Are you familiar with Ferrero Rocher candies? You know, the beautiful round chocolate balls covered in gold foil, that your fancy friends always seem to have stacked in giant pyramids around the holidays? Well, hang on to your wigs, because I have created a knockoff recipe that is thiiiiiiis close to the real thing. The creamy filling is 100% Nutella--no extra cream, chocolate, corn syrup, nuthin! They also have the crisp crunch of wafers mixed in, along with a whole hazelnut buried in the middle and a layer of toasted nuts around the Nutella. These Crispy Nutella Truffles may not come wrapped in gold foil, but for a candy with five ingredients and a handful of steps, they're worth their weight in gold.

Get the recipe: Crispy Nutella Truffles

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Crispy Nutella Truffles Photo ©2011 Elizabeth LaBau, licensed to About.com, Inc.

This may be controversial, but my favorite thing about Almond Roca was always the packaging. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a pink tin and some gold foil. The actual candy itself is always underwhelming--a little stale, a little old, a little tasteless. So I put on my thinking cap and got to work making my own Almond Roca. This recipe starts with a simple toffee made of brown sugar and butter, and chock-full of toasted almonds. It's cut into slender bars, then dipped in chocolate and rolled entirely in a coating of crushed nuts. The high nut-to-toffee ratio is what distinguishes it from other toffee recipes, as do the signature log shapes. The rich, buttery, slightly crumbly texture of the toffee is the perfect match for the darkly toasted nuts, and the freshness of the ingredients make this toffee a knockout. Now I just need to figure out how to make my own pink tins, and my copycattery is complete.

Get the recipe: Almond Roca

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Almond Roca Photo ©2011 Elizabeth LaBau, licensed to About.com, Inc.

Remember Pixy Stix? Those small straws full of powdery "candy" that always seemed to be 99.99% straight sugar? Well, the bad news is that they are mostly plain sugar. The good news is that this makes them extremely easy to make at home! My take on this childhood favorite, Lemonade Sugar Straws, has the sweet-tart taste of lemonade in a nostalgic Pixy Stix-inspired package. Once I got past the fact that eating these basically involves mainlining granulated sugar, I enjoyed sucking the lip-puckering powder straight from the straw, just like I did as a kid. With just three ingredients, making this candy--and giving yourself a phenomenal sugar rush--could not be easier.

Get the recipe: Lemonade Sugar Straws

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Sometimes I'm a culinary genius and I don't even realize it. A few months ago I was attempting to make a lemon meringue-flavored lollipop. The plan was to make two batches of hard candy--one flavored with lemon extract, one with marshmallow flavoring--and then artfully swirl them together in lollipop molds. Sounds delicious, right? Well, things don't always work out as planned *cough*understatement*cough* and I never managed to get a lemon candy I really liked. One of my "failed" batches was quite a bit undercooked and the lollipop that was supposed to be hard and crunchy was actually soft and chewy.

But, as they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and one woman's failed lollipops are that same woman's successful lemon chews! Yep, I took the same basic recipe that produced such lovely chewy lollipops, gave it a few tweaks, and turned it into this recipe for Lemon Chews. These are wonderfully sweet-tart candies with a smooth, chewy texture and flavor similar to Starburst candies. If you wanted to really emphasize the Starburst similarity, you can make multiple batches and use different extracts and food coloring to produce a rainbow of different flavors. The success of Lemon Chews almost makes me wish I'd fail in my candy-making a little more often!

Get the recipe: Lemon Chews

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Lemon Chews Photo ©2011 Elizabeth LaBau, licensed to About.com, Inc.