Facts about Food Friday – Candy hogs
FAF #2In 1980, Americans consumed 16.1 lbs. of candy *per person.* In ’93, that jumped to 21.9lbs. The candy industry actually set a goal for “25 by 95,” but it didn’t meet it. By ’98, though, it was up to 25.2lbs per person, though.
Seriously? That was back in 1998, so I can’t even imagine what it is now. That’s the most updated statistic I can find, though. That works out to be roughly 195 candy bars a year.
The thing is, I know I don’t eat a candy bar every other day. I don’t even eat one every week. There are a lot of other people who eat even less candy than I do. You know what that means? There are tons of people who eat waaayy more than I do to average that number out. Holy cow.
Taste the birthday, take 2 – Birthday cake confetti pancakes
I’ve been secretly craving making pancakes out of birthday cake batter since I was told this story last year about being able to “taste the birthday.”
So when my little cousin was visiting and we needed breakfast, I stole him away to conspire with me. I had just snagged a great deal on leftover Halloween cake mixes that had black and orange sprinkles inside for $.29 a box. I usually make my own, but come on, for roughly a quarter a piece, the sprinkles themselves were worth that and I thought it’d be nice to have on hand. Barring holding off until the following Halloween, though, I couldn’t think of a better use than being silly with a 5 year old.
And oh boy did we get our silly on. I doubt the moms were too thrilled, but then again, they were probably too hungover to care. Why get in the way of my a young boy’s fantasy?
It was his first time making a cake and being his meticulous self, I’ve never seen a boxed cake executed so precisely. His hard work paid off and his was tickled to death to watch them sizzling away on the griddle. “Look, K, look at what we’re making, come look, look!”
When they were finally done, though, we faced the issue of what to top them with. We couldn’t very well put regular syrup on them because that’s a lot of sugar and just sounds weird. And well, you can’t eat icing for breakfast, right? I opted to try mine with plain butter. B* had a better idea, though, and insisted on topping his with jelly.
Go big or go home, right?
~Edit~ The downside of making posts ahead of time is that I wrote this a couple months ago, but now I’ve seen birthday cake pancakes at least 3 times in the last week alone. Yay for now feeling like a copycat when this was actually written before, oops.
Chocolate covered marshmallow pops – Hot chocolate stir sticks
In past years, I’ve made “hot chocolate on a stick” using a chunk of fudge-like chocolate and homemade marshmallow squares.
This year, when trying to throw together a last minute party favor for the kids for our pre-Christmas get together, I just dipped some jumbo marshmallows I already had in some melted down chocolate chips. I didn’t think they’d be any good really, but the kids absolutely loved them. One of our friend’s kid’s kept asking for more, whispering in my ear “can I have more of that good stuff things?” After already being shut off after 3, I heard him ask for another as I was headed out the door. Oops!
It wasn’t until after the fact that I remembered the hot chocolate sticks and how these just as easily could’ve been used as yummy stir sticks. I’d suggest leaving off the nuts, of course, but try rolling them in crushed up peppermint candy canes instead. Delicious. To be eaten as is, I tried plain chocolate, rolled in crushed walnuts, sprinkles, and cinnamon candy pieces.
Oh, and it worked out quite nicely that I had transported them in cups and glasses. When I arrived and set them on the table, they looked like vases of festive flowers instead.
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