Milk Chocolate Coated Sponge Candy

1 cup sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 tbsp distilled white vinegar
1 tbsp baking soda, sifted
1 lb. milk chocolate, divided

~ Place foil in a 9-inch square pan with 2-inch sides, extend foil over sides. Butter the foil very generously.

~ In a heavy large, deep saucepan combine sugar, corn syrup and vinegar.

~ Stir over a medium heat until sugar dissolves. Swirling pan occasionally, cook mixture until candy thermometer reads 300F, approximately 18 minutes.

~ Remove from heat and immediately add baking soda and stir until well combined, mixture will foam vigorously.

~ Pour mixture into prepared pan and cool completely.

~ Using the foil as an aid, lift: candy from pan and fold down foil sides. Cut or break candy into pieces.

~ Chop chocolate finely and melt in a double boiler to 120 degrees.

~ Dip sponge candy into chocolate and set on a baking rack to cool.

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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 get instant win prizes including one-day tickets and season passes to Six Flags or coupons redeemable for free packages of select Mars products.

In addition to the chance to win $1 million and thousands of instant win prizes, there’s also a virtual “haunted” mansion filled with heaps of creepy, cool fun. Mars has also created a “ghoulish” application featuring all of your favorite M&M’S characters in their Halloween costumes that is available on the M&M’S and Snickers fan pages on Facebook.

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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 the candy was pretty much just sugary stuff like Smarties or SweetTarts or suckers. Mini candy bars just weren’t as prevalent then, and when you got one it was tucked away someplace safe so your siblings wouldn’t beg to trade for it. Even the occasional chocolate coin — usually made out of the cheapest chocolate available — was kept hidden.

Nowadays, though, it’s almost harder to find the non-chocolate stuff in the Halloween aisle. Every big candy bar manufacturer has a smaller mini version available of their best sellers, and the kids come home from trick-or-treating with bags stuffed with them. It actually makes me a little nostalgic for my own trick-or-treating days, when chocolate was considered a bit more special. I don’t, however, mind the day-after Halloween sales on the leftover bags!

What’s your favorite thing to hand out at Halloween? What’s your favorite Halloween treat that you got as a kid?

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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 of peanut butter cookies. ZonePerfect Chocolate Peanut Butter bars and Peanut toffee bars have also been added to the list.

South Bend Chocolate Co. has also issued a voluntary recall of certain candies manufactured with possibly tainted peanut butter.

Many other snack and candy companies are coming forward to say their treats are safe, such as Mars, Tastykake, and Hershey.

There have been nearly 500 cases of illness and six deaths linked to the salmonella outbreak.

Basically, steer clear of ready-made peanut butter snacks for a while (jarred peanut butter is not affected by any recalls — yet).

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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 couldn’t use up all the mini Snickers, I’d have had a riot on my hands!

Candy Bar Peanut Butter Cookies

1 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. softened butter
1 c. peanut butter
2 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3 c. flour
1 (16 oz.) pkg. Mini Snickers bars, cut in half

Cream together sugar, brown sugar, butter and peanut butter. Add vanilla and beaten eggs and mix. Add baking powder, baking soda and flour; mix well. Wrap dough around each Snickers bar half, forming a ball.

Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Cookies will flatten as they bake so don’t press them. Bake at 350 degrees for 11-13 minutes or until light golden brown.

The recipe says it makes 2-1/2 dozen, but I easily got over 50 cookies out of it.
…..

The cookies with the Milky Way Minis turned out pretty good, but the nougat hardened up to the point where the texture suffered for it. I thought they were a little tastier than the Snickers ones, though!

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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 some pretty speckling patterns on the outside.

I bit into one, expecting it to more or less be an expensive M&M. I was very surprised to find that there was no crunchy candy shell – it was soft! My first thought was that it had somehow gotten soggy (I don’t know how or why, it was just my first reaction) before realizing that was how it was supposed to be.

The Triple Chocolate, to me, was pretty unremarkable. They were dry and didn’t hit smooth or creamy. These contain layers of dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate and there really wasn’t one that stood out, which I suppose is the point. In the aftertaste I actually got more of the white chocolate, which I’m not at all crazy about. I wouldn’t buy these again (though I’m already starting to wonder how they’d hold up in a batch of cookies or brownies..!).

The Mocha were a small step up from the Triple Chocolate. They also have the disconcerting soft shell with a brown spattered pattern. The coffee flavor is noticeable but there’s not so much of it that it becomes that fakey coffee flavor. The chocolate is also on the dry side, which I think is just the norm for M&M’s since the usual hard shell kind of helps detract from that and doesn’t make it as noticeable.

Overall I just wasn’t impressed with the Premium M&M’s and am kind of glad I didn’t get the other three, though an almond center might have worked better with the dry chocolate than just flavoring.

Have you tried the Premium M&M’s? What did you think?

[image: product picture]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

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 beautiful to eat, really. Not.

Post from: Chocolate Bytes