#schimpffs

I am not a candy eater. I am a lover of bacon and cheese and all things salty, so when I eat candy, it has to be the good stuff to even tempt me. Around Christmas, my mouth starts watering for the following three items in particular:

3. Schimpff's Red Hot Hearts

I guess this counts as a Christmas candy to me because it's cinnamon  and also because my family goes to Schimpff's every Christmas Eve (it's in Jeffersonville Indiana) and watch the confectioners there make sugar; they have a big demonstration area, the most fun candy to watch them make has to be the old fashioned ribbon candy! There is also a candy museum attached to the deli-candy shop-candy demonstration-vortex of deliciousness that is Schimpff's. The red hots are made by hand with real cinnamon oil, so some of them are SUPER hot and others are sweet and mild. I could eat an entire tin of them by myself but I never get to because my sisters eat all of them first. 

It's totally unfair. (top photo courtesy of Schimpff's website)

2. Nuts N Stuff's Chocolate Covered Potato Chips

I KNOW RIGHT? It sounds so weird, but it tastes so good. Nuts N Stuff, on Barrett, specialized is weird spices, bulk foods, bunches of coffee and...candy. This is my newest favorite, but ZOWIE is it good. There's something about the golden, super salty sliver of a potato chip covered with a thin swath of super sweet milky chocolate that I just can't resist. I love big beefy alpha males with a secret sentimental side, and I love candy that has a good bit of salty in the palate. 

1. Muth's Modjeskas

I am marginally ashamed to tell you that I actually broke my diet to eat these. I am really, really good about keeping on track with my weight loss (I've lost nearly 110 lbs over the past year and nine months!) so when I tell you that I snarfed four of these babies, in my car, with my fingers sticky with caramel, at the stoplight after I left Muth's, you can kind of gauge how good they are. Modjeskas are a Louisville original, named after a polish actress who came here in the 1880's and so impressed a local candy maker he named a caramel covered marshmallow in her honor. I wish someone loved me that much! The ones at Muth's are made with the original recipe, and they are smallish, pillow-y marshmallows with a fat, buttery caramel coating. (photo courtesy of Muth's website!)