Candy Corn M&Ms

A bit late to the game, O'Leary?

Actually, I tried Candy Corn M&Ms last year (meh) and thus was lazy about giving them a second go this Halloween.  In 2012, I liked the vibrant colors but overall considered these candies swollen and sickeningly sweet.  And this year?

Not so much different.  With their very light candy corn flavor, these M&Ms make me simultaneously crave real candy corn and miss real (meaning, NOT WHITE) chocolate.

My prediction is that this year may be the last for candy corn M&Ms because their novelty can't trump their lackluster taste forever.

Caramel Apple Milky Way

Apologies for the blurriness of the photo, which in a way reflects my own uncertainty about this candy bar.  Well, first it is not a candy bar, it is a "bite size" (not to be confused with "fun size" or "bites") version of full-size Caramel Apple Milky Way. Except this product does not exist, which totally deconstructs the idea of bite-size CAMW being the diminutive form of anything. In a way, the candy bar equivalent to Judith Butler's conceptualization of gender performativity, i.e., "the copy without the original."  

Anyhoo, my problem with this candy isn't so much that the (sour?) apple flavor is fake albeit prominent but that once your taste buds start to enjoy it, your consumption experience is over. Yes, you can open another bite size, but, ugh, that takes work.  Why doesn't Mars issue a full-size version of CAMW so that we can have a sustained apple-flavored-caramel-chocolate experience.  Why the tease with the fun size. Not so much "fun" I think. 

Starburst Candy Corn

Candy Corn Starbursts debuted this year and they are not gross. 

I feel like I have to get that out of the way because when I included them on a list of top 10 non-chocolate Halloween candies for the Houston Press, some readers were quite disdainful.  

I understand that the general preference will be for regular Starbursts rather than Starbursts candy corn, but in the spirit of the upcoming pagan holiday, allow yourself multiple objects of candy worship.  Yes, plain Starbursts can be your favorite, but the candy corn version is fun, fruity, and less redolent of high-fructose corn syrup than generic candy corn.  

Brach's and/or quality candy corn are an entirely different story. If you don't like candy corn, there is something horrible, probably incurably, wrong with you.  And if you don't like autumn mix,  you are not welcome in my house.

Reese's Pumpkin

An oldie but goodie seasonal sweet I hope never goes away, the Reese's Pumpkin is larger than your standard Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, and, from my observations, employs richer peanut butter cream.

This to not to say, however, that you should restrict yourself to just one. Pumpkins are most fun in pairs, I think, so why not honor the consumption tradition of the peanut butter cup and eat two at once? Reese's, btw, should offer two in a package to facilitate this practice. Hope they get on that.

Cadbury Screme Eggs

I feel like at some point Cadbury got tired of dominating Easter and set its sights on Halloween.  And while the presence of Hershey and Mars will probably prevent them from ever dominating this holiday, I do give Cadbury props for successfully parlaying its most iconic Easter treat, the creme egg, into a Halloween confection.  How?

Simply by changing "c" to "s" and yellow to green.  A Cadbury Screme Egg,  as I discovered within moments of my taste test, is identical in taste to a  Cadbury Creme Egg. The only two elements differentiating the two candies is the name and the color of the interior "yolk."

I suppose that Cadbury chose green as their Halloween hue because the shift from yellow to orange would be insufficiently dramatic.  That's fine and good, I guess, but now they've completely foreclosed the possibility of using green for a mint-flavored St. Patrick's Day version of the Creme Egg.

Sigh.

Pillsbury's Pumpkin-Faced Sugar Cookies

Not to be confused with Pillsbury pumpkin-flavored cookies.  It's only October 17th and my local Kroger was already very eager to get rid of this "shape and bake" treat and had discounted them to "10/$10." Okay, I'll take one package for one dollar. 

I'm not going to write "baking these cookies couldn't be simpler!" because obviously having someone else bake them for me would be easier. But I will tell you I probably could bake them blindfolded.  Actually, I could probably bake them without even trying, accidentally even, if I tripped, tore open the package, and hurled the cookies into an open oven. 

I put down wax paper on the pan just to feel like I was making some effort.

I remember when I was little thinking that Pillsbury sugar cookies were of a reasonable circumference. Now they are the size of checkers and lend themselves to be eaten by the handful. 

To slow down my rate of consumption I made them into sandwich cookies with store-bought frosting. (Please, like I'm going to waste homemade icing made from unpasteurized milk and Irish butter on these things.)

It worked and I only ate six. 

Snickers Pumpkin

Not to be confused with Peanut Butter Snickers Pumpkin.  Let's be precise, people.  I had moderate expectations for the Snickers Pumpkin based on my experiences with Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins (to be re-reviewed later).  I assumed the themed black wrapper would hold a plain flat nugget of Snickers candy shaped vaguely like a squash. I was wrong.

Yikes, that's a scary grin.  It matches the picture on the wrapper but certainly not the label, for that, my friends, is a jack-o-lantern, not a pumpkin.  Also, Jack's smile is sort of desperate.  Seems like he's trying a bit too hard to jocular and repressing some deep internal melancholia. And speaking of insides:

Things are a bit sticky. And nutty. Crazy delicious, indeed.

Pillsbury Pumpkin Cookies With Cream Cheese Chips

I don't expect much from Pillsbury in terms of baking products around Halloween (recipes--that's a different story altogether).  Their pumpkin print cookies are nothing more than sugar cookies imprinted with cheap dye and for similar reasons, their ghost cookies probably scare me in a way that isn't intended.  New this season, however, is a pumpkin with cream cheese chips style of separate-and-bake cookie. "All right, Doughboy," I thought to myself when I spotted it on sale at my local Randall's.  "I'll give you another chance."

The flavor is vastly superior to  that of any other non-chipa-fied type of cookie (e.g., oatmeal, sugar) I've tried from Pillsbury.   With strong squash notes with ample support from cinnamon and nutmeg, this product is essentially a mild pumpkin pie in cookie form.  If that was all that Pillsbury promised, well, then, it'd be an easy win. The supposed inclusion of cream cheese chips, however, created a reasonable expectation that there would be more than, like, two to a cookie.  Not the case.  Doughboy, I don't regret my purchase, but next time around amp up the chip-to-dough ratio.

Halloween Season

And so it begins.  It's October, my self-imposed moratorium on premature discussion of Halloween foodstuff has been lifted (by, um, me) and now it's time to, as Jerry Seinfeld might say to "Get. Candy."  There is no rhyme and reason to the order in which I will review all the potentially amazing limited edition/seasonal Halloween foods on this blog.  There is a commitment, however, to trying and critiquing as many treats as possible. Stay tuned.