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Featured News Friday, May 09, 2008
Chocolate Storage SolutionsSince the temperatures were back in the nineties in Los Angeles and I just returned from a long road trip, I thought I’d discuss chocolate storage for cocoa butter hostile climates.
Freezing or even refrigerating chocolate can encourage sweating (condensation) and transfer of odors from other foods. I simply don’t use my fridge for my candy. It’s never worked out very well, it’s too cold. Also, if you do end up freezing your chocolate, it’s important to bring it back to room temperature slowly - first in the fridge, then into a cool room. (Too much work & planning! I want my chocolate now!) If you have a nice cool cupboard (preferably on an inside wall away from appliances that get warm), just keeping your chocolate sequestered should be fine. I have a set of Pyrex containers that won’t transfer odors and seem to give a bit of insulative protection. It also helps to have a climate controlled house. I don’t have central air and Los Angeles can experience some wide swings, temperatures inside my house go from the low sixties to over 100. (I’ve taken clothes out of my dresser that feel like they just came out of the hot dryer.) These glass containers at the moment reside in my Chocolate Fridge. Technically it’s a wine fridge (meant to hold a dozen bottles). I’ve repurposed it to hold chocolate by amping up the temperature to 65 (instead of 55, which is where you’d probably keep your wine). Because wine fridges don’t dehumidify, the glass is also good for protecting against moisture. It also helps to prevent transfer of flavors and odors. Mint and Coffee items are additionally wrapped in ziploc bags and kept in separate containers from other non-flavored chocolates. That’s what things looked like about a month ago. I ended up taking out two of the shelves and just stacking some of the glass containers because I have so much stuff. Yes, be sure to stagger things to encourage circulation, but also remember that a full fridge is more efficient than an empty one because the stuff inside insulates itself. I bought a little thermometer to keep on the inside as well to monitor the temperature. There wasn’t anything on the settings, just low-med-high, so I wasn’t sure what I was getting, right now I have it set on low and the temps have been 62-65 ... well within the ideal range. (That little white thing at the bottom is a container of baking soda, also to absorb odors.) Some folks also love to use charcoal briquettes to absorb odors and control humidity - just be sure to get ones without lighter fluid in them, which will result in an unpalatable flavor. While this is elegant and all that, it’s also expensive to buy and of course requires electricity (no good for brown outs in the summer heat). However, if you’re the type of person who is spending $8 a piece on bars, or place orders online for quanties far larger than can be consumed in a week, it may make sense in the long run.
I don’t actually freeze the cold packs I use, but sometimes I toss them in the fridge overnight. I don’t want to freeze anything or shock it, I just want to keep the climate consistently under 70 degrees. When I put them back in, I usually wrap them in a paper towel, just in case they cause a bit of condensation. (I’m thinking of making sleeves for them out of old fabric napkins. Cold pack cozies, anyone?) Then if I don’t have any other candies that must be kept cold I fill in with other candy, just for insulation value. If I don’t have any candy sitting around sometimes I use throw pillows or bubble wrap. A full cooler will stay cool better than one with a large gap of air in the top. When returning from San Francisco, because I took more candy up there than I brought back, I ended up stuffing two wool sweaters on the top of the cooler as insulation from the glaring sun from my hatchback window. I also placed a windshield reflector over the cooler to give an added measure of protection against heat. Another solution is water bottles. I have quite a collection of sport bottles that I just fill with tap water. The large mass of room temperature water provides yet another layer of insulation. I could also put them in the fridge for a while should the temps rise (this is a great solution if you don’t have access to those cold packs - but again, if it’s humid they will sweat, so put them in a clean cotton sock or something). I also have an old styrofoam cooler box that I got a gift of cheese in once. For the most part, I just put stuff in there as a storage space for things I pick up on sale (my Hershey’s Eggs in this case), but as it’s been getting warmer I’ve tossed a few cool packs on top. For shorter trips around town, remember that your car is a portable solar oven. Leaving stuff in the trunk or back seat is asking for moltency. Again, a cooler is a wise choice, and those insulate lunch bags can be rather helpful as well. If you have no choices, put lots of layers around the chocolate and water bottles or any large volume of liquid is your friend.
Finally, for carrying to parties or a special picnic, why not consider this wide mouth Soup Thermos: As I found out, it doesn’t do much to protect candies from changes in air pressure. Here are some other resouces about how to store your chocolate goodies:
Do you have any solutions, or words of warning? Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:26 am Shopping • Candy • Featured News • Behind the Scenes • Comments (5) Saturday, May 03, 2008
All Sugar Free Week (May 5-9)I never thought it could happen, but here I am slating full week of reviews of candies that contain no sugar (no glucose, sucrose or fructose) - all without breaking my own rule of no artificial sweeteners.
You can look forward to reviews of: SparX & Xylichew (xylitol), Hershey’s Sugar Free Chocolate, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & York Peppermint Patties (sorbitol), MarieBelle Maya Chocolate Bar (no sweeteners, just milk), Michel Cluizel Cacao Forte bonbon & Noir Infinity bar (no sugar at all) and finally a roundup of 99-100% dark chocolates from Bonnat, Dagoba & Meiji and even a baking chocolate bar. Do they all qualify as candy? We’ll find out ... Related CandiesUPDATE: Just to clarify, I don't eat artificial sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, aceK, etc.), so I had to chose my list of products to try very carefully. Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Easiest Chocolate Pudding (not quite from scratch)
I usually make Jell-O Cook & Serve pudding. I’ve tried some organic stuff from Whole Foods but found it had far more sugar in it and less flavor, so I went back to Jell-O (I actually preferred Royal, but I can’t find that any longer). I usually make mine with Lactaid milk, as I’m not that good at digesting larger quantities of milk products and this is a good alternative to ice cream.
Here’s what you get from Jell-O for $1.50:
It turns out that it’s so freakishly easy, I’m kicking myself for not doing it for years. (For the record, I did a search on the internet to see if I could find a recipe for just this and I had absolutely no luck ... so I worked it out on my own.) What started this was that I got two cans from Equal Exchange last week ... when it was 90 degrees out. Not really hot chocolate season any longer, but pudding is always in season. One can is of their Organic & Fairly Traded Spiced Cocoa (shown) and one is of their Organic & Fairly Traded Drinking Chocolate. The difference between the two: hot cocoa is just that, cocoa and sugar (this one with spices as well) to be mixed with milk. Hot Chocolate or Drinking Chocolate has cocoa liquor in it and therefor a bit of cocoa butter.
Here are the ingredients of the Drinking Chocolate:
(The ingredients list would look shorter if they didn’t have to throw the word organic in front of everything because it’s two things: sugar and some sort of chocolate or cocoa.) It took me two tries, the first one I did only 2/3 of a cup of cocoa mix and 2% milk. The second was best and is what I’ve listed below. Deluxe & Politically Correct Lactose-Free Chocolate Pudding That’s Super Easy to Make from Near-Scratch Have your destination cups ready. I usually use the little cups that came with my china pattern, they hold 8 ounces, so that’s what I put in them. But you can use ramekins or other dessert cups that hold the recommended dosage of a half a cup if you have self control (or if you have no self control and just like to do a lot of dishes).
Put 3 cups of milk into a large, heavy saucepan. Sift the 1/4 cup of corn starch into the milk while stirring (I use a mesh tea strainer to do this, a fine screen colander works, too). This should avoid any of the dreaded lumps. When done, turn on burner to medium.
Put in 3/4 cup of cocoa mix, stirring constantly, scraping bottom and sides. This process takes about five minutes. Just be patient, work out any lumps or clumps in the cocoa while stirring, they get easier to integrate as the milk warms. The drinking chocolate didn’t look like it was completely melted until the very end, so have confidence. Continue heating until mixture thickens. Do not allow to come to a full boil, but if you get a few blurples as it comes up to that temperature, it’s not the end of the world. Pour into cups. Allow to cool. If you don’t like skin on your pudding, cover immediately with wax paper or plastic wrap touching the surface of the pudding. I don’t mind skin, so I don’t cover mine at all, even when I stick it in the fridge (partly because I’m lazy and partly because it seems like such a waste of plastic). I also like hot pudding. Yes, I’ll rinse out the pan and clean up my mess and then dig in with a spoon to my chocolate soup while it’s still steamy and a little runny. In order to customize this, in both instances I followed the ratio of milk to hot cocoa mix on the package, so give it a try with whatever you may have around, but I’d err on the upper side of 1/4 cup per cup of milk. The Equal Exchange Spiced Cocoa was a bit too spicy for me, but a really good, rich flavor (I might try it with half unspiced at some point). Not quite as fatty smooth as I would have preferred but this allowed me to sense the difference between that and the Drinking Chocolate (57%) was amazing. So deeply chocolatey, but silky smooth. It was like a freshly waxed floor and stocking feet ... my tongue was sliding around with that pudding going, “Whee!” Yes, truly from scratch is probably best of all, but this is so elegantly easy and means that I can have hot cocoa on hand for guests and just need to have corn starch around for a scalable chocolate pudding mix at the drop of hat. Pudding is a great year round dessert, easy to make larger batches for bigger crowds or use as a pie or tart filling. I also tried Guittard Grand Cacao Drinking Chocolate late last year, which is absolutely divine as a hot chocolate ... next time I’ll try it as pudding, too. It’s the perfect ratio of chocolate to sugar (milk adds its own sweetness). I haven’t (and won’t) tried this with an actual instant cocoa mix that you’d use water with ... that has powdered milk or “coffee creamer” type products in it. I don’t think it would work with soy, rice or almond milk products, part of the reaction that thickens pudding is the starch with the calcium in milk, if I’m not mistaken. But if it does work, it’d make this vegan. (Jell-O Pudding box image swiped from Von’s website, Equal Exchange Drinking Chocolate image from EqualExchange.org & Guittard Grand Cacao from Guittard webstore.) Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:00 am Equal Exchange • Chocolate • Candy • Recipes • Featured News • Comments (7) Thursday, April 10, 2008
Candy Blog’s Happy 3rd Anniversary
Since my first post on April 9th called Adventures in Candy, things have changed quite a bit. I was not new to blogging at that point, I’d been keeping Fast Fiction since 2001 and blog regularly for blogging.la since early 2004. I’m not sure I realized how much it would take over my life.
There was something about blogging about candy. It just clicked. People I’d never met started reading. I had fun and I realized that I’d been writing about candy my whole life. From the short story in 5th grade to essays in high school to my masters thesis, a river of candy ran through it.
So I hired Hop Studios in late 2005 to redesign the blog which meant great new features like following comment conversations, the regular polls, related candies, search, the fun ratings & specs chart and intensive category tags.
I continue to work with Hop Studios, tweaking functionality, adding new features and of course just fluffing it up once in a while. There are over 1,200 posts here on Candy Blog so far. I don’t know for sure how many products I’ve reviewed (some posts include multiple reviews), but I put that number at about 800. My flickr Candy photoset has documentation of over 2,100 product photos (including at least 200 things that I’ve tried but never reviewed) .
Readers are a big part of things here too, there are 12,700 comments logged here from you (and another 800 or so responses from me). I have no idea of the number of people who have visited the blog over the years. My statcounter says 4.6 million page loads since November of 2005 (and that doesn’t count me). The best part is that I’ve come to know so many of Candy Blog’s readers by name, via emails and through their blogs linked in the comments.
I’ve traveled for Candy Blog, covering the 2006 & 2007 All Candy Expo (the largest trade candy show in North America), the 2007 & 2008 Fancy Food Show, the 2007 & 2008 Natural & Organic Products Expo and trips to candy factories in Pennsylvania & California. No matter where I go in the country, I try to see what’s going on in the local confectionery.
But for the most part Candy Blog has become a faithful review site, five a week ... sometimes more, every once in a while I take a day off.
Late last year I did add an extra layer of insulation from advertising concerns by taking on my husband as my publisher. He talks directly to people interested in advertising (in case they may be manufacturers) so that I don’t have to worry about that stuff.
So now it’s your turn, this is an open thread for you to request things from me. More giveaways? Forums? More recipes (though I fail at most of them)? Factory tours? Candy destinations? News? Buyer’s guides? Company profiles? More history ... it’s your call. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:35 am Behind the Scenes • Featured News • Candy • Comments (32) Sunday, April 06, 2008
Candy Blog Photo StudioI get emails and comments all the time asking how I do the photographs for Candy Blog. So I thought I’d show you my home studio (yes, I cleaned up for the photo). My Equipment:
My Tools:
I store most of these underneath the table, which means that they’re always readily available.
It’s completely moldable. I pull out little bits for propping up chocolate eggs or roll out a teensy string to put behind spherical candies like malted milk balls. I have a large wad of it on an old votive candle on both the base to keep it from slipping and on the face of it to stick the back of packages to, this gets them to sit up straight. It’s probably the best $2 you can invest in your tools. I also have a bunch of props and prop-em-ups sitting around. I have little glass vases, a selection of brandy snifters, wine glasses and ramekins. They don’t make it into the shots very often, but sometimes I like to play. I usually keep a few small dishes ready too. As I’m photographing, as you may have observed, I take a bite out of a lot of things. I usually just set the rest aside on a plate or put it back in the package to finish later. But there’s usually a dish of leftover items for my reviews that I munch on later that day or the next. Stay tuned for a tutorial on getting that white background look in photos. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:43 am Candy • Featured News • Behind the Scenes • Comments (9) Friday, April 04, 2008
Red Vines GiveawayNational Licorice Day is on Saturday, April 12th. Why licorice only gets a day when peanut butter gets a whole month is beyond me. (Here are some more candy days.) In recognition of this Red Vines contacted me a few weeks ago offering up some prize packages for Candy Blog readers. I’ll be giving FOUR (4) of these prizes away. (Rules below.) Here’s what’s inside:
Plus you’ll also get a hat, tee shirt, sticker, water bottle and three temporary tattoos! So, if you’re a Red Vines lover (or haven’t tried it before and would like to experience a representation of their line of products) just follow these simple directions: If these odds aren’t good enough for you, Red Vines is also running a contest on their website, too for actual scholarship or travel money. (Other fine print: Red Vines are made with wheat and are not suitable for those with wheat/gluten sensitivities. Above photo was provided by Red Vines, not taken by me.) UPDATE: Four lucky winners were drawn and their packages shipped out this week. They should have them in their hot little hands right now. The winners were Tara, Shelley, Kim & Paul. Congratulations! Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:00 am Featured News • Candy • Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Candy Tease: Edition FiveHere are some new candies that will be hitting store shelves soon:
Name: Revved-Up Cinnamon Mentos
Name:Ritter Sport Peppermint
(images courtesy of the respective manufacturers) Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:28 pm Candy • Featured News • Comments (2) Friday, March 21, 2008
Happy Easter IslandHappy Easter from Candy Blog ... here are some fun Peeps-themed postcards you’re free to share with your friends: (source image from Marie Tess via a cc license attribution/non-commercial) (source image from ~david via a cc license attribution/non-commercial) (source image from viajar24h.com via a cc license attribution/non-commercial)
(source image from viajar24h.com via a cc license attribution/non-commercial)
Related Candies
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Candy, you know, that stuff made with sugar. These are my candy reviews. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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