SF&WB team shares holiday snack and bakery favorites

Baked treats, savory snacks, and sweet confections are common at many end-of-year holiday celebrations. In addition to the homemade goodies families whip up and share at clan gatherings, folks enjoy munching on prepackaged goods at parties. Some of these treats have become regular, important parts of these yearly shindigs and holiday memories.

The team that puts together Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery and Candy Industry daily is very much into traditional seasonal snacks and baked goods, with certain delectables (handcrafted and CPG) regularly invited to their own holiday events. This year, the very talented Senior Art Director Sarah Zagacki took many of those lists of staff holiday favorites and turned them into SF&WB/Candy Industry Unwrapped, a play on the annual personalized Wrapped lists that music streamer Spotify gifts its users every December. You can get a peek at all the fun graphics Sarah put together of everyone’s top five holiday snack/bakery treats, and top 5 seasonal candies, on the post on SF&WB’s LinkedIn page from a few days ago.

Here are some of the sweet highlights:

• Staples at Ms. Zagacki’s holiday feasts include the Salatowski family sugar cookies (a recipe passed down for generations), McKee Foods’ Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes—which I just learned come in a giant, non-edible inflatable version you can decorate your home with)—and Sanders Sea Salt Caramels
• Senior Online Experience Manager Hillary Harris enjoys homemade, artfully decorated sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies topped with Hershey’s Kisses (we call them “peanut butter blossoms” in the Spinner family), Queen Anne Dark Chocolate Cordial Cherries (made by the folks at World’s Finest), and Sweetarts candy canes.
• Group Publisher Doug Peckenpaugh is busy in the kitchen during the holidays, baking spiced Swedish pepparkakor cookies and making candy like chocolate-dipped peanut brittle. However, his celebrations also make room for CPG treats like the seasonal versions of Sheila G’s Brownie Brittle.
• Senior Editor Liz Parker Kuhn is partial to Chocolate-covered Oreos, pecan pie, and holiday Peeps.
• I am very persnickety about my candy canes—they have to be peppermint, and they must be Spangler canes—and I always eat them the same way: I hold onto the crook and suck on the straight end until it forms a sharp, lethal-looking point.
• One particular seasonal candy treasure made it onto nearly everyone’s top 5 list, but you’ll just have to head over to that LinkedIn post to find out for yourself (like Santa, I like doling out Christmas surprises).

What about you—do you have favorite snacks, baked goods, and candies you like to enjoy during this time of year? I’d love to hear about them—please email me your lists at spinnerj@bnpmedia.com.

Happy holidays from everyone at SF&WB, and all the best in the coming new year.