Pop!

There’s been a strange culinary phenomenon in recent years of adding popping candy to various products. Once upon a time it was a substance only available in small, foiled packets – bought illicitly as it was rather frowned upon by my parents – and you’d have contests to see how much you could fit in your mouth without your head exploding.

I think it was the Willy Wonka brand that first thought of putting it in chocolate, but eventually Cadbury’s got in on the act, creating a truly magical combination of Dairy Milk and Popping Candy (they knew it was magical, hence naming it ‘Magical Elves’). Being only 25p and 75 calories, they became a staple of long, focus-group related train journeys. Then came Terry’s Chocolate Orange segments with added explosives, and the genius at the Hummingbird Bakery who decided to put it in frosting…

…ah, the Soda Cupcake range. Absolutely inspired. I tried the popping candy trick myself earlier this year – it’s a cunning one for adding the element of surprise to your baking. (The trick is to add the candy right before you frost the cakes, otherwise it’s liable to pop too much.) Watching people take their first bite unwarned is utterly priceless.

But this week, the world of popping candy [incidentally, do you know how many times I’ve accidentally typed ‘pooping candy’ in this post?!] reached a new high (or low, depending upon your opinion). In the condiments section of Sainsbury’s, I made a surprising discovery: