Edible Art: Sweet Veggies

There is something a little bit naughty about these candied vegetable photographs by Amsterdam-based photographer Wendy van Santen and art director Hans Bolleurs. They definitely conjure up images of childhood and the ongoing struggle to get kids to eat their veggies. I think we can all agree that more children would be eating their vegetables if they looked like these colorful creations. Personally, I prefer my vegetables to be a little less sugary, but they certainly are fun to look at! ~Erin

jcoco chocolate

It’s hard to imagine a time when chocolate was a luxury. In modern times, chocolate is so readily available that we take it for granted and don’t really savor it or appreciate it the way our ancestors did. It’s not made to be savored, really. It’s mass produced and filled with so many unpronounceable ingredients that we’ve forgotten what quality chocolate really tastes like. Jcoco is not that sort of candy. It’s not average or run of the mill. Instead, it’s the sort of treat that reminds you that, sometimes, a really special chocolate is worth waiting for!

Let’s start with the packaging, which I absolutely love! It’s not the most important part of the puzzle, but I’m a sucker for a cute wrapper and jcoco certainly knows a thing or two about making their product visually exciting. The exterior box, which resembles a clutch or a wallet, is made out of a really lovely paper that is quite soft to the touch. I pretty much forced everyone I know to run their fingers up and down the cover! It was sooo smooth and silky! Once the box is opened, you will find three separate bars each one featuring a different fashion photograph. So cute!

The candy itself is delicious! I am, honestly, very reluctant about doing reviews because I worry that I won’t like the product, but I truly, truly loved these bars! I didn’t want to share them with anyone! Here’s the breakdown on the three flavored bars.

Edamame Sea Salt: This one was perhaps my favorite. The toasted edaname beans provide a nice crunch and you can never go wrong with a salt/chocolate combo. This bar is made with milk chocolate, and I’m normally a dark chocolate type of gal, but I didn’t miss it at all in this case. Often I associate milk chocolate with cheap candy, but when it’s done right, as it is with this bar, it can be quite good!

Black Fig Pistachio:  This one was a big hit, too. Several people named it as their favorite. This is a dark chocolate bar, so bonus points there. Also, pistachios and figs are two of my all-time favorite foods, making it pretty hard for me to resist.

Veracruz Orange: I didn’t think I would like this one. Normally, I’m not a fan of chocolate and orange, but, I have to say, I loved it!! The combination of orange and white chocolate is really nice. I much prefer it over dark chocolate and citrus. The bar is creamy and sweet and downright delightful.  

In addition, I’m happy to report that jcoco does not use genetically modified ingredients in their bars and prints all of their boxes on recycled boxes. Woo hoo! You can find more info on jcoco, and shop online, on their website. ~Erin

Olive & Sinclair

I love every aspect of these chocolate bars by Nashville company Olive & Sinclair. The first and most obvious attraction is the packaging. You can’t help but be won over by the graphic, vintage-inspired wrapper. Next there are the unique flavors: salt and pepper, Mexican style cinn-chili, buttermilk white. (Don’t even get me started on the bourbon nib brittle.) I want to try them all! But the best part of all, tops on the “why I love this company” list, is the fact that the chocolate at Olive & Sinclair is handcrafted, slow-roasted and stone ground in small batches, using both new and vintage machinery. Owner, chef, and visionary Scott Witherow is a firm believer in the bean-to-bar process and uses single origin cacao beans to create a chocolate bar that feels so much more special and one of a kind, than your average ol’ candy bar. Check out the video above to find out more about their process. It’s a great combination of old and new chocolate making. Click here to check out all of the Olive & Sinclair products and to shop online.

Seattle Chocolates: Holiday Collection

In honor of holiday season, which is now officially upon us, I wanted to share these fun new truffle bars from Seattle Chocolates. I’ll admit that it was the cute, retro-inspired wrapper that originally caught my eye, but it was the unusual flavors that really reeled me in! The collection, which is titled Baby It's Cold Outside, was inspired by song titles and lyrics of the 1950’s, and comes in five different flavors: Hot Buttered Rum, Mom’s Hot Cocoa, Candy Cane Crunch, Holiday Cheer Eggnog, and Christmas Cookie.

I shared my bars with my friends and family and they all disappeared fairy quickly, but there were two clear winners: Hot Buttered Rum, which combines toffee and a hint of rum to recreate that warm cozy feeling that you would normally get from the drink, and Candy Cane Crunch, a delightful blend of chocolate and peppermint that also has the distinct advantage of being the only dark chocolate bar in the bunch. These two also happen to be my favorites visually speaking, especially the Hot Buttered Rum, which features an old-school skier against an aqua background. You can check out the full line of holiday truffle bars, and shop online, right here. You can also click here to find a store near you.

Vintage Confections

I have a soft spot for lollipops. Call it an oral fixation, if you must, but, really, I think it’s more about the fact that lollipops offer a prolonged dessert experience. You don’t just bite and swallow a lollipop (unless you are that owl in the tootsipop commercials), but, instead, you get the opportunity to savor the flavors for an extended period of time. It a fairly unusual eating experience, if you really think about it. And if you’re going to have an unusual eating experience, you may as well be eating something that looks unusual, too! Which is where this lollipops from Vintage Confections come in. From striped neopilitian ice cream pops to pops imprinted with images of peacock feathers, bottle caps, and emoticons, their online shop is filled with some seriously cool candy! And with flavors like caramel crème, pink champagne, and peach cobbler, you know that they are going to taste as good as the look! Click here  to check them out and shop online.

Jelly Babies

Photo by Brian Valentine

As far as sweets/desserts are concerned, I’m not a fan of jellied things. I never liked Jell-o, not even as a kid. Nor did I like jellied candy, like worms or bears. I don’t even really like jelly beans, although I do quite enjoy Jelly Bellies. Don’t ask me to explain the difference. Needless to say, I don’t really enjoy eating gelatin-spiked foods, but I do seem to be fascinated by them. Jelly keeps popping up on this site over and over and over again. As an object of interest, I can’t seem to resist a wobbly thing! I think some of it comes from the fact that jellied foods often take on the oddest and most bizarre shapes, like these Jelly Babies, for instance. There is something so wrong about them, yet I can’t look away! For starters, who wants to eat a tiny person? Not to mention the fact that there’s something almost alien-like and scary about their design. I can almost imagine them coming to life and forming a small army of jelly people, which will then take over the planet, filling it with tiny jelly houses, tiny jelly trees, and tiny jellied jelly donuts. I’m just saying. It could happen.

Image by Paul Frank

Jelly babies have been around, in some form or another, since 1918. But artist Mauro Perucchetti was the first person to turn them into art. The sculptures, which are made out of  polyurethane resin, have been featured in several of his exhibitions and were most recently installed at Marble Arch in London's West End.

From the artist: “Twelve years ago I created a body of work inspired by the dilemma between cloning and religion, and cloning and medical ethics. I decided to use the jelly baby as an impersonation of cloned mankind. I was trying to capture the ambiguity that could be present in a cloned being. On first glance, they seem very sweet, but from certain angles, they can look slightly sinister, especially on a large scale."

My thoughts exactly. Like I said, watch your back. To learn more about the history of Jelly Babies, click here. You can also find more information on Mauro's work via the Halcyon Gallery right here, as well as on his personal website, here.

Cadbury's Return of the Goo

Call me a dork, but I kind of love this catapult game from Cadbury, which allows you to "egg" any location in the world with a giant Creme Egg. All you have to do is enter the address into the little box of the main page, pull back the catapult, and then, wallah, watch as the egg flys through the air and splatters across your chosen target. The game uses Google Maps technology, so the effect is, somewhat, realistic. I picked my office building for my egging and let me tell you, seeing your place of work covered in Cadbury Egg goo, is especially hilarious, not to mention dreamy. Who wouldn't want their rooftop covered with candy?? Click here to start egging.

Peacock Lollipop Holder

This lollipop holder by Jonathan Adler is totally impractical, but I think I love it. You certainly couldn’t keep the lollipops unwrapped, unless you were having a party or something, and they would be eaten quickly. If you left them naked for weeks at a time they would get all sticky and covered with dust. Yuck! Still, I really like the idea and the retro style of the peacock. It’s sort of like an updated take on the candy dish. J. Adler is the best. He always makes such cheery things. I hope everyone has a great holiday! :-) --Erin

This Charming Candy

When Kate and Susan from This Charming Candy first sent me the link to their Etsy shop, my first thought was, hmmm . . . these lollipops sort of remind me of the suckers that they used to have at the doctor's office when I was a kid. They looked so simple and unassuming. But as we all know, looks can be deceiving. It didn't take me long to realize that I had, indeed, been wrongly stereotyping the This Charming Candy pops, once I caught a glimpse of the flavors: Pistachio-Marshmallow? Vanilla-Cardamom? Apple-Anise? These were definitely not doctor's office lollipops!

The more time I've spent looking at the pics of Kate and Susan's lollies on their Etsy site, the more I've come to love their sweet retro charm. I also really like fact that these lollipops are handmade in small batches and contain only a few ingredients, so you definitely feel like you're getting something that's way more fresh and special than, well, doctor's office lollies! To check out the full selection of This Charming Candy lollipops and to shop online, click here.

Sweet Testing: Red Hot Velvet Cake with Cinnamon Buttercream

Yes, it's true. It's another Baked cake. I know. You're shocked, right? Actually, I've been wanting to make this cake ever since I first got Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. Every time a birthday or a holiday or some other cake-required celebration comes around, I put it on a list of suggestions and it always gets overlooked! So, when I was asked what kind of cake I wanted for my bday, I immediately picked this one! And I was so glad that I did! So, so yummy! One cake eater/red velvet fan said that it was the best red velvet cake that she have ever had! I have to admit, though, that I liked it a whole lot better the next day. The cinnamon seemed much stronger. I don't know if that's because the flavors needed time to percolate or if I had just eaten too much food prior to cake time. Then again, I often tend to like baked goods more the next day, but that's just me and my weirdness.

You can find the complete recipe for Red Hot Velvet Cake with Cinnamon Buttercream after the jump.

Inspiration Board: Candy

Oh, wow! Do I love this cake or what?? When I first came across this Rock Candy Cake on Style Me Pretty, I thought, that is the greatest wedding cake I have ever seen. Okay, I admit it, I probably have said that about other cakes in the past, and I think I said it again when I saw the Dots Cake featured below, but it's definitely one of my favorites. It's beautiful and fun and simple all at the same time. Who knew that rock candy could look so sophisticated! If I attended a wedding and there was a Rock Candy Cake, I'd be a happy girl. Seeing this cake actually inspired me to do a little research to find other ways in which candy can be used as a design element in food and this is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it! {Rock Candy Cake by Cocoa + Fig, photo by Red Ribbon Studio}


Candy Dots Cake, by Lochel’s Bakery, courtesy of Philadelphia Wedding


Gumball Cake by A Sweet Design


Heston Blumenthal’s Popping-Candy Chocolate Cake by Chubby Hubby {This cake is amazing, but if you'd like a simpler approach to incorporating Pop Rocks in your desserts, try sprinkling it on top of a cake or cupcake.}

Edible Art: Share the Sweet

I love it when I see something dessert related and within a few seconds I find myself smiling with delight. That's what happened to me recently when I first saw these wonderful candy designs by Norwegian designer Maria Tovslid. Titled Share the Sweet, Tovslid's series was created to change the way we read, interact with, and consume candy. The three pieces, the chocolate, the lollipop, and the licorice, are molded in such a way to draw attention to the experience of sharing. It's candy that not only makes sharing easy, but encourages it. What's better than that?? You can check out more of Maria Tovslid's work on her Web site, right here.

Edible Art: Lolli-Pop

I'm not a fan of labels, but I do love the concept behind this new photo book, Lolli-Pop, by Italian photographer Massimo Gammacurta in which he takes iconic symbols from companies like Nike, Channel, Izod, and MTV and turns them into lollipops. The project actually began as a limited-edition art experiment by Gammacurta and became so popular that he was able to develop into an entire book filled with his colorful edible logos. I love stories like that and I love the way that the suckers poke a little fun at corporations that most of the time take themselves much too seriously.



For more images from the book, you can visit Gammacurta's Web site, right here. You can also order Lolli-Pop via the publisher by clicking here.

Gummi Bear Chandelier

I've always been drawn to bold, statement making lighting fixtures, so when my friend Alja posted this beautiful chandelier on Facebook, I was instantly intrigued. It was only after I started reading the text that I realized that this isn't any ordinary light source. It's not made out of glass or plastic, but, drum roll please, gummi bears! Okay, so they're acrylic gummi bears, but the real thing probably wouldn't last very long once the light was turned on! Created by Kevin Champeny of the deign group Jellio, the chandelier is made out of 5,000 gummi bears and takes two months to complete. In addition, only ten of these babies will ever be made, so you will definitely be getting an original piece!

Jellio's Web site also features a number of other dessert-themed furniture, like an ice cream bench, cupcake table, and gummi bear lights. I'm not really sure these pieces would work with my décor sense, but I have to admit, I kinda like the Pop Art feel of that ice cream bench! There’s lots more to see at their site, so click here for more information. Thanks, Alja!