Josh Scherer Defends Candy Corn

Welcome to Mythical Kitchen Picks, the series in which the culinary experts from Mythical Kitchen tell you all about their favorite foods and ingredients. For the next few installments, we’ll be talking about Halloween treats. We asked each Mythical Kitchen crew member for their favorite spooky time sweet. First up: the Mythical Chef himself, Josh Scherer. And he has quite the controversial opinion. 

Josh’s Halloween Pick: Brach’s Fall Festival Candy Corn

Brach’s Fall Festival Candy Corn
Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon / Mythical Entertainment

I have a soft spot for all candies that pre-date modern science. Salt water taffy, honeycomb, marshmallows, Necco wafers—the list goes on and on, and the list also gets pooh-poohed by a vast majority of the general population. Candy corn dates back to the 1880s—when leaching was still a common medical practice—and no better candy has been invented since. 

There’s no logic here that will convince a candy corn hater (CCH) to love candy corn—it tastes like sugar and chews like plastic—so if you fall into that category, you can click out of this article (and into a better article). But for all my candy corn stans (CCSs) on the right side of history, there has, at long last, been a new development in America’s noblest candy that could change everything. 

Brach’s Fall Festival Candy Corn Grab Bag of Fantasticness (BFFCCGF) features not one, not two, not seven, but SIX flavors of candied corns. Are they ALL great? Absolutely not. Caramel Apple, Strawberry Funnel Cake, Lemonade Shake-up, Lemon-Lime Snowcone, and Cotton Candy are—though all noble attempts—relatively unpleasant (though Sporked managing editor Gwynedd Stuart like them all enough to rank this mix as some of the best candy corn ever). But, like Neo in 1999’s cinematic masterpiece, The Matrix, there is one that rises above all others: Kettle Corn. 

KETTLE CORN! It’s a corn-flavored, corn-shaped candy! All the waxy chew of candy corn with all the butter extract flavor of kettle corn, this is the single greatest candy I have ever eaten, and when Brach’s finally recognizes the gold mine it’s sitting on and sells a kettle corn-only bag, all of us CCSs whose faith never wavered will be exalted and rise to the heavens on a geyser of corn syrup. 

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About the Author

Sporked Staff

The Sporked Staff tastes everything and anything. They are obsessive about groceries and finding the best of any type of food or drink, from frozen fried shrimp to Dijon mustard to gummy candy. And they're always on a hunt for the best new products. When they aren't eating professionally, they're eating recreationally. And often they're browsing grocery store aisles, just for fun.

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