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For today's dietary irresponsibility I compared the regular milk chocolate Hershey bar with its "1 gram" cousin. I now know why the Reese's "1 gram" peanut butter cup is more peanutty than the regular version. Whatever that dark substance is, it isn't quite chocolate. The Hershey's "1 gram" is filled with chopped almonds. Not whole or half almonds, not even chunks, but tiny chopped bits. I like almonds, but this just doesn't work. It seems to be an attempt to distract from the chocolate being... well, lacking. I have no desire to repeat the experience.
I saw some Reese's "1 gram Sugar carb" peanut butter cups at work and decided to try them. I also got the regular kind for comparison.
The ingredients lists are interesting. The regular kind starts off with milk chocolate while the "1 gram" kind starts off with peanuts. I think the wall of the regular kind is thicker than the wall of the "1 gram" so there may be more peanut butter filling. The "1 gram" also uses a couple artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame potassium. Oddly, while being more artificial, it seems to be more like actual peanut butter. It's still not what you'd spread on toast but it does stick to the roof of the mouth some.
( ingredients )
The nutritional label shows that the "1 gram" has less of almost everything except for dietary fiber and "sugar alcohols." I'm not going to copy the nutritional labels, but the "1 gram" is 160 calories (110 fat) while the regular is 230 calories (120 fat).
It's certainly best to avoid both the regular version and the "1 carb" but if you don't have problems with what's in the "1 carb" (I prefer to avoid artificial sweeteners, myself) then it seems to be a little less bad for you than the regular version.
Crumbling Violet
22 May 2003 17:22Sometime during his recent trip, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jmaynard bought a Violet Crumble bar or two. When he mentioned this on IRC it got a few positive responses and I was curious as to what this strange and unique thing was. I knew there were no violets or violet flavor or violet color (save perhaps for the wrapper color) involved. Well, he brought a bar home with him. And this noon I sampled it.
Guess what? I've had it before! Only it wasn't in a fancy violet wrapper, nor as regularly shaped, nor known by that name. See, for years and years and years the family would have this Christmas candy, around - wouldn't you know it - Christmastime. It was a somewhat crystalline thing, like a solidified froth of tiny bubbles, coated in chocolate. The pieces were irregularly shaped, like a batch had been made, and shattered, then the resulting pieces coated. These would be in a container made of thin plastic, or more often, on a foam tray and covered in a plastic wrap and sold by weight, like hamburger.
Jay was surprised by the name I used. And when I asked at work, I got mixed results. Those from Minnesota, if they knew of the candy at all, simply called it "Christmas candy." Those from Wisconsin knew the name I had always heard it called, "Angel food." One guy did recall he had seen the stuff, labelled as angel food, for sale at one of the stores in town around Christmastime, so it isn't purely a Wisconsin thing.
To me, that is what angel food is. If you say "angel food," I'll think of the candy. If you want me to think of cake, you'd best say it's "angel food cake" to avoid confusion. Violet Crumble is good, but it's not the unique thing that was implied. Not to me, anyway. I suppose a Violet Crumble is more consistent than angel food, which can have considerable variation in density, but that's all it is: angel food candy. Here's a recipe for the stuff. Or just google for "angel food candy," not cake.
I think I'll have to make a point of getting some angel food around Christmastime this year.
