Seriously. Trust me - it’s THAT good.
When pastry chef David Lebovitz posted this recipe several months ago, I bookmarked it out of loyalty to a fellow Jew-slash-chef. Anyone brave enough to claim that this was the stuff of legend, AND be baking it a full four months early, had to be on to something, right? The recipe then got lost in a sea of bookmarks, until such time as another food blogger posted her version of this and reminded me of its existence. I will freely admit that I cut and pasted the recipe that very second and abandoned my computer to go and make some.
By the end of the day, I had endured several burnt fingertips and was surrounded by a sea of chocolate-smeared napkins. Not because I am a particularly messy pastry chef, but because I am an impatient so-and-so whose nose and eyes could no longer handle the absolutely heavenly caramel smell and the shiny molten chocolate layer on top. I ate rather more of it than I originally intended, AND I ate it before it was technically ready to eat, hence the scorched skin. Luckily for me and my Seder guests, the recipe yields enough that I had some to serve on both nights and even a few scraps to give the kids in the days after.
Chocolate Candy Review: Chocolate-Coated Matzah
Categories: Candy, Candy Reviews, Chocolate Candy, Holiday Candy
Any way you break it (ha!), Passover is a Candy Addict’s worst nightmare. A vast majority of candy these days is simply not kosher for Passover, largely because it is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Most Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews do not allow the consumption of corn or legumes during the holiday, so corn syrup sweetened stuff is a no-go zone. Most Sephardic (North African/Middle Eastern/Spanish) Jews do allow legumes and corn, but even those who don’t mind the corn syrup have to bid adieu to their favorite classic treats - anything with crisp wafers (see ya, Kit Kat), malt (buh-bye Whoppers), crispy rice bits (No Crunch bar for you!)
Traditional Passover candies tend to be those that will not offend anyone in either the legumes or no-legumes camp. They’re mainly a collection of Joyva Ring Jells, those hideous pink jelly rings covered in dark mockolate or those completely horrible cherries floating in cough syrup coated with mockolate. Not all kosher candy is bad, it’s just that Passover candy in particular is mostly a disaster. Over these eight days, my sugar highs tend to be the result of a few too many (handfuls of) home made meringues.
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Candy Recipe: Chocolate Covered Honeycomb
Categories: Candy, Candy Recipes, Chocolate Candy
Honeycomb (also known as Cinder Toffee) is one of those quintessential British candies which has made its mark everywhere but the U.S. Here in Australia, people tend to either love them or hate them, and those in the “love it” camp have their favourite brand. Violet Crumble is perhaps the most well-known of the commercial honeycombs available.
Every time I’ve offered to bring someone a sweet treat from from Down Under, it’s either the Violet Crumble or the Crunchie they beg for. Honeycomb is essentially basic toffee which has baking soda added to it. The baking soda and molten sugar react, creating a volcanic eruption of sugary golden edible styrofoam. You can eat it as is, but dipping the irregular chunks into chocolate is delicious. You can also smash it up and mix it into cookies, top cupcakes with it, stir it through ice cream and sprinkle it on top of a chocolate cake for a whole new eating experience.
Candy + Braces = Orthodontic Nightmare
Categories: Candy, Gummi/Gummy Candy, Hard Candy
Braces are the natural enemy of candy eaters, primarily because when you’ve got a mouthful of metal, you’re not supposed to have a mouthful of candy, too. Many is a parent who has endured an expensive trip to the orthodontist to repair or replace various bits of mouth hardware which fell awry of a Skittles.
The Raising a Healthy Family website has developed a list of thirty foods which your orthodontist hates. Of course the article should be about thirty things he loves, because all those repairs have got to be helping to plump up the old bank balance. Not surprisingly, twenty one of the items listed are candy. All the old favorites are on the “no go” list, including Starburst, Twizzlers, gummy bears and of course Tootsie Rolls. So what is a teenage Candy Addict supposed to eat, given this enormous list of things which are not allowed?
Classic Candy Review: Snickers
Categories: Candy, Candy Reviews, Chocolate Candy, Classic and Retro Candy
Although Snickers has satisfied the world for over 75 years now, it has been some years since I’ve actually bought and eaten one. I had pretty much overdosed on them during my pregnancy, when I craved Snickers every day for several months (or just used the cravings excuse as a way to justify daily chocolate eating)!
These days there are so many interesting candy bars available, the tried-and-true don’t often get chosen when I’m in the mood for a sugar fix. After eating one for the purposes of this review, I remembered why those cravings were so nice to have. Snickers is really the granddaddy of all candy bars and it’s not difficult to taste why.
Upon eating it, I was reminded why Snickers is such a popular choice – there is just something very appealing about the different textures it offers. The smooth, slightly squishy nougat, the stretchy caramel, and the crunchy peanuts, all wrapped up in a soft chocolate coating makes this bar almost irresistible.
Classic Candy Review: Jolly Rancher Flavor Round-Up
Categories: Candy, Candy Reviews, Classic and Retro Candy, Hard Candy
Since I adore them so much, the flavors of Jolly Rancher candies often act as a benchmark for when I taste other fruit flavored candy. As a group they make no excuses for not tasting at all like the actual fruits they represent. Jolly Ranchers are fabulous in that they are so fantastically, gorgeously artificial and yummy. The advertising tag line is “bursting with BOLD fruit flavor” and when it comes to hard candies, no truer words were spoken. Here’s a quick review of the five classic flavors:
Apple: This is far and away my favorite Jolly Rancher flavor. Sweet and tart, green apple is a classic for which there is no substitute. It sits on the knife edge of being too sweet, but balances nicely with the amount of tartness in it. Added bonuses are the bright green it turns your tongue and the fact that you can use it to make Jolly Rancher beer.
Candy Review: Reese’s Whoppers
Categories: Candy, Candy Reviews, New Candy
Our good friends at Hershey’s are at it again - taking two favorite and much loved products and rolling them into one. In this case it’s the lovely malted balls of Whoppers and the peanut butter filling of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Original Whoppers are a small, crunchy malted milk ball covered with a thin layer of chocolate. These Reese’s versions are exactly the same thing, but the chocolate layer is replaced with peanut butter.
This product is another case of something with a lot of potential which just misses the mark. I busted this cute milk-carton inspired packaging open, threw a few of these in my mouth, chomped down and thought, “Oh.” That’s it. No declarations of my undying love for these, no desire to just pour the rest of them right down my throat (as convenient as the packaging would make that!).
Candy Review: Trio of Terrible TNT Treats
Categories: Candy, Candy Reviews, Foreign (non-US) Candy, Soft Candy, Sour Candy
It would seem that my mission - my purpose in Candy Addict-ness - is to find some sour candy which is actually sour. Thus far my efforts seem to bring forth endless rounds of candy which is not quite sour enough or not sour at all.
One thing I’ve learned on this quest is that sour candy labels are not to be trusted. Nor are the pictures on candy labels. Previously, if the label had words like “extreme,” “caution,” “super,” and the picture has someone whose head or ears is blown off, I knew I was in for a good candy eating time. Lately several varieties of candy with those words and pictures have left me disappointed. The TNT products were no exception.
Candy Review: Hershey’s Take 5 Bar
Categories: Candy, Candy Reviews, Chocolate Candy
Recently, I’ve gotten the relatively rare opportunity to taste and review a number of American products (thanks Sera!) and I’ve realized a few things. For instance, eating pretzels as candy is a very US-based food phenomenon. Products like the Pretzel Pete Chocolate Peanut Butter Gems, large pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate and rolled in toppings, pretzels added to desserts and so on are really only something you find on American shores.
Needless to say I was super excited to try Hershey’s Take 5 bar and ripped it open immediately (as evidenced by photo above). The Take 5 bar is made with a long list of my favorite things: chocolate, pretzels, caramel, peanuts and peanut butter. Based on this list alone, what’s not to like? The bar itself is actually two bars - two vaguely oval-shaped lumps, each about 2.5 inches long.
