Scorched Rice Candy

A recent visitor to The Candy Bowl (the blog, not the candybowl) said to me "You know what ones I like? Those burnt rice ones that are supposed to taste like the rice at the bottom of the rice cooker."

Chinese call it guoba. Koreans call it nurungji. If you have a decent modern rice cooker, and use it correctly, you probably will not get it at all. But make rice in an old/cheap rice cooker, with too little water, or too much heat, or too much time, and you will get a tasty brown crust on the bottom that has flavor to die for (and I'm sure some kind of naturally occurring chemical to die from. But I digress).

This candy is meant to taste like scorched rice, and has a good approximation of that flavor. Some liken it to burnt popcorn. Not charred popcorn, but popped kernels with golden brown around the edges. Some people like it a lot, including me. Others, including a certain high-level functionary, do not like it at all.

It's a spheroid boiled sweet, with creases and lumps on the outside. But it has a nice fracture, sometimes cracking in half. It leaves a bit more residue on the molars than a candy this good ought to. But that's all the more reason to suck it. And although some think the flavor at the center is different from that on the outside, Candybowl can assure you that he has proven them wrong beyond doubt.

Despite its long tenure in the candybowl (with fresh stock added at reasonable intervals), you people have not been eating enough of this candy. Candybowl says to eat this candy. Or else.

CubyRop

This is one cute candy. Two small cubes, each of a different flavor. And the name -- CubyRop -- shimmers with Asian linguistic mystique, suggesting a malapropism that one simply can't put one's finger on. Not only that, but this bag of mixed fruit candies also promises interesting flavors -- Pasionfruit, Boysenberry, Muscat, Grapefruit and Lime.

Sadly, the fruit flavors not only are cloying and unrealistic, but also are overwhelmed by menthol notes that will be familiar to consumers of Hall's cough drops. There are five different flavor options, to be sure, but none of them taste like any fruit that Candybowl has eaten.

Moreover, considering that this candy is all about form, the number and variety of structural issues are surprising. First, the cube is rough-hewn, with rippled edges. Second, some of them have cloudy centers indicating, perhaps, that the sweet was not properly cooled, or they are damaged when they are cut into cubes. Finally, the cubes tend to stick together making many of these candies distinctly non-cubical (for these, RectangularprismRop would be a more accurate, if unwieldy, moniker).

The crunch test yielded mixed results. One cube was tough and gummy. The other disintegrated into a sandy paste, like a sugar cube. And this was two cubes from the same package!

Despite all these flaws, this is no tomato candy -- it's flavors are pleasant enough, and sweet like a sweet should be. But like so many things in life, the package makes promises that the contents can't keep.

Kanro Fruits & Milk, Fruits & Yogurt

Once again, the confectionary wizards at Kanro have delivered candies worth blogging about.

As the name implies, these are fruit candies with milk or yogurt added. The fruit flavor is realistic, although, as is common in mixed fruit candies, some (e.g. Mango) are more realistic than others (e.g., Grape).

Kanro's attention to detail extends to the candy's appearance as well. This boiled sweet has a good shape, and is two-toned, indicating that the milk/yogurt is separate from the fruit.

It releases a lot of flavor without biting, but like the tootsie-pop owl, Candybowl simply can't resist for long. The crunch is refined, fracturing nicely, and leaving just a small amount of residue on the tooth.

These sweet morsels have proven quite popular, and new supplies have been added to the candybowl. Just the thing to get the taste of Korean Red Ginseng Red Bean jelly candy out of your mouth. Try it now!

Korean Red Ginseng and Red Bean

Denizens of the candybowl will recall that the last red ginseng candy disappeared a number of months ago. The store from which they came stopped carrying them. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when Candybowl happened upon these at a local Korean superstore.

This candy overflows with flavor. From before opening the package straight through to the aftertaste, the dominant taste is fresh potting soil. All that, plus pleasant notes of musty ginseng and white lithium grease, make it a must try.

It's a jelly candy, stiffer than a gummy. Since it's quite a large piece, it's good to have a candy that holds together after one bite. Leave it behind at a crime scene, and you're bound to be identified from your bite marks (an especially stupid move if the crime itself involves bite marks).

With so much going for this candy, Candybowl finds it hard to believe anyone wouldn't finish it before fleeing from justice. So flee to the Candybowl and try one before they run out.

Sugar Free Life Saver

I am pleased to present the sugar free Life Saver, another in my occasional series of guest candies. For reasons unclear to me, this candy was not popular when it was in the Candy Bowl. It should have been.

Once you get beyond the stigma of "sugar free," you will find this is one flavorful non-nutritive foodstuff. But what flavor? It tastes like fruit, but not like any particular fruit. Childhood experience with purple magic markers led me to believe this would be a grape flavored candy, but it tastes like neither grape or artificial grape. Raspberry? Perhaps Life Savers outbid Jolly Rancher for the last barrel of artificial wild berry flavor. The only aspect in which the candy disappoints is the aftertaste, which has slight notes of dish soap.

The factor that moves this candy from just north of blah to just south of boffo is the crunch. The fine people at Life Savers have managed to duplicate the crystalline crunch of a fine hard candy, and the absence of sugar (no, Dear Leader, your nemesis HCFS was not invited to this party) means that it doesn't gum up when you chew it.

If you needed any more reason to try this candy, consider this: Life Savers is owned by Wrigley. Maybe that funny flavor was the taste of Chicago.

Soda Mix Candy

I'll be the first to admit, this is one strange candy. So strange, in fact, that I believe it could only have come from a work-release program for criminally insane food chemists.

The package, which now wish I had kept, illustrated three different flavors (no doubt, the "mix"), each representing a moderately famous Japanese soda flavor. Had I kept the package, I might have been able to guess which one this particular sample was meant to taste like. But I didn't, so all I can do is give you my impressions of how it tastes.

It tastes like lemon. Or soap. Or some kind of lotion. Lemon moisturizing soap. Tasty lemon moisturizing soap. Or what I imagine Mr. Clean-flavored soda would taste like. (Honestly, I think this might be Calpis Water flavor.)

The crunch is good, not great, with a bit more residue on the tooth than I'd like. None of this leads me to speculate on what those drano-blue flecks are.

Try one and see what you think. Take it from the royal taster: you will not die, it's not poison!

Plum

This plum-flavored boiled sweet comes to us from Haitai, the people who brought us the Melon candies. In fact, it has a lot more in common with the Melon candy than with the nama ume ame plum candies I recently profiled.

The initial flavor is subdued, almost bland. Can it really be that the plum flavor manifests as a fragrance but not at all on the tongue? A piece of rock candy with the mere hint of plum blossom perfume? Consider how watery a real plum is. This sensory sleight-of-hand presents a nice example of how confectionary works of art can imitate life.

This is one candy you'll want to bite into. No more pulling punches; the natural plum flavor explodes in your mouth. The crunch is familar -- this candy is the equal of any ordinary boiled sweet, fracturing well and leaving just a bit of residue on the tooth.

Well worth a try.