This week and into next, I’m turning the reviewing over to my friend Neil. He’s from upstate New York but is currently living in the Netherlands. Ironically enough, his guest posts are about Chinese candy.
A labmate went home to China to celebrate the New Year and brought back a lot of candy to share. I asked her to select some for me. Here were my impressions:
White Rabbit, previously rocked by a variety of contamination scandals, has kept its name in China, thereby sticking Jefferson Airplane in my head for the remainder of the day. Mildly daunted by the possibility of contamination, I remembered that despite various food aversions, I do take some risks when it comes to food safety, particularly when there are sweet rewards to be had.
The White Rabbit candy looked to me like a vanilla Tootsie Roll, a confection I haven’t seen since my move out of the U.S. Its hardness was beyond that of a Tootsie, however, and I’m unsure whether to chalk this up to this instance of the candy or if this is common.
Once upon a time, in my 8th grade Earth Science course, I learned the Mohs hardness scale for minerals. I’d say this rated a 2.5 on the Mohs.
Upon first bite, flakes of the Rabbit came off. I believe they were rice paper, but it’s a little disconcerting [note from Rosa: It is rice paper, and it’s totally edible]. That bite took a lot of power.
The flavor struck me as a combination of vanilla (perhaps due to visual priming), sugar, and milk: something akin to a vanilla milkshake or Upstate Farms’ Intense Vanilla Milk. The sweetness wasn’t too intense, so it was a pleasant, even relaxing flavor.
Unfortunately, the required mastication is frustrating, taking away from my enjoyment of the candy itself. I am tempted to try another, giving the Rabbit another chance, but not before I give these other candies a chance. Solid O.
More to come from Neil on Wednesday!
Sounds like something I would mildly enjoy. I was surprised by the Intense Milk reference – sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who’s ever heard of it! I LOVED the intense vanilla milk when I tried it.
I’m eating a white rabbit candy (one of the coworkers came back from her motherland) looking for some information about it. I landed on this blog.
I agree about the taste. According to Wiki, it seems to be wildly popular over there. Not much of milky taste. It’s “wei wei” harder than tootsie roll. Can’t even chew.
I’ve been reading your blog for the past couple of hours to mostly drool on the candy and mark down a couple of the good reviews, but it came to me to search for this locally very popular candy, and I can make a statement about this.
It is true that White Rabbit candy got caught in the fuzz when China got into the whole melamine milk scandal mess. Dozens of warehouses even here were emptied of powdered milk. On top of that, this candy has also been rather difficult to find in the recent years, despite being very common when I was a child.
However, evidently the producers of this candy managed to work things out. But I think they could not erase the impression people got from the old version of the candy, therefore they came up with a new packaging and design and renamed it ‘Golden Rabbit Candy’ instead (searchable on Google). Closer inspection of the packaging, however, reveals that they stamped the original logo in the top left corner – as if letting us know who they were. A sort of silent shout-out to all the older generation kids who enjoyed their candy 🙂 The only difference being that the traditional nostalgic wax wrapping was now foil, and protected much better against the heat and sun here.
With all that being said, I think that the super-hard texture you encountered might be due to freshness. White Rabbit candy is known for being pleasantly soft and melt-in-your-mouth, if not being slightly sticky sweet. As soon as you pop one in, it will start to melt so fast that the rice paper comes off in one piece, albeit mushy. Old White Rabbit candies tend to be rock hard if left for too long, or super mushy and sticky, if kept improperly. We’re not really sure why, haha.
The stiffness can be remedied by sucking on them till they become chewable, much like gum or chewy candy out of the fridge. Or just buy them fresh XD Just something to keep in mind if you ever come across them and wish to try them again 🙂