corn syrup

SORDID CONFESSIONS

CANDY CORN WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME

I lived in the US until I was seven, and Halloween was an occasion we celebrated with gusto. My mum once came second in a neighbourhood pumpkin carving contest (by using a pair of Minnie Mouse ears) and one year we turned our garage into a haunted house. We spent months thinking about our costumes and decorations, and I trick-or-treated with the best of them.

Trick-or-treating quickly makes you an expert on sweets, and candy corn was the good s--t. Little lumps of orange and yellow goodness, doled out into our treat buckets by the handful. I wasn’t interested in your Minties or lollypops; they took too long to get through. Candy corn is small, soft, easy to chew, and basically made for kids who want to eat their own bodyweight in Halloween-themed sweets in the shortest possible amount of time. It was my absolute favourite. Accept no substitutes.

We moved to Australia just after my seventh birthday, and that’s when my love affair with Halloween ended. Twenty years ago supermarkets did not stock special Halloween lollies and decorations, nobody went trick-or-treating (I tried one year and I got nothing but fruit, old Easter eggs, and a lot of telling off), and none of my new friends had even heard of candy corn.

Fourteen years would pass before I had the chance to taste it again, and in that time I told countless people what a tragedy it was that candy corn wasn’t available in Australia. I told them it was my favourite sweet of all time, the best thing I’d ever tasted, and made sure they knew they’d never eaten “proper” candy.

And then, at the age of 21, I was in the US again for Halloween. Finally. I bought myself an enormous bag of candy corn, a huge, enough-to-feed-the-whole-neighbourhood bag of the stuff. I didn’t even make it home—I opened it up in the front seat of my car, put a little piece into my mouth and started chewing. I was just so happy I could hardly stand it.

And then I realised it was awful.

Not just a little bit awful, but really awful. Like chewing on dried plaster or old Play-doh. I tried another piece to be sure, because maybe I’d just gotten a bad bit. But no, they were all identically horrible. It didn’t even have a flavour—it was just a solid mass of high-fructose corn syrup and wax died vaguely autumnal colours. Like eating a candle, but less delicious. I felt like my entire childhood was a lie.

Now that American candy is more readily available in Australia, people who knew me growing up will quite often buy me some candy corn. They remember me banging on about it, and so they see some and they think of me. It’s so nice and so thoughtful that I’ve been too embarrassed to admit that the thing I raved about for so long is actually completely vile. I’ve been pretending to still love candy corn for years. But now is the time to admit it, to come clean. Candy corn is disgusting.

JOSIE STEELE, MELBOURNE

Candy corn: similar in appearance to small rotten pointy teeth but even less delicious. ("Syphilitic malformations of the permanent teeth", from A clinical memoir on certain diseases of the eye and ear, consequent on inherited syphilis : with a…


Candy corn: similar in appearance to small rotten pointy teeth but even less delicious. ("Syphilitic malformations of the permanent teeth", from A clinical memoir on certain diseases of the eye and ear, consequent on inherited syphilis : with an appended chapter of commentaries on the transmission of syphilis from parent to offspring, and its more remote consequences by Jonathan Hutchinson. [Plate facing page 205]. Published by John Churchill, London, 1863. Wellcome Library, image no. L0021139).

UNSOLICITED ADVICE

"PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE"—WHAT IS THIS FRESH HELL

To an ex-pat Australian living in Canada, there are many puzzling aspects of what one might call Grand Unified North American Culture. Why are there so many TV channels yet all that’s on is repeats of The Big Bang Theory? Why don’t they like roundabouts? Why hasn't internet banking caught on yet—and who still uses cheques? (The good people of Canada and the United States, that’s who). How come you can buy guns in what is essentially Big W, in both fine nations? Why is the US still persisting with the imperial standard? Why are Canadians obsessed with Australia’s deadly wildlife when its own wildlife includes bears, wolves, wolverines, as well as bad-tempered elk, cranky bison and murderous moose?

But most puzzling of all is the pumpkin spice phenomenon.

Every year, sometime after the June solstice, the coffee shops of North America bring in their seasonal menus. What this means is pumpkin, and lots of it.

Now, North Americans have a strange relationship with the pumpkin. They eat it only as a pie. And a sweet pie, to boot. To any Australian who grew up with roast pumpkin as part of their Sunday roast, as well as pumpkin scones and pumpkin soup, the idea of pumpkin primarily as a dessert is a trifle strange. Of course pumpkin scones are a sweet treat, but at least most Australian people use actual pumpkin in their pumpkin scones. Here in the north, they use pumpkin pie filling from a can.

(They also like to use pumpkins as decoration, as that masterwork “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, M-----f---ers” so eloquently explains).

I can get behind carving pumpkins for Halloween, I can tentatively accept pumpkin pie, I can even understand why you’d buy the filling in a can, what with the general painfulness of chopping up a large squash. But where the line needs to be drawn is the pumpkin spice latte.

The first time I wandered innocently into my local Starbucks—Canadian law dictates a person can never be more than 10km from a Starbucks or a Tim Hortons at any time, unless that person is officially in “the backcountry” and has all the necessary permits and licenses and an avalanche beacon—and saw the sign for the pumpkin spice latte, I was confused.

Now, Canadian coffee is pretty bad at the best of times, especially from Starbucks and even more especially from Tim Hortons. The love Canadians have for Tim Hortons is so peculiar, so misplaced, and so perverse, that I am forced to conclude that the store laces its stale donuts and cigarette-butt-flavoured coffee beans with some sort of highly addictive substance. People queue for this shit. Actual lines out the door.

But a latte that tastes like pumpkin? Cigarette butt and pumpkin-flavoured coffee?

Incredulous, I turned to the infallible Google, and discovered the pumpkin spice latte is, in fact not flavoured with pureed pumpkin or pumpkin pie filling from a can, but the spices typically used to flavour pumpkin pie. My intensive research tells me the spice blend usually includes a lot of cinnamon and smaller quantities of cloves, allspice, ginger, nutmeg and possibly mace.

In short a pumpkin spice latte is a latte with cinnamon sprinkled on it. Of course, this being an invention of the United States of America, it probably also contains high fructose corn syrup and the tears of true patriots.

It’s hard to get too worked up about a cinnamon latte, even if you’re buying it from a place that uses the contents of old ashtrays instead of coffee beans, so let’s instead focus on the deceptive marketing of the name, and the fact that artificial scarcity is created by calling this beverage “seasonal”. What, is cinnamon powder only available between August-November?

And what’s to stop you from making your own pumpkin pie spice blend at home and putting it in your coffee? In, say, March? NOTHING. And so, I urge the consumers of North American caffeinated beverages to buy a decent coffee making apparatus, a milk frother, and some FRESH GODDAMNED BEANS. With all this you can sprinkle spice blend on your coffees for a mere cents instead of $4.95 plus taxes. Do it for yourself, and do it for freedom. Especially if you’re in the United States. If you are in socialist Canada, do it for the Mounties! (I don’t know what that means but it sounds good).

KATE HAYCOCK, CALGARY

The author wishes to note she has not actually sampled a pumpkin spice latte as she prefers to buy her coffee from a coffee shop where they use freshly roasted and ground arabica coffee beans sourced from fairtrade growers, and where the baristas know that coffee should taste nice and not like dirt.

"By Gad Sebastian, they've gone and put pumpkin spice in my latte!" "No!" "The Governor will hear about this, you mark my words—he'll see them hanged" "Ooh pumpkin spice lattes! How much, my good fellow?" "Hear that, Sebastian? This place is going t…

"By Gad Sebastian, they've gone and put pumpkin spice in my latte!" "No!" "The Governor will hear about this, you mark my words—he'll see them hanged" "Ooh pumpkin spice lattes! How much, my good fellow?" "Hear that, Sebastian? This place is going to the devil" "Ooh, challenge him to a duel, Tarquin!" A Melbourne coffee-stall, wood engraving, published in The Australasian sketcher, 7 May 1883, by Alfred Martin Ebsworth, Melbourne. State Library of Victoria, A/S07/05/83/77.

It is little known that the "pumpkin spice" phenomenon first came about as a Halloween "trick". This group of men declined to give the shifty gentleman on the left any candy (or a smoke) so in revenge, after distracting them with the cry "look at th…

It is little known that the "pumpkin spice" phenomenon first came about as a Halloween "trick". This group of men declined to give the shifty gentleman on the left any candy (or a smoke) so in revenge, after distracting them with the cry "look at the red wagon!", he has slipped pumpkin spice into the coffee pot. This trick was considered even more heinous than putting dog poo in a paper bag, placing it outside the victim's front door, setting the bag alight, ringing the door bell and then running away. The coffee stand–early dawn. Wood engraving, published in The Australian news for home readers on 24 December 1863, by Ebenezer and David Syme, Melbourne. State Library of Victoria, IAN24/12/63/13.

The only good use for a pumpkin spice latte (especially one from Tim Hortons). Note the bodiless head that has apparated above the hot coffee in question—another hazard of "seasonal menus". Hot coffee for a cad who insulted a woman. W…

The only good use for a pumpkin spice latte (especially one from Tim Hortons). Note the bodiless head that has apparated above the hot coffee in question—another hazard of "seasonal menus". Hot coffee for a cad who insulted a woman. Wood engraving, published in Police News, 25 November 1876, by Richard Egan Lee, Melbourne. State Library of Victoria, PN25/11/76/00.