Candy making and holiday gifts

A few weeks ago a fellow expat Sarah G who blogs at We have moved to USA posted that she was making candy, and two of my favorite kinds twix and crunchie. So of course I had to give it a go.

We attempted to make the crunchie first which was really to easy to make and as you can see from the recipe it only has three ingredients. Well four if you count the chocolate.

The messiest part was the coating in chocolate, I'm sure there must be an easier way to do it! They tasted so good, just like a proper crunchie. We ate a few then I sent the rest to Dave's office where they didn't last long!

Next was the twix, these took a lot longer to make as it was three longer stages, I purchased a cheap candy thermometer for making the caramel but it somehow managed to get water in it and stopped working, so I had to use guesswork and it turned out pretty well, although there was a lot more caramel than we needed. I have since been out and purchased a new candy thermometer that I plan to use soon.

Dave said the people in his office also enjoyed the twix. I think the biscuit could have been more crunchy, it had more of a shortbread consistency to it, but tasted nice all the same.

After making all of this it got me thinking about the upcoming holidays, halloween, thanksgiving and chritsmas. I love baking and often make cookies and other things for Dave's office and the neighbors, but they are always presented in a ziplock bag, which is fine, but I thought I wanted something nicer for holiday gifts. So I plan to buy some see through bags. This then got me thinking, how about some nice tags. As it turns out a friend on twitter Kelly happened to post about her etsy shop The Country Crab. I had never been on etsy before, and I love it. I purchased two sets of tags from Kelly's shop, some general baking ones and some halloween ones.

She then mentioned she can do custom made tags and other things too. I didn't need to be told twice and sent her to work making me some custom made holiday kitchen tags which arrived today. I also have her making my Christmas cards for me. Her prices are great and she ships really fast too. Those of you who are on my Christmas card list will get to see her wonderful Christmas card desing later in the year.

Week 34

I'm a day late posting again due to it being a holiday here yesterday.

I think I had an OK week, wasn't as clean as I hoped to be - maybe 60% this week. On the plus side I have no been soda free for 36 days :) 

These are my stats from my fitness pal this past week

I only had one day this week I was over on calories, and my overall net calories was 541, although I did eat out Sunday night and the restaurant did have any nutritional information, so I would imagine that I was probably over that day also, as I had to guesstimate based on foods already in the database. I also ate a lot more fat this week and less carbs, what it doesn't tell you is the kind of carbs of fat, so not really sure how useful this is.

The result from this week was a loss of 2lbs (yay me!) taking my total loss to 20.4lbs (I can finally update my goals and rewards page). I am hoping to try and lose 2lbs this week also so I will officially be in the 260's - watch this space. I have 7 weeks before my sister and nieces come and I did set myself a goal to be 250lbs by then, which I don't think I will reach, unless I have some super super big losses, so depending on how it goes, I now have a trip to England planned on November 30th, so I may move my goal date to then, giving me 12 weeks to lose 21.8lbs - but we will see how it goes.

Dave and I had lots of fun yesterday making homemade candy - we made twix and crunchie - there will be a blog post to follow about that at some point.

Thanks for reading and have a great week everyone.

UNREAL Candy unjunked

I've been a busy Bzz Agent again, as most of you will know I have been a Bzz Agent for many years, and am often sent products to try for free or little charge and I then get to share the good (and bad reviews) of them with you.

The latest one was a new line of candy called UNREAL candy unjunked. I actually received a free bar of this last month via a CVS coupon, so was excited to be sent another free coupon to try another bar - who doesnt like free candy?

There are currently 5 different kinds, all of which are based on similar candy products out there on the market already but these versions are better for you, they contain NO corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oil, no artificial ingredients, no GMO's, no preservatives and have a low glycemic index - sounds good doesn't it?

As you can see they all come in really cool funky colorful packaging, which certainly makes them easy to spot on the shelf. I found mine in CVS where the bars are currently 2 for $2 and the bags are $4.99, I believe Walgreens is also selling them, and they are hoping to launch them in more stores soon.

The first two UN 54 an UN 41 (not sure the reasoning behind those names) are based on plain m&m's and peanut m&m's - I'm not a fan of either so didn't try these ones. Those two contain almost 40% less sugar then the m&m brands. If you look on their website it gives you a full breakdown of calories, sugar, protein etc. The third bar UN8 was based on the snickers and I tried this one last time and I must say it was really yummy, much nicer than I expected and 13g of sugar less than a regular snickers bar. The fourth bar UN5 was by far my favorite and was like a milky way (or a mars bar if you are in the UK!), and has 16g of sugar less than a milky way, and i think it even tasted better than a milky way. The fifth version UN77 is like reeses, and must be popular as there were no single packets left on the shelf! Just the big bag that I photographed, which was fine with me as I'm not a fan of peanut butter cups.

Price wise these are only slightly more expensive than regular candy bars, and they are full of less junk than regular bars, if I am in a store and they sell these I would definitely buy them over the regular bars.

If anyone wants to try these I have some Buy one get one free coupons so let me know.