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.
2 packages (20 oz) milk, semisweet, or dark chocolate baking chips or wafers. I prefer Ghirardelli Milk Baking Chips for chocolate bars
2 trays of silicone chocolate bar molds with ~1/2″ depth (I used these)
2 cups miniature marshmallows
1/2 tablespoon salted butter
1 cup crumbled honeycomb candy (or graham crackers in a pinch)
For honeycomb candy:
1 1/8 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
Dash of cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1. Chocolate. Melt 1 package of the chocolate in a double boiler (for me, this is a metal mixing bowl floating in a small saucepan filled with water. Elegant, I know). Once melted, spoon the chocolate evenly into each chocolate bar in the molds (~1 generous tablespoon per bar). Toss and catch the chocolate molds lightly in your hands so the chocolate settles to the bottom, then place in refrigerator to chill.
2. Honeycomb Candy. Place sugar, honey, vanilla, and cinnamon in saucepan over high heat and stir continuously as it begins to melt. Heat the mixture to 300 degrees (I used my meat thermometer as I do not own a candy thermometer. Make sure it gets hot enough or it won’t set!). Over high heat, this should take approximately 3-5 minutes. The mixture will smell fantastic and become a deep amber color. Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the baking soda, noting that the mixture will froth, foam, and triple in size as you do so. Quickly pour the mixture onto a cutting board covered in wax paper and let it cool. It should be hard, crunchy, and ready for you to hit with something to break apart in 5-10 minutes.
3. Marshmallow. Melt the two cups of marshmallows with 1/2 tablespoon of salted butter in a saucepan until just a few small lumps remain. Turn off heat.
4. Chocolate Bar. Remove chilled chocolate bars from the fridge. Carefully. use a butter knife or small silicone spatula (and your finger) to smear a small swath of marshmallow over the chocolate. Don’t swirl it around too much as the hot marshmallow will melt the chocolate. Do this for all bars in the molds. Sprinkle small, cracked pieces of honeycomb candy over the marshmallow for each bar. Chill molds. This step is messy. There was marshmallow in my hair. There was marshmallow on Aspen. There was marshmallow in the coffee maker the next morning.
5. Finish. Melt the remaining batch of chocolate just like before. Remove molds from the fridge and spoon chocolate over each bar, spreading out to cover the majority of the filling, and repeating the toss-and-catch technique to settle the chocolate in the mold before chilling. Chill until set, ~30-60 minutes, wrap individually in tinfoil, and serve/gift! 🍫🍫🍫
Quite possibly the easiest, most summery, and healthiest dessert! If you just don’t have the energy for my easy stone fruit skillet cobbler but still need something sweet to make after a summery date night dinner such as summer sausage orzo, this is your go-to.
This is the single most elegant, delicate, graceful dessert I have yet encountered – more so than soufflé, macaron, or profiterol. It is crunchy and mallowy, creamy and mildly sweet, and very customizable. Its cloud-like cream topping rests on a pillowy meringue base, topped with the fruit, chocolate, or accent of your choosing.
This delicious and simple banana bread is the timeless treat you want with your morning coffee, your afternoon tea, or just after dinner. It has a rightful place on my food blog because my mother made this recipe nearly every other Sunday growing up. There would always be a fresh loaf of banana bread in the house – her version has the golden raisins which is how I make it to this day. And it even freezes well! That’s right, throw a fresh (cooled) loaf in some plastic wrap and put it in the freezer to enjoy a few weeks later. That is, assuming there is any left. 😉
