Okay, what?! What are those words? What is this chocolat-y gooeyness? And why?? I mean, yes!, but why?!

When I was a kid, I was a huge sugar fiend. My mother had a sort of unwritten rule in the house about no processed sugar anywhere – no soda, breakfast cereal, candies, gummies, or Hostess cakes. If we were to have dessert, we were to make it from scratch – banana bread (recipe coming soon), lemon cake, peach melba, chocolate chip cookies. While I agree 100% with this philosophy, it may have exacerbated my particular problem as I would go to friends’ houses and pour Coca Cola into Cocoa Pebbles and eat Oatmeal Cream Pies and Fruit Rollups by the box, taking advantage of my friends’ parents lack of attentiveness to our sugar intake. 

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was never my favorite movie but I was fascinated by the sugar-laced fantasy world the film brought to life. I can still picture Gene Wilder dancing through a field of sugary grass and daisies around a stream of milk chocolate, plucking a yellow tulip from its stem, using it as a teacup, then crunching into the cup itself like brittle, lemon hard candy. 🍋🌷 To me, the best part of any movie – especially a fantasy movie – is the scene setting. The Great Hall scenes in Harry Potter where the feast is served or the candy selection on the train. The Medieval fare (turkey legs, whole roasted pigs, red grapes, unleavened bread loaves, hard cheese wheels) scattered around Viking halls. The same is true for videogames. It is these little details that bring a world to life. In the case of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the world was a saccharine, glazed, and sprinkled childhood wonder – like an Old Fashioned Soda Shoppe spilled out into the world for the taking. Brown cows and milkshakes, licorice laces and hard candies. Taffy.

I always liked the concept of a chocolate bar more than the chocolate bar itself. Something about the tinfoil waiting to be torn off. Something about the pristine molding. It was art. I almost didn’t want to eat it. 🍫🍫🍫 So when Charlie Bucket tore the tinfoil from a Willy Wonka chocolate bar, I was captivated. Then Johnny Depp got involved and I was even more captivated. That golden ticket Whipplescrumptious Fundgemallow Delight Bar became a symbol of the impossible – the intoxicating world where sugar was everywhere for the taking. Where it formed the very structure of the world from mountains to streams. Where it did not make one sick but cured all ills, like chocolate frogs in Harry Potter. 

🚗🚙🚛

Fast forward to 2021. The Piemaker and I are on a road trip. An exceptionally long road trip. 13 hours in the car with anyone will leave you wanting for conversation topics especially when the journey begins between the witching hours of midnight and 3am. The final stint between Fredericksburg and Northern Virginia found us arguing full tilt over the identity of Willy Wonka’s Whipplescrumptious Fudegmallow Delight Bar. What was it? What did “whipplescrumptious” mean? “Fudgemallow” was simple enough to unpack but what innovation, what variation on the theme of a Milky Way or a chocolate-covered graham, did “whipplescrumptious” imply? I had my thoughts as did the Piemaker. So silicone molds were purchased en route (on Amazon) and plans were made for a Whipplescrumptious competition. But then we got home, got busy, and forgot about the punchdrunk roadtrip rivalry until this weekend when I found the molds in the bottom of a kitchen drawer and decided to make good on the planned experimentation. After two failed batches of Sponge Candy – a candy with which I am intimately familiar given my two year residence in Erie, Pennsylvania – I arrived at a decent interpretation of the Whipplescrumptious Fudgemallow Delight Bar. Another variation may yet await us but the Piemaker is strongly in favor of this version. He did comment that the sponge candy is too sticky and slightly burnt on its own but integrates into the bar beautifully. For my part, I was just excited to revisit a childhood fantasy. And of course, I wrapped the bars in foil.