Fun with not so sweet candy

I suppose occasionally, there probably should be a non tech topic even on a tech centric website.

While looking for something to write about the other day, I found an old notebook of mine in a drawer. Flipping through the pages turned up a funny candy recipe, I came up with in those days in order to teach some fellow classmates a lesson. Now, the story behind that entry is probably to sweet no to be shared and likely very inspiring to the mischievous mind and so here it is.

Back in school, which I found overall to be a quite annoying experience, I was in a swimming class for several years. For those that are not familiar with that kind of physical exercise, let's just say, that swimming can be a very exhausting pastime and so I always had two things:

1. A small stash of candy in my bag for a quick blood sugar refill.
2. Several classmates refilling their blood sugar while I was at the opposite side of the pool.

Now, the problem of course was not me being too selfish to share or being too impolite to offer, but rather the fact, that my sweets were regularly taken from my bag's pocket without even bothering to ask for permission. Even as I write this, I still picture a certain person's typical wide grin, showing that he was perfectly well aware of having stolen from me. I also remember the frowns from the day I put a stopper into that practice.

Now, there are of course several ways to try to make sure, that what is yours, also stays yours. The naive approach would simply be to tell the teacher, but one quickly realizes, that in reality this is as boring as it would be in any movie and likely does not produce the desired effect anyway. The next idea would be to put a mousetrap into the pocket where the candy is expected. Now, this would really work well in a comedy movie, but in reality, common sense simply tells us not to break other peoples bones (at least not for this kind of issue). So, in order to teach a lesson that sticks, the only option left pretty much boils down to understanding, that nobody wants to eat bonbons, which cannot be trusted not to contain rat poison. Of course, putting actual rat poison in edibles is absolutely and totally not acceptable, unless the intended goal indeed is to kill a vermin (as which a fellow human being, even one that steals from you, does not qualify). Luckily, there are good and far less lethal substitutes available from every kitchen, which not only work better, but also don't have any medical side effect to worry about at all. Usually, they come in containers, labeled "salt", "pepper" and "chili", can be mixed at any ratio and really work wonders if applied to anything that is expected to taste sweet.

The trick with fake candy is to not make it look fake, something which bought fake candy from joke article stores stunningly fails at. A non branded bonbon is always a suspicious thing and will likely not be eaten. So, what has to be done is making the prank candy indistinguishable from the normal candy. which pretty much means taking regular, branded candy and adding a little "flavor" to it. One brand, I found to work particularly well with my problem in those days, is called "Maoam" by Haribo, a chewing candy, that comes in bite sized, single wrapped blocks, which again are bundled as a five pack (at least in the classic version). Since paper is used as a wrapping, it is especially easy to unwrap a single block, treat it, wrap it again and then put it back between it's innocent brethren. Treatment is also utmost simple, as Maoam is not a sugar coated candy, all that is required is to put it for a few seconds in a bowl of warm and saturated salted water. The result will be as harmless looking as it is disgusting.

Of course, the salt water approach was my second attempt in producing fake candy. My first one was indeed drilling a hole in a soft block of Maoam and filling it with a salt&pepper mixture. It looked innocent enough to the greedy eye, but upon closer inspection the tempering was easy to spot and after the first tasting also actively looked for. However, I can most certainly attest, that there are few things as satisfying as fooling the same person twice in a row. Just imagine the guy, after not having learned his lesson the first time, snatching my candy and signaling with a triumphant smile, that this time, he thought about checking for tempering, then stuffing it in is mouth and immediately afterwards loosing that stupid grin, while hastily looking for the next trash can ... again!