What is your favorite candy? Are you a chocolate kind of person? Or are caramels more your thing? Maybe its licorice, or gummies, gum or sours. Whatever your fav it’s that time of year again where we as Americans are spending around $9 billion on Halloween goodies. Kids are are back and forth on who or what they want to be for trick or treating, and teachers are dreading the sugar induced craze at school within their classrooms.
Every culture around the globe has their favorite sweet of choice, and every article touts their own opinion of how each should be be ranked. But let’s face it we’re all different, all of us! We all grew up being introduced to some combination of sweet, sour, milky, chocolatey, and sometimes salty concoction that is unique to our family, region, or nation. And, we ALL like something that we identify as a candy. I came across something called Milka a chocolate bar made with Alpine milk that originated in Germany that sounds delicious. Japan has a wasabi KitKat bar that sounds intriguing, but the green color is a little off putting so I’m not to sure about that one. China has a Tootsie Roll shaped sweet milky candy called White Rabbit that is wrapped in an edible rice paper.
Do you remember your favorite candy when you were a kid? Is it still around or even still available? Black Jack taffy, Fizzies, Charleston Chews, Mallow Cups, Whatchamacallit to name a few. I have seen some of these in Mast General Store in downtown Greenville, but do they taste the same as they once did. Or do our memories of them have them blown to extreme proportions in our head as to what we think they taste like. Will we like them the same as we did when we were young, or have our tastes changed too much?
For the month of October, since we buy so much candy anyway, I am going to be making candy themed cakes. Kind of a test to myself of how many I can accomplish and also to see how close I can come to the taste of the original flavors. I promise that I will have strawberry, carrot and pumpkin cakes available, but be on the look out for some familar sounding favorite candies, chocolates and caramels. Wish me luck, and drop me a line of a suggestion that you might have for this challenge!
