ZOMG, Candy!

My expat friends, Nana and Justin, sent me a bag of Okinawa Brown Sugar Candy in their last generous shipment of foreign candies. At first I thought that making sugar-flavored candy was strange, but then I realized it’s not that different from honey candies or straight up shooting honey sticks.

The prettily matte bag was mostly covered in Japanese. I was able to recognize the character for bamboo on the top right corner, but otherwise I had to rely on the English letters to know what it contained.

The back of the bag described them as “Nature’s blessed ‘Okinawa Kokuto (brown sugar)’ made from sugar cane grown in Okinawa”. I think that makes them a regional specialty.

The candies were individually wrapped in plastic that echoed the bamboo motif of the larger bag. They were smooth flat cylinders, like butterscotch hard candies.

The candies and their melt was perfectly smooth on the tongue, with nary an air bubble to break its glossy surface. The flavor was simple – that of dark brown sugar, sweet with a burnt molasses edge to keep it from being cloying.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed such a simple treat. They didn’t taste revolutionary, but if you’ve ever sneaked a pinch of brown sugar while baking or making oatmeal, you’d enjoy these. An OM.

In my first year of college, I dropped hints to my parents about how my roommates were getting great care packages from home, with things like homemade cookies and knitted hats and other fun treats.

Eventually, my hints worked – sort of. I got a package from my parents that was full of cough drops and a note: “Rosa, Do not have too much fun. Dad.”

Recently, I received a similar package, but this time, I was expecting it: a box full of Luden’s throat drops that were free samples from the manufacturer.

They’re throat drops, not cough drops, which means they have no medication in them. Their new orange flavor, however, is also a Vitamin C supplement.

I got four flavors: wild cherry, orange, honey lemon, and honey licorice. They came in single-flavored bags of individually wrapped drops. All were oval hard candies stamped with “Luden’s”, and all had perfectly smooth melts.

Wild cherry had a deep red sweetness. There was no tartness or brightness to the flavor, but there was also no medicinal tinge, which sometimes plagues cherry-flavored candies. Red candy flavors have never been my thing, but these were nice enough.

Orange is the new addition to their lineup and boasts real orange juice and your daily dose of Vitamin C. It started with a light undertone of orange zest with just an edge of pithy bitterness.

It did get a bit tarter as I held it in my mouth, but I prefer my orange candies brighter and tangier.

Honey lemon was the most familiar cough-droppy tasting one. Its initial quick lemon citrus hit became immediately displaced by a strong menthol sensation.

The menthol was not too intense – it didn’t reach my sinuses, but it did cool my mouth every time I inhaled. The acid lemon flavor was light, as was the sweetness of the honey, though the lemon did get a bit tarter as time went on.

Honey licorice had bitey, herbal, grassy notes of classic licorice. I really hate licorice, so these were definitely not my thing, and I had to spit them out. I am a terrible licorice reviewer.

I wouldn’t buy these as a candy replacement, but they’re good for their candy-as-medicine class. I’ll happily keep the rest of my samples handy for my next cough or sore throat. Actually, based on how people have been sounding around campus, I should bring them to lab with me and hand them out.

I give Os to the wild cherry, orange, and honey lemon. In the honey licorice case, I abstain.

These 1890′s Sweets/Drop Candy Berry Mix from Public Displays of Confection were a free sample, along with the Thanksgiving Mix I reviewed a week ago and a couple of fat candy canes.

The website describes them as “blueberry, blackberry and raspberry pressed into shape on our 150 year old drop roller press. These are called fruit drops, because the machine produces sheets of candy that are “dropped” onto a hard surface to break them into pieces.”

The candies were cute and distinctively shaped. All had a perfectly smooth melt that felt glossy against the tongue.

Raspberry was a red circle dappled with little round bumps. It was sweet with a concentrated fruitiness and a hint of tartness. I wouldn’t have placed it as raspberry based on its flavor, as it lacked the artificial seediness raspberry candies usually have.

Blueberry was a knobbly, artificially bright blue sphere. It tasted darker than the raspberry, with a purple, grapey flavor.

Blackberry had the same shape as the raspberry but was a deep purple in color. It had the deep darkness of the blueberry but with bright, fruity overtones that made it taste positively juicy.

This was a fun, tasty assortment. I liked how amped up all the flavors were, and the polished mouthfeel was great. An OM.

Public Displays of Confection sent me an assortment of samples of their artisanal, handmade hard candies. They use old school techniques on machines that are over a century old; you can check out a video here.

The Thanksgiving Mix contains a seasonally appropriate mix of flavors: pumpkin pie, peach cobler, cranberry sauce, apple cider, and sweet potato casserole. They’re image candies, made from folding and pulling candy into a long tube and slicing it into pieces to reveal the center picture.

The centers of the candies left little air tubules as they melted, like starlight peppermints do. The outer shells melted smoothly and felt like perfectly smooth plastic under my tongue.

The pumpkin pie was the easiest to pick out, as it had a pretty pumpkin in the center. It really captured the savory aroma of cooked pumpkin with a pumpkin pie’s notes of nutmeg.

Peach cobbler had a bright orange shell and a layered square of peachy-striped colors. It was sweet and lightly fruity with a hint of cinnamon. The overtones were bright, and the candy tasted positively juicy.

Cranberry sauce had a pinkish red center with the image of a trio of red cranberries and something blue and white (any guesses on what it’s supposed to be?). It captured the tannic essence of cranberry juice, with the perfect touch of tartness to take the edge off the candy’s sweetness.

Apple cider had a little red apple in the center and a green and red shell. It tasted sweet and brightly full of apple juice flavor. I found it lightly tart with maybe just a hint of cinnamon to the finish. I appreciated that this tasted of genuine apple rather than the candied version that Jolly Rancher has codified.

Finally, sweet potato casserole had an orange and blue shell with a little stamp of a yam in the center. It had the spot on taste of sweet potato with a butterscotchy finish. While there was no denying what it was emulating, I found the savory and sweet combination in a hard candy to be strange.

I was impressed by how spot-on the flavors were. The sweet ones – peach cobbler, cranberry sauce, and apple cider – get OMs. The savory ones – pumpkin pie and sweet potato casserole – were a bit strange to consume as hard candies, so they get Os.

This roll of Red Band Rang! Mixed Fruit hard candies were a gift from my friend Neil, who’s been living the expat life in the Netherlands.

It looks like they’re a Dutch-made treat. The cheerful exclamation mark in the title makes me wonder what the word Rang! means in English.

Read the rest of this entry »

These Perles au Miel, loosely translated as honey beads, were a gift from my friend Neil, who’s currently living and working in the Netherlands. The wrapper says that they’re “fourrees miel”, which means filled with honey.

They were extremely hard-shelled little balls with a prickly granulated sugar shell. The flavor was spot-on with the amber complexity of genuine honey – just a skotch darker than clover honey.

Once the sugar sand dissolved, the resulting candy was literally a thin shell of its former self. The shell was thin enough that just a hint of pressure was enough to crack it, revealing the sticky, thick, honey ooze within.

The ooze was quite viscous and held its shape like a gooey caramel. It was quite capable of working its way into the nooks and crannies of my teeth.

The shell became chewy when combined with the oozy center. Overall the candy was sweet without being cloying. If you love honey sticks, as I do, you’d love these. An OM.

I wasn’t able to find an exact match for these online, but I found similar products called “boules de miel“, or balls of honey. They seem like a very European thing.

Here’s a second Egyptian candy courtesy of my friend Katie. The wrapper labeled them as, “filled hard candy with cherry juice.”

The candies were lozenge-shaped: smooth, glossy, oval spheres. Though the wrapper depicted them as oozing a liquid goop, the centers of mine were goo-less.

Instead, they were soft and chewy. Perhaps the goo got absorbed into the hard candy?

The candies had a smooth, round melt. They tasted of a deeply artificial red candy with a medicinal tinge and the edge of a near menthol bite.

They are serviceable, but unexciting, making them a classic O.

Today, I start delving into the substantial stash that I picked up in China. First up is two varieties of UHA high concentrated milk candy. I reviewed the original version way back in October of 2007.

First up, the chocolate version. The front of the bag shows an oozing lozenge-looking thing. The back labels the outside as milk and the inner ooze as chocolate.

The (individually wrapped) candies themselves were actually more like marbles with beveled edges. The hard candy milk portion had lovely cream, dairy, and vanilla high notes. It was like really deliciously fresh vanilla bean ice cream.

The hard candy had a slippery, glossy melt. It was pretty easy to crack and cleaved cleanly, revealing the chocolate center.

While the chocolate on the wrapper looked oozy, the little dollop of chocolate in the center was solid. Its flavor was just meh – like cocoa powder – but it was a nice surprise.

The coconut version had a slightly different texture – it had a softer, satiny mouthfeel. The coconut flavor was immediately noticeable as an airy, fresh nuttiness. Once the outer layer dissolved, the coconut flavor lessened as the creamy milk flavor became more apparent.

It too, has a chocolate center, which was unexpected. My fault, really, as that red ribbon on the front does say that it has a chocolate center (though I could get the gist of that text with some effort, I’m functionally illiterate, so I didn’t take it in at first).

I enjoyed these. They’re a nice departure from the usual fruit-flavored hard candies that we have in the U.S., but I won’t be that crushed when my bags are emptied (partly because I’ve seen the original version in Asian grocery stores in the U.S.). An OM.

This bag of Life Savers Fruiteria caught my attention with its splashy NEW! sign. It kept my attention with an adventurous selection of flavors that included passion fruit and papaya.

It seems that globalization and foodie-ism has trickled down to this once basic brand that started out as a peppermint.

In addition to passion fruit and papaya, the bag also included strawberry, pineapple, and mandarin orange.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Life Savers, they’re life preserver-shaped hard candies that come in mint and fruit flavors. The original 5 flavors were lemon, lime, orange, cherry, and pineapple, so this Fruiteria version represents a 4/5 departure… 3/5 if you consider mandarin orange and orange to be interchangeable.

Strawberry was opaque-with-a-hint-of-translucent pink. It tasted sweet and floral, with a great berry finish.

Pineapple was nearly white and the lightest colored of the bunch. It sweetly captured the essence of pineapple flavor, which I associate with pineapple cores, and had a nice, round flavor.

Mandarin orange was a light, translucent orange. It tasted of bright, tangy tangerines. In the spectrum of candy orange flavors, this was heavy on the tart and easy on the mellow, whereas I believe the original orange Life Saver is more mellow than tart.

A deeply purple O turned out to be passion fruit. I usually associate passion fruit with its yellow innards, but I suppose the purple made for a more striking Saver.

It tasted like a mild raspberry, sweet without much seediness, with a tinge of citrus. I was impressed at how complex the flavor was.

Finally, papaya was orange-colored with a tinge of salmon. It was the only one of the bag that was solidly opaque.

To me, it didn’t taste like fresh papaya, which I usually find rather lightly flavored and thus underwhelming. Instead, I got peachy floral tones with a mango bite and a mellow orange finish. I prefer the Life Saver take!

I really should keep these in my work drawer instead of my current assortment of chocolate Easter candy bought on sale. They’re a great sweet fix, and I wouldn’t chomp through them as quickly as I do chocolate.

Fruiteria (what does that mean, anyway?) presented a nice mix of flavors. I didn’t dislike any of them, and I really liked the mandarin orange and the non-papaya papaya. An OM.

I receive press release emails fairly frequently. The one that I got from Das foods was more eye-catching then most. Read for yourself:

“What’s your flava?  Man Bait, Naughty Ginger, Fab-O-Pom or Caramel Me Happy? They may sound like names you’d have if you worked for an “escort” service, but they are not. Instead, they’re the inspired flavors of Das Foods’ chic and unique new brand of delicious lollipops that will launch nationally next week at the All Candy Expo in Chicago, May 19-21.”

I gave these babies a test drive on my drive from New Haven to Rochester. They definitely helped keep me awake with their extreme lollipop flavor novelty. That’s also why the remaining photos are courtesy of Das, as I couldn’t photograph them while on the road. As an added bonus, I tasted them without access to the press release materials (quoted below in italics), so I didn’t know what I was eating while I ate it.

Fab-O-Pom: “A pomegranate and orange lolli that’s good and good for you.  It’s a sweet and tangy fusion of heart-healthy real pomegranate extract and fragrant orange oil with tiny pieces of orange zest.”

The lolli is a pale, translucent salmon flecked with bits of brown. It smells strongly of orange. The flavor is deep citrus, like a blood orange, while the finish has a bit of a bite to it, probably due to the pomegranate component. The brown flecks eventually wind up studding the surface as the lolli melts. They taste like bits of fruit leather or candied orange peel. I like this, despite the two air bubbles it contained. An OM.

Caramel Me Happy: “A caramel and lavender lolli made with caramelized cane sugar and indulgent chewy Das Salty Caramel mixed with real lavender extract and tiny crystals of Fleur De Sel sea salt for a trendy, delicious sweet and salty treat.”

This smells just like a salted caramel. It’s reminiscent of a deeper, more complex butterscotch candy with burnt sugar notes. The lollipop itself is not perfectly smooth; rather, it’s very finely textured. I enjoy the salted caramel flavor, but I’m a bit thrown by the mismatch between texture and taste. I wish I could chew this lollipop! I’d much rather have a Das salted caramel, so an O.

Naughty Ginger: “A ginger and lemon lolli that’s sweet, tangy and tantalizingly spicy all at once.  Small bits of wickedly spicy candied ginger are complemented by all-natural lemon extract.  And the ginger works double time; it tastes great AND soothes an upset stomach!”

Whoo boy is the ginger smell strong! This lolli is super, super gingery and super, super spicy. I got in a few licks, just enough to note the strong ginger flavor with a very light, sweet undertone of lemon, but couldn’t keep eating it because it was just too spicy for me. It left my mouth tingling. I’m a ginger wuss, so this guy wasn’t for me, but I bet ginger enthusiasts would appreciate it. A –.

Man Bait: “A maple bacon lolli that’s a fiercely delicious combination of real smoky bacon bits and delicious maple syrup providing an all-at-once savory and sweet sensation.”

Like the Naughty Ginger, this lollipop was too much flavor for me to handle. It smells like maple syrup with a hint of meat undertone. That’s pretty much how it tastes as well. It’s pretty sweet from the strong maple sugar flavor, and that plus the smoky meatiness from the bacon bits and the lollipop nature/hard candy texture does not compute in my brain. I felt a bit ill and couldn’t keep eating it. A – from me.

Out of all four lollipops, Fab-O-Pom is the only one that I would want to eat again. They are all, however, a fine flavor effort. They taste exactly as promised, and the flavors are strong, vibrant, and concentrated. While the ginger and bacon pops weren’t for me, ginger and bacon enthusiasts would enjoy them, making those the pops a great novelty gift. And at $0.50 a pop (har har), they’re an affordable gift as well.