April Fool’s Day is one of our favorite holidays. Here are couple of contests to help you get in the spirit:
If you happen to be in San Francisco and are looking for a way to celebrate, we recommend the St. Stupid’s Day Parade. Whatever you do, have fun!
Can’t figure out what to do with all of your leftover conversation hearts after Valentine’s Day? It turns out they do a passable impression of sidewalk chalk, even without being a significant source of calcium!
Not that we would know anything about having too many candy hearts. The giant melted together heart ought to work like those multicolored crayons. That could actually be a good use for it.
Last year as Valentine’s day approached we suggested writing new messages on your conversation hearts and loading up your trebuchet. We still advocate catapults for Valentine candy distribution and disposal, but we’ve upgraded the presentation a bit. With a rubber stamp kit and a food-safe pen, you can stamp your messages so they look nearly authentic, but have much more appropriate messages.
Continue reading Conversation hearts: Stamp your own messages
After more than a year of painstaking directed research by our Experimental Foods Division, we have finally achieved one of our most important longstanding goals: the production of edible googly eyes. Like many other great inventions, it seems almost simple in retrospect, but in this write up we walk through the process and show you how to make your own.
Continue reading One Hundred Percent EDIBLE Googly Eyes!
We are crazy about Thanskgiving, both for being the only real food-centric American holiday and for giving us an excuse to make all kinds of things that we don’t make the rest of the year. One of the few downsides is that we usually end up eating the same leftovers for days on end afterwards. These can be amongst the best leftovers that you get, however even your favorite dish can start to wear on after having it reheated for the fourth meal in a row.
The solution? Food hacking– a tasty form of recycling! Incorporate your leftovers into new recipes to bring them back to life. While reworking leftovers certainly isn’t a new process (Bubble and Squeak, anyone?), it is one that benefits from a fresh approach from time to time. After the jump, a few of our favorite out-of-the-box approaches to eating well on Black Friday.
Continue reading Five Tricks for Thanksgiving Leftovers
The fall holidays are fantastic ones: Halloween is all about costumes and candy and Thanksgiving is all about food. Here is how to make one of our favorite fall treats: pumpkin spice truffles. (Yum.)
To get the note-perfect flavor of traditional American pumpkin pie, we use the spice ratio from the old-standard can of Libby’s pumpkin (here is the recipe from under the label). Bittersweet chocolate has a stronger flavor than that of pumpkin, so we actually use twice the spice of a pie for a small batch (well, small for us batch) of truffles. The amazing thing is that these pumpkin-free wonders taste uncannily like pumpkin pie. Not that anyone will have trouble distinguishing your truffles and a pie, but you just might get asked, “Are these actually made with pumpkin?”
Continue reading Pumpkin Spice Truffles
Our favorite neighborhood donut shop has made a classic pronunciation/spelling misstep: they sell “Apple Flitters.” It only adds to the charm of the place!
Supposing that you’re less than omnivorous, you may not always be in the mood to eat insects. You might be vegetarian, or your religion tells you that you shouldn’t eat insects, or maybe you’re just on a strict non-bug-eating diet. Here are a couple of simple hints to help you identify foods that contain bugs, illustrated with a few common supermarket candy items.
(Note: This article has been moved here from Instructables, where it was previously published. It has also been slightly updated.)
Continue reading How to Eat Fewer Insects (formerly on Instructables)
We are great fans of Bawls Mints. Or, I should say, we were great fans of Bawls mints, because they are apparently no longer being made. They have been replaced by this visually similar but radically inferior substitute called “Bawls Buzz.” The formula has been completely reworked, and now tastes of cheap, bland candy, a little bit like pixy stix. Sugar is no longer the first ingredient.
On the other hand, the text on the bottom of the box is still there and still brilliant. Who makes packaging like this anymore? (And who makes candy like Bawls Mints anymore?)
