Candy Dish Blog

This just in – Miley Cyrus loves gummy bears! OMG LOL it’s so like we’re twins or something!‡

Wait a second – who doesn’t love gummy bears? Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that this gummy bear thing even needed to be mentioned? Loving them is simply part of the human experience, I thought. Even Miley’s father, with his giant mullet and achey breaky heart, can be cheered up by the little guys.

Other celebrity classic candy favorites include Jerry Seinfeld, who loves Bit-O-Honey. To me, Bit-O-Honey tastes like childhood. I remember my mother saying that she loved them too. Great stuff.

Another of my favorites, Callie from The Real World DC, loves Tic Tacs. What? You don’t know Callie? She is the cute blonde one. You have never seen the show? Some friends and I watch it because it was shot here in DC. Otherwise, I would likely never have seen it either. But back to Callie. She seems like the nicest of all the people cast for the show, and she loves a classic candy. What’s not to love about her?

Well, the celebrities have weighed in. What classic candies rank among your favorites?

‡Miley Cyrus and I are not twins, just for the record. Truth be told, I wouldn’t even recognize her if I saw her on the street, much to the horror of my nieces, who love her. I don’t think I have ever seen her in anything she has done. She is a star of a very different generation. But she loves the gummy bears, so deep down she is my soul mate.

Gummy Bear by fdecomite.

If you have any of these little guys left over, and I bet you do, you may be wondering what to do with them. Here at Candy Dish Blog, we are hard at work and ready to offer solutions.

1. Use them in crafts. Glue them to earring posts to make conversation heart earrings or use them to decorate a Valentine’s themed picture frame.
2. Make a conversation heart martini. When you perfect a recipe, let us know and we will post it here.
3. Pastel food decoration. Grind them up in the food processor to make pretty candy dust you can sprinkle on cupcakes and other yummy goodies.
4. Send them to Susan. She loves them.
5. Wrap them in plastic and save them for summer. Extra conversation hearts in February? Who cares. Extra conversation hearts in June? Now you are the hit of the barbecue!

What? You already ate all your conversation hearts? I bet you could still find some in the store at a discount. After all, Valentine’s Week is just now ending.

Conversation Hearts by CraftyGoat.

In honor of Presidents Day we present Jimmy Carter Candy, which I found at the Desktop Cookbook site.

Ingredients

• 1 package vanilla almond bark
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup miniature marshmallows
• 1 cup dry roasted peanuts
• 1 3/4 cups Rice Krispies

Instructions

1. Break up almond bark and melt in microwave, 1 minute at a time, stirring well in between, until completely smooth.
2. Combine all other ingredients and mix well. Marshmallows will not melt completely.
3. Spread mixture on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.
4. Cool completely until set up and hardened. Slice into squares.

Jimmy Carter by cliff1066™.

Live in Maryland? Forget to get your sweetie some sweets for yesterday? Hope is not lost. Head out to the store now, get your mitts on some discount candy and blame it on the recent storms. Gov. Martin O’Malley has declared this week Valentine’s Week. I bet the CVS around the corner has all that yummy chocolate and other goodies at 50% off this morning.

So if you didn’t stick the landing yesterday quite as well as Alexandre Bilodeau did in the Freestyle Skiing Moguls, fret no more. Just go to the nearest drug store, supermarket or convenience store and stock up. I won’t tell your secret. Just give Gov. O’Malley a thumbs-up or a high-five for saving the relationship.

Chocolate Valentine’s Sculpture by emilywjones.

We already know that candy in its various forms is the best Valentine’s Day gift. What about the worst? I surveyed our staff here at the Candy HQ about their worst Valentine’s Day gifts, either given or received, and found these selections:

1. A crock pot
2. An ant farm
3. A singing stuffed animal
4. A unicorn dancing on heart shaped clouds (No, I didn’t make this up.)
5. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Bupkis.

Remember – Getting your sweetie a bad gift can be even worse than getting nothing at all. Be sure to get out today, before the pickings are even slimmer, to get your Valentine’s candy.

And if you get someone a unicorn-themed gift, be sure it is a candy unicorn, like on the cupcake above. They are sweeter than the normal ones you encounter.

Unicorn Cupcake by kristin_a.

This week our Friday Five comes from our intern Kiki, who is excited about being here, as you can tell, and is working closely with our team that puts on our annual Expo. Please give Kiki a warm welcome.

Since I am one of the few people at the NCA who will be attending the SWEETS & SNACKS EXPO™ for the first time, I have incredibly high hopes for it. When I talk about it with my friends, we are imagining a combined world of Willy Wonka’s factory and the board game Candy Land. They’re all insanely jealous, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to triple check my suitcase for stowaways before I leave.

Anyway, Carl wanted me to write down my top five amazing things I am expecting to see at the Expo. Like I said, I have high hopes, and I will not be talked out of any of these.

1. John Candy. Okay, he’s dead, but I can dream, right?
2. Cotton Candy Trees. Listen, they already look like trees. And what could be more perfect than a walkway of cotton candy trees leading up to McCormick Place? Sometimes you get a sugar craving before you even get into the Expo, so BAM, problem solved.
3. A petting zoo. Filled with life-sized gummi bears, Peeps, sour gummi worms, Sluggles, chocolate Easter bunnies, and gummi sharks. What could be more amazing or cuddly and delicious than candy animals?
4. An obstacle course of the board game Candy Land. To get to the Candy Castle, you have to find/eat your way through the Gingerbread Plum Trees, Peppermint Forest, Licorice Castle, Lollipop Woods, Gumdrop Mountains and so on. Only then will the business deals between buyers, suppliers and exhibitors go through. It may not be practical, but it’s way more entertaining than normal networking.
5. A Chocolate River. Carl has been trying to convince me that this does not exist at the Expo. I know he’s wrong, and I refuse to change my mind—he just never looked hard enough. I am determined to search for the chocolate river while at the Expo, and if Carl would stop making the Oompa-Loompas give him rides around the office I could get them to help me as well. By May 27, I will know the secret location of the chocolate river. Mark my words.

That being said, I am not crazy. I don’t expect any of these things to actually exist (except for the chocolate river, which I am serious about finding).

The National Retail Federation just announced the results of its annual survey, which showed a number of interesting predictions for Valentine’s Day spending. Check this out:

• On average, each person will spend $103 on the holiday.
• Spending on friends, coworkers and pets (yes, I said pets) is up while spending on significant others is down.
• Men will spend about twice as much as women will, dropping $135.35 as opposed to women’s relatively miserly $72.28.
• Candy is the second most popular Valentine’s gift, with 47.2% of people expecting to buy it, bracketed by cards (54.9%) and flowers (35.6%).

Ladies, while you are out and about buying gifts for your coworkers, don’t forget that we guys like candy and pretty things too. Let’s try to balance the Valentine’s Day spend gender disparity once and for all. Tori, Susan, Susan and Laura, I hope you are reading this. I expect some nice goodies from you on that special day.

So how much are you planning to spend? And what do you plan to buy?

Chocolate heart by Bob.Fornal.