One of the oddest seasonal products of 2012 were Bacon Candy Canes. We all know how popular bacon has become over the past two years; with everything from bacon flavored butter and bacon vodka to bacon lip gloss hitting the shelves it was a bacon overload. After suffering a heart attack I swore off bacon but I had to give in and get a couple boxes of these to try out and to give to my bacon-loving friends.
Taste wise, the bacon flavoring is there but it’s not that succulent greasy flavor you are hoping for. They are shaped exactly like a standard candy cane and have a white body with red stripe; that is where the deceitful part comes in. They look just like the boxed candy canes so you can mix one of these in with the others and see the look of shock on someone’s face when they start sucking away on it. With an average selling price of about $5.00 for a box of six pieces these are obscenely priced but they were one of the most requested items of the season in this part of the country.
Several different companies made bacon candy canes for the 2012 Christmas season; some of them had a straight bacon flavoring while others had the coating over a regular peppermint piece. Those were the most disgusting because you had the bacon taste in your mouth and then you hit the peppermint layer. None of the boxes I purchased contained actual bacon; they were all made with a bacon flavoring. I am sure that someone, somewhere has come up with a true bacon candy cane but those are going to be homemade and probably hand crafted by a cardiologist.
Nutritionally there’s not a lot of difference between these and regular candy canes; anyone that says that these are made with “real” bacon or renderings are eating something other than the mass produced bacon canes. One bacon candy cane contains 75 calories and 16 grams of carbohydrates (almost all of which are from sugar); they are fat free and sodium free. When you read the ingredients you see that these contain “artificial bacon flavoring” so the internet melodrama about them causing heart attacks and clogging arteries are nothing more than a cheap marketing ploy.
If the regular five inch canes are not enough, you can also get the Jumbo Bacon Candy Cane that packs over three ounces of bacon goodness in to one solid piece. I tried to find these locally and no one had them but I knew if I ordered them online they would probably arrive broken. As a word of warning, if you are going to snag these on clearance you are going to want to store them in an area where pets can not get to them. Even though the regular boxed candy canes are individually wrapped, it didn’t stop my dogs from almost constantly eyeing them up when they were on the tree or sniffing the boxes that were wrapped and ready to be given out as presents.
