Our vote goes to these bacon-and-eggs
jelly bean cupcakes by Eileen E. Photo
courtesy Jelly Belly.

Are you ready for The $10,000 Jelly Belly Cupcake Challenge?

The challenge is to create the “world’s most creative cupcake,” using Jelly Belly jelly beans as the decoration.

The winner will receive a check for $10,000, so it’s worth a bit of thought. There are also “instant win” prizes, just for uploading a photo of your cupcake.

The top five cupcakes will be selected by What’s New, Cupcake? authors Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. Fans will then vote to determine the overall $10,000 grand prize winner.

Baking cupcakes from scratch is not a requirement. This is a cupcake decorating contest, so cake mixes or store-bought cupcakes are fine.

The online contest runs through July 31, 2011. For additional information, visit JBCupcakeChallenge.com.

Find our favorite cupcakes and recipes in our Gourmet Cakes Section.

These Dove chocolate hearts are about to
be pressed into oatmeal cookies. Photo
by River Soma | THE NIBBLE.

If you have more Valentine chocolate than you think you’ll consume, you can transform it into something else.

 
Or, just bring them to work and set them out. They’ll disappear like magic.

What would you do with leftover Valentine chocolate and other Valentine candy?

The BitterSweets Dysfunctional Collection.
Photo courtesy Despair.com.

Forget those happy Valentine candy hearts—called Sweetheart Conversation Hearts—with their positive messages: Love You, Be Mine and so on.

Despair.com has candy hearts for those who are not in the Valentine spirit.

Choose from three different collections of BitterSweets: Dejected, Dumped and Dysfunctional.

Each box contains 37 brutal kissoffs. The Dumped collection, for example, offers U LEFT SEATUP, BACK 2 KENNEL, I GOT SOBER, CELIB8 THX2U and CALL A 900#.

Six ounces in a heart-shaped tin is $9.95.

Sweethearts Conversation Hearts, those ubiquitous pastel sugar losenges, have been made by the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO), since the Civil War. The company manufactures more than 8 billion hearts annually.

The first versions were made in the shape of a cockle shell. Mottoes printed on thin colored paper were rolled up inside. Sometime in the 1860s, the company devised a machine with a die that printed the words on the lozenge paste. The present design dates to 1902.

Messages included All Mine, Angel, Let’s Kiss, Love, Lover Boy, My Baby and Sweet Talk, among others. Beginning in the early 1990s, the sayings were updated annually. “Call Me” became “Fax Me.” (Hey, what about Text Me?)

The line now includes chocolate, Spanish and sugar-free versions.

The fruit salad version, wrapped in
sour cream.

February 2 is National Heavenly Hash Day. But which heavenly hash?

If someone offers you Heavenly Hash, you may want to clarify:

Is it a fruit salad bound with sour cream or whipped cream, or a chocolate confection or baked good filled with marshmallows and nuts?

Heavenly Hash: The Fruit Salad

The fruit salad version of Heavenly Hash is a traditional Southern dish. It began as a Christmas recipe with red maraschino cherries, green grapes, pecans and other ingredients folded into whipped cream.

Over generations the recipe evolved, with everyone inventing his or her own hash (the term, after all, indicates a jumble or muddle of ingredients).

So today the recipe for heavenly hash essentially requires some kind of fruit—fresh, canned and/or candied—in some kind of creamy white binder.

Here are just a few of the combinations we perused:

 
We make Heavenly Hash with fresh fruits (strawberries, bananas, pineapple, peaches) and nuts (a mix of pecans, pistachios and walnuts), folded into crème fraîche or slightly sweetened sour cream. If the whole concept sounds odd to you, know that Heavenly Hash is very much a comfort food to its fans.

Heavenly Hash: The Candy/Cake/Cookie/Ice Cream

Folks liked the concept of heavenly hash so much, they ported it into other sweets called Heavenly Hash:

 
So enjoy Heavenly Hash Day your style, with one of the ideas above; or freestyle it to create something new.

Here’s one of our favorite products from Jacques Torres: chocolate-covered cornflakes, a crunchy chocolate snack.

In this week’s cooking video, Jacques Torres himself shows both how to temper chocolate and how to make his chocolate-covered cornflakes. Simple as they are to make, they’re also fancy enough to be a gift for your New Year’s Eve party host. We love them as a cupcake topping.

For more tips and how-tos, visit our Cooking Videos Section.

So much more than candy! Photo courtesy
Gilliam Candy Company.

A candy cane is more than a snack or holiday decoration. Here’s how we use them:

Candy Cane History

Candy canes were created in 1670 in Germany, by the choirmaster of the Cologne Cathedral. He created sugar sticks for the young singers in the choir, to keep them quiet during the long Living Crèche ceremony. He bent the sugar-sticks to represent a shepherd’s staff.

At this point, candy canes were all-white and had no flavoring. They remained this way for more than 330 years. White candy canes can still be seen on Christmas cards dating to 1900.

Shortly after then, the first red-and-white striped candy canes appeared. The name of the innovator is lost to history. At about the same time, confectioners added peppermint and wintergreen flavors to create the “modern” candy cane.

Our vote for World’s Best Toffee. Photo

We taste lots of toffee each year, but have never found one we like as much as Enstrom’s.

It’s a very buttery toffee; and that rich, buttery flavor combined with excellent chocolate and nuts makes the product stand out.

There’s so much butter that the company recommends refrigerating the toffee (but don’t worry, it’s even delicious right from the freezer).

And, the line is certified kosher!

Soft peppermint sticks won’t hurt
teeth. Photo courtesy King Leo.

Here’s an inexpensive gift that every peppermint candy lover will cherish.

King Leo Candy makes succulent chocolate-dipped soft peppermint sticks just once a year, for the holidays.

Made with 100% pure peppermint oil, they’re very flavorful and melt in your mouth. There’s no hard candy cane to crunch at the risk of your dentistry.

Hand-dipped in luscious dark chocolate, the peppermint sticks are great for snacking, to garnish desserts or to serve with coffee or hot chocolate.

A 6-ounce box is $5.99; a case of 12 boxes is $70.00, at KingLeoCandy.com. The minimum order is $25, or 6 boxes.

These white chocolate eyeballs are sure to make your Halloween celebration memorable.

They’re available from Woodhouse Chocolate, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week, on a chocolate hand ($10) or a chocolate spoon ($6), in milk or dark chocolate.

Woodhouse has a large selection of artisan Halloween chocolates, including adorable bats and spiders. See them all at WoodhouseChocolate.com.

Mmm, eyeballs. Photo courtesy Woodhouse
Chocolate.

We love these keepsake Halloween boxes from Williams-Sonoma.

Made in Germany from handcrafted papier-mâché, they’re filled with seasonal candies: gummy pumpkins, gummy candy corn and gourmet jelly beans. They’re $14.95 each, a delightful gift or party favor.

If your budget doesn’t allow for the splurge, look in candy stores, card shops, discount stores and other retailers for cardboard, plastic or metal Halloween boxes. Then fill them with your own selection of candies.

FUN FACT: Papier-mâché (pop-YAIR mah-SHAY) means “chewed-up paper” in French. If you’ve ever worked with it, you know why! Torn-up pieces of paper are soaked in a paste of flour and water, then molded to dry.

For your favorite friends and family, a
keepsake box filled with Halloween candy.
Photo courtesy Williams-Sonoma.