Best and Worst Candy

Oh snap!

After reading the other replies here, maybe I shouldn't admit that I actually like candy corn. I also like those creme mallow pumpkins... and fruitcake... and marshmallow Peeps.

Maybe this actually explains more about me than anyone needs to know.

Favorite ... Snickers
Worst ... Peeps. Ugh.

Oh yeah... I was thinking best/worst CHOCOLATE, but you're right. Twizzlers are chewy red wax.

They still make and sell them, so SOMEBODY must be buying them. They don't stock stuff this long when it won't sell. But I don't know who's buying them... and I'm not sure I want to know.

If you like ferrero roche, try the Five Star Chocolate Bar (hazelnut version) from Lake Champlain Chocolates. It looks like a high price for a small bar, but the bar is bigger than it looks. The shape is like a h*rsh*y (that's a dirty word for chocolate lovers, that H word) nugget, but the size is like eight or ten of them put together.

I feel like there must be just ONE person in every town that really loves twislers and stockpiles them for hard times But I will look for those! I have yet to find a chocolate with hazelnuts in them that I didn't like!

I like a wide variety of candies...most of them with chocolate but not always...red vines is one of them...some people say red licorice but...well...licorice itself is a flavor and not so much a candy in itself.

But there isn't any candy out there that I have yet to make...except for the liquor filled bottles...they either crystalize up on me or break before I can get them dipped in chocolate. Been kinda annoying too...but other than that everything out there in a Russel Stover or Whitman's box I can make...and will be here soon.

BUT

one of the best that is really loved that you don't see a lot of...chocolate covered candied orange peels.
You won't see them in a grocery store...you have to go to a chocolatier...or patissier...or a scratch candy shop.
Don't waste your time on the one in Pigeon Forge TN...their chocolate is crap. Overpriced nasty tasting chocolates that look good only.

But I make over 1,000 pieces of candy every year...I just got back from the liquor store too in order to make all of them...gonna start soon on the centers and have them frozen for when I am ready to produce the last stage of dipping chocolate.

This includes mounds and almond joys and reeces and Rollos and turtles and just about anything you can imagine and probably a bunch you can't. Grasshopper, Gran Mariner, Chambord, Kahlua, lemon, orange, raspberry, blackberry, mint, coffee, and on and on the list goes. I'm sick of candy by the time the season is over. I go through 22 lbs of Belgian dark chocolate and roughly 5 of the white. (every year...just to coat) then I usually go through a few pounds of the cheap almond bark stuff that I heavily reflavor with the real chocolate for the cookies I dip. (1,000 cookies annually)

Now I just have to wonder, do you sell some of those candies, give them as presents, or is this your annual get in Santa shape regiment so you can be the most authentic Santa around?

These are Christmas presents we give out every year...
It's kinda a production at our house.

Last year we got more commercialized packaging for the candy. In the end it was over one pound boxes of fine chocolate truffles in each box with little baggies of chocolate orange peels stuffed in with the cookies.
My wife got some labels designed and printed up...they looked great. I guess we could have gone the one extra step of shrink wrap but we decided against it. We were our own brand name as it was... lol.

This year the boxes tripled in price...ugghhhh. it was going to be $150 for the boxes and plastic inserts alone...we decided against getting more...we will just use some dollar store/tree trays and some nice cellophane wrapping plastic.
We do have a few leftovers from last year...might use them for a few people.

But it's always fun around here at Christmas. I usually cheat and use powdered crystalized cocoa butter to help temper the chocolate. Gets me that chocolate snap every time from being tempered right.

Best: Almond Roca, (anything with Almond & toffee) Almond Hershey's & Reeses.
Worst: candy corn & jelly beans

I like a wide variety of candies...most of them with chocolate but not always...red vines is one of them...some people say red licorice but...well...licorice itself is a flavor and not so much a candy in itself.

But there isn't any candy out there that I have yet to make...except for the liquor filled bottles...they either crystalize up on me or break before I can get them dipped in chocolate. Been kinda annoying too...but other than that everything out there in a Russel Stover or Whitman's box I can make...and will be here soon.

BUT

one of the best that is really loved that you don't see a lot of...chocolate covered candied orange peels.
You won't see them in a grocery store...you have to go to a chocolatier...or patissier...or a scratch candy shop.
Don't waste your time on the one in Pigeon Forge TN...their chocolate is crap. Overpriced nasty tasting chocolates that look good only.

But I make over 1,000 pieces of candy every year...I just got back from the liquor store too in order to make all of them...gonna start soon on the centers and have them frozen for when I am ready to produce the last stage of dipping chocolate.

This includes mounds and almond joys and reeces and Rollos and turtles and just about anything you can imagine and probably a bunch you can't. Grasshopper, Gran Mariner, Chambord, Kahlua, lemon, orange, raspberry, blackberry, mint, coffee, and on and on the list goes. I'm sick of candy by the time the season is over. I go through 22 lbs of Belgian dark chocolate and roughly 5 of the white. (every year...just to coat) then I usually go through a few pounds of the cheap almond bark stuff that I heavily reflavor with the real chocolate for the cookies I dip. (1,000 cookies annually)

You ought to open your own candy and confection store.

But it would be just my luck to attract all the "Karens" in the world and you would be watching me instead of Kyle on the defendants chair.

The margins are really tight and the overhead really high on this stuff to begin with...

Especially as people reduce the amount of luxury goods/consumables they are purchasing.

When there's all this inflation talk and stagflation... people circle the wagons and reduce expenses. Ultra high end chocolates are not going to sell well enough to make a reasonable profit...

BUT

I can probably pick up some of the equipment used for small patisserie shops rather reasonably. A chocolate enrober would be handy.

You're the candy man.