32 replies to this topic

[Fat Guy]

I'm putting this here because James Beard says freezing is a form of cooking.

So, why is it that most candy bars taste so much better frozen?

[girl chow]

I don't know why, but they decidedly do -- especially Milky Way and Three Musketeers. I don't even eat those bars at room temperature anymore. For that matter, fudge also should be eaten frozen (I am officially in holiday candy making mode right now). I put it directly in the freezer after cooling and cutting it. An added benefit of this is the post holiday discovery of a container of fudge. Nothing like a good piece of frozen fudge in March.

[Bux]

Heresy is relative. I can even recall learning that ice cream is not a fit dessert for a fine meal as the cold temperature interferes with digestion or something like that. I'm sure cold numbs one's taste buds as well. Nevertheless, and ice cream is a good example, creamy sweet things taste very good to me when very cold.

Perhaps you can explain why I like to eat goat cheese straight from the refrigerator. The creamy ripe part just under the skin of a Boucheron is most appealing when ice cold. It has the texture of the smoothest ice cream. It's only a matter of time before this gets put into one of those fast ice cream freezers and finds its way onto menus served with a bit of ripe fruit or jam.

[Wilfrid]

You can have some different and not unappealing experiences with cheese by serving it at different temperatures.  For example, we are all accustomed to eating a firm blue cheese like Stilton close to (a little below) room temperature, with red wine or a glass of port.  Try it fresh from the fridge with a cool white wine.  I am not saying it's better that way, but it does open up new horizons - emphasises the chee's creamy butteriness/downplays the mildew.

P.S.  Frozen candy bars.  Ugh.

[Steve Klc]

to bring this, however briefly, back to candy bars tasting better right out of the freezer--I'd suggest that might be because most are made of crap, mushy overly sweet pseudo-chocolate, caramel that doesn't taste caramelly (is that a word?) enough, nougat-like or mousse-like substances rather than something worth savoring at room temperature.

my sense might be that freezing dulls our ability to detect the medicinal, mechanical and synthetic notes in commercial candy bars--and improves the pallid, flaccid texture by hardening it up.

to take this to another level--try removing a piece of chocolate chunk from any of the super-premium commercial ice creams, like Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey.  set it aside, let it come to room temperature and then taste it--as chocolate.  absolute dreck.  frozen though, you don't notice its gravelly, slate-like cloying sweetness.

[Fat Guy]

See, I knew I was right!

[jhlurie]

Oddly enough Candy Bars also taste better melted.  So apparently room temperature is the problem. :)

[Lily]

Quote: from Steve Klc on 7:34 pm on Nov. 28, 2001
--and improves the pallid, flaccid texture by hardening it up.

Hee hee.  Sorry, I just felt like being a little juvenile.  

I tried freezing minature 3 Muskateer bars just about a month ago (on sale after halloween) and nearly broke a tooth.  I do like Snickers frozen though.

[Fat Guy]

Steve, I assume you've tasted pretty much every popular commercial candy bar. Do you think there's a single delicious one out there?

[Jinmyo]

Not germane to freezing but to candy bars.

jhlurie mentions that "Oddly enough Candy Bars also taste better melted."

So I thought I would mention that deep-fried Mars bars are apparently a common street food in Scotland.

[Fat Guy]

And there was just a thread on the Off the Beaten Path board about deep-fried Snickers bars being popular in Nepal. Go figure.

[Steve Klc]

I just had another thought about the freezing candy bar issue--sugar acts as an anti-freeze in ice creams and sorbets--the higher the % of sugar in a mixture, the softer it will be in the freezer.

could it be that the candy bars that lend themselves best to freezing--and hence less likely to chip a tooth--are the cheapest ones, the ones that have the most sugar?  The most sugar by weight in the chocolate--albeit a cheap chocolate coating--would likely be a milk chocolate, which would have the least amount of cocoa mass and cocoa liquour--and also likely a bar with a gooey caramel.  Lily--sounds like you win the prize for your Snickers observation.

The 3 Muskateer bar doesn't freeze and eat well because of that nougat layer--which freezes hard as a rock.  Must not have enough sugar in it!

wonder how much of the enjoyment of melted cheap candy bars has to do with smell?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

You're all too young to know about it, but the original and quintessential frozen candy bar was the U-NO bar. It was, as I remember, a premium candy bar made of rich whipped nougat coated with dark chocolate.  It was introduced to me by an octogenarian lady in the early '40s, and sold for 10 cents then, an outragious price when Hershey et al were only a nickel, and a U-NO was only about 1"x 3"x 1/2".  

[Jason Perlow]

Frozen Butterfingers.

And ho-ho's.

[jhlurie]

The new "Cruncher" type of Snickers bar (sort of a Snickers bar crossed with a Nestle's Crunch) freezes really well.

[chefette]

why are frozen candy bars just so #### good?

1- because sugar is not so sweet tasting frozen and these candy bars are noxiously sweet when eaten at room temperature
2- because they are using some nasty chocolate product instead of chocolate and the only way you get to enjoy the nice crisp sensation of the chocolate is if it is either cold or frozen
3- because its more fun that way...

Personally, I am completely addicted to frozen chocolate chip cookies. I believe this is because my Mom always made big batches of cookies and froze them, then my brother and I would always sneak them out of the deep freeze.  Just got used to eating them that way I guess.

[girl chow]

For me, frozen treats are all about the texture. I like it either cold and creamy rich or solid frozen (such as with my frozen Three Musketeers fetish). Funny, I've never had a problem with my teeth chomping into frozen nouget. Perhaps I have bionic woman teeth.
I'm very curious now about the texture/flavor of chilled soft cheeses.... thanks for the thought Wilfrid.
And deep fried candy bars? Who knew? Any thoughts on the method for that?

[papachef]

For me the frozen candy bar has great combines sweet and chew appeal. They are like jawbreakers in a way that you must kind of work for it. My mom use to freeze up snickers, charleston chew and even those chocolate covered orange sticks. Today I thank her because those special frozen treats heped to create the Herculean chiseled (wink,wink) body I have now. Actually my mom liked to freeze all kinds of things (grapes etc). I guess it was because we lived in Arizona.

[Lesley C]

One of the best things to eat frozen is Italian gianduja!
I think American Hershey Bars are good for wolfing down (Canadian Hershey bars are tasteless and waxy) Kit Kats are quite nice, but someone tell me why the English Kit Kats are so much better than Canadian Kit Kats. They seem to be fresher and crunchier. There's a huge difference between a fresh commercial candy bar and a stale commercial candy bar (a fresh Mars bar is edible, a stale Mars bar is disgusting).
Cote d'Or makes some nice praline-filled chocolate bars at ŭ a pop.
I agree with Steve about the ice cream chocolate. The folks at Ben&Jerry's should be ashamed of the oil-based garbage they call chocolate chips.

[girl chow]

The thought of deep fried candy bars was too tempting not to research. I did a search on Google and found articles AND recipes.

As for cooking the bars, the consensus seems to be to chill the candy bars, then dip in a beer (??) or milk-based batter and fry away.

I even found this article about deep fried candy bars at the Minnesota State Fair. Chef Rodney from Wisconsin gives his take on 'em (hope this link works):

http://www.channel4000.com/news/stories/news-92316420010817-100833.html

I am still trying to stop laughing.

[stefanyb]

You haven't lived until you've tried a frozen Mallomar!

The crunch, the sweetness,  the melt-in-your-mouth frozen marshmallow, the chewy cookie bottom, mmmmm.

[Bilmo]

I'm not much of a fan of frozen candy bars.  Most of them are just too hard when frozen, and the super-sweetness gets muted.  When I eat a candy bar, I actually enjoy the (for some people, not me) cloying sweetness.  I often hear people complaining about some dessert or other as being too sweet, which I never understood.  I'm not a big sweets fan, but when I do get in the mood, I just love baklava and pecan pie and galub jamen (sp?).

[yvonne johnson]

I'm with those who go for chewiness. A frozen candy bar's appeal is the texture and chew. My fav is 3 Musketeers. I also like my icecream chewy. Keep that half-melted stuff that runs off your plate. There's a wonderful layered effect when it's almost tough!

I wasn't sure what a Mallomar was. Here's a link with a pic and a quote "... about Mallomars: They're a New York thing. Seventy percent of all Mallomars sold are sold in metropolitan New York. And they're seasonal, available only from October to mid-March, because they are such delicate flowers they would melt in the harsh spring and summer months. News of the wonders of refrigeration and climate control has apparently not reached Nabisco's New Jersey headquarters."
http://www.salon.com...2/27/mallomars/

[jhlurie]

Mallomars... marshmallows on a cookie, with some chocolate thrown in... what's not to like?

[A Balic]

I rarely eat candy bars or icecream so the only thing I can contribute is that yes, they do deep fry Mars Bars here in Scotland. I don't know who eats them, as every body I know is revolted by the idea, as they use the same oil that has been used to fry fish. Deep fried, fish flavoured chocolate bars are only one of many Scottish crimes against food, for example they also deep fry pizza (with or without battering first).

[girl chow]

Quote: from A Balic on 1:48 pm on Nov.30,2001
Deep fried, fish flavoured chocolate bars are only one of many Scottish crimes against food, for example they also deep fry pizza (with or without battering first).

And I thought deep fried pickles were bizarre. But pizza too? Yikes.
Of course, people probably used to think that battered and deep fried jalapenos were strange too.
On the subject of deep frying, maybe someone should start a thread asking what the weirdest thing anyone has ever deep fried. Mine would probably be an entire pack of bubble gum, but that was quite by accident. I no longer place my fry daddy directly underneath the kitchen cupboards.

[jhlurie]

Quote: from A Balic on 10:48 am on Nov. 30, 2001
as they use the same oil that has been used to fry fish. Deep fried, fish flavoured chocolate bars are only one of many Scottish crimes against food

OK.  Anyone who recycles cooking oil for ANY reason is already going too far.  Is oil that expensive in Scotland?

[helenas]

i don't know about candy bars, all of them taste way too salty for me, but i do like nougat, and i finally found some pretty good one, which is chewy and not too sweet, exactly how i like. It's sold through www.chefshop.com
Recently one of the food magazines ran an article about this nougat business of Sally Williams

[Katherine]

My father did break a tooth on a frozen candy bar, so I never started.

[Rachel Perlow]

re: Chocolate in ice cream

Having made homemade ice cream, here's a possible reason why most of the chocolate in ice cream is crappy chocolate.  When you use decent chocolate in ice cream it gets really really hard when frozen and also feels a little gritty. B&J (and others) use "chocolate flavored" chips or chunks that have a high percentage of oil in them because they are softer at frozen temperatures.

Any ice cream using decent chocolate tends to use the shaven form rather than chips or larger chunks. Here, I am thinking of Haagen Dazs - bought at a Haagen Dazs store, not from the supermarket. Specifically their double chocolate mint. The chocolate shavings are really small and taste much more chocolatey than other brands.