Name: Firecracker ChocoPod & Firecracker Chocolate Bar
Brand: Chuao
Description: Firecracker is the newest unusual, unexpected and delicious flavor from Chuao Chocolatier. Firecracker is a perfect balance of Chipotle Chile, Salt and Popping Candy in Venezuelan dark chocolate for an arousing experience.
Release: 5/15/2008
Notes: The idea of pop rocks in chocolate isn’t exactly new, but I would certainly like to try a good version of it. (I also have a Christopher Elbow one on hand.) Chuao is also expanding their ChocoPods to include their most popular bar flavors such as Chinita Nibs.

Name: Sea Salt Almonds, Sea Salt Cashews & Fruit and Nut Mix
Brand: Mama Mellace’s Naturals Line (Mellace Family Brands)
Description: Mama Mellace is all about simple, homemade goodness and natural ingredients. That is why we oven-roast our almonds & cashews for a natural crunch without added oils, no butter and nothing to detract from Mama’s classic treat. Sprinkled with a hint of sea salt and mixed with real fruits, our Naturals line includes wholesome snacks created out of Mama’s desire to make an uncomplicated snack, simply better.
Release Date: 5/1/2008
Notes: I have a sample of the cashews to try, they look really good. I don’t know about the retail price for them but I expect it to be prohibitive for everyday uncomplicated snacking.

Name: Milk Chocolate with Peanut Butter Filling
Brand: Ghirardelli
Description: Satisfy your inner child and your inner gourmet with our new Peanut Butter Squares(TM) chocolate and bar. Our tempting new recipe is the perfect combination of intense creamy milk chocolate and gourmet peanut butter with crunchy peanuts roasted to perfection. Ghirardelli - Moments of Timless Pleasure.
Release Date: 3/1/2008
Notes: The market for milk chocolate and peanut butter is pretty crowded, so I’m having trouble figuring out what will be so great about this that I’d chose it over other items. I have one to try ... so we’ll find out.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: All Candy Expo 2008 #1
2. Ghirardelli Intense Dark
3. Candy Tease: Edition Five
4. Candy Tease: Edition Four
5. Chuao ChocoPod Collection
6. Chuao ChocoPods

It all starts tomorrow, bright and early on Tuesday morning in Chicago.

As I mentioned before, the National Confectioners Association, which runs the All Candy Expo, sent me a box of goodies so I wouldn’t feel left out by not attending.

The package says that it’s 20 lbs (last year I brought home 60 lbs ... but I think I ended up giving away about 20). It’s a fabulous assortment.

While there are a few things that I’d never pick up for myself, things like jerky, chips, and many packages of gum, those quickly found homes. But there were also plenty of samples, full sized things, that I might not have been able to score by myself on the floor. Some other items I’ve already found in stores and reviewed here (Wonka Giant Chewy Nerds, Starburst Gummi Bursts, Figamajigs, Craves, and a few others).

Here’s a small sampling of the items I’ll be able to talk about this week:

The bold ones are those that I’m planning reviews of (but ya never know). There are dozens of other items that were in the box, of course, but not things that are likely to be included on Candy Blog.

The photos shown here are from a reader, Michael J. Hartman, who is working behind the scenes. These were taken on Saturday as everything was being loaded into the McCormick center for the show. Some of the very elaborate booths require cranes to assemble and of course days.

You can check in here as I upload my photos on Flickr.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: All Candy Expo 2008 #1
2. Candy Giveaway! The Ultimate Candy Box
3. All Candy Expo - Tuesday Noon Update
4. All Candy Expo - Monday Noon Update
5. House of Chocolate Blues

Name: Emergency Chocolate
Brand: Bloomsberry & Co.
Description: 1 oz all natural premium chocolate bars. Milk 34% cocoa. Dark 55% cocoa. Perfect impulse personal consumption items!
Release Date: 4/1/2008
Notes: Bloomsberry is all about the cute packaging, and this item is no exception. Instead of their usual 3 ounce bar, this one is, as the copy says, only one ounce, so a nice little indulgence and probably a bit easier on the pocketbook.

Name: M&Ms Premiums
Brand: Mars
Description: Will come in five flavors, Triple Chocolate, Chocolate Almond (how is this different from the current Almond M&Ms?), Mint, Mocha, Raspberry Almond.
Release Date: June 2008
Notes: I’m not sure how different these are from some of the current limited edition offerings. According to Adweek they’ll be priced at more than $3 for a 6 ounce bag but my guess is that they’ll come in at about $6 like the recent Cherry Cordial ones.

Name: Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy
Brand: Best Sweets, Inc.
Description: The newest addition to the Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy line allows you take the fun and great taste of Mint Chocolate Chip and Very Berry Strawberry Baskin-Robbins ice cream with you - no matter where the day takes you! Made with real cream and the texture of these time-honored ice cream flavors, this new format is sure to be a hit.
Release Date: 5/5/2008
Notes: I have a sample of these to try in the Mint Chocolate Chip, which I must admit was one of my favorite flavors to get when I’d go to Baskin-Robbins as a kid.

(images courtesy of the manufacturers’ press kits)

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Edition Five
2. Candy Tease: Edition Four
3. Candy Teases: Edition Three
4. Candy Teases: Edition Two
5. Candy Teases - New Products

First, I’m not going to the All Candy Expo in Chicago this year. The dates (May 20-22) are simply unworkable for me this time around. I’m not terribly upset about it, the last show was just in September and I still have a few items left from that to review! Next year’s show will revert to the original June dates, and I’ll be back in ‘09.

Through the wonderful assistance of the folks at the National Confectioners Association though, I will be able to bring copious amounts of coverage including reviews that week! (Instead of readers waiting until I return home - so maybe things will be even better from a reader’s perspective.) But if you also want some first-hand coverage, Candy Addict will be on the floor and I’ll do my best to point to other coverage as the week goes by.

Changes this year at the convention include some new policies. Children are no longer allowed at the show at all and the Candy Time Room, which was that fabled space where you could fill a single bag with whatever you wanted from dozens of bins of candy ... that’s gone. (I scored a couple dozen snack sized Ritter Sport bars last year, they were so good.)

The show used to be on a Monday-Wednesday schedule, this year they’re going Tuesday-Thursday. The exhibitors are already on the floor at the McCormick center this weekend, setting up their booths. Some are quite elaborate, while other smaller companies opt for the old table & curtain display. The smallest booths are 10 feet square. The largest ones occupied by “Big Candy” like Hershey’s, Mars, Jelly Belly, Wrigley, Ferrara Pan & Nestle are more than 50 feet square, which is bigger than most candy stores (and my house). As an attendee, all I ever care about is the ability to view their product line, sample items, perhaps take a sample home and of course talk to someone. The larger booths not only feature the candy but show off how global they may be (Hershey’s was sampling some of their Asian versions last year) as well as the advertising campaigns & marketing tie-ins. While I may not care about some NASCAR merchandising deal, there are plenty of stores that will. 

The show is continuing to diversify to include more snacks (popcorn, chips, jerky, etc.) and gourmet confections. One of the cornerstone events will be the sessions under banner name “Taste of Gourmet” featuring Frederic Loraschi (Michel Cluizel) and Michael Antonorsi (Chuao). This year also shows the continuation of the “Gourmet Marketplace” are of the show floor where companies like Stephany’s Chocolates, Fannie May, Wolfgang, Bloomsberry & Co and other upscale (but not quite artisan) makers will be grouped together. I’ll have some reviews of their items to at least tip my hat towards the gourmet corner this year.

The show has a wide number of attendees. Most are buyers for large companies like Wal-Mart, Trader Joe’s, Rite Aid, grocery chains and other general merchandisers. Others are candy brokers & wholesalers, who are the middlemen for the smaller candy retailers. Most candy stores can’t afford the minimum purchases from the large factories, so they come to the show to see what’s new & how they’ll be marketed in the coming year, then they place their orders through the wholesale companies. Other people on the floor are publicists who work with different confectionery companies, writers from the industry or from consumer oriented publications (like bloggers) and finally, other candy companies.

I plan to give candy teases all week long as well, just announcements of new products that have caught my interest, keep an eye on the little sidebar to the left where it says “All Candy Expo” coverage. (Or sign up for my RSS feed and you won’t miss a thing.)

Related Candies

1. The Traveling with Candy Balancing Act
2. Candy Blog is Munchcast!
3. Navigating a Candy Expo
4. Partying with the Sugar Crowd
5. What is the All Candy Expo

Since the temperatures were back in the nineties in Los Angeles and I just returned from a long road trip, I thought I’d discuss chocolate storage for cocoa butter hostile climates.

The ideal temperature for storing chocolate is 60-75 degrees F, away from items with strong odors or direct sunlight. The temperature should be constant, even mild swings can encourage bloom.

Freezing or even refrigerating chocolate can encourage sweating (condensation) and transfer of odors from other foods. I simply don’t use my fridge for my candy. It’s never worked out very well, it’s too cold. Also, if you do end up freezing your chocolate, it’s important to bring it back to room temperature slowly - first in the fridge, then into a cool room. (Too much work & planning! I want my chocolate now!)

If you have a nice cool cupboard (preferably on an inside wall away from appliances that get warm), just keeping your chocolate sequestered should be fine. I have a set of Pyrex containers that won’t transfer odors and seem to give a bit of insulative protection. It also helps to have a climate controlled house. I don’t have central air and Los Angeles can experience some wide swings, temperatures inside my house go from the low sixties to over 100. (I’ve taken clothes out of my dresser that feel like they just came out of the hot dryer.)

These glass containers at the moment reside in my Chocolate Fridge. Technically it’s a wine fridge (meant to hold a dozen bottles). I’ve repurposed it to hold chocolate by amping up the temperature to 65 (instead of 55, which is where you’d probably keep your wine). Because wine fridges don’t dehumidify, the glass is also good for protecting against moisture. It also helps to prevent transfer of flavors and odors. Mint and Coffee items are additionally wrapped in ziploc bags and kept in separate containers from other non-flavored chocolates.

That’s what things looked like about a month ago. I ended up taking out two of the shelves and just stacking some of the glass containers because I have so much stuff. Yes, be sure to stagger things to encourage circulation, but also remember that a full fridge is more efficient than an empty one because the stuff inside insulates itself.

I bought a little thermometer to keep on the inside as well to monitor the temperature. There wasn’t anything on the settings, just low-med-high, so I wasn’t sure what I was getting, right now I have it set on low and the temps have been 62-65 ... well within the ideal range. (That little white thing at the bottom is a container of baking soda, also to absorb odors.) Some folks also love to use charcoal briquettes to absorb odors and control humidity - just be sure to get ones without lighter fluid in them, which will result in an unpalatable flavor.

While this is elegant and all that, it’s also expensive to buy and of course requires electricity (no good for brown outs in the summer heat). However, if you’re the type of person who is spending $8 a piece on bars, or place orders online for quanties far larger than can be consumed in a week, it may make sense in the long run.

Not only that, it doesn’t hold that much (well, not enough for me). So my second line of defense is a series of Insulated Coolers (ice chests) in my closet. This closet happens to be in the north-west corner of the house which is naturally shaded in the late afternoon by my neighbor’s house. Inside the cooler I layer my candies ... full boxes on the bottom (I still have some Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road bars left), then a layer of cold packs. At the moment my cooler isn’t really that good, I’m planning to upgrade to a better insulated ones (called 5 day coolers by Igoo).

I don’t actually freeze the cold packs I use, but sometimes I toss them in the fridge overnight. I don’t want to freeze anything or shock it, I just want to keep the climate consistently under 70 degrees. When I put them back in, I usually wrap them in a paper towel, just in case they cause a bit of condensation. (I’m thinking of making sleeves for them out of old fabric napkins. Cold pack cozies, anyone?)

Then if I don’t have any other candies that must be kept cold I fill in with other candy, just for insulation value. If I don’t have any candy sitting around sometimes I use throw pillows or bubble wrap. A full cooler will stay cool better than one with a large gap of air in the top. When returning from San Francisco, because I took more candy up there than I brought back, I ended up stuffing two wool sweaters on the top of the cooler as insulation from the glaring sun from my hatchback window. I also placed a windshield reflector over the cooler to give an added measure of protection against heat.

Another solution is water bottles. I have quite a collection of sport bottles that I just fill with tap water. The large mass of room temperature water provides yet another layer of insulation. I could also put them in the fridge for a while should the temps rise (this is a great solution if you don’t have access to those cold packs - but again, if it’s humid they will sweat, so put them in a clean cotton sock or something).

I also have an old styrofoam cooler box that I got a gift of cheese in once. For the most part, I just put stuff in there as a storage space for things I pick up on sale (my Hershey’s Eggs in this case), but as it’s been getting warmer I’ve tossed a few cool packs on top.

For shorter trips around town, remember that your car is a portable solar oven. Leaving stuff in the trunk or back seat is asking for moltency. Again, a cooler is a wise choice, and those insulate lunch bags can be rather helpful as well. If you have no choices, put lots of layers around the chocolate and water bottles or any large volume of liquid is your friend.

I have a couple of other smaller options as well. Inside my purse I carry this little anodized aluminum sunglass case. It doesn’t have much insulation value, just a little fuzzy lining, but the fact that it’s durable metal helps to minimize direct transfer of heat to a precious candy bar that might pick up at a deli such as this valuable BonBonBar from Joan’s on Third.

Finally, for carrying to parties or a special picnic, why not consider this wide mouth Soup Thermos:

As I found out, it doesn’t do much to protect candies from changes in air pressure.

Here are some other resouces about how to store your chocolate goodies:

Do you have any solutions, or words of warning?

Related Candies

1. Friday’s San Francisco Candy Adventure
2. Thursday Candy Trippin’
3. The Adventures of Melted Chocolate!
4. This Week in Candy - Too Hot

I never thought it could happen, but here I am slating full week of reviews of candies that contain no sugar (no glucose, sucrose or fructose) - all without breaking my own rule of no artificial sweeteners.

You can look forward to reviews of: SparX & Xylichew (xylitol), Hershey’s Sugar Free Chocolate, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & York Peppermint Patties (sorbitol), MarieBelle Maya Chocolate Bar (no sweeteners, just milk), Michel Cluizel Cacao Forte bonbon & Noir Infinity bar (no sugar at all) and finally a roundup of 99-100% dark chocolates from Bonnat, Dagoba & Meiji and even a baking chocolate bar.

Do they all qualify as candy? We’ll find out ...

Related Candies

1. MarieBelle Mayan Chocolate Bar (no sugar added)
2. Four 99%-100% Chocolate
3. Michel Cluizel 99%
4. SparX
5. XyliChew
6. Hershey’s Favorites - Sugar Free

I love pudding. I don’t care much for pastries, I’ve never gone for cupcakes (or any cakes for that matter) but I cannot resist pudding. I don’t care what kind of pudding it is: tapioca, rice, custard, flan, creme brulee, butterscotch or bread pudding, it’s all good to me. You can put it in a crust and call it pie, but it’s all pudding to me.  (Yes, custard has eggs in it, true pudding is just starch thickened milk & sugar. Instant pudding is like mockolate and does not deserve the pudding name.)

I usually make Jell-O Cook & Serve pudding. I’ve tried some organic stuff from Whole Foods but found it had far more sugar in it and less flavor, so I went back to Jell-O (I actually preferred Royal, but I can’t find that any longer).  I usually make mine with Lactaid milk, as I’m not that good at digesting larger quantities of milk products and this is a good alternative to ice cream.

Here’s what you get from Jell-O for $1.50:

Sugar, Dextrose, Cornstarch, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Modified Cornstarch, Contains Less than 2% of Natural and Artificial Flavor, Salt, Calcium Carrageenan (Thickener), Polysorbate 60 (Prevents Scorching), Fumaric Acid (for Thickening).

It occurred to me the other day that I could just make my own. “Oh,” I thought, “That’s a lot of work, measuring different things.” But really, is it? The thing is, I have a lot of hot chocolate mixes sitting around. I get samples but because this is a candy blog, not a drink blog, I don’t review them. And I don’t really drink that much hot chocolate. But I do eat pudding ... so why not make all that hot chocolate, that really, really good hot chocolate into really good pudding?

It turns out that it’s so freakishly easy, I’m kicking myself for not doing it for years.

(For the record, I did a search on the internet to see if I could find a recipe for just this and I had absolutely no luck ... so I worked it out on my own.)

What started this was that I got two cans from Equal Exchange last week ... when it was 90 degrees out. Not really hot chocolate season any longer, but pudding is always in season. One can is of their Organic & Fairly Traded Spiced Cocoa (shown) and one is of their Organic & Fairly Traded Drinking Chocolate. The difference between the two: hot cocoa is just that, cocoa and sugar (this one with spices as well) to be mixed with milk. Hot Chocolate or Drinking Chocolate has cocoa liquor in it and therefor a bit of cocoa butter.

Here are the ingredients of the Drinking Chocolate:

Organic Evaporated Sugar Cane Juice, Organic Cocoa Powder - Processed with Alkali, Organic Chocolate Liquor, Organic Cocoa Powder

(The ingredients list would look shorter if they didn’t have to throw the word organic in front of everything because it’s two things: sugar and some sort of chocolate or cocoa.)

It took me two tries, the first one I did only 2/3 of a cup of cocoa mix and 2% milk. The second was best and is what I’ve listed below.

Deluxe & Politically Correct Lactose-Free Chocolate Pudding That’s Super Easy to Make from Near-Scratch

Have your destination cups ready. I usually use the little cups that came with my china pattern, they hold 8 ounces, so that’s what I put in them. But you can use ramekins or other dessert cups that hold the recommended dosage of a half a cup if you have self control (or if you have no self control and just like to do a lot of dishes).

- 3 cups of milk (don’t use anything less than 2% or you’ll end up with a disappointing slurry - I use Lactaid Whole Milk)
- 1/4 cup of corn starch
- 3/4 cup of hot cocoa mix or hot chocolate mix
- optional: vanilla extract, orange extract or a little dash of spice of your choice

Put 3 cups of milk into a large, heavy saucepan. Sift the 1/4 cup of corn starch into the milk while stirring (I use a mesh tea strainer to do this, a fine screen colander works, too). This should avoid any of the dreaded lumps. When done, turn on burner to medium.

Put in 3/4 cup of cocoa mix, stirring constantly, scraping bottom and sides. This process takes about five minutes. Just be patient, work out any lumps or clumps in the cocoa while stirring, they get easier to integrate as the milk warms. The drinking chocolate didn’t look like it was completely melted until the very end, so have confidence.

Continue heating until mixture thickens. Do not allow to come to a full boil, but if you get a few blurples as it comes up to that temperature, it’s not the end of the world.

Pour into cups. Allow to cool. If you don’t like skin on your pudding, cover immediately with wax paper or plastic wrap touching the surface of the pudding.

I don’t mind skin, so I don’t cover mine at all, even when I stick it in the fridge (partly because I’m lazy and partly because it seems like such a waste of plastic).

I also like hot pudding. Yes, I’ll rinse out the pan and clean up my mess and then dig in with a spoon to my chocolate soup while it’s still steamy and a little runny.

In order to customize this, in both instances I followed the ratio of milk to hot cocoa mix on the package, so give it a try with whatever you may have around, but I’d err on the upper side of 1/4 cup per cup of milk.

The Equal Exchange Spiced Cocoa was a bit too spicy for me, but a really good, rich flavor (I might try it with half unspiced at some point). Not quite as fatty smooth as I would have preferred but this allowed me to sense the difference between that and the Drinking Chocolate (57%) was amazing. So deeply chocolatey, but silky smooth. It was like a freshly waxed floor and stocking feet ... my tongue was sliding around with that pudding going, “Whee!”

Yes, truly from scratch is probably best of all, but this is so elegantly easy and means that I can have hot cocoa on hand for guests and just need to have corn starch around for a scalable chocolate pudding mix at the drop of hat.

Pudding is a great year round dessert, easy to make larger batches for bigger crowds or use as a pie or tart filling.

I also tried Guittard Grand Cacao Drinking Chocolate late last year, which is absolutely divine as a hot chocolate ... next time I’ll try it as pudding, too. It’s the perfect ratio of chocolate to sugar (milk adds its own sweetness).

I haven’t (and won’t) tried this with an actual instant cocoa mix that you’d use water with ... that has powdered milk or “coffee creamer” type products in it. I don’t think it would work with soy, rice or almond milk products, part of the reaction that thickens pudding is the starch with the calcium in milk, if I’m not mistaken. But if it does work, it’d make this vegan.

(Jell-O Pudding box image swiped from Von’s website, Equal Exchange Drinking Chocolate image from EqualExchange.org & Guittard Grand Cacao from Guittard webstore.)

Related Candies

1. Guittard Akoma Fair Trade Chocolate Chips
2. Mary Jane’s Bread Pudding
3. Chocolate Hellfire Chip Cookies
4. Equal Exchange Miniatures
5. Malted Crisped Rice Squares

I don’t often do gratuitous self-congratulatory posts, but today marks the beginning of my fourth year of Candy Blog.

Since my first post on April 9th called Adventures in Candy, things have changed quite a bit. I was not new to blogging at that point, I’d been keeping Fast Fiction since 2001 and blog regularly for blogging.la since early 2004.

I’m not sure I realized how much it would take over my life.

I was at a wedding that day in downtown Los Angeles of my friends & neighbors Amy & Robin (mentioned here often). My husband had laryngitis so I did a lot of the talking and much of it seemed to be about candy. (I can’t recall what we were talking about.) My passion for the sugary stuff impressed my table-mates and they mentioned that I should blog about it. I came home and started that night.

There was something about blogging about candy. It just clicked. People I’d never met started reading. I had fun and I realized that I’d been writing about candy my whole life. From the short story in 5th grade to essays in high school to my masters thesis, a river of candy ran through it.

The default template and limited features I was using on Blogger were suddenly insufficient to hold all the possibilities of blog about candy. I decided to broaden my goals, I wanted to become a recognized candy expert from the consumer’s viewpoint. (I also wanted to go to the All Candy Expo, where you could only get in as a member of the press, a difficult thing to score as a blogger at that time.)

So I hired Hop Studios in late 2005 to redesign the blog which meant great new features like following comment conversations, the regular polls, related candies, search, the fun ratings & specs chart and intensive category tags.

At first I envisioned Candy Blog as a place to experience new candy, or at least candy that was new to me. Part of what I wanted Candy Blog to be was something that I couldn’t find on the internet then, someone to tell me what was really inside that package. This was especially true for regional candies and foreign items. As the years have gone by I realized that I needed to revisit the tried and true favorites in order to give the new items perspective. There are still plenty of classic candies missing from the blog. I will get around to them eventually.

I continue to work with Hop Studios, tweaking functionality, adding new features and of course just fluffing it up once in a while.

There are over 1,200 posts here on Candy Blog so far. I don’t know for sure how many products I’ve reviewed (some posts include multiple reviews), but I put that number at about 800. My flickr Candy photoset has documentation of over 2,100 product photos (including at least 200 things that I’ve tried but never reviewed) . 

That was the one thing I didn’t expect with Candy Blog: the photography. I wanted the photos on the blog because it was what would make the blog unique (not just the wrapper) and would satisfy the one thing that I’d want to know when thinking about a new candy ... what does it look like?. Little did I realize that I’d take so many photos and that I’d actually get good at it. (Take minute and look at some of the early photos ... not really up to the current standards.)

Readers are a big part of things here too, there are 12,700 comments logged here from you (and another 800 or so responses from me). I have no idea of the number of people who have visited the blog over the years. My statcounter says 4.6 million page loads since November of 2005 (and that doesn’t count me). The best part is that I’ve come to know so many of Candy Blog’s readers by name, via emails and through their blogs linked in the comments.

The fun part is that I’m no longer alone with my obsession. (When I started CandyCritic.org and Writers and Artists Snacking at Work had not been updated in a while and most of the current big food blogs hadn’t even started.) I love having other voices and views of the candy world and enjoy updating my blog roll with new candy reads. The amazing part is how long so many of us continue to write about candy, owing to the enduring passion that we share.

I’ve traveled for Candy Blog, covering the 2006 & 2007 All Candy Expo (the largest trade candy show in North America), the 2007 & 2008 Fancy Food Show, the 2007 & 2008 Natural & Organic Products Expo and trips to candy factories in Pennsylvania & California. No matter where I go in the country, I try to see what’s going on in the local confectionery.

Since its inception, Candy Blog has become more than just reviews. Though I’ve never considered Candy Blog to be a global candy zeitgeist, mostly it just reflects my transient obsessions (often inspired by your suggestions). This is what I hope keeps me sincere and authentic. But then sometimes it’s not all frothy fun; readers helped get out the word last year about the threat to real chocolate and helped Gary Guittard to mobilize 34,000 people to respond to the Citizen’s Petition the FDA received from the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

But for the most part Candy Blog has become a faithful review site, five a week ... sometimes more, every once in a while I take a day off.

Candy Blog accepts direct advertising now (which covers the above trips & some of my equipment and candy purchases plus the growing hosting costs & programming of the blog), but I never accept money in exchange for a review and will always tell you when any product has been comped so that you can judge my objectivity for yourself. I also never use affiliate links, so you’ll never see me benefiting directly for a review or from a link to any store, source or manufacturer of candy.

Late last year I did add an extra layer of insulation from advertising concerns by taking on my husband as my publisher. He talks directly to people interested in advertising (in case they may be manufacturers) so that I don’t have to worry about that stuff.

At the moment my plans are modest. Simply to gain readers by writing the best that I can muster, try more candy (my list is pretty long) and visit some more candy cities. I’m flirting with the idea of forums so that you have a place to expand your discussions (poll over there to the right until April 12th) and some better search options to help you find the candy you’re looking for.

So now it’s your turn, this is an open thread for you to request things from me. More giveaways? Forums? More recipes (though I fail at most of them)? Factory tours? Candy destinations? News? Buyer’s guides? Company profiles? More history ... it’s your call.

Related Candies

1. Candy Blog Photo Studio
2. The Adventures of Melted Chocolate!
3. Candy Blog is Munchcast!
4. What I Ate on my Summer Vacation