UHA Kororo 100% Grape Gummy

There was a bowl of candy.  It had a blog which lived and grew and entertained some people. There was candy to talk about and people to talk to.

Candybowl the blogger ended up in an office with a pile of snacks in one public snack zone. Nobody ate out of candy bowls.  A few posts from home, a tiny stream of visitors that meanders on to this day.  Candybowl has been out of the game.

So when Cadnybowl went to  Japan on vacation and picked up a bag of UHA Kororo grape jelly candy, it was without any consideration of the blog.  That changed.

The gummy is slippery and a little rough  on the tongue.  On sucking one gets hints of an intense and pleasant concord grape flavor, with the uneven mouthfeel of a peeled grape.  On biting the jelly in the middle oozes all over.  It's strong, with a realistic grape flavor. One knows one is eating candy but a very realistic candy.

Denizens of Candybowl (the blog) will recall that UHA produces the excellent Cucu line of hard candies.  This is more like the UHA gummy, which boasts 100% fruit juice (20% is 5x juice concentrate). There's a footnote on this package which appears to say (in Japanese) it's made with 6x concentrated fruit juice for a total of about 6.7 grams or about 16.5% by weight.   Candybowl respects a candy with a footnote.

They're very nice, and it's not a very large package.  So go ahead and get them if you see them.

Impact Mints Strawberry Sugar Free Candy

A few packs of sugar free fruit mints were laid upon Candybowl on his way home from work. The route home passes through a pedestrian zone popular with companies giving things away.  Free newspapers every day.  Toothpaste, mints and eye drops occasionally. 

Impact Mints are made by German health food company sanotact. They come in little tins which are covered in horses.  Candybowl was drawn to the package as it conjures memories of a time and place.  A workplace with women who love horses.

The candy comes out of the gate high and off-balance, with huge artificial berry and sweetener notes.  I guess that's the impact. On continued sucking it starts to turn sour, as if the candy is making amends for the cloying start.  And then it's almost gone.

The chew is very nice after sucking for a while, as the candy breaks into little crunchy shards and then dissipates.   If you chew right away it will be noticeably more difficult, a common issue with sugar free hard candies.

Impact mints will not diminish the longing for your days of vicarious pferdebesitzerkeit.  It's the Ice Cubes of fruity mints.  Give it a pass.

Smith Orange and Melon Jelly

When Candybowl’s mom used to go to the Asian food store, she would sometimes get Botan candies, orange-flavored morsels wrapped in clear rice paper that melted on your tongue.  It was so much fun to take off the rice paper and pretend to eat plastic wrap.  So Candybowl was excited to see these Orange and Hami Melon jellies from Hong Kong's Smith Confectionery listing rice paper as an ingredient.

From first appearances, it appears the rice paper got fused to the outside of the jelly.  It keeps the wrapper from sticking, but definitely not fun.  The other ingredients are pretty uninspiring -- glucose syrup, sugar, agarm and flavoring (probably artificial).

This is not a confection intended to be sucked, although the floating rags of rice paper do tend to confirm Candybowl's fused-to-the-exterior theory.  The bite is nice and stiff, and the jelly breaks down into small lumps in the mouth.  It's all about the texture.

The orange initially releases a bitter zest-like orange flavor.  Deeper down, there is nothing.  The same is true of the melon, where an odd and unfamiliar melony flavor dissipates into the slippery mash of sweet jelly.  Eating both of them together masks the melon flavor.  But why?  Just get the orange.

Overall a fair attempt from Smith Confectionery, which according to this article is one of the last candy companies still manufacturing in Hong Kong and does much of its work by hand.  Try it if you can find it, but don't go out of your way.

Check out My Fruity Gum Blog

It's called Fruity Gums of the World, and will feature (ummm....) fruity gums I come across in my travels.

Check it out.  http://fruitygum.blogspot.com

Kabaya 5-Flavor Umami Candy (Sozai no Umami Ame)

If you listen to the Splendid Table on NPR, you may loathe hearing the words "Umami is the so-called fifth taste."  Umami is the indescribable flavor found in mushrooms, tomatoes, meats, soy sauce, and yes, MSG.  So it was quite a surprise to find a bag of candies with the words "umami candy" on the front.

This candy, from newcomer Kabaya, has five flavors: soy sauce, matcha (green tea), ginger, brown sugar, and sesame.

Searching for the Umami, Candybowl dove in straight for the Shoyu flavor.  The initial flavor note is reminiscent of a red tea candy.  But after a moment, the soy sauce flavor kicks in.  Oh baby.  Put soy sauce on a sugar cube, and this is it.  On crunching, the flavor gets more complex, with notes of brown sugar and even pecan pie.  Complex and yummy.

Next, Candybowl went for the Matcha. Earthy, grassy, and delicious, almost the equal of the Ujinotsuyu tea candies featured on the candybowl oh-so-long ago.  A bit less complex, but very very nice.

Sesame was just as delightful.  The initial flavor notes are reminiscent of the black sesame soup sometimes served as a dessert in Hong Kong.  But chewing brings in flavors of toasted sesame seeds (there are real black and tan sesame seeds).  And -- dare I say it -- the fifth flavor.  Mmmmmmm!

The crunch is excellent, dissolving quickly and leaving a small amount of delicious gum on the tooth.

How can you possibly go wrong with this candy -- lovely, realistic flavors and an excellent texture?  And soy sauce to trick the unwary!  Candybowl is in love.  (Also riding a bit of a sugar high, but in love nonetheless.)

Asahi Cheesecake and Peach Tart Milk Candy

This pastry-flavored sweet comes to us from Asahi, a company better known outside of Japan for its beer.  In Japan and elsewhere in Asia it is also known for a variety of foods -- sugary drinks, mostly -- that are anything but super-dry.

Candybowl tried the peach tart flavor first.  The initial flavor is intense peach, slightly more realistic than the insipid peach schnapps but not by much.  There is a slight cream note, but the dominant flavor is peach.  On chewing, the cream flavor emerges, along with a chemical note not unlike an odor Candybowl remembers from 5th grade industrial arts.  The overall impression, however, is not at all unpleasant.

The cheesecake flavor is much more realistic.  Not only a good creamy flavor, but also that slight lemony tartness that one gets in a good, dense cheesecake.  After the crunch, the sourness intensifies and a note of graham crackers emerges, coating the mouth in a lovely, cheesy grunge.

Grunge.  This candy leaves a significant amount of gum on the tooth.  Too much.  Add to that this candy is slightly rough-hewn, and one is left with the impression that Asahi does not think we will notice form and texture.  We do.

The verdict?  Buy a bag, eat the cheesecake ones, put the peach ones out for your guests.  And brush well after consuming.

UHA CuCu Watermelon Salt Vanilla Candy

When Candybowl was young, he went to a summer day camp run by hippies.  Not hula-hoop-twirling, dirty-dredlock-wearing hippies, but just good snaggle-toothed, granola-eating folk into whose hands we were placed for a chain of hot summer days.

There was some weirdness, like the belief that powdered milk was healthier than fresh, or the picking up and inspecting of insects, or the grunge at the bottom of the swimming pool.  But most of it we just accepted as normal.  Like cutting the white parts off of the watermelon rinds other kids had sucked clean earlier in the day and tossing them into an aquarium so we could pickle them.

Of course, there was nothing normal about making watermelon pickles in an aquarium.  For good reason.   First, aquariums are nasty places in which fish and reptiles do terrible things.  Second, aquarium glass breaks easily.  So when we were all supposed to be eating yummy pickled watermelon rind, instead we were picking pieces of broken glass out of the broken aquarium and rinsing the rind, and hoping to god that the pieces we were eating wouldn't kill us.

Which is why the new Japanese fad for watermelon salt candies evokes a sense of longing in Candybowl.

This morsel is part of UHA's CuCu line.   Like all of UHA's candies the texture is flawless.  On sucking, one gets mild and very pleasant watermelon notes with just a hint of vanilla.

The crunch is delightful, releasing a burst of saltiness and just a little caramel.  The watermelon flavor intensifies, but only slightly, more like an increase in sourness without additional fruitiness.

And no broken glass.  An odd and pleasant treat from CuCu.  Try them as soon as you possibly can.