Last week, students at Atlantic Community High School in Delray Beach, Florida were delighted by a new snack offering in the vending machine. Unfortunately, it wasn't immediately clear how to select this limited time item for purchase.
Bon Appétit pastry chef Claire Saffitz is at it again. You probably remember that she's tried her hand at making all kinds of popular junk food from scratch -- Oreos, Lucky Charms, Skittles, Kit Kats and more. Her latest from-scratch creation is a gourmet version of those squishy, marshmallow-filled, shredded-coconut-covered Hostess snack cakes known as Sno Balls. If I've learned anything from her videos, it's that making gourmet junk food ain't easy.
Just for fun, here's the Unwrapped footage (featured in the Bon Appétit video) that shows how Sno Balls are made in Hostess' St. Louis factory, not from scratch:
Here's something nobody asked for: Pringles-flavored instant ramen noodles**.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pringles and the 30th anniversary of Super Cup, the two are combining their brands Voltron-style to release two new flavors of Super Cup ramen noodles (Sour Cream and Onion and Jalapeno and Onion) and two new flavors of Pringles chips (Chicken Bone Soy Sauce and Squid Fried Noodles).
A 10-pack of this special ramen costs $24, just a bit more than ordinary instant noodle cups (shipping is $28 though). Available for preorder now through Japan Trend Shop.
**Now, this is not to be confused with ramen-flavored Pringles. That's a whole different junk food beast.
Pastry chef and Bon Appétit's senior food editor Claire Saffitz has been reverse engineering popular candies like Kit Kats and Skittles in an effort to make her own gourmet versions. For both candies, it's quite the process to recreate artisanal versions of them!
If this is your kind of thing, Saffitz has also tried to recreate junk food like Cheetos and Twinkies.
Jane Espenson is not only a talented TV writer who has worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, and Once Upon A Time, she is also quite adept at constructing impressive Pringles structures.
"I did it!" she tweeted. "I did it! I built a Pringles ringle! No glue, just physics."
Most impressive to me is how Espenson managed to complete the ring before eating them all, as I most certainly would have done. Read the rest
Swedish brewery S:t Eriks created a box of fancy potato chips that costs 499 kr (~$56). There are five chips in each box. Obviously a marketing/fundraising gimmick, but they certainly sound like quite the artisanal chip. Ingredients include: matsutake, truffle seaweed, crown dill, Leksand onion, India Pale Ale wort, and potatoes gathered from a "hillside in Ammarnäs, a steep, stony slope in a south-facing location where almond potatoes are cultivated in very limited numbers."
They made just 100 boxes and sadly they have all sold out (with proceeds going to charity). Oh well, there are always Pringles.
S:t Eriks Chips (via Weird Universe)
At Blue Hill, Maine's George Stevens Academy, there lies a Twinkie that was the subject of teacher Roger Bennatti's 1976 science lesson on chemical preservatives and shelf life. Now the immortal snack cake sits in a glass case on the desk of the school's Dean of Students Libby Rosemeier who was a student in the class when the experiment began.
“It’s really funny that we’re this wonderful coastal community in Maine, and we have this school of 325 kids that is a gem and we’re doing great things and kids are going to great colleges, and the thing people know about us is this 40-year-old Twinkie,” Rosemeier told ABC News.
Hostess did not respond to ABC News's request for a comment on the miracle of the everlasting golden spongecake with creamy filling.
(via Weird Universe) Read the rest
In fact, the Double Stuf Oreos tested by a high school math class in Queensbury, N.Y. contained only 1.86x the amount of stuff that was in a regular Oreo. A Nabisco spokeswoman, responding to the scandal, says the measurements must have been inaccurate. Read the rest
Chocolate frosty pod rot is not a poorly conceived cereal brand. Instead, it's a fungus that devours cocoa pods — turning them to nasty mush while still on the branch. Quietly spreading through Central America, chocolate frosty pod rot can devastate cocoa crops, wiping out entire plantations. Read the rest
David Freedman has a piece at The Atlantic about healthy foods, unhealthy foods — and the "healthy" foods that are actually probably not that healthy, despite coming to you all natural and un-processed. I want to like the piece more than I actually do. For instance, Freedman has some issues with misrepresenting the positions of the people he's arguing against. For instance, I think he and Michael Pollan would probably agree that downing lots of 300-calorie fruit smoothies isn't the best way to get in shape. But it's an interesting read, especially if you just focus on the key point: Healthy food doesn't have to be limited to what you buy at Whole Foods or the farmer's market. Read the rest
Good news for those of you who require some kind of public justification for your love of junk food. The Paper of Record has published a positive review of Taco Bell's Doritos Loco taco. Fair warning, though, food critic William Grimes advises against springing for the Supreme version, as the tomatoes are flavorless and the "sour cream is just wrong." Read the rest
This is what a turkey looks like after it has been stuffed with cubed, toasted Twinkie cake and glazed with a mixture of Twinkie filling and honey. Chow's Joyce Slayton did this, following a recipe in a 2006 Twinkie cookbook. She describes the smell as "like a turkey being roasted in a cupcake-scented Yankee Candle." *shudder* Read the rest
