If you were up really early yesterday morning, you may have seen the CBS Sunday Morning feature on the Future of Candy, part of the Tomorrow Show series with Mo Rocca (who I love on NPR’s Wait, Wait – Don’t Tell Me). In the event that you like to spend Sunday morning sleeping in, or getting ready for Sunday football, you can watch the segment on the CBS Web site.
Go ahead, watch it. We’ll wait.
Regular readers of the Candy Dish blog have already heard most of what was discussed including the importance of flavors, the trend toward savory and the influence of global cultures on American candy.
A student at Resident Course pours hot candy into moulds
NCA provided some of the background used to put together that story and if you watch the first half of the segment very carefully you’ll see a few shots from our Resident Course in Confectionery Technology, which we affectionately call Candy School.
That’s right. I said Candy School. Sorry, the course is not open the public … but if it were, would you sign up? What would you contribute to the future of candy?
Last week we wrote about the latest trends in chocolate. We missed a trend, though, probably because none of the experts we interviewed were from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai is home of Al Nassma Chocolate, makers of the “first and finest camel milk chocolate.” Al Nassma intends to expand beyond the Middle East into the U.K (Harrod’s) and the U.S. (San Francisco’s Chocolate Covered Company) by next year.
The camel milk for Al Nassma Chocolate will be supplied by a 3,000 camel farm in Dubai that appears to be owned by the Dubai government. That, my friends, is a lot of camels. According to media reports, the milking of camels is not for the faint-hearted. Camels don’t like to be milked and will sometimes lay down on the job, so to speak.
Now to the taste and benefits of camel milk chocolate. According to the company, camel milk contains 5 times more Vitamin C than cow milk, less fat and less lactose. Some believe it is an aphrodisiac. One American living in Dubai said the camel milk chocolates are “creamy and delicious.”
The company is marketing the chocolates as a “luxury” product which will only be sold in upscale stores and will “never be in supermarkets.” Hhhmm. I don’t know about you but I feel quite luxurious after consuming supermarket purchased chocolate bars, chips, bunnies, pumpkins, hearts, etc. Plus, what about grocery stores that cater to Mediterranean tastes?
While the dark chocolate candy category in the U.S. has been growing the last several years Americans still prefer milk chocolate slightly more than dark chocolates. Who knows? Perhaps camel milk chocolate will give the category a shot in the arm.
Are you game? Who’s willing to try it?
Camel by ANGELOUX.
I was very excited to receive an email from Cadbury Chief Executive Officer Todd Stitzer a couple of days ago. Todd wanted to tell me, and probably thousands of others, that Cadbury has raised the competitive bar of social responsibility chocolates by launching Fairtrade Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate bars into the United Kingdom chocolate bar market. The bars are now available in 200,000 stores across England and Ireland and will increase the value of of U.K. Fairtrade sales by around 25% over 2008 sales. Cadbury’s fairtrade bars are being made available at no extra cost.
Cadbury already sells Fair Trade and/or organic chocolates in the U.S. under the Green and Black’s label but their Dairy Milk Chocolate is not a big seller here. Todd noted in his email that Cadbury is making a substantial investment in sustainable cocoa growing communities and has a long history of social responsibiltiy.
What Mr. Spitzer (I feel a little too forward with this first name basis stuff) says is true. In fact, it’s true for a number of chocolate makers. Hershey’s history of social responsibility begins with the 100 year old Milton Hershey School. Mars has a long history of supporting cocoa communities and ensuring that cocoa is grown in an environmentally friendly manner. And the World Cocoa Foundation, founded in 2000, is supported by more than 70 companies and trade associations, including NCA. WCF programs raise farmer incomes, encourage responsible, sustainable cocoa farming and strengthen communities.
This announcement makes me feel good about the companies for whom I work. Do you want to try Fair Trade certified Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate?
Cadbury Chocolate by Tasumi1968.
I am reading Natacha Du Pont De Bie’s excellent book Ant Egg Soup: Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos and came across a sentence that threw me off-kilter for a moment. No, it wasn’t about the soup referred to in the title, as I was expecting that, as well as other things I saw and outlandish foods I tried while spending time with some of the Lao diaspora in Udon Thani, Thailand.
No, what stopped me in my tracks was the author’s description of a restaurant in Savannakhet. “It was a tatty modern room painted the exact pink of sugar-mice.” First of all, I had a mental idea of the color immediately. It was a bright pink that I am pretty sure does not exist in nature. But sugar mice? I deduced from the name that these were some sort of confection but had never heard of them before.
I knew the author was raised in part in England, so that may be why she apparently grew up with this type of thing and I did not. An internet search revealed that they are sugar in the shape of mice, with the tail made of string or sometimes a stick, a handle for easy consumption.
Note the photo here. The slate the sugar mice are sitting on looks like the same one we had our gourmet truffles on last week but it’s just coincidence.
Have you ever seen these little mice before? Where would you recommend I look for them?
Sugar Mice by MBK (Marjie).
I picked up these snowballs at a candy store in Ottawa when I was in Canada a couple weeks ago. Something neat about Canadian candy – really just about any product purchased in Canada – is that it is printed in two languages. Canada’s national languages are both French and English, which offers a great opportunity for me to try to relearn some of the French I have forgotten over the years since tenth grade.
Truth be told, I probably never knew that “dessicated coconut” in French was “noix de coco desséchée,” so perhaps it’s even better than relearning. How could my French teacher have failed to teach us this? Is it really less important than other key phrases such as, “Mon pantalon est dans la machine à laver,” and, “Où est le saucisson?” I think coconut trumps all of it.
Do you also delight in seeing packages with foreign languages? What languages do you enjoy exploring with the assistance of candy?
I know you read the Authors page many months ago, when we were first all introduced, so you already know that I love durian. What? You have never heard of durian? You should definitely try it with a friend. Or several. That’s how wonderful it is. Well, think of the delight I had when I found this bag of durian candy in the Chinese supermarket next to my hotel here in Toronto. My wife actually spotted it but I was the one who decided to get it. Normally I am forbidden to bring it in the house but if it’s in the form of candy it’s not so bad. This particular one is soft and chewy, like taffy. Yum!
One of the joys of traveling is getting to taste different foods, especially candies, that are unique to the geographical location you are visiting. In this case, Toronto has approximately 180 different nationalities represented in the city, so you can really take your pick when it comes to the local flavour. When visiting Chinese and other Asian-style markets, I tend toward the fruit candies because they hold a lot of flavor and sweetness not readily available in my own cultural confectionery cabinet. Among my favorites are rambutan, durian, lychee, jackfruit and banana. Anyway, I was ecstatic when I finally got to the hotel and ripped the candy bag open. Such delightfulness!
What’s your favorite exotic fruit candy?
Happy Canada Day! This photo by Flickr user Zorbs isn’t necessarily a spectacular photo in terms of composition or lighting but part of what makes a picture special has nothing to do with the technical aspects of photography. This photo is special because it captures the festivity of an important day. Red and white Smarties emblazoned with a maple leaf – it doesn’t get much more celebratory than that!
Smarties are candy-coated chocolates made by Nestle. My wife, a native of Canada, told me about them when we were first dating. “You mean like M&Ms?” I asked. “Not quite,” she said. She was right. They are similar but definitely different.
What led to further confusion was that what we call Smarties – those delicious sugar tablets in a plastic sleeve – are known as Rockets in Canada. It’s like they have a different word for everything. And they put the letter “u” in places I don’t understand.
I will be spending Friday driving up to Toronto to visit my in-laws and will be reporting next week from Canada’s candy capitol and home to Laura Secord chocolate company. I am assuming that’s Toronto. Wish me luck. I will try to bring home some souvenir extra “u”s for us all to share.
Do you want your candy photos featured here? Submit them to the Candy Dish Blog Flickr group. We want to see your candy photos and so does the rest of the world!
