The best part of the weeks leading up to Christmas? Holiday craft sales. From tiny indy affairs hosting young artists with edgy, Etsy-style offerings, to old-lady church basement sales chockablock with crocheted sweaters, knitted scarves and hand-painted ornaments, I love ‘em all. Edmonton’s biggest holiday craft sale, which takes place at the Butterdome, the University of Alberta’s ridiculously yellow, butter-pat-shaped athletics building, combines the best of both worlds.

As much as I love looking at arts and crafts, my favorite corner of the Butterdome craft sale is the one where the food vendors are – or, as I like to call it, “sample city.” After mooching more than my fair share of ciders, hot chocolates, baked goodies and more different kinds of dips, spreads and tapenades than I can count on both hands, I went looking for candy items to review – no easy task. From several kinds of home-made toffees to chocolate-covered fruits to the folks from Calgary with 50 kinds of fudge, the candy options were as numerous as they were delicious.

Finally, I settled upon an offering from Davenport’s Tasty Sensations, who make a very fine caramel toffee popcorn, as well as “Cowboy Crunch,” which you can think of as a more upscale version of Clodhoppers. I selected a bag of Davenport’s Chocolate Covered Caramel Corn. (Though caramel corn straddles the line between “candy” and “snack,” in my opinion, anything coated in this much chocolate and caramel has left snack territory and wandered firmly into candy country.)

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For the longest time, my palate’s intelligence for toffee has resembled my career in high school geometry: I liked the class and got a B, but I was nowhere near as good in it as I was in English (chocolate) and Science (gummi). Toffee always seemed likable, but I never ate enough of the stuff to be an aficionado.

Toffee itself is a simple candy made by boiling sugar and mixing it with butter. Though most Americans identify toffee by the way it appears in Heath and Skor bars, it can take several forms. English toffee is a derivative that can be chewy, and honeycomb toffee is aerated, as found in Crunchie and Violet Crumble bars.

Toffee tends to be a flavor spread around by the British, resulting in it being more popular in Europe and its colonies rather than in the U.S. When I was living in New Zealand, I was exposed to a variety of toffees of all different textures and tastes, which were never readily available to me back in the States. This inundation of the sweet created my craving for toffee that still exists today.

When I was offered to write a piece on LalaBoodles’ Gourmet Toffee, I couldn’t turn down the offer. I had never sampled gourmet toffee, and the descriptions of what they produced were so enticing that I circled my mailbox for an entire week until they showed.

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To heck with Christmas – summer is definitely the most wonderful time of the year. You’ve got warmth and sunshine, barbecues, beers on the patio, and outdoor sports. And in my home town of Edmonton, Alberta, summertime is Capital Ex time. That’s our local midway, recently re-branded from Klondike Days. (Considering that our claim to the old name was basically “During the gold rush, some guys stopped here for a beer on their way to the Yukon,” I figure the change was long overdue.) But whatever the name, the big draws remain the same: rides, midway games, and, of course, delicious, delicious carnival food. So on a recent Saturday, I braved the crowds at the Ex in an attempt to determine the top five carnival candies. (The things I do for you readers! Wink, wink.) The results were as follows:

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I first ran into Popsters at this year’s All Candy Expo. As I walked by I grabbed a sample and was blown away. Popsters are mini caramel popcorn balls coated with milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or a peanut butter. The mini popcorn balls range from roughly the size of a whopper to the size of a jellybean. They aren’t skimpy with the coating and the ratio of coating to popcorn is just right. The popcorn adds a nice flavor and crunch to the Popsters.

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I was a little confused when a colorful package from the people at POP! arrived on my doorstep. I’d checked out the website before they were sent, and the product information describes them as a “delectable frozen confection.” It’s true, they arrived beautifully boxed and carefully nestled in foil cold packs But when I opened the box, I found an assortment of fudgy-popcorn treats, not ice cream, as I’d been expecting.

Still, I wasn’t about to turn up my nose to these lovely chocolatey little globes, so I decided to just assume the makers of POP! want me to enjoy them cold (even if they wouldn’t melt at room temp), and leave it at that.

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