and they are wrong!  Those who grew up in a Dutch Christian Reformed household likely experienced an environment that was lacking in hugs, nurture, encouragement, and heat.  Fortunately for me, the shortfall in all of these areas was made up for by copious amounts of sugar.  Pudding pops, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and a smorgasbord of candy were always readily accessible.  It’s a wonder that none of my siblings or I caught juvenile diabetes.  Recently, I’ve decided to put in place a diet plan that parallels the 21 day fix.  I ordered the 21 day fix cookbook and it includes a section on desserts.  The reality is that I can eat fish instead of meat, I can eat plain sweet potatoes instead of mashed potatoes, and I can eat shit tons of broccoli in place of pretty much anything that has flavor to prove to myself that food doesn’t have to have taste to provide nourishment.  What I can’t do is go a prolonged distance of time without sweets.  I love the shit out of anything with sugar in it.

I was skeptical when I made my first dessert in the cook book which was flour less brownies, the picture looked amazing, and if these things turned out half as well as the picture they would be just what the doctor ordered for my sugar fix.  After they had cooled down from the oven I took my first taste, my nose was half plugged and I was near the sink in case it was so vile that I needed to spit it out, fortunately it wasn’t too bad, and my kids even liked them.  The brownies were a semi success so I decided to make the chocolate chip cookies.  The ingredients for the cookies were, almond flour (I substituted gluten free flour because I couldn’t locate almond flour), coconut oil, one egg, two egg whites, a half a cup of maple syrup, and a half a cup of chocolate chips.  I mixed everything together and the batter was drier than a popcorn fart.  I proceeded to taste the batter and it tasted like what I imagine a dead raccoon’s butt hole would taste like.

Ultimately, I improvised and added another egg and brown sugar to make them edible.  The dough still tasted terrible and it felt and tasted like I had  licked out the center of a nuclear reactor.  Since I wanted really badly to have chocolate chip cookies to help me through my diet plan I faked myself into thinking the baked version would taste much better.  Unfortunately, the cookies are currently residing in the bottom of my trash can, my kids didn’t even like them, in fact I don’t even think my dog would have liked them.  My next experiment will be the peanut butter squares but I am a bit concerned because the recipe calls for Peanut Butter and honey which reminds  me of possibly the worst candy bar ever made, that’s right Bit O Honey, it should be entitled Bit O Regret.  Talk about a waste of empty calories.  Flashbacks to the Bit O Honey got me to thinking about the best candybars ever made.  So, I found a list of the best candy bars/candy of 2015 according to a Harris poll and boy do I have a beef to pick with the people they polled.

http://www.confectionerynews.com/Markets/Top-US-chocolate-and-candy-brands-2015

There are three categories:  Chocolate, Premium Chocolate, and Non-Chocolate.  I will address the chocolate and non-chocolate categories, I’m Dutch I don’t even dabble in premium chocolate, way too rich for my blood.  First of all, Hershey’s Kisses is  number one, that is the equivalent of Donald Trump becoming president, hold wait a minute that could actually  happen, regardless it’s a similar travesty.  Furthermore, the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate candy bar came in at 4.  It’s the same thing as Hershey’s Kisses you just don’t have to go through the hassle of unwrapping the tinfoil on twelve of them to get the equivalent of the candy bar.  Who did they poll here people with no taste buds and no common sense?  You just voted for the same thing twice you morons!  Here is my top five and it is flawless:

1. Milky Way:  Keeping it simple.  Caramel, Chocolate, and Nugget, can’t go wrong with that combination.  It’s chocolate perfection.
2. Take Five:  If you have never had it, don’t do it, it’s the candy bar equivalent of crack, I don’t even want to go into the unmentionable things I have done to get my Take Five fix.  Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Pretzel, and Caramel, need I say more?  It’s called a take five but you will likely go into a 30 minute sugar coma after consuming a take five.
3. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  You can eat other brands of peanut butter cups, but they always fall short.  Miniature’s, full size, or jumbo, you will never be disappointed when you dig into a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
4. Peanut Butter Twix.  I’m not a real big fan of the plain twix because it’s way too plain for my taste, but you throw peanut butter on that bad boy and you have just created something truly magnificent.  If George Castanza would have put this into his candy bar lineup he would have had  a right to be upset when they were all consumed behind his back.  Maybe if we come up with a Peanut Butter version of one of the republican candidates that trails Donald Trump they would somehow be able to over take him for the nomination.
5. Caramello:  I was right in the middle of caramello and I struck gold!  Damn right you did.  Whenever I have one of these I always feel bad for not having it more, a Caramello candy bar is like that girl in college who had a great personality but you just couldn’t bring her out of the friend’s zone because she wasn’t quite cute enough.  Sure, you would mess around with her every once in a while, but you wouldn’t be seen in public with her.

I know I am going to get a huge amount of grief for leaving out Snickers but let me tell you this, Snickers is over rated!  That’s right, I said it, Snickers is the Adam Sandler of Candy Bars, it’s been getting by on name alone for years.  Besides, it has peanuts in it, peanuts are the Mel Gibson of nuts these days, nobody wants anything to do with Peanuts due to their hyper allergenic nature.  Granted, peanuts are the major ingredient of peanut butter, but peanut butter has so much more to offer than plain peanuts that I’m willing to overlook it’s deadly properties for the sake of it’s amazing taste and versatility.

The non chocolate top five according to the poll is even more of a travesty than what is currently going on with Flint’s water.  They have Reese’s Pieces as the number one on chocolate candy.  Are you kidding me, ET looked terrible back in the 80’s when they didn’t even have special effects, Aliens across all of the galaxies were visibly upset when the movie came out because ET was such a stereotypical alien and now he’s still influencing society 30 years later.  I’m pretty sure ET does not stand the test of time in light of it’s terrible special effects, awful plot, and ridiculous candy choice.  Lifesavers is second, this makes me think they only polled people who lived through world war 2, does anyone under the age of 30 even know what lifesavers are?  Come on people, what are we doing here, I don’t care what a bunch of people who are going to be dead with in two months think about candy.

1. Skittles.  They made a huge mistake when they went to sour apple and got rid of lime.  Who likes the taste of Sour Apple, if I don’t want my kids to eat something I tell them it’s sour apple flavored.  Whoever made that decision should be forced to watch an endless loop of Adam Sandler movies for the rest of their life.
2. Starbursts.  When I think starburst I only think red flavors, who actually eats the yellow or the orange? they are just an impediment to getting to the red flavors.  Fortunately starburst was smart enough to come up with bags that only contain red flavors, Way to go Starburst! But why are you still even producing orange and yellow?  When I’m eating starbursts out of the candy bar size package I never let my kids have any of the red ones, and you shouldn’t either, they have way too many good things in life to be allowed the red flavors of starbursts, I had to watch cartoons on a 19 inch tube television and I didn’t even have cable until I was in 8th grade, yeah I’m totally justified in my selfishness.
3. Nerds.  It’s just sugar somehow repackaged as candy.  Whoever came up with Nerds is a genius.  If I was to speculate, the profit margin on Nerds is around 99.9%.
4. Gobstoppers.  Teeth are overrated.  If you made it to the middle of a gobstopper with all of your teeth in tact you really felt like you had achieved something that was truly special.
5. Red Vine Licorice-  America has been brainwashed into thinking Twizlers is where it is at, but let me tell you, welcome to flavor country if you have been open minded enough to give Red Vines a shot.

There it is, now rush out to your local store and stock up, because there’s no telling how long it will be on the shelves after my 12 readers figure out what truly is the best candy in the USA.