Happy...Febru-ween?

 © Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Red Velvet Kit-Kats -Target

Red Velvet Kit-Kats -Target $3.24

We already know my stance on cake-flavored candy (spoiler alert: I think it's a scam), but when it comes to red velvet cake, things get a bit complicated.

Garish red-food-coloring aside, Red velvet cake is known for it's fine, velvety, texture and usual pairing with cream cheese frosting. (Food Snob Fact: It used to be served with ermine frosting, but most Americans use cream cheese these days.) Now, can you really cram chocolate cake, with a velvety texture, and cream cheese icing into a crispy, crunchy white chocolate confection like Kit-Kat? Sounds like a stretch, but we shall see...

CLOSED - Trick or Treat GIVEAWAY!

I have LOTS of candy & LOTS of awesome readers, 

so I'm sharing the wealth with a little giveaway! 

 To thank all of you for following my blog and participating in my 4+ years of food hoarding, 

I'm going share some of these sweets I have squirreled away!

- You MUST be 18 or older to enter

- I will only ship to USA or CANADA 

(I’ll be doing an international giveaway next year, but for now I can’t afford the shipping.)

COMMENT down below and tell me what your FAVORITE Halloween Candy is! 

(It's that easy!) 

There will be 2 LUCKY WINNERS selected from the comments

Each one will receive a Treat Bag stuffed with the candies and treats shown above. 

Most of it is Japanese, and most of it I've reviewed on the blog!

(Some stuff is going to be reviewed soon)

CONTEST NOW CLOSED
WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED 11/2/16

Thank you all for following & GOOD LUCK!

Crunchkins - Walmart

Crunchkins - Walmart 

 Okay, this is a (relatively) new candy product a lot of people were excited about, but I (sadly) was not one of them. 

From the second I saw the promo image for this product I felt like it was going to be a disappointment. Why? Look at those flavors! It seems like this is going to be another case of fancy flavor names that the product can't deliver. I mean, Birthday Cake and Fudge Brownie? Aren't those just fancy ways of saying "Chocolate" and "Vanilla?" But Glazed Donut? That one I wasn't sure about. My curiosity won out over my gut instinct. Lets see who was right, my gut, or my brain

Meiji Marble Chocolate - Asian Food Market

Meiji Marble Chocolate - Asian Food Market

Meiji Marble, in a box? If you're unfamiliar with Meiji products, their candies are often sold in long skinny cardboard tubes with a matching cardboard cap. The only time I've ever seen Meiji Marble in a box, and not their signature tube, is when it's part of a mini-sampler, or a special flavor mix, but this looks pretty normal to me. I can't read much of the packaging, but from what I can see...this looks like normal marble chocolate. I guess we'll open it up and find out.

Meiji Poifull Drink Mix - Asian Food Market

Meiji Poifull Drink Mix - Asian Food Market

Poifull may look like jelly beans, but the texture is completely different! The outside is sugary and kind of crumbly, similar to Jelly Belly style beans, but the inside is chewy, bouncy and soft. It's almost like a panned gummy, and it's absolutely delightful! Unlike a lot of American jelly beans, these are also flavored inside and out! The cores are each a different color to match their sugary exterior. For this mix in particular we have four soda-themed flavors, and I'm super excited to give these a try!

Candyology 101 Episode 34 - Mike & Ike

Which is your favorite?

On today's episode of Candyology 101 we take a look at Mike and Ikes. This jelly-bean-like confection comes is a ton of different flavor varieties and it's really affordable, but it's never gotten the same recognition as other fruity candies like Skittles or Starburst.

We take a brief look at this tubular candy to discuss how it's made, how long it's been around, and we share our favorite mixes and individual flavors. Plus! Cybele tries to quiz me to see if I can pick out the legit Mike and Ike mixes in a sea of fakes. (How did I do? Tune in to find out!) Then, as always, we finish things off with our treat or trick section to let you know what sweets are headed our way soon. Be sure to share your favorite Mike & Ike mix below!

Have you been liking Candyology101 so far? 

Please head on over to itunes and give us a little review to let us know how we're doing.

Meet the cast:

Cybele from Candy Blog

Maria (Me) from Sometimes Foodie

Listen to the player above, check us out on Stitcher, or you can download the MP3 file. If you want to subscribe to the show, it’s available on iTunes and via RSS.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

Like Sometimes Foodie's Facebook page to keep up with all my foodie adventures!

Mike and Ike Root Beer Float - Dollar Tree

Mike and Ike Root Beer Float - Dollar Tree

Those Cotton Candy Mike and Ikes weren't alone, they were released with a matching faux-vintage box of Root Beer Float candies and I couldn't just review one without the other, could I? (Well I could, but I'd feel like a bad food blogger.) Besides, I like root beer and root beer flavored sweets. When I was little root beer flavored medicine was always my favorite and I loved eating those little root beer barrel shaped hard candies. As an adult I still like root beer, I just don't care for it in cookie form.

Fun Fact: Root beer is extremely unpopular in Japan! This post went viral on Tumblr, then it quickly spread all over the rest of the internet.

Image ©  Yuru Yuri San☆Hai  - Comment credited to nerdfighterwhatevernumbers

So it's pretty safe to say that these candies would be a flop in Japan, but what will I think of them?

Mike and Ike Cotton Candy - Dollar Tree

Mike and Ike Cotton Candy - Dollar Tree

In preparation for our next Candyology 101 recording, I grabbed a few different flavors of Mike and Ike candies from the Dollar Tree, which carries a pretty wide variety of flavors. I'm a sucker for cute retro stuff, and my mother loves cotton candy sweets, so picking this one from the lineup was a no brainer!

Strawberry Shortcake Oreos - Walmart

Strawberry Shortcake Oreos - Walmart

Another month, another new Oreo. Between these, Peeps and all the new m&m's...I'm getting pretty overwhelmed! It seems like the second I buy a new flavor of one, three others pop up in it's place. My stomach just can't keep up with it all! Heck, I still have a pack of the limited edition chocolate lemon Oreos somewhere in my avalanche-worthy food horde...I think? They're somewhere around here. I should probably find those and review them soon...

I'll get to those eventually. For now, let's find out if these Strawberry Shortcake Oreos are just strawberry flavored, or actually shortcake-like. 

Birthday Cake Airhead - 7-Eleven

Birthday Cake Airhead - 7-Eleven

Today is my friend Karen's birthday, so why not celebrate by eating a cake flavored taffy and then describing it to a bunch of strangers on the internet? To top things off I'm not even sharing it with her! (Sorry Karen, but to be honest, I'm really skeptical about this flavor, so it sounds selfish, but I might be taking a cake-flavored bullet for you. You're welcome.) 

Milky Matcha - Asian Food Market

Milky Matcha - Asian Food Market

So here we are again. I, a self proclaimed Milky candy hater, bought another Milky product. Why?  It's the same excuse as always, I was sucked in by the adorable illustration. Look at it! Can you blame me?

Smarties Squeeze Candy - Five Below

Smarties Squeeze Candy - Five Below

It's like candy and toothpaste had a baby just to spite dentists everywhere. This kind of squeeze style liquid candy has been around for quite some time and they're really popular with small children, but you don't need to be a child psychologist to understand why. It's liquid sugar, with bright colors, packaged in a squeeze tube. What's not to love? I remember buying a bunch of Hubba Bubba's Squeeze Pops from Blockbuster video back in the 90's and thinking I was the coolest kid on the block, but looking back, eating them was super awkward and messy, and I honestly don't remember them tasting all that great.

I was walking around Five Below a few months ago to get some sour sweets for the Candyology 101 podcast, and I saw this lonely tube of squeezable candy sitting on the shelf. I picked it up for a closer look and someone who was restocking the merchandise said it was really popular and that they couldn't keep it in stock. Welp, that sold me! Into my handcart it went. I wonder 28-year-old-me will like this stuff as much as 8-year-old-me.

Handcrafted Luxury Chocolates - Aldi

Handcrafted Luxury Chocolates - Aldi

Valentine's Day has come and gone, and clearance candy has (already) disappeared from the shelves. These stores move so quickly! You have maybe 2 days after the holiday occurs to score anything on clearance before it all disappears into some kind of magical season-appropriate black hole. I thought they used to ship it off to the discount stores or something, but it seems like it's short lived on the shelves there as well. What happens to all of this out of season candy? 

Thankfully, Aldi is amazing as always, and they hang on to seasonal stuff and mark it down until it's all sold out. (I love you Aldi, never change.) I grabbed this fancy looking box of "luxury" chocolates to treat myself after the holiday season.

Apple Cinnamon Harvest Cookies - Aldi

Apple Cinnamon Harvest Cookies - Aldi

My not-so-secret love affair with Aldi continues! This product pulled me in with it's gorgeous packaging, but to be honest, I'm not too sure I really want a cinnamon apple flavored cookie. I like apple pie, apple oatmeal, and apple cobbler, but I haven't found an apple cookie that I've liked yet. Something about that apple flavoring being in something purely crunchy and without little chunks of real apple seems unnatural to me. Maybe this will be the one to win me over?

Candyology 101 Episode 31: Pucker up for some Sour Candy!

We've talked about a ton of the sweet stuff, so today we're focusing on Sour!

It's the sour things in life that make us appreciate the sweet! On today's episode of Candyology 101 we tackle the goodies that make our mouth water and our eyes tear. Everything from the mild Lemonhead to the profuse puckering power of Warheads. To start, I give you a little glimpse of the science behind what makes these sweets so sour, and we talk about the validity of the warning labels on treats like these. Then things get a little less science-y as Cybele and I discuss our favorite go-to sour candies. Plus, we have the fan favorite Treat or Trick section to finish things off and let you know what new goodies are headed our way. Tune in and grab a napkin, because talking about all these sour goodies may cause you to drool a little. (Consider yourself warned.) 

Have you been liking Candyology101 so far? 

Please head on over to itunes and give us a little review to let us know how we're doing.

Meet the cast:

Cybele from Candy Blog

Maria (Me) from Sometimes Foodie

Listen to the player above, check us out on Stitcher, or you can download the MP3 file. If you want to subscribe to the show, it’s available on iTunes and via RSS.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

Like Sometimes Foodie's Facebook page to keep up with all my foodie adventures!

Lindt Strawberries & Cream White Chocolate Truffles - Target

Lindt Strawberries & Cream White Chocolate Truffles - Target 

Yet another strawberry themed item for Valentine's Day? Yup! I told you guys, candy companies went strawberry-crazy this season. When it comes to strawberry flavored chocolate sweets I still think a white chocolate base is best, since a milk chocolate one can overpower everything else, and thankfully, Lindt felt that way too, because these truffles are white chocolate based! Sure, there are some exceptions to the white chocolate rule. I mean, I absolutely love Ghirardelli's Dark Chocolate Strawberry Squares, but so far all of the other strawberry and chocolate variations have been pretty lackluster.

Lets see if a white chocolate base can really make a difference!

Hammond's Cupcake Caramel Marshmallow - Target

Hammond's Cupcake Caramel Marshmallow - Target

I'm a food blogger on a mission. The challenge: to review ALL of the Valentine's Day themed products in my stash BEFORE February 14th. Can I do it? (I sure hope so!)

To make things even more intense, and to (hopefully) put a massive dent in my overwhelming food stash, ALL of my PINK candies and sweets count as "Valentine's Day Candy." Which ups the ante quite a bit since I have a bunch of pink toned sweets from Japan, but I have faith in myself. Serves me right for hoarding stockpiling so much stuff. For today's seasonal sweet, I have two cupcake flavored Hammond's Caramel Marshmallows!

White Strawberry Shortcake m&m's - Target (exclusive)

White Strawberry Shortcake m&m's - Target (exclusive)

New year, new limited edition m&m flavors! Recently the cherry flavored ones were re-released, and Walmart had some new chocolate-based strawberry ones (review coming soon), and now we have these fancy white chocolate Strawberry Shortcake ones that are Target exclusive! I guess 2016 is the year of the strawberry, and as a fan of all things berry flavored, I'm all about it!

Dove Milk Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Crisp - Target

Dove Milk Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Crisp - Target

This strawberry influx was something I never saw coming, but I'm excited none-the-less. (Strawberry sweets are a weakness of mine.) It seems like every chocolate company out there is putting out something to cash in on this unexpected fruit flavored trend, and Dove's contribution are these milk chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Crisps.