I hate flower flavored food, and I already have a ton of stuff I -should- be reviewing. But February means all thing pink, and flowery, and Valentine's Day-y. All things I would use to describe this new product from Lidl.
I'll be the guinea pig and give this a try so you can see if this it's worthy of your valentine. (Accidental rhyme(ish)?)
It's trendy to take chocolate-whatever, add red food dye, top it with white frosting, and promote it as "red velvet." But it's wrong! In case you're new here, "red velvet" is one of my rant-triggering flavors. (That, and "birthday cake.") So, let the ranting commence!
(You can skip right to the review by clicking the continue reading link below)
I love baking, and I watched The Food Network obsessively in the 90's and 2000's, back when they were more focused on actual baking/cooking and not reality TV. I have seen tons of bakers discuss red velvet, because it's a real, historical, baking-thing. The coloring and texture comes from a reaction in the ingredients, typically cocoa powder, baking soda, vinegar and buttermilk.
Also, red isn't the only "velvet" in town. Throughout baking history, there have been tons of other flavors, since it's about getting a certain texture in your cake and not a flavor in and of itself. But what most people get hung up on is the dang coloring. Hence all the "pink," "green" or "blue velvet" recipes on Pinterest. The color has next-to-nothing to do with how it tastes! (As long as you're not using beet juice or a distasteful food dyes.)
A "Red Velvet Cake" is a chocolatey cake, with a burgundy-brown coloring, and a velvety mouthfeel. Typically topped with a white frosting, to highlight the coloring of the cake itself, which may or may not be cream cheese based. (These days cream cheese is the go-to, but at one point it was ermine.) Not just a chocolate cake with a ton of red food dyes, or beets, or whatever else you dump in there.
So, we have established that the coloring doesn't affect the flavor, it's more-so a reaction, AND that the main reason to get "Red Velvet" is the texture of the cake itself. So... how do you make other things like gum, or cookies, "red velvet?" You don't.
But "cream cheese filling" Doesn't exactly have the same decadence or punchiness as "red velvet." It's all about spin and marketing. (Ever see Thank You for Smoking?)
Which brings us here, to this review. Why would I buy cookies that are "red velvet" given that I clearly think it's a marketing scam. Especially after the Benton Hot Cocoa cookie fiasco?
Happy Valentine's Day everyone! (At the stroke of midnight, be sure to run out there and scoop up all the clearance candy!)
To celebrate this day of candy consumption (and love), I've doubled down on the content. I'll be reviewing the candy as well as the recipe for lava cakes included on the bag. Will this post end up being twice as nice? Or double the disappointment?
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...
Ah, Green overly-sexualized m&m, we meet again. It feels like only yesterday I was staring at your blinged-out Christmas packaging (reviewed here), but it was actually a week ago. I think we need to have a talk about "boundaries."
Confession time: I knew these were going to suck before I even bought them, but I got them anyway. Why? Well, two reasons: 1- My b/f's sister wanted these, and I just so happened to be at Walmart so I grabbed them for her, and 2- it's trending food-blog-fodder.
I've been trying random new food stuffs for a few years now, and even though I'm not as seasoned as my more knowledgeable foodie friends, like CandyBlog, JunkFoodGuy or ImpulsiveBuy, I still know a dud when I see one. Usually when anything shelf stable tries to taste like cheesecake, you know you're in for a bad time. But, who knows, maybe I am being cynical and I'll be proven wrong. There's only one way to find out...
Cupcake Kisses. Sounds adorable, but what are we really getting here? White chocolate kisses with crunchy vanilla cookie bits inside. How is that at all like a cupcake?
I'm calling Hershey's out on this hyped up nonsense.
So back in 2014 Hostess released two limited edition Twinkie flavors to advertise the X-Men movie: Days of Future Past. Both of the limited edition flavors features the classic white cake and a different fruity filling. One was a blue raspberry, featuring Beast, Mystique, and Colossus (one of these things is not like the other...), and a Strawberry version featuring Professor Xavier, Storm and Bishop, which make even less sense color tie-in-wise. If they were going for an obvious color theme, Iceman should have replaced Colossus on the blue box, and the red should have had Bishop with Magneto and Pixie. Or they could have broken the boxes up with one being the future, with the aged characters, and the other being the past with the youthful characters. What they've done here makes no sense, then again I'm looking for sense in a promotional snack food item from a 2014 movie tie-in.
Anyway, I didn't try either of these flavors back then, because Banana Twinkies hadn't yet shown me the error of my snack-cake-hating ways, but I DID see the movie, which was much better than I expected. Will these Twinkies be as palatable and a rugged, time-traveling, Hugh-Jackman-Wolverine? (Or as disappointing as QuickSilver's outfit?) We shall see.
Even though Christmas feels like it was just yesterday, the world keeps on spinning, and stores have already moved on to Valentine's Day and Easter. Seriously, Easter. There are already pastel and Easter Bunny shaped sweets on the shelves as I huddle here clutching a cup of tea in my blanket cocoon for warmth.
While I was out taking advantage of Christmas stuff being 50-75% off (or more), I picked up a few of the more interesting Valentine's Day sweets to review. FYI, you guys should really shop clearance Christmas stuff. It's a great way to get holiday placemats, napkins, dishware, decor and non-edible stocking stuffers for next year dirt cheap. It pays to plan ahead!
Okay, enough frugality, let's munch on some cupcakes!
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.
Every time I buy a Dum-Dums product I get the song from their 90's commercial stuck in my head. Looking back, I feel like that commercial and the Blow Pop one were always being shown on Nickelodeon! I can still recite them both from heart, along with the kickass song from the Crossfire commercial!
Dum-Dums lollipops have been around for quite some time but they aren't letting their brand get stale. They've been having some fun releasing pizza, bacon, and buttered popcorn flavored lollipops, some jelly bean centered candies for Easter, and now these new Heart-shaped pops offer two flavors in one.
I think we all recognize this iconic little kitty. (Although she's apparently a little girl?) Cat, human, whatever she may be, she's been around for 40 years and even though this isn't specifically Valentine's Day themed, it's pink and red with hearts, so what better time to review it than now?
This is a novelty product, so the main selling point is the packaging. They want to sucker us all in with that iconic Sanrio-cuteness, and you know what? It totally works. (It got me and I'm not even a big Hello Kitty fan.) We have a bunch of adorable Hello Kitty illustrations scattered on a resealable foiled plastic pouch containing a small amount of candy. It's adorable, collectible, and the gummies themselves are shaped like Hello Kitty's iconic bow so you get a double whammy of cuteness.
Speaking of the bow shaped gummies, they're really cute, but they have this weird edible-glitter-like coating that I don't understand. Is it intentional? Or are these coated ina little too much food-grade wax? It's kind of neat, like they're coated in clear glitter, but these could just be old or something. I can't really tell.
Inside there are two flavors:
Peach (translucent pink): Once you get through the weird waxy coating, the gummi tastes very sweet and mild. It's a bit on the floral side of things, but it tastes a lot more realistic than other peach flavored candies I've had in the past. (I still think the Kasugai gummies are better, but there aren't half bad.) It's enjoyable, and not bad for a novelty product, but I know I can get better peach flavored gummies elsewhere.
Apple (translucent redish-peach): Again, once you get through that weird waxy outside, the flavoring is pretty nice. These apple gummies are tangy and more concentrated than the peach, and it's almost like they took apple juice concentrate and turned it into a gummy candy. I like this one more than the other, but you don't get that many in this bag, and it's pretty pricey, but this flavor is on-par with Kasugai's.
This is a really cute novelty product for fans of Hello Kitty, and the flavoring is more authentic than a lot of gummies on the American market, but the portion size is really small and these are pretty expensive. If you're looking for delicious fruity gummies to snack on, and you want to spend a little money, I suggest getting Kasugai ones instead. However, if you're looking for an edible gift for a Sanrio fan, these are pretty gppd for a novelty product and I don't think anyone would dislike them.
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!
That's right, there's not one, but TWO exclusive strawberry-themed m&m's on the shelves. One for Target and this one for Walmart. Unlike the Target one, which used white chocolate, this one uses a milk chocolate base, and I'm not too sure how I feel about that. Normally I'm against it, because chocolate tends to overpower any of the other flavors that are mixed in, but years ago there were these Strawberried Peanut butter m&m's that were released as a promotional product for the Transformers movie (which made absolutely no sense), and I thought they were really cool but I never found them. I'm kind of hoping that this flavor will give me a little bit of the strawberry flavored snacking satisfaction that I missed out on.
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 forhoardingstockpiling so much stuff. For today's seasonal sweet, I have two cupcake flavored Hammond's Caramel Marshmallows!
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.
Here's another Trader Joe's chocolate bar that was good enough to revisit. Instead of a popping candy gimmick, this time we have a bar that's filled with bacon ganache! Because everything is better with bacon, right?
For the record, I hate Katy Perry, but I love JonTron, so here's your obligatory Fireworks reference. Now that we've got that out of the way...
The first time I grabbed this chocolate bar was back when we were recording our Trader Joe's themed episode of Candyology 101 with the awesome foodies from What's Good at Trader Joe's. I did a lot of "homework" for that episode, which meant buying a TON of Trader Joe's sweets to eat and discuss, but I may have gone a little overboard... I bought way too much and I needed to consume it faster than I could blog about it! Some of those candies were good enough to warrant repurchase and their own write-ups, so I grabbed this today because it seems oh-so appropriate for the upcoming Valentine's Day season. (Dammit, now I have Firework stuck in my head. At least Jon does it better.)
Okay, these are old news, and the newest flavor of Oreo has already been announced, but I still bought a package of these to review. These have already been covered by quite a few food blogs, but I tend to pick on red velvet flavored sweets a lot, so I thought I might give readers a different perspective.
No matter how many times I photograph these tins, I'm never happy. The art is really lovely in person, but these pastels are a major pain in the butt to photograph! I have photographed this specific tin and it's chocolates three separate times. I would have kept going, and tried again, but the chocolates were getting soft and melty from being handled in front of all the photo lights. I had to suck it up and go with this set, even though I'm still not entirely happy with it.
Bah, enough rambling about my first-world-food-photo problems, let's talk about magical girls and candy!
Happy Valentine's Day! (It'll still be Valentine's Day for another hour or so, better late than never.) It's finally time to review all of the Sailor Moon themed chocolates I bought from JBOX.com. I went a little overboard photographing them, so each item is going to be broken up into a separate post.
First up, these freaking precious Luna and Artemis tins!
