We immediately snapped out of our food comas. Pop Rocks? The carbonated candy of stomach-exploding legend from the Eighties? The same, our server confirmed. "We’ll take two.”

The dessert is the creation of Urbana's executive chef John Critchley, a former pastry chef, and the restaurant's sous chef Ben Schnable. “Ben loves to have fun with desserts and wanted to add a sparkling element with popping candy, so I encouraged him to play,” says Critchley. “Then he came up with a really good lemon curd to be a topping for a clafoutis, but that wasn’t working so we decided to spread the curd on cherry pound cake and top with the candy at the very last.”

The Pop Rocks are not called out on the menu, only hinted at in the name, “Sparkling Lemon,” for an element of surprise—a surprise that hits you at first bite. One spoonful of the dense cake slathered in creamy curd and Pop Rocks and your whole mouth is tingling. “We flavor the popping candy with citrus acid and lemon zest to give it that Sour Patch sort of taste,” says Critchley.

Since Critchley took over the kitchen in December, he has been changing the menu about twice a season. So don’t expect the Pop Rocks-sprinkled cake to last into the fall. “I like to change the menu as a way to train the staff and evolve the restaurant,” he says.

Makes me wonder what will pop up next.

Photo courtesy of Urbana

Y&H had his doubts about this, but Chow's wine and spirits guy, Jordan Mackay, alleviated them quickly. He admits to as many misses as hits in this funny little vid.

Video courtesy of Chow.com

If you ask me what I remember from the Halloweens of my youth, it's always the candy. Not the costume, but the candy. In fact, as I'm writing this, I can't think of a single costume I wore as a kid, save for that ridiculous one-piece clown outfit that my grandmother had sewn for the family (and our mom made each of us kids wear at the appropriate age, as if it were a rite of passage to deal with the utter embarrassment of the damn thing).

Yes, Halloween was always about scoring candy. After our evening rounds, my older sister and I would spread out our loot on the living room floor and negotiate trades for the candies we liked. I always hated Sweet Tarts; those were easy to give up. Most of the miniature chocolate bars were non-negotiable; Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth, Nestle Crunch (especially Nestle Crunch!), and Snickers were my protected players. Mounds, Butterfingers, and Almond Joy were imminently tradable.  The candy corn were like minor league players; you might have to throw in a few to complete a trade.

Junk food was obviously my reason for wearing any clown outfit on Halloween. I've mostly given up junk food as an adult — although the occasional afternoon candy bar craving still hits — but I still associate Halloween with food. So do a lot of others, including chefs and bartenders.

After the jump, I've aggregated a number of Halloween recipes, events, odd-ball items, and party round-ups from around the web (thanks all for doing the work already!). Many of these dishes, recipes, and cocktails sound, alternately, funny and inventive and maybe even tasty (or nasty). Frankly, I miss the thrill of trick or treating for my haul.

• BrightestYoungThings has compiled a list of Halloween food events and scary cocktails.
• Speaking of scary cocktails, The Passenger has boiled up some hellish concoction called El Zombie, which the Brothers Brown will serve up to the brave (or foolish) during their Halloween Fiesta.
• Y&H's very own Stefanie Gans has compiled an extensive list of Halloween drinks for the occasion. Best cocktail name ever: Brain Hemorrhage.
• Metrocurean has a list of seven scary dishes to try.
• Serious Eats counts down the best and worst Halloween candies.
• Chow wants to help you dress as your favorite celebrity chef for Halloween. (If you go as Paula Deen, just make sure your pants fall down at some point.)
• Chow also suggests you make your own candy this year.
• Girl Meets Food has compiled a fairly comprehensive list of events under the  heading of Ghoul Meets Food.
• Twenty ways to cook a pumpkin from Epicurious.
• Food & Wine makes a skull cake.
• Metromix has your guide to the local party spots.

Photo by StarMama via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

These delicate, egg-shaped confections are Rob Kingsbury's contribution to the spring and Easter seasons at ACKC Cocoa Bar. The chocolate shells (both white and dark) contain some piped yellow frosting, which is sprinkled with red sugar crystals to resemble paprika. They're ingenious  — and, sadly, more delightful to gaze upon than eat. I found them too sweet for my palate.

The modest storefront on Georgia Avenue, next to the historic Silver Spring Post Office, tells the newcomer next to nothing about the company's past, even with "The Original"  descriptor mysteriously affixed to its name. As if there are numerous copycat Velatis caramel shops out there.

No, you have to walk inside, stare at the two large vintage photos on the wall, and talk to a clerk to get a glimpse of the complex story behind this caramel maker, whose D.C. roots can be traced back to 1866 to a store at Ninth and G streets.

But even that exercise won't tell you everything about Velatis, such as why the "The Original" tagline is affixed to its name. Or why, in the late 1990s, a guy named Tim Beyer, a former postal worker and son of a retired caramel maker at Velatis, started selling candy under the Vatores brand but marketed it as based on the original Velatis' recipe.

Then again, perhaps you don't care about any of this ancient intrigue. Perhaps you only care about this one important fact: that after an absence of nearly 15 years, Velatis has returned to the D.C. area. You can, once again, walk in the front door of Velatis (now in Silver Spring) and walk back out with a pound of chewy, molar-sticking, marshmallow-stuffed vanilla caramels or soft, sugary chocolate caramels that taste as if the shop has a grass-fed Jersey cow pastured nearby, producing rich, buttery milk on command.

Velatis' current owners, the Servais family, moved back here in December after working out of a shop in Maidens, Va., since 2002. Amy Servais says the Virginia store was just too rural and that most of Velatis' mail-order customers were still based in the D.C./Bethesda/Silver Spring area, often the offspring of parents or grandparents or great grandparents who used to wait in line for a box of caramels at the G Street store.

"Velatis caramels were somewhat synonymous with being a Washingtonian and were, for my family, one of the most coveted traditions of Christmas," Joan Mattingly of Silver Spring told the MetropoList in July 2009 in the Washington Post. "My grandmother always had a bowl filled with the chocolate and vanilla treats at Christmas..."

Amy Servais understands these customers. She and her family have had a similar, multi-generational relationship with Velatis. "I was raised on it, let's say," says Servais. "It's just been our family tradition."

It's been a tradition for thousands of families. After a brief stint in Richmond, Salvatore (or Salvator) Velati moved his candy store to downtown D.C., where he sold not only caramels but also produce, sandwiches, and what some considered the best ice cream in the District. In a 1999 Washington Post story, food writer Walter Nicholls painted a detailed, nostalgic picture of the shop:

Many would recall Pauline Beyer, daughter of the founder, who managed Velati's until her death at age 89 in 1963. Day in, day out she sat at a small, wooden desk in the window near the G Street entrance of the shop. Pauline was said to have run the store with an iron fist. She greeted regular customers, did the paperwork. She was always at the ready to complain, to anyone who would listen, about the ever-rising cost of cream.

The 9th Street display window at the main entrance was Pauline's world as well. The fancy, tasseled, gold satin balloon shades, extensive collection of delicate, footed Dresden candy dishes and framed copy of Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy were her touches. In busy downtown, where one blank or bland facade blended into the next, Velati's European style was exceptional.

That shop would fall to the wrecking ball in 1972 when crews were building the Metro. Velatis then moved into Woodward & Lothrop, the flagship of the department store chain known commonly as Woodies. In 1980, Woodies bought the Velatis business, including its recipes, but 15 years later, would be forced to sell it after the chain went into bankruptcy.

That's where the Servais family came into the picture. Amy Servais was living in Florida during the mid-1990s, fresh out of college. Her sister, Michelle, called to let her know that Woodward & Lothrop had gone belly up and that their beloved Velatis was up for sale. The sisters wanted to buy it.

There was a small problem, though. Woodies didn't actually own Velatis. The flagship store, including the caramel business and other stores, had been sold to JCPenney. So Amy Servais hopped on a plane to Plano, Texas, JCPenney's corporate headquarters, to try to scoop up the candy shop. She and her family ultimately beat out several other bidders to buy Velatis and they promptly started a mail-order business in Tampa. Five years later, in 2002, they moved operations to Maidens.

"We're using the same recipes that we purchased," says Amy Servais, "which we were told were the original recipes [from 1866]."

Unfortunately for the Servais family, they weren't the only ones interested in reviving the sweet chewy candies of Velatis.  In the late 1990s, Tim Beyer started selling caramels under the Vatores brand; he told the Post that he wanted to "carry on the tradition" of Velatis, which his great-great-grandfather founded and where his father, William, used to make the candy for years.  Wrote Nicholls in his 1999 article:

Dad is all for it. "I like the idea, as long as he does it slowly," says the proud former caramel king. "I've tried his caramels. He knows when they're done. They're as good as mine."

Tim Beyer has his own concerns. He knows his caramels are just the consistency they should be. It's the name. Will the name change work? Will old-time customers recognize the pink box with the big "V"? Maybe. Maybe not.

The problem was, Beyer didn't own the name Velatis. The Servais family did.  So Beyer opted for the Vatores brand, hoping old-timers would make the connection between the brands in taste, if not in name.

This had to be the reason, I figured, that "The Original" descriptor had been attached to the Velatis name. So I asked Amy Servais that very question, and she sort of laughed. It wasn't a mocking laugh. It was the laughter of recognition. She had been researching that very issue herself.

"The Original" tagline goes all the way back to Salvatore Velati, who apparently divided his stores between two sons. At some point, Amy Servais says, both of Salvatore's sons had two stores each. One son called his "The Original Velatis," while that other used a stranger locution: "The Originator of Velatis."

"I guess it was a little feud," says Servais, who has found newspaper clippings in which the battling sons had placed ads right next to each other. She plans to display some of her research when the new Velatis "officially" reopens during the week of March 15-20.

So what about Tim Beyer and Vatores? Velatis bought out Vatores and Vatores merged several years ago, and Beyer occasionally makes appearances at Velatis events although Beyer doesn't have an official job in the company. The old Vatores Web site and toll-free number now roll over to Velatis.

"It was good for business," Amy Servais says about the merger.

Peanut brittle and I haven't been on speaking terms since, oh, junior high when, with a full set of adult chompers, I realized that one of two things will happen when I bite into the hardened treat: I'll either crack a bicuspid (or feel like I did) or spend the rest of the afternoon prying the sticky matter from the divots in my teeth.

No thank you. The joys of brittle, I determined long ago, simply weren't worth the dental troubles.

Earlier this week, however, a friend and colleague gave me a 12-ounce bag of Betty Jane's "gourmet" peanut brittle, which was made by one of her Vienna neighbors. My friend even gave me a sample from her own stock, which was down to small broken pieces, crumbs, and brown dust. She was practically embarrassed by her rate of peanut brittle consumption.

Less than two days later, I understand. My 12 ounces are gone (although I had some help from Loose Lips, who obviously made unauthorized raids on my stash while I was away), and now I'm looking for my next fix. Fast!

Betty Jane's brittle is different from just about any other I've sampled over the years, which, admittedly, has been few. (See opening paragraph above.) It doesn't have the kind of tooth-cracking density that I've come to associate with brittle. It's airy without sacrificing crunchiness, and it's sweet without sacrificing good, salty peanut flavor. Now, I'll admit that Betty Jane's brittle isn't the purest expression of goober art. I've had others that tasted as if the brittle were pulled straight from the Virginia soil.

But no brittle has addicted me as quickly as Betty Jane's. I swear to the God of Goober Peas that I couldn't stop eating these irregular pieces of brittle. At one point, I decided to check the ingredient list to make sure it didn't include heroin or meth or something. Instead, I noticed a rather Old School list of baking ingredients: light corn syrup, cornstarch, even margarine. I was reminded of my own run-in with the Betty Crocker-era of cooking. It was yet another reminder that tasty things can come from humble ingredients.

Betty Jane's recipe, it turns out, comes from someone named — what else? — Betty Jane, who kept her seven children stuffed with confections of all kinds. But it was her brittle that everyone loved, according to this backgrounder, and it's her brittle that daughter, Bobbie and son-in-law John, are making and selling as an homage to Betty Jane. They do it right there in Vienna.

You can order it online, or you can purchase it at several stores in the area.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

According to the New York Times, Americans seem to be coping with the economic downturn by gobbling down obscene amounts of Necco Wafers and other sugary treats. I read this piece with great interest, since my own candy intake appears to be rising. 'Course, I blamed it on blogging, which is probably worse on your health (and the environment) than red meat.

Reports the Times:

The recession seems to have a sweet tooth. As unemployment has risen and 401(k)’s have shrunk, Americans, particularly adults, have been consuming growing volumes of candy, from Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls to Gummy Bears and cheap chocolates, say candy makers, store owners and industry experts.

Theories vary on exactly why. For many, sugar lifts spirits dragged low by the languishing economy. For others, candy also provides a nostalgic reminder of better times. And not insignificantly, it is relatively cheap.

Given this information, Y&H wonders if other restaurants will follow the lead of Liberty Tavern and replace their brunch dessert bars with candy ones.

But now the Food and Drug Administration is changing that. Earlier this week, the FDA issued a rule requiring manufacturers to list cochineal dye among the ingredients (rather than concealing it as "artificial colors" or "color added"). As this ABC News story reports, the new requirement has nothing to do with alerting consumers to a potential a gross-out factor:

Instead, the FDA is doing so to help prevent dangerous anaphylactic reactions in people who are allergic to the insects and are unknowingly ingesting and/or rubbing the colorful bug powder on their faces.

The labeling of "these color additives in all foods and cosmetics is necessary to ensure their safe use," stated the FDA report issued Monday.

The new requirement was, in part, a response to a citizen petition about the allergic reactions, first launched in 1998 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, according to the FDA report. But the final rule doesn't go as far as the center had wanted: an overall ban of the ingredient or a required label to explain that carmine is "insect-derived."

"We wanted people to know that it comes from an insect," said Michael Jacobson, the center's executive director. "Vegetarians, Jews, anybody else who has concerns about eating animal products should know that."