trifle eyefull

The brownie was too dry, my wife thought as she crumbled it into a large glass bowl last night. She was making a chocolate trifle for Father's Day. She wondered if it was because she substituted Splenda Sugar Blend for real sugar. Or maybe the recipe she got from Hershey's Cocoa should list a slightly shorter cooking time.



A layer of chocolate mousse went on top of the brownies. It was made from Nestle's European Style Mousse Mix. That was topped with some store-brand fat-free whipped topping and a crumbled Heath bar. All that was repeated for a second set of layers. The bowl sat in the refrigerator for 24 hours. We thought the layers would smush together but they stayed fairly separate. We each had some for dessert tonight with a little bit of sugar-free Jell-O pudding (not pictured) thrown on top for extra moisture.

nothin' like the face

Some country singer is pushing s'mores on TV. Since when do smore's need to advertise? The three ingredients were also featured in this week's Wal-Mart sales flyer. Photos of smore's cupcakes have been catching my eye lately too. A few weeks back I spotted a new Little Debbie version of S'mores, right next to their Devil Dog look-alike.



Tonight I'll have to satisfy my sweet tooth cravings with a Special K Protein Bar.

show some restraint

Thanks to an email reminder from my friend Bean, my family and I went to Baskin-Robbins after dinner tonight. It was their annual 31 Cent Scoop Night. While blogrolling this afternoon, I had also read a posting on Reality Me about the promotion. Just like last year there was a line out the door. A sign on that door warned customers of the ten scoop limit. Another sign advertised that they needed help. I was tempted to hop behind the counter and pitch in.



Back in my scooping days, we had to wear hats when working at Baskin-Robbins. Tonight, an employee in a red shirt kept touching her long hair after bending over to scoop out some ice cream. The lower she had to reach for the ice cream, the closer her hair got to the tubs. My wife said that she didn't want this girl to serve us. When it was our turn, I told the girl that we needed another minute to decide. She moved on to the next customer and we were helped by a guy with short hair.



I saw several people with multiple scoops including a guy who showed me his five. I only got a single scoop of Chocolate Mousse Royale, which was all I needed. As good as it was, I realized that I have lost my ice cream jones. When I first moved to Knoxville, I would eat ice cream almost every night. That's part of the reason I gained the weight that I lost a couple of years ago. I still love sweets but if I had to choose between ice cream and cake, I think I would take the cake. Or the cookie or the brownie or some candy.

always more fun

The cupcake fad is about to hit Knoxville in a big way. We already have VG's Bakery and MagPies, both of which I still haven't tried. However I have discovered another blog devoted to the little treats, Cupcakes Takes the Cake.

Now The Cupcakery has established its first foothold in East Tennessee with a delivery-only location in Oak Ridge. They plan to open a Bearden store in June. I had the opportunity to taste a couple of their flavors one afternoon last week when a box was delivered to the office. There were enough for me to take two varieties home. I cut each in half and shared them with my wife. The Double Chocolate had a disc of baking chocolate stuck into the buttercream icing as a garnish. The Peanut Butter Cup had a crumbled Reese's on top. As you would expect, the creamy frosting steals the show from the chocolate cake. That's probably why a cupcake shop in Los Angeles sells icing shots for 75 cents. I think I would enjoy one of these gourmet cupcakes with some buttercream injected into the middle. Can't have too much frosting.

If the Bearden store were already open, I would be tempted to swing by this week for the featured flavor, the Graceland. It has banana cake with peanut butter icing. I've always loved banana cake. By the way, why can't I ever find the frozen Sara Lee Banana Cake I loved as a child? Anyhow, back to the point. The Cupcakery will offer Graceland cupcakes from April 28 through May 3. I wonder if they might be similar to the Elvis Cupcakes I saw online. One of the blog commenters suggests a Fluffernutter cupcake. This. Must. Happen.

Bearden will actually be home to two cupcake shops. Their online calendar says Cities Cupcake Boutique will have its grand opening on Sunday, May 18 but according to their store hours, they will be closed Sundays. When I was a kid, Sundays were the busiest day at the Crestwood Bakery. Everyone went there after church. Oh yeah, back to the point again. Cities cupcakes are each named after a different city. Knoxville gets an orange cupcake. In a bit of political commentary, the vanilla cupcake is named after Washington, DC. Maybe they can do a peanut butter and banana cupcake and name it after Memphis.

unflattering imitation

Like Jimmy Durante used to say, "everybody wants to get into the act." Since Marshmallow Peeps are the top selling non-chocolate Easter candy, it makes sense that other companies want to compete. I'll cover the copycats today and save the real deal for tomorrow.

A while back I wrote about a similar Christmas candy called Marshmallow Pals. They are also made in an Easter version. I saw more sugar coated marshmallow things at Wal-Mart this week. Palmer now makes a Marshmallow Baby Binks in addition to their chocolate bunny with the same name.



Nestled among the Peeps, I spotted some animal-shaped marshmallows made by Barton's Candy. Their Barn Yard Buddies looked more like Barn Yard Blobbies to me.The creatures pictured below are supposed to be cows, pigs and frogs.



The odd shapes reminded me of an old Bob & Ray bit about a warehouse that stored its chocolate Easter rabbits too close to some steam pipes. My radio idols did a fake commercial for Chocolate Wobblies. Each one was guaranteed to have a ribbon hidden somewhere inside it.

yuck boo yum

Supermarket shelves are currently stocked with a variety of Easter candy, including a couple of items that I hadn't seen before. Sam's Club had a big stack of Edible Easter Grass made by Galerie au Chocolat. If you've ever ended up with plastic grass stuck to your jelly bean, edible grass seems like a fine idea. However if it's made of white chocolate, it could end up as a melted mess in the bottom of your basket. Yuck.



Milk chocolate fans usually want their bunny, whether hollow or solid. The package for Palmer's Too Tall Bunny amused me while I was at Food City the other day. You see, his ears are so big, they don't fit in the box. My enthusiasm quickly waned when I saw some guy with annoying sound effects prove on YouTube that the bunny is not too tall at all. The box has a false bottom. Boo!



I'm more of a dark chocolate and marshmallow fan. The folks at Candy Blog have described a Lindor Truffle Egg that sounds pretty good. I couldn't find any of them but I did see a different holiday treat at the Food City on Morrell Road. Until now, I had always thought that people who keep Kosher were denied the pleasure of eating marshmallows. That includes Marshmallow Peeps which are not Kosher even if they are "always in season" nowadays. It's because marshmallows are made with gelatin and gelatin is made from animal bones and connective tissues, hence the non-Kosherness. Anyway, this store has a pretty big selection of Passover products. Wedged in among the Manischewitz were packages of Granny's Toasted Marshmallows by Rokeach. So how does a bag of marshmallows get a Pareve insignia on the label? Turns out that these coconut-covered treats are made from "kosher fish gelatine." Yum?

rumbly in my tumbly

The original plan for Wednesday's post was to list the various dessert items that have been tempting me since the start of Lent. It turned into an all-cupcake missive. As a result, a few other sweets got left out until now.

Hurley is my favorite character on "Lost." When I learned that Jorge Garcia is a blogger, I eagerly read through his archived posts. He was impressed by a Milwaukee restaurant that served extra soda alongside his root beer float. I too, enjoy root beer floats although mine are made with diet root beer and fat-free whipped topping. His fondness for Oreo Cakesters also rang true with me. Over the summer I shared a three-pack with my son. Thanks to Jorge, I'm craving them again.

The folks at Slashfood continued to make me salivate with some red velvet layer cake and chocolate almond cakes. The latter led me to a site called Dessert First, which featured a molten chocolate cake on Wednesday. I occasionally get Google hits on a mention I made of chocolate lava cakes a year ago. Still haven't tried one though.

Chef Walter got ready for Valentine's Day by making a Butterfinger cake on Monday. I especially enjoyed his reference to Jackson Pollock as he poured on the chocolate sauce. I wonder how many people watching had no idea what he meant.

for the mighty and the bold

Seeing the word Knoxville on the Engadget HD site caused me to do a double take today. They ran a blurb about DirecTV finally offering HD versions of our local channels. I thought about trying to write a whole blog entry about this but two things have distracted me. First of all, I can't find the price for the HD channels on the DirecTV website without placing an order.

Secondly, my wife is making a batch of Oreo truffles as her dessert contribution to the casino night at KCHS on Saturday. If you're going to the Luck of the Irish Party, be sure to sample one of these delicious treats.

The smell of Oreo in the air prompted me to start singing (if you can call it that) the DSRL theme from the new Double Stuff commercials. My wife thought I was trying to sing Dies Irae which is part of several famous requiems, like Mozart's for example.

Since I was so far off tune, I registered at the DSRL website just so I could download the theme song by the Lords of the Future. I even put a copy of it on my mp3 phone. I sent the link to both of my kids too with the warning that the tune was stuck in my head. Here's my daughter's response:

...thanks? now it's stuck in my head forever...grrr
so, what the deuce was that? it sounds like someone playing Guitar Hero on Nintendo Wii. pretty whack...and not just the regular type. no, that was wiggitty-whack

fork a stick in it

After the 4:00 p.m. dinner show at the Dixie Stampede on Wednesday, we were ushered out of the arena past a display of stick horses from WHOA, the Woodin-stick Horses of America. I have looked at their website and cannot figure out why they insist on misspelling it "woodin" instead of wooden.



The night was still plenty young, so we headed to Gatlinburg for more sightseeing. I saw a bunch of marshmallow treats in the window at Kilwin's. They had chocolate covered marshmallows on sticks as well as chocolate covered Rice Krispies Treats on sticks. The Poofy Ropes and Poofy Pops were bargain priced but I wasn't interested in strawberry-flavored marshmallow poof.



It was only 7:15 p.m. when I took a picture of the Gatlinburg Inn. All the lights were out. Because of the prominent placement of the AARP logo on their sign, I assumed that the residents had gone to bed for the night. It turns out that they are closed until April 1. It also turns out to be the place where the song "Rocky Top" was written in only ten minutes, presumably not in the winter.

hankey-panky

Kathy's husband Keith told me that they've never seen "South Park." Although known for his good sense of humor, he was being completely serious. This means that Kathy truly had no idea that her chocolate-covered marshmallow men looked exactly like the Santa-hat-wearing character from the show. The fact that she didn't know makes the coincidence all the funnier. Weird Ralph must have agreed. He submitted the blog entry to Digg.com

After reading the post, Kathy and Keith felt compelled to bring me some of her cream-filled cupcakes with ganache icing. It was absolutely delicious.

appetizers

It took some searching to find two articles about the test flight of the balloons that will make their debut in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday. WNBC's story includes video. The Herald News wrote about a New Jersey woman becoming a balloon handler.

While looking for news about the new balloons, I found a story about some of my favorite old balloons. The widow of a Goodyear balloon designer loaned photos of his creations for a display at the library in Akron. Naturally I liked the Underdog photo best.

Don't forget that "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is on ABC tomorrow night. I'll probably record it for my wife, just like I did last month with "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" even though she hasn't had time to watch it yet.

In addition to everything else she does, my wife had a Martha Stewart moment today. She made some turkey-shaped place card holders out of pipe cleaners and Ferrero Rondnoir dark chocolates.

stick in the mud

Two years ago our friend Kathy made some cream filled cupcakes for the annual parish bake sale. I desperately wanted to try one but it was too early in my weight loss program to risk it. I saw Kathy after Mass today and asked if she had baked them again this year, now that I can afford to have one and count it as my starch and fat for the day. Kathy said that instead she had made something I would really enjoy: marshmallow snowmen. As soon as I saw them, I thought Kathy might be pulling my leg. The "snowmen" were covered in chocolate and were wearing Santa hats. My son compared them to the muddy snowman in "To Kill A Mockingbird." I thought of a not so literary reference. To me they looked like a character from "South Park." Not just any "South Park" character, but the one that triggers my gag reflex and keeps me from ever watching that show. Kathy feigned ignorance but I think she's too smart to not see the resemblance.



The unusual treats were well received at today's bake sale. My wife bought one for me while I snapped a picture of the remaining marshmallow men. They were all sold in a matter of minutes. Kathy called them snowmen but I'll call them Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Santas on a Stick. To make them, she put three marshmallows on a lollipop stick and enrobed them in melted chocolate. She dipped the tips into white chocolate that had been dyed red and then piped white chocolate to make the whites of the eyes and the decorative squiggles. You can use a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off instead of a pastry bag. The mouth is made with the same red chocolate as the hat. A couple of chocolate chips complete the eyes. You might want to skip the Santa hat, add antlers and try to make chocolate reindeer instead.

methods of inflation

Thanksgiving is only two weeks away! Over the years the things I have loved most about the holiday are: watching the parade, eating and having the next day off. I get two out of three again this year.

Today we received a See's Candies holiday catalog in the mail that barely mentioned Christmas. Instead it was pushing Thanksgiving chocolates. As I ate my salad at dinner, I pored over that catalog like other men look at a Playboy centerfold. I was fascinated by the two page spread with cross sections of the various confections. I saw some old favorites like the Scotchmallow and some that were new to me like the Apple Pie truffle.

It's about the time each year when I start to wonder which new balloons will fly in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The information was a little harder to find than I had anticipated. My friend Bean will be happy to know that Hello Kitty will be taking flight. The other new helium-filled characters are Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street and Shrek. There will also be a balloon version of a modern art sculpture called Rabbit by Jeff Koons. The original sculpture looks like a Mylar balloon. It might be considered a sequel to an earlier metal sculpture called Balloon Dog.

I wonder if either NBC or CBS shows the parade in HD. If so, it gives me yet another reason to love Thanksgiving.

once, twice, three times a mallow

The Union Square Marshmallow Fluff Fest has been turning up in my search results lately. Some people searching for information about it are finding what I wrote about last year's festival. My blog entry got linked from the official site. Unfortunately they think my name is Frank Miller. The second annual Fluff Fest was held today in Somerville, Massachusetts. Like everyone else, they must have scheduled their festival around the Vols.

Whoopi Goldberg was waving a box of Mallomars on "The View" this past week. She said it was the first day that the seasonal treat was back in stores. I've also gotten a few page hits recently from people searching for Mallomars. I wrote about buying some last October. Maybe they'll have some tomorrow when I go to buy salad.

I didn't see any Mallomars the last time I went to Wal-Mart. As I pushed my shopping cart past a refrigerated case, I thought I saw some miniature marshmallows out of the corner of my eye. Marshmallows in the refrigerated section? Yup, they're part of a S'mores Dessert Pizza.

straight and twisted

Twizzlers or Red Vines? Your answer probably reveals whether you grew up near the East Coast or the West Coast. My favorite reward in the children's summer reading program at the Crestwood Library was a pack of Twizzlers. When I moved to Burbank, I acquired a taste for Red Vines. To me, they weren't as sweet as Twizzlers but enjoyable nonetheless. The Vines have devoted fans. There was a former KROQ program director who moved to New York to take a job at MTV. Every couple of months he had someone ship him a big tub of Red Vines from Smart & Final. If Easterners like Twizzlers and Westerners like Red Vines, what about people from the middle of the country? When we were in St. Louis, I noticed a supermarket display of a red licorice I had never heard of. Are Midwesterners just as loyal to Switzer's Licorice?



At the other side of Dierbergs Market, I saw a fairly impressive display of chocolate covered pretzels made by Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company. The pretzels were topped with bits of Butterfinger, Heath Bar, Reese's Pieces and other confections.

might as well be walking on the sun

The Sunsphere reopened to the public on Thursday!



Earlier today, my wife packed some salads in the cooler and we took our son downtown for a picnic in World's Fair Park and a ride up to the inside of the Sunsphere. One of the other tourists in the elevator recognized my voice from the radio, which is always surprising and amusing. I was happy to see the observation deck all cleaned up and looking nice. They had the air-conditioning cranked up, which was great on a hot day. Afterward we got a dark chocolate-covered pretzel rod for dessert at The South's Finest Chocolate Factory.





In May of 2004, the city let people see the Sunsphere "as is." I was not about to let an opportunity like that pass me by. The first thing I noticed as I stepped out of the elevator was that the observation deck had been infested with pigeons and their droppings. One of the other visiting citizens was a self-proclaimed expert on the structure. According to him, the builders avoided some red tape back in 1982 by claiming that the Sunsphere is only eight stories tall and therefore not subject to the regulations for taller buildings. Its actual height would be more like twenty-six stories if they counted the shaft. The first three floors are at the base of the tower. Four through eight are inside the ball. The fourth floor is the observation deck, at the bottom of the actual sphere. At the top is the eighth floor, which had some city offices. My then radio partner, Ashley, and I used our positions as "members of the media" to talk a city employee into letting us climb to the roof. We took a ladder from the eighth floor to an attic above the ceiling. Another ladder led to a hatch and the open air. There's not much room up there. Most of the space is taken up by air conditioning equipment. Ashley and I swapped cameras and snapped photos of each other.



Now that Knoxville's most visible landmark has reopened, I should notify Roadside America.

snack breaking news

The cashier was about halfway through her Limited Edition Elvis Reese's Big Cup. She set it down on the counter and turned back to her cash register just before I walked in to a Walgreens in Farragut.



I asked the cashier (I think her name tag said Ashley) about the counter display. She told me that the Big Cups had arrived today (a couple of days ahead of schedule).



The wrappers bear the next design in the series of "collector's edition packages." She offered to give me the empty box the packages had come in because it said "collector box 2 of 2" on it. I declined.



Ashley said the artificial banana taste permeated throughout the the peanut butter cup. She didn't love it but it still sounded pretty good to me. However I resisted the urge to buy one since I already had a banana flavored treat this week when I tried a banana creme filled Twinkie on Monday.

sweet teeth

The staff at Garde Bien offered me a cupcake when I arrived for my haircut today. They were celebrating the birthdays of an employee and of a favorite customer, Carol Bass. I first met Mrs. Bass at the salon on the day of my makeover. After I finished my cupcake, I realized that I had forgotten to try eating it sandwich style. Cupcakes are an infrequent treat. I'll try to remember to put the icing in the middle next time.

Today's newspaper had a recipe for a different sandwich style treat. The Mint Chip Monster is made by splitting a chocolate snack cake and putting ice cream in the middle. Kids can decorate it to look like a monster. The idea for a fun food is reminiscent of the hamburger cookies I saw at a swim meet last year.

I briefly flipped past the AFI special on CBS tonight. They were up to the movie "Nashville" in their countdown of the top 100 films. In the clip, I heard a reference to the Grand Ole Opry, sponsored by Goo Goo Clusters. It got me wondering if the candies got their name from the initials of the Opry. They didn't. The Goo Goo website points out that the candies have been around 13 years longer than the Opry.

neat, sweet, petite

The dark chocolate bandwagon recently picked up some Snickers for the ride. Milky Way has had a great dark chocolate bar for a long time. I finally tried a Snickers Dark Mini at Sam's Club the other day. If I were a NASCAR fan, I might have already known about these.



It was pretty good but my favorite "mass market" dark chocolate is still M&Ms. Snickers, Milky Way, M&Ms and CocoaVia, the "healthy chocolate," are all made by the same company. When I first heard "The Addams Family" theme in the M&Ms Dark Chocolate commercial, I was very much amused.

Hearing the familiar music made me think about the upcoming Addams Family musical. Perhaps to avoid a situation similar to what happened when the TV version debuted the same year as "The Munsters," the Addams musical won't make it to Broadway until two years after the "Young Frankenstein" musical. Frederick, Igor, Inga and the rest hit the Great White Way this fall.

once you go dark

As St. Valentine's Day draws near, chocolate is everywhere I look. Last week I wrote about some "healthy chocolate" and some Mozart chocolate, which elicited an interesting comment all the way from England.

I set the TiVo to record a couple of chocolate shows while I was out improvising tonight. With so many of my regular series to record last night, tomorrow night and Thursday night, I didn't want to entirely miss "Covered in Chocolate Week" on Food Network. The festivities will be capped off with a full day of chocolate programming on Sunday. Their website is loaded with chocolate recipes. This recovering marshmallowaholic must try S'more Brownies someday.

In addition to the TV listings, chocolate is calling to me from my mailbox. A Sam's Club magazine arrived the other day. It was full of intriguing recipes like the Hershey's Chocolate Mousse Box and enticing products like Chudleigh's Lava Cakes (a molten ganache center surrounded by decadently rich chocolate cake). I'm no connoisseur but an article about which wines go with which chocolates has me wine-curious.

what would Salieri do?

Christmas candy lasts a lot longer around our house than it used to because we have discovered something called "portion control." This week I finally got around to sampling some German chocolate we received for Christmas. The product is called "Mozart Chocolade" by Reber-Spezialitäten. These milk chocolate treats were filled with pistachio marzipan and hazlenut praline. To make it even better, every other piece had Mozart's face on it.



Tasting this actual German chocolate reminded me of something I once read about German Chocolate Cake. The recipe is not from Germany. The cake is made with baking chocolate that was named after a "Sam German." It was originally known as German's Chocolate Cake.

While we're talking chocolate, somebody at work gave me a sample of "The Healthy Chocolate" by Xoçai. It was really good and really dark. My wife thought it was a little too bitter though.

But wait, there's more. Here's a photo of some Cacao Reserve by Hershey's ready to eat at our local Kroger. It's pretty good too.

from the Greek word for beautiful

There's no doubt that you people know your snack food almost as well as reviewer Patrick Holland does. Last night I posted a close-up photo and asked you to guess what was in the picture. I hoped somebody might think it was the landscape of a far off planet or the pattern on a tortoise shell. However you all recognized the broken pieces of Oreo cookies that my wife used to decorate the cupcakes she made for our son's swim team. She used the blender to break up the cookies but left the pieces bigger than she does when making Oreo Truffles. Bonus points for guessing that the cupcakes were chocolate (duh!) and that the cupcakes are sitting in a box lined with aluminum foil. The little pastry cup liners are foil too.

name change

About nine months ago, my wife and I shared a single "Beamer Ball" at the swim team banquet. It's no coincidence that Beamer Balls got added to our Christmas cookie list around the same time that my wife reached her weight loss goal. Of course the new versions of us have learned the importance of portion control. Even if the right portion seems so tiny sometimes.

More than a few people have asked me for the link to the recipe. It's not that hard to find. A Google search for the "beamer balls" recipe points you right to my blog entry from March. I expected to see more written about these tasty treats. The name "beamer balls" was printed on the recipe that we received at the swim banquet. I tried different search terms and found that some others have posted similar recipes with the more descriptive names "Oreo Balls" or "Oreo Truffles."

As my wife rolled the Oreo and cream cheese mixture into balls, I thought a good name for them could be "reindeer droppings." That name is already taken by some interesting cookies and by somebody else making Oreo Balls with milk chocolate coating.



Most of the other online recipes use almond bark instead of the Ghirardelli baking chips that we used to coat the mixture. After we finished making ours, I found a recipe that says you can also add shortening to the ingredients we already knew about. That might be too rich for my blood.



As it turns out, my wife gave away most of the Oreo Truffles pictured below. That's the name she's sticking with, by the way. Yesterday she told a friend to expect a few on the plate of assorted cookies we planned to give as a Christmas gift. The friend said that they sounded delicious and would be great for the dinner party she was hosting tonight for some of the staff from the Knoxville Symphony. She asked if we could just give her a serving plate full of the truffles. I hope the friend (or her husband) will post a comment here to let us know how it went.