This is my first choice–what do you think?

Credit: “Head of Candy Research,” Warner Jenkinson ad, 1974.

It is never so simple, of course: there is no one thing that directly causes cavities. But we like simple answers and we like villains.

These days, experts have been paying more attention to the particular kinds of bacteria that are associated with decay, and why some people seem to have them and some don’t. There’s a theory that these bacteria may be contagious. So this means it’s not so easy to just blame candy and be done with it.

Instead, our health experts have fingered a new culprit: mothers. Here’s a poster from the NYC Department of Health and Hygeine that I saw on the subway yesterday:

Get it? Mom’s kisses and sharing are rotting baby’s teeth. Bad mother.

Sigh. I mean, maybe this is good “public health” policy and good advice. And I should be happy that more “scientific” views than “candy rots your teeth” have prevailed. But I am discouraged when the only solution seems, yet again, to blame the mothers.

For several years, Loralee has been developing kid-friendly experiments with candy and posting them on her website candyexperiments.com where she promises “all candy, all science, all fun.” Now comes this beautiful, full color book that gathers all the experiments in one place, with gorgeous photos of the sometimes startling results of, say, putting marshmallows in a vacuum food saver, or nuking a 3 Musketeers bar in the microwave.

Kids will love the weird effects, but there’s a method to the madness. Loralee includes with each experiment a brief but very clear explanation of the physics and chemistry that make wintergreen Lifesavers spark and Skittle separate into different color bands when you melt them in water.

I ordered it as soon as I knew it was out, and my trusty assistant in the Candy Professor Kitchen, now 9 years old, exclaimed “this book is awesome!” We’re planning a Candy Science Birthday party. I think it’s going to be a hit with her friends!

If you want to know what I’m hoping will be in my basket, check out my Easter candy gallery at Saveur.com

http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/The-History-of-Easter-Candy

We have a title! CANDY: A Century of Panic and Pleasure

Coming in October 2013, published by Faber and Faber.

And here’s a description:

Many adults who wouldn’t dream of indulging in a Snickers bar of jelly beans feel fine snacking on sports bars and giving their children fruit snacks. For most Americans, candy is enjoyed guiltily and considered the most unhealthy thing we eat. But why? Candy accounts for only a small portion of the added sugar in the American diet. And at least it’s honest about what it is—a processed food, eaten for pleasure, with no particular nutritional benefit. What should really worry consumers is the fact that today every aisle in the supermarket contains highly manipulated products that have all the qualities of candy. So how did our definitions of food and candy come to be so muddled?

CANDY tells the strange, fascinating story of how candy evolved in America and how it became a scapegoat for all our fears about the changing nature of food. Samira Kawash takes us from the moral crusaders at the turn of the century, who blamed candy for everything from poisoning to alcoholism to sexual depravity to dread diseases; to the reason why the government made candy an essential part of rations during World War I (and how the troops came back craving it like never before); to current worries about hyperactivity, cavities, and obesity.

CANDY is an essential, addictive read for anyone who loves lively cultural history, who cares about food, and who wouldn’t mind feeling a bit better about eating candy.

Look what I saw today at the drug store:

So: Hershey’s and Russell Stover, two totally separate candy companies, both come up with the idea of chocolate rabbits to break in pieces, at the same time? I don’t think so! There’s a mole in the chocolate…bunny heads will roll.

To Russell Stover’s credit, their version at least maintains the classic chocolate bunny aesthetic. As for the name, Snapsy wins over “Break -It Rabbit” hands down.

We can thank some horrid committee at Hershey’s for dragging the hallowed chocolate bunny into the food wars. You know the story: obesity, big food, sugar kills, eat your kale. Snapsy is Hershey’s answer to the food police.

Snapsy Before

Snapsy After

The package promotes the bunny as “easy to snap and share,” but seriously, who shares Easter candy, especially bunnies. This travesty has nothing to do with sharing. I can just imagine how it went down in the marketing meeting: mothers are going to love this! They can give Junior this whole bunny, then faster than you can say “bait-and-switch,” they can break it into sensible portions and morsel them out one at a time.

Just look at how sad and ugly little Snapsy has become compared to his artful 3-D cousins. Snapsy is the chocolate bunny reduced to a flat, lifeless form whose contours serve the purpose of portion control and fun-sapping.

Sad Snapsy

I’m all for most of the new food orthodoxy–except when it comes to candy. Listen: candy is supposed to be FUN! There should be room for silly, crazy, excessive, pleasurable, messy, kooky candies, especially when it comes to giant chocolate bunnies.

Invertase is one of the candy chemist’s little secrets. It is an enzyme that splits sucrose (table sugar) into smaller pieces: glucose and fructose. You can buy invertase from kitchen chemical supply companies. It is used to make fondant smoother. And most important, invertase is the magic ingredient that makes possible dipped chocolates with liquid centers. Confectioners start with a solid, fondant center made with invertase; after the solid center has cooled, the invertase goes to work and within a few days, the fondant has turned to liquid.

Invertase sounds like a scary chemical additive, but actually it is active in all kinds of natural processes. It is what helps bees transform nectar into honey. And each of us carries around our own personal supply, right in our own mouths as part of the chemistry of saliva.

Invertase was first discovered by nineteenth century chemists who were studying the effect of yeast on sugar. They noticed that the sugar changed form before it started fermenting, and eventually they isolated the enzyme that caused this effect. By 1900, processes for deriving invertase from yeast were well known, and over the next decades chemists would develop many uses for invertase derived from yeast, most importantly in candy-making.

And where did that yeast come from? Some of it may have come from factories like Fleischmann’s that were manufacturing yeast for home and commercial baking. But some of it came from breweries.

Yeast is a by-product of the beer brewing process; when the beer is done, the yeast settles at the bottom of the tank. Storage and re-use is possible, but there are some difficulties. Instead of throwing it away, some brewers’ ended up donating or selling the waste to be turned into invertase.

One chemist, by the name of Sidney Born, was able to complete his 1913 dissertation on the chemical constitution of invertase thanks to the generosity of the Jacob Ruppert Brewery, who furnished Born with 200-pound barrels of compressed yeast from time to time. Born describes a complicated and tedious process lasting several weeks; eventually, 200 pounds of yeast would yield 200 grams of invertase.

Based on Born’s process, I calculate almost a pound-for-pound transformation from yeast to finished candy product. Candy makers using invertase undoubtedly accounted for a huge quantity of brewery waste after Prohibition ended.

So there you have it: from beer to candy, via the chemistry lab, and a nice story about industrial recycling as well.

Sidney Born, The Chemical Constitution of Invertase, 1913 at Google Books

Book? Yes, that’s where I’ve been the past few months, shaping and molding all my candy thoughts into a coherent whole. I’m very happy with the result, an entirely new story about candy in America from about 1880 until today. Some of the themes will be familiar to readers of CandyProfessor, especially ideas about the way candy takes the blame for all kinds of bad things, and our essential ambivalence about candy (“evil, or just misunderstood?”). But what I’m really excited about in the book is the way I can tell a larger story about how the emergence of mass-produced candy changed what we call food, and how so much of what we eat as food today is directly descended from candy.

Alas, you (and I) will have to wait some time to see the actual book. Books, evidently, are like babies.  They take about 9 months, so look for my book at the end of October, 2013. It’s called….

Oh, wait, I don’t know what it’s called. First it was called “The Candy Lure.” Then it was called “In Defense of Candy.” Then it was called “Candy: The Secret History of Food.” And now…I have no idea. There are many masters to please when titling a book: the author, the editorial staff, the marketing people, the sales people…. and while I’m thrilled to be working with an excellent team at Faber and Faber, the fact is that once an author signs the book over, the publisher gets the final word. Lots of smart minds are brainstorming at this very instant to come up with the best title ever; I can’t wait to find out what it will be!

So stay tuned. As soon as I find out what my book is called, I’ll let you know.

Savor richness…followed by lightness…and a hidden silky caramel filling. Taste waves of pleasure, building to the Signatures sensation. Then revel in the afterglow of…Chocolateness.

All that, in a little cookie. Enjoy it alone, or with a friend.