The Burnside Bridge is ready to open… It was 1926.
Today, Candy Babel wants to give a well-deserved shout-out to our friend Tyler Mackie, a local fiber artist, who is helping put on a wonderful event in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Broadway Bridge this coming PDX Bridge Festival in August. Four 18' x 21' knitted banners, knitted by volunteers, will be hung off the side of the bridge celebrating the anniversary. After the event, the banners will be turned into blankets for the homeless. The yarn is donated wool from Cascade Yarns. Learn more about the event here:
This is exactly the kind of event that helps the world become a sweeter place! If you are interested in helping out, or knitting for “Bridge for Blankets”, you can email Tyler at tyler.mackie@gmail.com .
Thanks Claudia for bringing this cool event to our attention!
Marshmallows, mint and mallow, mushy and soft to the tooth
Oranges, lemons, cherries and berries, to be savored like fine vermouth
Traditional treats and taffy from Texas
Herbals from Germany, and honey from here
European sweets, and eggs with a peachy flair
Rainbows of colors and flavors, chewy and gummy concoctions
Salty licorice, sour ribbons and well-traveled sweets
Dainty, decorative tins to put it all in
Artisan chocolates and caramels
You can't do much better than that!
Just in time to surprise your favorite Mother, we are excited to announce our newest local collaboration with exceptional confectionary talent Marushka chocolates! Whether it is chocolates or caramels that make the mother in your life tick, Marushka offers something for everyone's tastes. The product descriptions alone, are enough to make even the most jaded of us salivate... And they look amazing!
Sweet and Simple Collection
The Sweet and Simple Collection will please any palate. For the discerning chocolate lover who appreciates chocolate in all its percentages, this collection includes dark, milk and white chocolates. The fillings are all alcohol-free.
Honey White Chocolate – White chocolate ganache flavored with Pacific Northwest blackberry honey and pure vanilla bean. Warming honey flavor that melts in your mouth.
Coconut Almond Crunch - A milk chocolate disk topped with the best part of a coconut maracoon and fried salted almonds. The flavors were inspired by the chocolate itself. Deceptively simple, this is a definite favorite!
Salted Peanut Chocolate Caramel – Amazing rounded buttery flavor - but without the butter! Salty roasted peanuts in a smooth caramelly chocolate.
Tahitian Vanilla Milk Chocolate - Nutty milk chocolate perfumed with plump juicy Tahitian vanilla beans. Chocolate at its most unctuous.
Tea and Cookie – A blend of milk and dark chocolates infused with Republic of Tea Oolong Tea, and paired with a cookie - a crunchy almond-streusel like bite.
70% Dark - Dark, dark chocolate. Not acidic. Not bitter. Just smooth chocolate flavor that fills your mouth and gives you deep down satisfaction. Simple and sublime.
Marushka Favorites
This collection contains only favorite recipes (five chocolates and two caramels) with a nod to milk and white chocolates but mainly featuring dark chocolate. If you are feeling adventurous and like a little spice, this collection is for you.
70% Dark - Dark, dark chocolate. Not acidic. Not bitter. Just smooth chocolate flavor that fills your mouth and gives you deep down satisfaction. Simple and sublime.
Coffee Cardamom – Direct-trade Columbian Stumptown coffee in direct-trade dark Columbian chocolate, subtly scented with cardamom.
Cognac Caramel with Vanilla Fleur de Sel – Salted caramel all grown up with a hit of cognac, a hint of orange, topped with vanilla-infused fleur de sel.
Jasmine Pearl Tea – Jasmine pearls lend their floral, sublime fragrance to a blend of milk and dark chocolates. Topped with a vanilla scented wafer of dark chocolate.
Mendiant Duo (disks) – Two mendiants for the price of one. Lucky you, you really can have it all! The first is milk chocolate with crunch coconut macaroon and fried salted almonds. The second is white chocolate with candied pistachios, lemon and ginger. Nutty, sweet, crunchy, creamy, salty, pungent – these simple chocolate disks are canvases for creativity.
Salt & Pepper Caramel – This caramel comes with a caveat: “Warning: this is spicy! Eat it in one daring bite” Shaped like a gobstopper (who can resist?), take your chances and enjoy the spicy hit of not one but two kinds of chili heat, fresh Thai bird chilis and toasty red chili flakes.
Caramel Collection
Caramels are definite favorites. Caramel lovers everywhere - this is the box for you. It includes some new, never-before tried Marushka flavors as well as some favorites.
Cognac Caramel with Vanilla Fleur de Sel - Salted caramel all grown up with a hit of cognac, a hint of orange, topped with vanilla-infused fleur de sel.
Beer Caramel - Hair of the Dog Adam beer is transformed into a malty, complex caramel that tastes nothing like a 6-pack.
Black Currant Caramel- The sophisticated flavor of Black currant delectably blended with chocolate – a pleasingly purple cassis caramel. You taste the black currant, you taste the chocolate. You will love this one!
Salt and Pepper Caramel - This caramel comes with a caveat: “Warning: this is spicy! Eat it in one daring bite” Shaped like a gobstopper (who can resist?), take your chances and enjoy the spicy hit of not one but two kinds of chili heat, fresh Thai bird chilis and toasty red chili flakes.
Honeybush Tea Caramel with Chicory and Cinnamon - Fine teas are a wonderful foundation for building flavors. Rounded, mellow honeybush tea with a hint of spice and earthiness. A world of flavors in your mouth.
Vanilla Bean Caramel with Elderflower Liqueur - Real Tahitian vanilla is one of the finest flavors in the world. This caramel is intriguingly delicious. It has all the goodness of supreme vanilla flavor paired with the subtle floral aroma of elderflower. Old fashioned, fashion forward, or a little of both? You’ll have to decide for yourself.
May could be the month you treat your mouth to something extraordinary!
As some of you may remember that at Candy Babel we sell Miracle Frooties (tablets) a double factory sealed tablet made of dried Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum). A little red fruit about 1.3 to 1.8 cm (0.6 to 0.8 inch) in length and 8 mm (0.4 inch) in width. Miracle Fruit berries cause bitter and sour foods (lemons, grapes, vinegar,...), consumed after eating Miracle Fruit berries, to taste sweet.
The berry was first documented by explorer Chevalier des Marchais who searched for many different fruits during a 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from shrubs and chewed it before meals. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet (6.1 m) high in its native habitat but does not usually grow higher than ten feet in cultivation, and it produces two crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces small red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced for many months of the year. The seedsare about the size of coffee beans.
The berry contains an active glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing sour foods to taste sweet. While the exact cause for this change is unknown, one hypothesis is that the effect may be caused if miraculin works by distorting the shape of sweetness receptors "so that they become responsive to acids, instead of sugar and other sweet things".This effect lasts 15-30 minutes.
Once picked, the fruit only lasts a few days. Because of this we prefer the dried, powdered version, called Miracle Frooties. Fresh miracle berries are freeze dried moments after being picked to produce powdered Miracle Berries with the same effect as fresh berries. The powder is then compressed into Froooties for easier usage.
Since I’d been wanting to try these for ages, and I seem to have a few customers that don't eat any sugar, It seemed like a good time to offer something to tickle the taste buds in a sugar free way!
While I enjoy a good, old-fashioned drink-ourselves-silly party as much as the next person, this is a fun way to break up the evening. The effects only last around half an hour to an hour, and you’ll spend half that time stuffing fruit in your face and saying things like, “Mmmm, oh wow. It tastes like candy! That’s so weird.” And when you’re done sampling various treats, you can still enjoy the effects by making some citrus-y cocktails.
The Simply Orange people make a variety of not-from-concentrate, no-sugar-added citrus juices that are perfect for this. A word of warning: those things will go down easy. I was accidentally a little heavy handed with the Gin while making a a drink for a friend, and he said it tasted like delicious, sugary lemonade. If you’re a beer drinker, you can go for the sour beers. Avoid sugary drinks—they will taste way too sweet. Except Guinness is reported to taste like Chocolate mike!
Tips for hosting your own flavor-tripping party: When you and your guests eat the miracle berry tablet, make sure everyone knows to let it dissolve in his/her mouth. (The goal is to coat your taste buds.) You’ll have to endure the semi-weird silence that occurs when a group of people all stand around and wait for a pill to disintegrate in their mouths, but that’ll be over soon enough.
Snacks that I recommend include:
lemons
limes (shockingly sweet)
oranges
grapefruit (amazingly delicious)
pickled things
carrots
granny smith apples
kombucha
super sour candy
salt & vinegar chips (taste sweet!)
rhubarb
And remember: Even though what you’re eating tastes like sweet candy, it’s still quite acidic, so don’t go too crazy!
