When it comes to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, it’s all about two flavors for me: Americone Dream and What a Cluster. I’ll dabble in Phish Food and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and I was into Magic Brownies (despite the Dave Matthews Band association) because it tasted like my hometown favourite, Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chip. But my local Ben & Jerry’s spot was running low on the good stuff and running high on Late Night Snack and the Greek yogurt flavors the other night, so my boyfriend convinced me to try the limited edition Cannoli.

This picture is about as exciting as the ice cream itself was. The mascarpone base was a cross between vanilla bean and cake batter ice cream flavors that I actually wouldn’t mind tasting in more vanilla-based pints, especially with its end notes of butterscotch. The pastry hunks were very crunchy, and the chocolate they were dipped in had an alcoholic taste with a hint of cherry. Not bad, if a bit overpowering.

The disappointment was in the mascarpone swirl, which was only evident by a fleeting hint of graininess; we couldn’t detect a flavor difference between the base and the swirl. Either the swirl needed to be more Amazonian so the texture could make up for the lack of flavor excitement, or it could have been the traditional ricotta of a cannoli, or even better would have been something completely different, like the chocolate chips you see on a lot of Brooklyn cannolis.

I liked the overall effect of a slightly cheesy, elevated cake batter. I’ll just know to bring my own Nutella and M&Ms to the ice cream party next time.

Even if you’ve never visited NYC, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Dylan’s Candy Bar. It’s been featured on a couple of episodes of “Project Runway”, for one, and your mom friends have no doubt chattered away at you during soccer practice about how you just have to ride the ferris wheel at Toys”R”Us and then go to Dylan’s and let the kids fill up a bag with gummy brains, jujubes, and clodhoppers for a mere $12.99 a pound.

Going to Dylan’s is, in a word, hellish. The store is packed–both with candy and with kids–at all times, and the crowd is backed up to the door and blocking the stairs and singing along to the candy-themed music at the top of their lungs. But it’s also, in a word, amaaaaazing. Picture three floors, packed with the newest candy and also the impossible-to-find stuff from your parents’ childhoods. There’s a cafe serving cakes and milkshakes upstairs, a corral of bulk candy that takes up most of the main floor, and a bottom floor filled not only with packaged candy and homemade chocolates and fudge but also candy-related pillows, pajamas, rain boots, and more.

There are giant gummy bears and Swedish fish behind the cash registers, humongous lollipops sticking out from everywhere, and transparent staircases embedded with candy spelling out cheesy sayings. For someone who requested that her boyfriend recreate the candy room from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory for her for her last birthday, it’s pretty much my idea of heaven.

And really, the $12.99 per pound for bulk candy isn’t so bad. That’s basically what all candy stores in NYC charge, except they label their bins $3.99/¼ pound so you think you’re getting a deal. Dylan’s just says, “Yeah, our candy costs $12.99 a pound. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?” And the answer is “nothing”, because not only does Dylan’s have the most candy, it also has the best candy. Never have I ever had fresher circus peanuts than at Dylan’s.

On our visit this weekend, my boyfriend and I picked up a couple of bags of our bulk favourites for Halloween movie season (and then immediately devoured all of it in a 24-hour period) and these:

A s’mores Rice Krispies treat with graham cracker and chocolate between the layers. It was the softest, most marshmallowiest Rice Krispies treat I’ve ever had. It was also too big to fit into my mouth.

Creme brulee candy corn and blueberry cobbler candy corn. My boyfriend read about the blueberry candy corn just a few months ago while we were Googling the exact flavor of candy corn. It’s supposedly only available in Eastern Canada, so I immediately Facebooked every Eastern Canadian I know (one) and asked her to be on the lookout for me, secretly knowing that I’d spend the rest of my life blueberry-candy-corn-less. AND THEN I FOUND IT AT DYLAN’S.

The creme brulee tastes like vanilla frosting, and the blueberry cobbler really does taste like blueberries. The original candy corn flavor is still my favourite, but oh, the novelty.

Cadbury Screme Eggs. Finally Cadbury figured out that like Peeps, there’s a market for Creme Egg ridiculousness all year long. Screme Eggs taste just like Creme Eggs but have a green yolk instead of yellow. Finding these made me feel so stupid about the chocolate Cadbury Creme Eggs I’ve been hoarding in my freezer since Easter, and my BFF and I are now anxiously awaiting the Christmas and Valentine’s Day ones.

None of these specialty items seem to be available on the Dylan’s website, so please let me know if I can pick some up and ship them to you in Ohio or Louisiana or wherever. For a mere $15.99 per pound plus shipping.

When you’ve finished licking the fat of a whole rotisserie duck off your fingers at Momofuku Ssam Bar and your friends claim they couldn’t possibly even look at the dessert menu, the only thing to do is to say goodbye to all of them, walk one block in whatever direction they happen to not be going in, and then to quickly double back to Momofuku Milk Bar, the bakery offshoot of David Chang’s restaurant mini-empire.

The idea of Milk Bar chef Christina Tosi “living in Brooklyn, NY, with her three dogs and eating an unconscionable amount of raw cookie dough every day” like the Milk Bar website says kind of makes me want to vomit all over her cereal milk–wait, excuse me, Cereal Milk™–but you gotta figure she’s doing something right if even my friend in the backwoods of South Carolina is singing the praises of the Milk Bar cookbook.

Here’s a sampling of the offerings:

Crack Pie

Just for the record, this tastes exactly like my aunt’s famous old-fashioned cream pie (or sugar pie, as it’s known elsewhere). Which is pretty much the reason any of us show up for family functions in Ohio. And as a regular weekend crack-cocaine abuser, I can tell you with great confidence that this is absolutely nothing like crack. But I can also tell you with great confidence that it takes something bigger than mere narcotics to draw a family together. It’s not as creamy and jiggly as my aunt’s, but I love how dense and lemon-bar-like the texture of this one is.

corn cookie

Everything’s better with corn. I could actually use a lot more corn flavor in this–my cookies don’t have to be super-sweet–but this is just what I want to bite into when I buy a cookie. Not some shelf-stale crunchy thing but a giant, flimsy, almost-uncooked-in-the-center butter-slab that I have to hold with both hands lest the middle simply droop right out of it.

Cereal Milk™ ice cream

All the flavor of caramelized cornflakes with none of the getting-stuck-in-your-teeth. Well, until you have them top it with more cornflakes. Then it’s your fault. But if you’re going to get one thing at Milk Bar, make it this.

If you want to buy me a cupcake (hint), make it one from Crumbs Bake Shop. Yes, it’s a chain. No, it’s not as fresh-from-the-oven as Magnolia Bakery. Yes, each one contains half your daily recommended caloric intake. That’s sort of the point. When I eat a cupcake, I want it to be an event.

Or just, you know, a Saturday afternoon when I’ve already eaten half of a baguette slathered with cheese and honey, dumplings, pizza, and Cadbury Eggs. Don’t judge.

the dulce de leche and Elvis cupcakes

My boyfriend can’t resist caramel, so he chose the dulce de leche with chocolate cake filled with caramel cream cheese frosting, covered in caramel cream cheese frosting, and zigzagged with caramel and chocolate. It did not disappoint.

I chose the Elvis for the peanut butter chips. I always get the Baba Booey for the peanut butter chips, even though I secretly prefer white cake to chocolate a million times over. So when I saw a cupcake with peanut butter chips AND white cake, it was

It’s soft banana cake injected with banana cream, frosted with peanut butter and banana buttercream, and rolled in peanut butter chips.

Peanut. Butter. Chips.

If there’s a good reason to be fat, this is it.

It’s a Chips Ahoy! Chewy cookie, topped with a fire-roasted marshmallow, rolled in Nerds.

My boyfriend, his friend Gary, and I concocted it in Gary’s backyard last summer while we were in California. We had already eaten four packages of Swedish cookies and a bag of marshmallows, and I guess the concern was that the sugarbetes wasn’t onsetting quickly enough.

I really love irresponsible eating.