[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

If you've ever wanted to eat a Koosh Ball then you understand the appeal of Hostess Sno Balls. Who doesn't want a fluffy, jiggly, bouncy neon snack? Uh. Well. Maybe you don't. In which case, who wants chocolate cake?

We can all agree on chocolate cake.

On a technical level, Sno Balls are Hostess cupcakes turned upside down and coated in marshmallow, coconut, and dye. But that's a little like saying that Superman is just Clark Kent with a cape.

Underneath it all, yes, they may be the same. But the exterior of each dictates certain conventions or, in the case of the Sno Ball, confections. A Hostess Cupcake is solid, reliable, sweet, and a little dense, like Clark. But throw on a marshmallowy robe and that plain little chocolate cake transforms into something so much more...super.

Like Clark and Superman, the Sno Ball knows a thing or two about the power of disguise. Around St. Patrick's day, the Sno Ball goes green and masquerades as a Lucky Puff. For Easter, it's a violet Hopper and for Trick-or-Treat it becomes a Scary Cake.

Which is funny, because the Sno Ball is kind of a scary cake all year round. I don't want to be mean, but seriously, it belongs in the X-Files. Literally. Remember Scully's birthday and the sparkler-topped Sno Ball Mulder arranged for her? But that's not the Sno Ball's first televised birthday appearance. Digging through the television director's Metaphors for Sexual Tension Handbook, I found another oh-so-questionable Sno Ball incident with Bo and Carly on Days of Our Lives.

Despite the Hostess bankruptcy business and ensuing Twinkie panic, you can still pick up a two-pack of Sno Balls at the grocery. But, should a day come where they're no longer available and you find yourself in need of a birthday cake for the Scully or Bo in your life, I've got you covered.

Get the Recipe

Hostess Sno Balls »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Writing about Magic Middles, making a recipe for them, makes me feel like that person at the Police Department who sketches a criminal's portrait while listening to the victim's account. You see, I have never tasted a Magic Middle nor seen one in the wild. But based on eye witness reports and video footage, I've taken on the role of a forensic chef in the hunt for America's Most Wanted Cookie.

Reports describe the texture of the cookie itself as somewhere between a Chips Ahoy and a Soft Batch. Soft, but not too soft. Crunchy, but not too crunchy. Raph, but not too Raph. The middle itself allegedly had a texture like fudge— not gooey exactly, but soft enough to give way when the cookie broke in half. Reports indicate the Middles had an intense chocolaty punch but also ample sweetness. Rumor has it some Magic Middles had chips while others did not; accounts often mention Mini Middles as well.

Taking a wild stab at a cookie that could bridge the gap between Chips Ahoy and Soft Batch didn't take much effort. Mastering a filling that would stay put, however, took a lot more thought. A ganache filling would just bubble out in the oven, but a pure chocolate filling would cool into a solid mass. Neither match the description.

To strike a balance, I needed a hard ganache. Normally, that means making a ganache with twice as much chocolate as cream. But in a 350°F oven, that proves not nearly hard enough. So I wound up with something that only barely qualifies as ganache—more like chocolate with a slight adulteration of cream. I needed five times more chocolate than cream for it to hold up in the oven. Just enough excess fat and liquid to keep the chocolate from taking on a firm set at room temperature, but enough chocolate solids to prevent the mixture from liquefying in the oven.

Let me say in no uncertain terms: this is an artist's rendering of a Magic Middle, based on the testimony of one man and one elf.

So please, make these cookies, evaluate them, post your critiques and help me bring Magic Middles to justice.

Get the Recipe

Homemade Magic Middles »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Oatmeal Creme Pies have mastered consistency in every sense of the word. It starts with the unparalleled consistency of both the cookies and the so-called creme. Together they are yielding yet substantial and neither squishy nor firm. Their flavor and texture remain consistent from edge to edge, from box to box, from decade to decade.

We can't get that kind of magic at home by gluing together any ol' oatmeal cookies with marshmallow fluff anymore than we can produce Chanel No. 5 by tinkering around with rubbing alcohol and flower petals. Recreating a confection so unlike other cookies that they bear the name "pie" demands careful study.

In Oatmeal Creme Pies, Little Debbie orchestrates a symphony of industrial delight. They create a beauty that comes from within: the creme. I can best characterize the filling of an Oatmeal Creme Pie by what it doesn't do, rather than what it does. It doesn't quite reach the edges of the cookie. It doesn't squish out the sides at first bite. It doesn't have a marshmallowy stretch. It doesn't amount to much more than a thin smear. It doesn't move or allow the cookies to twist apart. It doesn't compare to any other creme filling on the market. It doesn't have an "a" because we all know damn well that's not cream in there.

Meanwhile, the cookies have all the comforting familiarity of an oatmeal cookie but in their most stylized form. There is a uniform thickness, or rather thinness, from edge to edge. Delightful, impossible thinness. No bulge in the middle, no tapering at the edges. The cookies' moistness verges on wet in the most delightful way, despite the grossness of those descriptors.

They have the flavor of stale gingerbread, the aroma of a spice cabinet on mute, and a hint of molasses and vanilla. It's a taste at once both dark with a chocolaty depth yet brightened by a vaguely fruity acidity. Such subtle nuance! Such glorious depth!

I couldn't make these kinds of flavor notes up. Don't believe me? Sprinkle a little salt on your next Oatmeal Creme Pie and stand back as a world of flavor reveals itself to you. Check out the label's ingredient list for yourself, if you must. Mixed in among the Sorbitan Monostearate and Malic Acid you'll find cocoa, dried apples, raisins, milk, and molasses awash in an ocean of sugar and corn syrup (both high fructose and standard issue).

Your psyche picks up on those nuances, the hints of Old World flavor—though the extreme sugar content prevents most from sussing out those diverse flavors on any sort of conscious level. But as illustrated by another famous oat-based snack, the Fruity Oaty Bar, one should never underestimate the impact of subconscious delivery.

Get the Recipe

Oatmeal Creme Pies »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Scarfing down a sugary snack without preamble definitely gets the job done, but a little delayed gratification really amps up the satisfaction of certain sweets. These sweets seem to demand a little ritual and thought: Twisting and licking an Oreo, wearing a Fudge Stripe like an edible ring, punching out the middle of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, or folding and nibbling a Fruit Roll-Up into a fruity snowflake.

Fruit Roll-Up connoisseurs hold to a number of schools of thought when it comes to the best method for consumption. Some had avant-garde fathers who'd spread peanut butter over a strawberry Fruit Roll-Up, then re-roll it as some sort of kiddie maki. Traditionalists went with the fold-and-bite method, riddling them with scalloped holes, while fruity origami practitioners folded and shaped Fruit Roll-Ups into three dimensional designs. The Tyler Durdens among us crumpled them into a ball of fruit, just to destroy something beautiful.

Some wrapped Roll-Ups around an index finger while others rolled them into tubes or makeshift straws. Oh, you have not experienced artificial fruit flavor until you've had Kool-Aid through a coordinating Fruit Roll-Up straw.

But for me, nothing could beat Fruit Roll-Ups with the pull-out shapes. Call it a lack of imagination on my part, but I took immense pleasure in gentling peeling out the designs. Sometimes I'd slap them on my arm as a sugary tattoo, though I didn't actually care that much about the shapes themselves. Rather, I had a thing for the negative space they left behind.

However I did have a bit of a preference for the pizza themed Fruit Roll-Ups which came out during the height of Ninja Turtle Mania. I remember dutifully peeling out tiny mushrooms and micro-rounds of pepperoni to place atop the "crust", all while sitting about three inches from the television and hanging on Raphael's every word. Having a crush on a ninja turtle and routinely eating my body weight in strawberry "pizza" probably goes a long way to explain the BraveTart trajectory.

The problem with homemade Fruit Roll-Ups (or their cousin Fruit by the Foot) doesn't have to do with making them, so much as it has to do with giving yourself permission to make them. Look at recipes online and you'll find no one has resisted the urge to transform them from nutritionally abysmal morsels of junk food into naturally sweetened, dietitian-approved health food items.

Healthiness and dessert don't have to be mutually exclusive, but at the intersection of the two, Fruit Roll-Ups become fruit leather. I respect that some people want to cut sugar from their diet, but I don't want a FRINO (Fruit Roll-Up In Name Only). I want a sugar fest in bright, cheery colors that tastes like I remember.

This means following in Fruit Roll-Ups' footsteps and using a mildly flavored fruit for bulk (they use pears, but apples work nicely too), a ton of sugar, corn syrup for plasticity, and a tiny amount of some other fruit for flavor.

Now, if only I had some tiny pizza-topping shaped cutters...

Get the Recipe

Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

I don't know that there remains any praise for Biscoff that Francis Lam has not already articulated. Rather than try to out-prose the man who wrote of cookies that "taste beautifully and comfortingly of warm spices, caramel, and wheat", I've decided to tackle Biscoff from a different angle; as a chef, not a writer.

Typical "Biscoff" recipes call for a wide array of spices and also butter, two things totally not involved in real Biscoff. Cinnamon alone spices Biscoff and they rely on oil rather than butter for their unique texture; a dash of soy flour also comes into play, too. So. How to make them at home?

I started out with a little research and a found a recipe for "Dutch Butter Cakes" from a 19th century English cookbook aptly titled The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker's Assistant.

I scaled down the recipe dramatically, from 8 pounds of flour to 8 ounces and wrote the ingredients in a list from greatest to least so I could compare it in a more meaningful way to the ingredients on the Biscoff package (listed in the same order).

Dutch Butter Cakes: flour, brown sugar, butter, baking soda, cinnamon, water

Biscoff: flour, sugar, oil, brown sugar, baking soda, soy flour, cinnamon

With both relying on roughly the same set of ingredients, I had a good place to start.

For the first batch, I began by swapping out the butter for oil and slipping in a little soy flour. I used roasted soy flour, also known as kinako, because it has a sweeter, nuttier flavor than plain soy flour. Initially, I wanted to trade some of the brown sugar for white to more closely mimic the Biscoff formula, but had a suspicion that the blend may have had more to do with quirks of industrial production than flavor.

I got to baking and soon had a batch of super delightfully cinnamon-y cookies with a huge crunch, but not close enough by any stretch. Biscoff have a Frito-like balance of greasiness and crunch, just painted in cinnamon and sugar rather than corn and salt. My first attempt utterly lacked that quality; they were crisp but not rich. And despite relying solely on brown sugar, they had a pale tan color far lighter than a Biscoff.

On round two, I upped the oil a full ounce, decreased the water and switched to dark brown sugar. I also cranked the oven to 375° F after reading Biscoff's official description of how they achieve their caramelized flavor. This batch baked up darker, fattier, and with a more full fledged caramel flavor.

I made a half dozen more batches after that, tinkering with baking soda, kinako, and cinnamon to get the balance right and eventually found a ratio that tasted how I thought they should. I didn't know, however, how to master the Biscoff look. With Fauxreos, I paid tribute to the Oreo design with a little cornelli work. But Biscoff don't have such a classic appearance.

They come stamped in a wide array of styles and designs, including at least two unique variations for Delta; one that actually says DELTA and another simply bearing the Starfleet insignia Delta logo.

With at least six different designs already in official use, I figured why not introduce one more? I kept the shape rectangular, in homage of the original, with fluted edges to symbolize Biscoff's scalloped shape. And a heart because, well, you know why.

Get the Recipe

Homemade Biscoff »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Writing a nostalgia-fueled column about childhood junk foods has some occupational hazards. Trips to the grocery now involve huge chunks of time spent roaming the center aisles ("Chips Ahoy or Famous Amos? Oh, hello Pecan Sandies..."), my notebook at work has more pages devoted to Little Debbie than Petite Syrah, and my coworkers get irate when subjected to taste-testing the same thing twelve too many times ("Soft Batch, again?").

A small price to pay for the chance to revisit my childhood favorites, scrawl tasting notes like je nais se crap, and bore would-be snack thieves out of my kitchen. But what I love most: a chance to try out the sweets I missed the first time around, like Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts.

Before I began this quest, I would have told you I had boundless love for all Pop-Tartkind. But it turned out my love had bounds, strict ones at at that. My heart, smaller than I realized, had no room for anything but Frosted Strawberry. I carried a shameful Pop-Tart prejudice.

Maybe it came from my childhood love for Strawberry Shortcake coloring books, but I always perceived the Brown Sugar Cinnamon variety as somehow inferior. Cheap. I used negative language to describe them (B.S. Pop-Tarts; Poop-Tarts), found their coloring drab and made fun of their lack of sprinkles. I even, it shames me to say, once enjoyed watching a video of someone destroying Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts with a lawnmower.

But I've reformed. You sweet, brown-sugar-loving people have showed me a better way. Your constant, consistent urgings for a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tart recipe wore me down. Taught me that I couldn't love any Pop-Tart until I could love all Pop-Tarts. That Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts deserved a chance.

Due to your urgings (on both my blog and here on Serious Eats), I bought my first box not so long ago. And, to my total shock, I freaking loved them. The cinnamon flavor shines through without any creepy chemical nuance. Their monochromatic look seems a chic palate of beige and tan. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed licking their smooth frosting, unblemished by sprinkles, without embarrassing myself.

How I survived childhood without their companionship, I will never know. But to compensate, I sought out your memories by taking to Facebook with a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tart poll. Frosted or unfrosted?

Between my own personal page and the BraveTart page, I had over sixty responses bordering on rabid. Discounting inconclusive comments (e.g., "that just ain't right" and "yes!"), I had forty responses which broke down curiously: seven conservative votes for unfrosted, eighteen frosted enthusiasts, and fifteen advocates for buttered (specifically five for unfrosted and buttered; ten for frosted and buttered).

Buttered Pop-Tarts? <insert obligatory Paula Deen joke here.>

At any rate, getting a good brown sugar cinnamon filling at home involves more than just mixing up brown sugar and cinnamon (pfft, too obvious). Alone, brown sugar will liquify in the oven, bubble out around the edges and cool into a brittle, caramel-like substance. The filling needs something to give it structure. Something that can soak up the melting brown sugar and keep it from escaping. Something with a neutral flavor and absorbent texture. Something to keep the filling moist, even after baking. Something like... bread crumbs. Buttered bread crumbs.

These Pop-Tarts boast everything you remember about the originals and even newcomers like me can appreciate their warm, spicy-sweet flavor. Frosting lovers will enjoy their irresistibly lickable icing while purists can opt to go au naturel. The real question is: will you butter yours?

Get the Recipe

Homemade Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Last year, Robyn taught us about a magical place called the Netherlands where people enjoy life so much that they crown even the most mundane food, buttered bread, with hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles).

I don't know how this practice began, but I'd like to think that the people of the Netherlands have a sweeter constitution and dessert in the evening alone can't sustain them. To survive the long, dangerous hours between breakfast and dessert, they take chocolate vitamins to tide them over.

I've only had hagelslag once. (Well, technically, I've had them about twelve times if you subdivide the box my friend gave me into individual hagelslag experiences.) At the time, I didn't know about using buttered bread as a vehicle for transporting piles of sprinkles into my mouth. I just ate them out of hand; too delicious to waste with any competing flavors or textures.

You see, hagelslag have a more robust chocolate flavor than their American counterparts and a gentle crispness that makes ours seem waxy by comparison. I just wanted to eat them for their own sake, not as a garnish. It felt insulting to treat them like anything other than the main course.

While I rather enjoy the waxy texture and vaguely scratch-and-sniff cocoa flavor of the chocolate sprinkles I grew up eating, what I wouldn't give to enjoy some hagelslag again. Probably posh specialty gourmet shops sell them, but not in Lexington, Kentucky. And though I know I could just hop on Amazon and order some, I don't write a column about how to buy things on the internet now, do I?

I've made my own rainbow sprinkles for years; you could even say I've become something of a sprinkle sommelier. I have one recipe for sprinkles with a sharp bite and intense minerality, nuances of vintage I Can't Believe It's Yogurt (circa 1993 a great year for sprinkles). Another yields sprinkles with floral notes and a firm yet yielding texture; soft but not flaccid. Lively on the palate. A third has an herbaceous, mint forward flavor with strong vanilla undertones.

Look. If this guy can make a living as a water sommelier, surely you can grant me that all sprinkles are not created equal?

Perfecting a chocolate sprinkles recipe tripped me up for ages. Too much chocolate and they never crisp, remaining eternally tacky, like Glamor Shots from the eighties. Not enough chocolate and, well, why bother. Too much liquid and the sprinkles will ooze into malformed shapes, too little you won't have the strength needed to pipe them. Striking a balance between those factors proved trickier than anticipated, but after a half dozen adjustments I found the right ratio. Go ahead, get your sprink on.

Get the Recipe

Homemade Chocolate Sprinkles »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

Editor's note: Food & Wine has nominated our very own BraveTart, aka Stella Parks, for The People's Best New Pastry Chef. If you've enjoyed her recipes and stories, show your support by voting here.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

People who rag on Conversation Hearts as tasteless, chalky pills totally miss the point. You don't eat Conversations Hearts, you experience them. I can remember everything about them without having had a box in years.

It starts with the sound. The sugary clatter of countless hearts tumbling end over end, then a long, scraping woosh as they slide from the box, piling in my palm with jubilant clickety clicks. In a world painted with Skittles primary, neon Nerds, and psychedelic Sour Patch Kids, Conversation Hearts came as a pastel reprieve. Soothing watercolor candies.

They had a sweetly floral aroma, individual notes of fruit and mint melding into a unique fragrance unrivaled by the finest perfumer.

I remember their flavor inducing a dreamy synesthesiac state in my six year old self. The white ones sang of a teal-tinged wintergreen snowfall; yellow the rhythms of swaying banana trees; pink held the glory of all red candies dancing as one; green carried the scent of key lime blossoms on the wind; orange tasted like the memory of a clementine; purple spoke of some dark mystery.

And just when you thought they had no further joy to offer, the sweet, sweet poetry began:

SUP BABE

So they don't exactly seek out Bill Shakespeares to pen the slogans. People complain you can't write anything meaningful in a tweet and that has about 133 more characters of literary freedom.

Even so, I feel the tone of the overall conversation among these hearts has gotten a little scattershot. The heartfelt mottos of yesteryear (SOUL MATE and BE TRUE) mingle with the inane (REACH 4IT and GAME ON) like drunk texts from an ex on Valentine's Day, lurching between sophomoric come-ons and bursts of lucid sincerity.

HEY CUTIE. CALL ME. PLAY NOW? SO FINE. U MOVE ME. TRUE LOVE. URS 4EVR. WINK WINK. SEE YA.

And I thought FAX ME was crass.

As if that indignity didn't hurt enough, they've replaced their iconic box with the heart shaped plastic window with a more gaudily colored box with an illustration of a heart shaped window. Finally, the harsh reality of reformulated recipes stripped Conversations Hearts of all remaining charm. I sat down with Mr. BraveTart to sample our way through a box. Or, as he called the experience, "a roller-coaster of trauma."

The white ones had a harsh one-note menthol and yellow boasted all the banana flavor of car wash air freshener. Pink came out ahead, tasting stunningly like amoxicillin, that childhood elixir of yum. Green had a chemical sour and orange an even fainter citrus twang. Purple managed to taste like grape in a way not unlike a wad of Big League Chew scraped off a table at Showbiz Pizza.

And so I give you a recipe to right those wrongs. A formula for the flavors (and texture!) you remember so you can escape the charade on the market today. Rather than try to cram tiny messages onto the hearts with food pens, I say stick with letters instead and play a sweet, sweet game of scrabble this Valentine's Day.

Get the Recipe

Homemade Conversation Hearts »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Imagine, if you will, a cage match between Butterfinger, 5th Avenue, and Clark Bar. Who would emerge victorious to claim the crispiest, crunchiest, peanut butteriest crown? Moreover, how might we then usurp the throne for ourselves? Let us first define the rules of engagement.

Crispety: a pleasantly brittle texture which requires little effort to eat. Crispness tends to demonstrate a degree of subtlety, refinement or delicacy.

Crunchety, however, indicates a degree of brittleness so intense the very act of chewing creates a sound audible to bystanders.

Peanut buttery, a classic example of advertising equivocation, describes qualities evocative of but not necessarily derived from peanut butter. For example: in a contest between Nutella, almond butter, and yogurt, almond butter would be peanut butteriest, whereas in a contest between yogurt, popcorn, and candy canes, yogurt would win.

Reigning champ Butterfinger certainly brings crunchety to the table. It has serious bite. A mighty crunch yielding to crispety delight, power bowing before beauty. But peanut buttery? Um...Only vaguely. I mean, I get it. Compared to aforementioned yogurt, popcorn and candy canes it's the peanut butteriest! Other qualities worth mentioning: the freakish orange color, waxy chocolate-flavored coating, and creepy GMO ingredients that got this candy bar banned from Germany.

Sleeper bar 5th Avenue has definite crunch, less so than Butterfinger but in a I-probably-won't-chip-my-teeth sort of way you can really get behind. It has a delightfully crispety quality and a peanut forward flavor. If the magnitude of awesome contained in retro commercials counted for extra points, 5th Avenue would win in a landslide.

Underdog Clark Bar doesn't pack much punch in the crunch department, but makes up for it with the extreme delicacy of its crispety crispness. It shatters into a million flaky bits, leaves of candy showering down like confetti at a parade. It has a pronounced molasses flavor, but not much to call peanut buttery.

So the match ends in a trifecta: Butterfinger taking crunchety, Clark Bar winning crispety, and 5th Avenue with peanut buttery. Now, to Dr. Frankensteining our way to the union of all three. Reverse engineering the Butterfinger has proved so difficult that millions have simply given up, debasing themselves with melted candy corn mashed up with peanut butter. That's like taking your kid to an abandoned warehouse and calling it Disneyland.

How much denial does it take to chew a wad of candy corn infested peanut butter and conclude, "OMG, tastes just like the real thing!"? It may very well taste most excellent, and I won't hesitate to declare candy corn both my favorite candy and corn, but the egregious lack of crispety and crunchety, two-thirds of Butterfinger's identity, pushes my buttons too hard.

With the candy bar set that low, I thought about dipping some peanut brittle in chocolate and calling it a day. But no. Butterfingers was the buried treasure in my trick or treat bag and Clark Bars the only thing in the Honesty Box I'd pay for when no one was looking. I owed it to crispety and crunchety to stick it to candy corn once and for all.

My first attempt entailed making peanut brittle loaded with baking soda, hoping enough bubbles would aerate the structure. The result brought me one step closer perfecting a peanut butter jawbreaker recipe, but left me a thousand light years from Butterfinger.

Second batch involved peanut butter puff pastry, which in hindsight seems stupid, but at the time constituted an attempt to prove I could get flakey and peanut buttery in the same place at the same time. While I did just that, without crispety and crunchety it was a honky tonk parade.

But it got me thinking about lamination in puff pastry, the way butter and dough fold together to create hundreds of superfine layers. Could I make laminated peanut brittle? Hadn't I done something like that before?

After some brain scratching, I remembered a French confection called leaf croquant. I'd only made it once before, about twelve years ago. It traditionally contains ground almonds, obscuring its Butterfinger nature. But once I made the connection, I only had to hammer out the ratio of peanuts, molasses and corn flakes. Yes, corn flakes.

It tastes like a Butterfinger but flakier. Like a 5th Avenue but crunchier. Like a Clark Bar but peanut butterier. Everything you ever loved about those bars, but covered in your favorite chocolate. If only I could figure out what to call it.

Clarkfinger Avenue?

Get the Recipe

Homemade Butterfingers »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

The contents of this post may suddenly disappear when they realize how much classified information it contains. Please read this quickly, before they find out. We don't have much time.

In 1985, Ed Levine worked on a top secret project to invent a new snack, the Reese's Cookie Dough Cups. But he couldn't stabilize the recipe and it failed. So he invented a transdimensional snack window that would allow him to observe an alternate culinary universe. He theorized if the Cookie Dough Cup existed in another universe and he could find it, he could then stabilize the recipe in our universe too.

He used the device to observe an alternate version of himself ("AlterEd") on the brink of inventing Cookie Dough Cups. But at the crucial moment, a distraction prevented AlterEd from realizing he had perfected the recipe and he gave up in defeat. Our Ed determined to travel to the alternate universe to save the recipe, lest both universes go on without it.

To do this, he created a device to bridge the two universes and used it to cross over. But instead of helping AlterEd, Ed ended up kidnapping the Cookie Dough Cups and keeping them for himself. Naturally, AlterEd was pissed! So he became the Secretary of Noms and sent an army of shapeshifting chefs over to our universe to get the Cookie Dough Cups back.

Long story short, a bunch of shenanigans happened, I joined Serious Eats Fringe Division to investigate some super freaky snacks and boom! After months of working together building up mutual respect and professional admiration, Cookie Dough Cups and I fell in love. Blah, blah, blah, I got kidnapped, learned how to use my super powers, swam out to the Statue of Liberty... Anyhoo, Cookie Dough Cups and I developed a plan to help unite both universes and restore the balance when suddenly—

What was I talking about? What am I doing here, anyway?

Have I ever told you about this recurring dream I have about a mysterious Reese's Cup? Except it's not like any Reese's Cup I've ever made before. Something's different about it. Somehow, I know I love it, even though I can't remember its name.

Oh, like I'm the only one excited about a new episode of Fringe tonight?

Get the Recipe

Cookie Dough-Filled Reese's Cups »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

A single serving of Jell-O chocolate pudding, the kind we ate as kids*, came packed with the full spectrum of nutritional evil: an entire ounce of sugar and ten percent of an adult's daily sodium, plus a handful of unpronounceables. Even so, it got to squeak by as a wholesome snack moms could feel good about 'cause the Cos reminded them that it was made from fresh milk.

*The recipe used at Jell-O nowadays has cut back significantly on sugar and salt.

How did that work, exactly? Did five percent calcium go farther in the eighties? I don't mean to sound critical of Jell-O itself (a paragon of milk chocolatey satisfaction!) only the tactics once used to shill it. Nutritionally abysmal, calorically empty, vitamin deficient, sugar laden, fatty McFatterson desserts are kinda my thing.

I just don't like operating under the delusion that some nominal calcium can act like a nutritional Band-Aid. I love nutrition. I'd just prefer to keep it in vegetables where it belongs. I live secure in the knowledge that I deserve a bowl of chocolate pudding. I don't have to justify it or excuse it.

So let's free ourselves from the prison of these wholesome delusions and enjoy chocolate pudding for its merits.

What made Jell-O pudding in the little plastic cup so exceptional compared to the instant variety, or even homemade, related directly to its texture. It had a slick silkiness that made all other puddings seem as thick and heavy as paste. You could suck up a spoonful through closed teeth, letting it flood your mouth with creamy chocolate wonder. And what can compare to the exquisite pleasure of licking clean the chocolate stained tinfoil lid?

You can't make chocolate pudding like that with eggs; they lend an unwelcome richness and a yolky flavor vaults the flavor straight past pudding to pot de creme territory. And while cornstarch-thickened puddings have a lovely creaminess, they sit more heavily on the tongue. A major bonus when it comes to a slice of chocolate cream pie, but not so much when it comes to pudding snacks.

The Jell-O folks do it with an arsenal of industrial shenanigans (e.g., sodium stearoyl lactylate) which we can skip by using...wait for it...gelatin. An ingredient ironically not used in Jell-O pudding.

Get the Recipe

Homemade Jell-O Style Chocolate Pudding »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

Editor's Note: Today's your chance to get to know Stella Parks, the genius behind Bravetart, who has guided us in the making of Fauxreos and homemade Fig Newtons, DIY 3 Musketeers bars, and more. Got questions for Stella? A request for copycat baking projects? Leave them in the comments.

[Photograph: Robbie Clark]

Name: Stella Parks
Location: Lexington, Kentucky
Occupation: Pastry Chef
Website/Twitter: Bravetart.com, @thebravetart

Tell us about your pastry education. How did you get into baking?
At CIA, I specialized in baking and pastry which covers a lot of classic French technique, but also American regional baking, chocolate work and confectionery. I had some crash courses in the savory kitchen, how to make stock, how to break down a chicken. I spent all my time with sugar. I started baking with boxed cake mixes as a little kid. I mostly was into adding food color to the cake and frosting and making pretty things; I turned all of my class science projects into baking projects.

When did you start your blog? What inspired you?
I came in to blogging a little oddly, I think. My photographer friend Rosco decided he wanted to shoot more food photography so he started hanging out with me once a week to take pictures of whatever I had made. He enjoyed exploring a different side of photography, and I enjoyed seeing pictures of the things I'd made.

Making pretty dessert is my job, but those desserts always lived and died undocumented. Seeing them in a photo really energized me. After about six months, Rosco wanted to put a cookbook together and I was like, "holy crap that's way too much work." So we ended up compromising with a blog. That was late summer 2010.

What is your favorite dessert to make?
I love making ice cream sandwiches; they offer a lot of customization so I never get bored. But in spite of all the fancy possibilities, the Neapolitan one I made over the summer is probably my all time favorite.

What was the most memorable dessert you had last year?
I went to Tiny's and the Bar Upstairs the last time I was in New York. I'm twitter-friends with their pastry chef, Anna (@verysmallanna), and I've always longed to try her desserts because she seems exactly like my kinda girl/chef. So I went with my friends Francis and Ken and we ordered one of everything. So it wasn't just one dessert that was so memorable (well, her quince tart was killer), but the effect of having all of them at once that made it such a standout.

[Photograph: Sarah Jane Sanders]

What are your guilty pleasures?
Cereal. It doesn't matter what kind. I will play the whole "just a splash more milk! Well, whoopsie just a bit more cereal" game until I've killed the box. Every time. I had to ban cereal from our house because I gain my chief pleasure in life from eating an entire box. Having "a bowl of cereal" is for quitters; I see boxes as individual serving sizes.

Describe your perfect meal.
My perfect meal has nothing to do with the food itself, but the circumstances. A lazy day off, spent hanging out with John, drinking wine and playing video games in between babysitting a pot of stew or a braise or something that doesn't have much active time. Crusty bread would have to be involved. I love sitting down to a meal when I've had a chance to anticipate it all day.

What food won't you eat?
Anything with a sharp anise or licorice flavor. I had an indescribably bad run-in with Absinthe when I lived in Japan (who knew real absinthe was legal there, haha!). Now, anything that even hints at being in the same flavor family churns my stomach.

What would you like to try but haven't yet?
Goose. Like a roast goose, not foie. I never see it on menus and it doesn't turn up at the grocery. I'll have to special order some...

Favorite food person?
This question is doing to my brain what dividing by zero does to a computer. I've lost forty five minutes of my life just trying to process it.

When did you first realize you were a serious eater?
I grew up in a family of serious eaters, so the bigger revelations was when I realized other people weren't. As a kid, I had a friend over at my house and asked her what she wanted to eat for a snack. She said, "I don't care." I couldn't fathom genuinely not caring about what you wanted to eat.

What do your family and friends think of your food obsessions?
I've worked in restaurants since I turned fourteen, went to culinary school straight out of high school, and have never held a non-restaurant job. This has severely tainted my friendship-pool in favor of crazed maniacs. My family pretty much regards me as a gravy train of dessert (ganache train?), so they're quite supportive.

Favorite food sites or blogs?
I make almost every single thing Ben posts on You Fed a Baby Chili? and I am waiting with bated breath for the next entry from Finding Sachi. As a twitter addict, I'd be remiss to not mention how I live for tweets from @adoxograph and @verysmallanna. Their professional words of wisdom keep me sane.

Everyone has a go-to person they call for restaurant recommendations. Who's yours?
I utterly rely on my best friend Pritters. She knows the best places to eat wherever you go from San Francisco to Chicago, New York and Vietnam. She knows the word on the street, any street. She's a sage of deliciousity.

And what's the best recommendation she's ever given you?
She took me to Prune for brunch on my last NYC trip and I had this bowl of carbonara I just can't stop thinking about. They executed every single element with extreme perfection, from the thickness of the the pasta to the grind of the pepper. I'm allergic to pork, so I got really, really sick after eating it. Completely worth it.

What is your favorite meal of the day and where do you get it?
Breakfast. My husband makes breakfast for me every morning along with a big pot of tea. It's the one meal of the day where I have zero participation. It's my safe place.

Do you ever cook savory food? What's the best dish you make?
I cook about half the time, but I am very uncomfortable with ingredients made out of not-sugar and not-chocolate. I don't know that I have a specific "best dish," but I love making fresh pasta. You can see I don't stray too far from my doughy baker roots.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Like loose change lurking in couch cushions, half eaten boxes of Nilla Wafers populate our cupboards; buried treasure lost amid the Seven Cs (cookies, crackers, chocolate, cereal, candy, chips, and cola). No Pantry Pirate ever sets out to find Nilla Wafers, instead, Nilla Wafers reveal themselves with the time is right. Just as despair sets in, the weary snacker sets eyes on their golden shores.

When did I buy that box? Can I even remember? No matter. Like fine wine, Nilla Wafers don't spoil, they mature. They don't go stale, they acquire exquisite tenderness. They don't lose their flavor, they become more nuanced.

To the uninitiated, Nilla Wafers may seem nothing more than sweet Legos; building blocks for banana pudding and other sundry semi-homemade desserts. Indeed Nilla soars to new heights when sandwiching chocolate frosting, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter or Nutella. Each wafer has a certain heft, a sturdiness making it the perfect scoop for ice cream, pudding, Cool Whip....they're the original eco-friendly spoon.

But as naturally as they play the canvas, Nilla Wafers stand on their own. Or alongside a glass of milk, or possibly apple juice. You might call their enigmatic texture softly crisp. Part cake, part cookie, part mystery. They have a bit of a toasty flavor, a vague sweetness, just a hint of vanilla. (Well, vanillin. Ever wonder why they're called Nilla Wafers? Let's put it this way, using the word "vanilla" to describe their product would prompt a series of truth-in-advertising law suits.)

These Nilla Knockoffs will hold up in banana pudding or tiramisu much like the original, transforming into a sodden yet toothsome puddin' sponge. They last forever (I've got a bag two months old still aging at the restaurant as I search for the upper limit of their shelf life...), get better with time, and have a simple flavor and light texture that makes eating them by the handful all to easy.

Get the Recipe

Nilla Knockoffs »

P.S. If anyone wants to use these images for their homemade Nilla Wafer Mobile or race car just let me know...

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

The variety of sanctioned nomenclature for Stylized Animal Snacks boggles the mind. "Wait, what's a Stylized Animal Snack?" you ask. Well, I'd call 'em Animal Crackers, but you might've called them Animal Cookies. Unless you called them Circus Animals. Or did you prefer Zoo or Carousel Animals?

Some of these have frosting while others have icing and some complain that some come plain. Of the plain sort, we have Barnum's "Animal Crackers" which taste like cookies and come in a box and Carley's "Animal Cookies" which taste like crackers and come in a bag.

If you'd like to sugar coat the issue, you'll have to choose between cookies "fully" or "lightly" frosted. Keebler, unwilling to miss out on any potential consumer base, offers both frosted animal crackers and iced animal cookies. Still waiting to see if they'll debut frosted animal cookies and iced animal crackers to round out the collection.

The glazed animals (to use a neutral term) can come in white, or pink and white, the latter of which may or may not be bedazzled with rainbow sprinkles. And just when it seems all of the possible permutations of the above options have been calculated, you realize you forgot about Japan.

Enough! Give me a damned animal cracker. No sugar rush, no icing or frosting or whatever you call it, no sprinkles, no boxcar. I want the kind of off-brand business you can only find in some vending machine at an abandoned rest stop somewhere between Pennsylvania and Kentucky. The kind of cracker that never tastes quite like you want but perhaps like what you need. Barely sweet, hyper crisp and just a little playful.

Don't get me wrong, I have every intention of tackling the frosted, iced, sprinkled, and cookie versions over my illustrious industrial copy catting career. But for now, with the holiday excess behind and New Year's Resolutions ahead, the simplicity of a cracker is just what I need.

Get the Recipe

Homemade Animal Crackers »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.

[Photographs: Sarah Jane Sanders]

The mere sight of an Oreo stirs up feelings in me disturbingly like love. Not, of course, a torrid, star crossed love. Or even a simple storybook love. No, Oreos give you the kind of love only found in a long term relationship. They're familiar, comforting and pretty good in bed. (Oh, like you never eat cookies in bed?)

And while Oreos never disappoint, they never offer excitement or surprise either. Except around the holidays.

Like seeing someone you love in a new place, in new clothes, with a new attitude. Suddenly, all of that familiarity vanishes and you can only think of how good they look in red. Or how you can't believe you've never played in the snow together. Or delectable they look in that fluffy white robe.

I'm talking about Nabisco's Limited Edition Winter Oreos, Candy Cane Oreos, and Creamy White Chocolate Oreos.

Of them all, Winter Oreos offer the most superficial charm. Taking a page from Number 6's human seduction playbook, Winter Oreos wear a sultry red. The culinary equivalent of donning a fur trimmed red hat and singing "Santa Baby." Kinda cute, but not very clever.

Candy Cane Oreos, however, come dashing through the snow, hell-bent on making spirits bright. Nothing says "Christmas Spirit" quite like a candy cane. These Oreos wear a charming snowflake stamp on top with a sporty swirl of red and white inside. But they do more than look pretty. They have an addictive peppermint flavor (fact: Chocolate carved Peppermint's name on a tree in the 6th grade) and, even better, the crystalline crunch of candy canes bits inside.

To continue the cookies-as-Christmas-songs motif, Creamy White Chocolate Oreos would definitely sing, "Baby It's Cold Outside." One look at the heavy coating of pseudo-white Chocolate and you'll be all like, "I ought to say no, no, no." But White Chocolate Oreo, having none of it, lays it on thick: "Your eyes are like starlight now." Next thing you know the wrapper's on the floor...

The problem with the Limited Edition Holiday Oreos? They really mean business with that "Limited" nonsense. I've never even spotted the Candy Cane variety in the wild. So rather than drive from store to store trying find something that may not even exist, why not make some for yourself?

Swipe a few candy canes off the tree and fall in love with Fauxreos all over again.

Get the Recipe

Limited Edition Holiday Fauxreos »

About the Author: Stella Parks suffers from an unhealthy obsession with recreating the mass produced snacks of her childhood, but ironically is employed by a Frenchman to make the high brow desserts of his childhood. She blogs that dichotomy at bravetart.com and can be followed on Twitter at @thebravetart.