The Foreign Candy Review
RSSAlicja Cream Fudge (Alicja Krówki Mleczne), Poland
A Polish colleague allowed me to consume some of his Polish cream fudge, and I just had to photograph it so that I could post my opinion on this blog. He says he gets it from his local Asda, but never mind that!
The first thing you notice about this fudge is boy is it creamy. It’s not like your regular grainy fudge, it’s more like caramel. Very soft and melts in your mouth. As far as fudge goes, it’s probably some of the best I’ve tasted.
(Source: wytwornia-krowek.pl)
Yataiman Gyoza (ヤタイマンのぎょうざ), Japan
The Japanese seem to love playing with their food. This is a create-your-own-candy-filled-gyoza thing. For those who are unaware of what a gyoza is, it’s a Chinese style dumpling.
There are two kinds of gyoza to make - milk dough with jelly bean filling and banana dough with chocolate bits filling. You’re supposed to make a circle out of the ‘dough’ (soft candy) using the plastic contraption as a guide, so I started rolling it out on my desk… badly.
For the banana with chocolate filling - add filling, fold in half, bam, done. Easy enough.
The jelly bean filling one was more of a chore. I couldn’t quite fit all of the beans into my badly-made circle of dough, so it was bursting apart as I added the finishing touch… a pink jelly bean sticking out the top!
Well, the finished gyozas tasted pretty good, though I’m not sure they would have tasted any less good if I had just poured the separate ingredients into my mouth at the same time and had a good chomp. It’s quite a lot of effort to go to just for that.
It’ll keep the kids occupied for a while though.
(Source: meiji.co.jp)
Nama Ramune (生ラムネ), Japan
Ramune is basically a lemonade drink, and nama means ‘raw’. So… raw lemonade. According to the front of the packet, you can sometimes get a lucky heart! Well, I opened mine and found a heart. Hooray.
This sweet has probably one of the weirdest textures I’ve come across. Soft, slightly gritty, slightly foamy. Almost like a foam shrimp but more gritty. According to the back of the packet, the texture changes depending on its temperature. So I put some in the fridge, and tried to warm some up by rubbing them in my hands for a while.
Yeah. It made no difference to the texture at all that I could tell. They tasted OK, though, a very subtle sugary lemon flavour.
(Source: morinaga.co.jp)
Collon (โคลลอน), Thailand/Japan
These are a somewhat well known, bizarrely named Japanese snack by the creators of Pocky. In reality I purchased these from a local Thai store, which is why I am posting them under Thailand as well as Japan.
Basically they are small wafer tubes (think hula hoops, only slightly bigger) with a cream center. I tried strawberry and vanilla, and I think I preferred the vanilla, though there is not much to them. You’d think you could just eat a whole box in one sitting, but they’re not as light as they taste. I was feeling pretty full after half.
The hype surrounding the name is justifiable but in terms of being a snack food, I think they are over-rated.
(Source: thaiglico.com)
Ninja Meshi - Ume Katsuo Flavour (忍者めし - 梅かつお), Japan
This is frankly the most disgusting sweet I’ve ever tasted, so I had to let my workmates try them.
Spice Cakes (Medouoliai Kaimiski Prjaniki) - Lithuania/Russia
I’m pretty sure this kind of cake is actually Russian, but there isn’t too much information on them on-line. Anyway, I found this bag of strange looking cakes at a supermarket in Lithuania and thought I’d try them.
They have a harder outer shell coated in icing sugar, and are softer (but not totally soft) on the inside. It was an extremely familiar flavour to me, I knew that as soon as I bit into one of them. It took me a whole day to figure out what it was but it finally dawned on my travelling companion that they tasted exactly like lady fingers.
Well, I’d recommend them if you happened to find yourself in one of the Baltic States or Russia and wanted a cheap, cakey snack.
Kabaya Shaka Shaka Gumi (シャカシャカグミ), Japan
Have you ever heard of Salt ‘n’ Shake crisps? They’re a British potato chip which come plain but can be flavoured to the consumer’s personal tastes by way of a small sachet of salt contained in the bag; use as much or as little as you like. This sweet is exactly like that.
Follow the directions on the back of the packet to coat your gummy sweets—which come in flavours ‘pine’ (pineapple), soda, grape and orange—in a slightly-sherbet-y powder. The result is a pretty average slightly fizzy gummy sweet. My favourite flavour is the ubiquitous-in-Japan (but not elsewhere) soda flavour.
(Source: kabaya.co.jp)
Dars Milk Chocolate (ダースミルク), Japan
A very uninteresting sweet today. Simply, milk chocolate squares that were flown to me all the way from Japan. Probably the most interesting thing about this sweet is imagining the journey it took in order to get here.
Like most foreign chocolate, it tastes a little less sweet than the (pretty much pure sugar and milk) Cadbury’s I’m used to, but comparable to most other chocolate brands in the UK, but certainly a whole lot better than Nestle! Given that Japan is notorious for promoting bitter ‘manly’ chocolate, I’d like to say congratulations, Japan, for managing to create a chocolate that I would actually enjoy eating!
Pittan Animaru Gumi (ピッタンアニマルグミ), Japan
This is one of the weirder sweets I’ve ever come across, and definitely designed for kids, and those who are kids at heart! Essentially, the aim is to build your own candy animals. You’re provided with a sheet of half-animal ‘stickers’, and you have to peel each animal half off the sheet and pair it with the corresponding half, to make a full animal. The halves are individually flavoured such that when the animals are fully formed, there are 6 different combinations of strawberry, orange and lemon.
I made a giraffe. My giraffe tasted pretty average, and probably wasn’t worth the effort I went through to create it. I expect most people will just consume the individual halves on their own, but hey, whatever floats your boat…
(Source: catalog-p.meiji.co.jp)
Liquorice Root, Formerly Popular In The UK
This isn’t so much a foreign candy, as it’s available all over the world. It’s simply the root of a plant, whose extracts are commonly used for medicine as well as confections. I’ve been to many sweet shops here in the UK that sell these twigs fairly cheaply, and they last for ages.
Apparently sticks of liquorice root became popular in the UK in the 1950s, though they were popular elsewhere in Europe before then. I can’t find much about their popularity in the rest of the world, though, so if you’ve got any information I’d be glad to hear it. I was introduced to these things by my mum a few years ago.
What do you do with it?, I hear you ask. You just chew on it! It’s very flavourful.
About The Foreign Candy Review
