ZOMG, Candy!

Wired has a great post about the chemical make-up of chocolate and why it’s toxic – not just to dogs, but also to people! – if ingested in large enough quantities.

Apparently, Valentine’s Day is the biggest day for dogs in the ER due to chocolate ingestion. But Easter and Halloween are big chocolate holidays as well, so always be vigilant to keep your pets safe!

I’ve written in the past about Project Runway’s Candy Couture challenge to make a dress out of candy. Students of The French Pastry School of Kennedy-King College and Chicago junior high and high school students from After School Matters recently did something similar, creating a fun assortment of dresses and accessories out of Jelly Belly candies.

The one below is my favorite – and made by high schoolers! You can check them all out on their Pinterest board.

As a candy blogger/candy lover, I’ve had the privilege of visiting a few bean to bar chocolate factories to check out how chocolate gets from the raw beans to the finished bars. Apparently, the bean to bar trend hasn’t really hit in France yet, so much so that David Lebovitz suggests that they’re a great gift for Americans to bring to friends in France.

Fortunately, France is not totally bereft of local chocolate makers. David Lebovitz also has a nice write-up of the Parisian bean to bar chocolate factory of Alain Ducasse. Looks so noms!

The Billfold had a nice piece about how companies surreptitiously save money by downsizing their products, using the Snickers bar as an example. Apparently they’ve been slowly increasing the price and changing the shape and packaging.

I appreciate that they took the time to consider how ratio balances may alter taste experiences – ratios are so important for multi-component candy bars!

Hedonist Artisan Chocolates made a goat cheese collection that I really enjoyed. The tangy creaminess of goat cheese worked really well mixed with chocolate in truffles.

The funky stank of camembert, on the other hand, does not sound like a natural fit for pairing with chocolate. But The Creative Pot thought they’d be a good match and posted her recipe for making dark chocolate camembert truffles. I sort of want to try them but am sort of scared. H/t Knile.

Via Lifehacker, the blog One Good Thing has instructions for how to make your own mints out of gum paste and essential oils. It looks like a fun project that I wish I’d known about when I was in high school and saved all my Altoids tins.

Via Serious Eats, check out this post from an Australian who made a Colosseum replica entirely out of Tim Tam cookies. It looks epically delicious. Every toga party should have one.

While the U.S. Postal Service is having a rough time, Belgium’s post office has decided to get whimsical. They’ve launched a line of stamps with images of chocolate that smell and taste like chocolate too!

The BBC has a fun video that shows how they’re made, along with some people who take their stamp-making jobs very seriously. France did something similar a few years ago. Do you think the USPS would ever give this a go?

Happy Valentine’s Day! Did you get any sweet treats from/for your sweetie, or from/for yourself? The Serious Eats staff put their V-Day wishlist online.

I’m not expecting anything from my boyfriend because he’s noticed that “the world already sends [me] enough free candy.” I will, however, be dragging him to grocery stores tomorrow to pick through the Valentine’s Day sales candy.

That leopard heart truffle was from Beacon Hill Chocolates, by the way.

I just saw Wreck It Ralph last weekend (loved it, by the way!) and loved the idea of the Sugar Rush game. If you haven’t seen the movie, Sugar Rush is like Mario Kart, but set in a crazy world made of candy. The cars are made of cake and covered in frosting and zoom around on hard candy wheels.

The Sugar Rush race cars reminded me of this real-life candy bike (h/t Knile). Well, the bike is real-life; I think the candy isn’t real. Still, it looks delicious and would fit right into the Sugar Rush world.