M&Ms Day! Celebrate with M&M's Cookies

Today is National M&M's Day! Celebrate with Red's Ultimate M&M's Cookies or just eat a bunch of M&M's.

Red's Ultimate M&M's Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 12-ounce package M&M’S® MINIS® Milk Chocolate Candies
3/4 cup chopped nuts (optional) 

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy
Beat in egg and vanilla.
In medium bowl combine flour, baking soda and salt; blend into butter/sugar mixture.
Stir in M&M’S® MINIS® Milk Chocolate Candies and nuts, if desired.
Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 10 to 13 minutes or until edges are lightly browned and centers are still soft. Do not overbake. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; cool completely on wire racks.
Store in tightly covered container.

MAKES ABOUT 50 COOKIES.

World's Best Nightcap

Wow!  Now THIS sounds like a fantastic idea!  In the May issue of Self magazine, Sarah Silverman shares this tip:

"I end most nights with M & M's, which I microwave for 38 seconds.  The shell is intact, but inside: liquid chocolate.  I'm still smiling as you read this."

I don't have any M & M's on hand, or I would totally try this and report to you.  But I figured I should share this idea as soon as possible because it sounds so damn AWESOME!!!

A great way to end a Monday.

or a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, lunch break, beach trip, coffee break, meeting, wedding, blog post...   I gotta get some M & M's.

More Easter Eggs - Candy Coated & Dark

Hi Gang! Are you loving the spring weather? I had to take a few days off from blogging to recovered from the great cake pig out. Good grief. But I won't be parted from sugar, fat and chocolate for long!

These candy coated chocolate Easter eggs are a great spring celebration - like M & M's but with more chocolate - what could be better than that?

Cadbury Mini-Eggs are my favorite of these:




This was the first year I saw the tube packaging:



Here they are:

They have a more powdery candy coating (more matte, less smooth and shiny) than the Hershey's version (below) and are a little smaller, but the chocolate is better.

Here's Hershey's:

They look great and chocolaty, but Cadbury's taste better.

Brach's offered these life-size milk chocolate robin eggs:

Wow - too sweet! Too much sugar - closer to Palmer in the sugar content - wow!! Sugar lovers rejoice!

Harry and David tries to compete with M & Ms with their Chocolate Gems (and I have to admit, I was skeptical):

While I love these crazy bright spring colors from M & M:

Harry and Davis wins this contest easily:

They have a much smoother and better taste. There really is a big difference - I was surprised at how much better the Gems were! Once again my preconceptions are dead wrong. Big advertising budgets do not mean quality. Market domination does not equal excellence.

I found these Italian Chocolate Truffle Eggs at A Southern Season and they really are different than most of these. They have the candy coating:

But they have a rich, creamy, truffle filling and there is definitely some hazelnut flavor here.

These are extraordinary! This is a creamy dark chocolate - more on the sweet side of dark and the hazelnut is what really makes them fabulous. It's really not fair to compare them to the others. Holy candy coating, Eggman!

I hadn't see the dark chocolate Cadbury mini-eggs before:

and they are good, but I like the milk chocolate ones better. But this is really a matter of personal preference - dark chocolate lovers will probably love these!

I picked these up at Harry and David. I love this line - Glimmers:

Also in dark chocolate, I thought these were about a million times better than the Cadbury Eggs. I like the Glimmer coating - it's soft, not crunchy and does a much better job of enhancing the chocolate. Delish!!

Milk chocolate still seems to be more popular than dark chocolate (just judging by the fact that there are so may more milk chocolate Easter offerings than dark chocolate ones). But I found a few!

See's had some dark chocolate eggs:

These were my least favorite - a little less creamy than the others. Also less of that fabulous dark chocolate taste:

Dove's pretty pink dark chocolate Elegant Eggs were better:

But not quite as good as Godiva's:

Godiva's dark chocolate had more depth and a richer flavor than the other two.

But the best of all was Neuhaus' dark:

This had the richest, deepest flavor and was smoother than Godiva and less sugary. If you love dark chocolate, this will put you in a state of ecstacy.

Lindt made their famous Lindor truffles in egg shapes for Easter:

(We already reviewed the peanut butter ones) - the dark blue foil eggs are dark chocolate:

Again, it's not fair to compare a truffle with a solid - that delicious creamy filling is sooooo wonderful! It should probably be illegal.

My chocolate adventures keep teaching me the same lessons:

Keep an open mind - what you think you know isn't always right.

Just because everybody likes something (or believes something or does something) doesn't mean it's right or the best or what you should do. The hardest voice to hear in this life is your own.

Candy is fun! Are you giving yourself permission to have any fun?

Easter Peanut Butter Begins!!!

Woohoo - it's the Easter post many of you have been waiting for! PEANUT BUTTER!

I have so many peanut butter Easter candies, I'm going to have to do at least two posts. This one will cover the smaller candies up to the size of the standard Reese's Egg. The next posts will cover all the many standard eggs and the GIANT peanut butter eggs. So kick back and enjoy this lovely trip to candy heaven.

The littlest peanut butter eggs are the Reese's Pieces Pastel Eggs and the peanut butter M & M's Speck-tacular Eggs. These are the only ones with an outer candy shell.

The Reese's Pieces Eggs come in several different packages. The large 12 oz bag:

The single serving 1.5 oz bag:

And the adorable 3.5 oz carton:

The M & M's just come in one size - the large 9.90 oz bag:

Both are in bight festive colors - the M & M's are indeed speckled. And look how big the Reese's Pieces eggs are compared to regular Reese's pieces - yay!

Here are the autopsy photos and you can see the major difference:

The M & M's (on the left) have chocolate, the Reese's Pieces eggs do not. I have to tell you, I love them both, I really do. In fact, I refuse to put one above the other, because they both are sooooo delicious!!! One thought though - this is the only time of year you can get the Reese's Eggs - you can get peanut butter M & M's anytime.

This is a Palmer mix with milk chocolate flavored eggs, cottontail crisps, and peanut butter filled rabbits:

Here are the peanut butter rabbits:

I have to tell you - these are pretty bad. Too much waxy chocolate and not enough peanut butter. Boooo!!!!

Reese's has these milk chocolate and peanut butter foil wrapped eggs:

This is the first time I've seen this packaging - a direct rip-off of the Cadbury Mini Cream Egg packaging. It's a much better deal price wise to buy the bag.

Here's the autopsy photo:

These are pretty damn good - filled with that delicious Reese's Peanut Butter.

Palmer has a very similar (slightly larger) foil wrapped peanut butter egg. It comes in an assortment with both caramel and fudge eggs:

Here they are - I like the look of that blob of peanut butter!

I like the size of this egg better and it is filled with creamy peanut butter. This, my friends, is pretty damn good. I know, I know, it's Palmer - but that peanut butter is hard to beat - I love it! I'm not going to say it's better than the Reese's Eggs - but I'm going to say they are just as good. Try them!!!! You'll probably have to get the assortment - I haven't seen any bags of just peanut butter. I found these at Rite Aid.

See the size difference (Palmer on the right)? See the peanut butter? Isn't it beautiful? I love Easter!

The last of the round eggs (meaning no flat bottom) is from Lindt:

Now I adore Lindt and the Lindor truffles and this is an amazing smooth, creamy wonderful Swiss chocolate. It is a better quality chocolate than either Palmer (duh) or Hershey, but the peanut butter just doesn't kick the same butt. It's more chocolately. I really like the more peanut buttery taste. I'm not saying I'm throwing this away or anything crazy, but I like the others better.

Let's move on up to the small flat eggs - these have less than 100 calories each and are less than 2 inches long. Reese's has both a white and a milk chocolate mini-egg and look at all the packaging options!

I was delighted with this cute thing:

You open it up and get a little of everything:

See everything that was in there? It's the perfect Easter gift! I was surprised and delighted so much was in it! Yay!!!

Here's a large bag with both flavors:

And one with what has got to be the most popular flavor - milk chocolate:

Here the little babies are:

Isn't that beautiful?

The trick here is thin layers of chocolate and HUGE quantities of peanut butter. Life is good!

Dove has Elegant Eggs (what the Fairy Bunny carries, I assume) and these are the peanut butter ones:

Eh. These are fine - don't get me wrong. I like Dove Chocolate very much and these are smooth and creamy, but there's just not enough peanut butter here. See?

See how thick all the layers of chocolate are? Too thick in my book - more peanut butter, more peanut butter, more peanut butter! The Reese's Egg totally crushed the Dove egg in my book. Totally.

New this year for us are Bissinger's peanut butter eggs:

I was surprised at the lovely molding - there are three different designs:

They are really pretty aren't they?

These are better than the Dove eggs - more chocolate and it's really, really delicious milk chocolate. But I am in love with the salty peanut butter of the Reese's egg. I know - this is having the chance to drive a Jag and sticking with your old beater Nova. I know. But I like what I like and I LOVE peanut butter. For me, it's all about the peanut butter. Give me the Nova!

More peanut butter tomorrow!!!!