There are only a few days left to enter what may be the biggest Halloween treat on the planet! Mars Snackfood announced today the last chance to win an incredible Halloween treat: $1 million in the 2009 Halloween Million Sweepstakes!

U.S. residents have until Saturday, October 31, 2009, to register for the 2009 Halloween Million Sweepstakes at halloweenmillion.com by entering the UPC on packages of M&M’S, Snickers, Twix, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Skittles, and Starburst candies. (A full list of candies and sizes can be found here.)
One lucky person will receive the $1 million grand prize, and thousands more will …read more

I can’t believe it’s already that time of year — the weather is cooling, the leaves are turning, and one of my favorite holidays, Halloween, is just over a month away! The seasonal aisle at the grocery store already has had its shelves stuffed with pretty much any sweet treat you can imagine for a couple of weeks already, and I’ve found myself wonder what we should buy this year to hand out on October 31st.

When I was a kid and trick-or-treating, it seemed like a rare treat to get any kind of chocolate in your bag. The majority of …read more

Snack giants Keebler, Little Debbie, General Mills and Austin are recalling peanut butter treats in the wake of the salmonella-tainted peanut butter scare from last week.
Though there have been no complaints about illnesses from the Little Debbie snacks specifically, the company is still recalling peanut butter toasty sandwich crackers and peanut butter cheese sandwich crackers made since July 1.
General Mills is recalling their popular LARABAR Peanut Butter Cookie and JamFrakas Peanut Butter Blisscrisp snack bars.
The Hy-Vee supermarket chain is recalling bakery products that contain peanut butter, and Ralcorp Frozen Bakery Products, which sells through Wal-Mart has recalled several brands …read more

Williams-Sonoma has a ton of delicious-looking treats currently on sale!
If you don’t have a W-S close by you can easily order online as well. We’ve got one in the next city over (that I know of), but this is not a weekend I feel like venturing out. Not to mention I’d probably get so distracted by everything else in there that I’d forget what I went in for.
Just look at the Chocolate Peppermint Gâteau, Five-Layer Mousse Cake, and Recchiuti Chocolate Apple Slices. I still have a week until the diet starts, right?
[heads-up from cybele; image: williams-sonoma.com]

Happy Halloween from Chocolate Bytes!
Remember some Halloween candy and chocolate safety:
~ Chocolate coins recalled
~ How often does Halloween candy tampering really happen?
And check out some fun chocolatey Halloween treats:
~ Crunchy Spiders
~ Green chocolate dip
~ Make your own candybars
~ Halloween horror chocolate

We were given a large bag of mini candy bars last weekend and instead of letting them sit on the counter for the next month (it was a big bag and Halloween’s just a week away!) I decided to dig around and see what else I could do with them.
I came upon the recipe below and found a hit! It calls for Mini Snickers but I also tried a few with Mini Milky Ways.

This makes a lot of dough, so I ended up doing a couple of batches of regular peanut butter cookies while I was at it. I …read more

Have you tried the new Premium M&M’s? M&M’s/Mars released five new flavors earlier this summer: Chocolate Almond, Mocha, Triple Chocolate, Raspberry Almond, and Mint Chocolate.
I picked up the Mocha and Triple Chocolate at the grocery store last week. At about $3 a pop for 6 oz I couldn’t afford to get all of them!
The packaging is different than the usual bags – these are in slim recloseable boxes and the M&M’s are in a resealable plastic package inside. The candy itself is a little bit larger than a regular M&M (smaller than a peanut M&M, though) and has …read more

Along the lines of the Wrapper Museum, the appropriately named page “Why It’s Difficult to Shop in Other Countries” has a collection of chocolate and other labels, wrappers and containers from around the world with some pretty interesting product names!
Be warned, if you’re easily offended don’t click the link. Otherwise, enjoy!
Which was your favorite?
[image: flickr]

Tis the season to hunt down great candy – and one part of my hunt is for great sugar free candy for my husband who is diabetic, and LOVES chocolate. Not only that, he is incredibly picky about his chocolate, making it necessary to start early to find something great for him. A Bountiful Harvest is one of our favorite chocolatiers – partially because of the fabulous sugar free chocolates they make and partially because their presentation is so beautiful. Check out this bunny that is coming home with us for Easter – he is too …read more

Outside, as I write this, we are getting our first snowfall of the winter. Not much, but enough to leave a light dusting of white everywhere. Which makes me think of white chocolate. While not my favourite form of chocolate, I do eat some. But what is white chocolate, really? Does it come from an albino chocolate bean?
Turns out white chocolate isn’t really true chocolate at all. It contains no chocolate liquor, and therefore little chocolate flavour. The chocolate flavour it does have comes from cocoa butter. Usually white chocolate is made by combining cocoa butter, sugar, milk solids, lecithin, …read more