The creativity that candy creators show can be very impressive. From eggs to dinosaurs, there are all sorts of interesting, and sometimes tasty, candies that are made. It seems as though there is nothing that cannot be made into candy.
Recently while shopping, I spotted a number of jelly candies that were designed to look like some popular foods here in South Korea and decided to buy a few.
I purchased:
Yuk-hwae, which is raw beef with an egg on top;
Jjajang-myun, or noodles with black bean sauce;
And Dan-mu-ji, or pickled daikon radishes.
The last two of these are pretty much ubiquitous at Chinese restaurants here in South Korea, so I thought they would make a perfect pairing, while the Yuk-hwae looked interesting.
One of the really cool things about these jelly candies was the packaging especially the Jjajang-myun and the Dan-mu-ji.
The Jjajang-myun came with its own plastic bowl, and looked just like many of the bowls I had eaten the noodles out of as a child. Just look at this comparison:
The Dan-mu-ji also came in a plastic box, which looked similar to the pickled radish containers that chicken shops sell here.
After admiring all the packaging, I opened them up to take a look at the jelly candy.
The Jjajang-myun, made by the Weeny Beeny company, which is very popular here, was made up of long stringy black jelly noodles, and had a jelly fried egg on top of it.
The Danmuji was lots of half-circle yellow jelly candies.
And the the Yuk-hwae was one solid piece of jelly candy moulded to look like raw beef pieces with a raw egg on top.
I decided to try the Jjajang-myun first. Of course I had to mix it up in a bowl just like the real thing, even if the candy noodles didn’t really mix well with chopsticks.
The candy jjajang-myun noodles were very tasty. They had a cola candy taste to them, and had a nice level of sweetness, and were not too sweet. The texture was also nice and firm, but not too hard to chew.
The fried egg that came with them, on the other hand, was very tough to chew. It was quite a solid piece of jelly candy, and the flavor was non-descript.
Next, the dan-mu-ji. These were little slices of lemon heaven! The taste, texture, and sweetness were all perfect, and they were just the most amazing lemon jelly candies. I really wish that I had bought many boxes of these, they were that good.
Sadly, the Yuk-hwae jelly that I saved for last was very unappetizing. It was much too chewy, and had an almost slimy texture to it. The flavor was also a bit nasty, and I couldn’t even really notice it matching any other candy or food.
For these jelly candies it turned out to be a 50-50 deal with the taste. The dan-mu-ji lemon slices were awesome, and the cola jjajang-myun noodles were great, while the other two pieces were not good at all. Sadly, for some of this jelly candy it was a case of looking good but not tasting good.
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