One of the innate problems of starting an odd foods blog is pretty much trying to unearth the odd foods to begin with. When I still lived in New York City, I could have walked anywhere in 10 minutes and found something strange. However, around here in Wisconsin, this is not always the case.
Alex and I decided to look online for new and exciting snacks and foods to try to help get the blog going and one of the places we looked was Mexgrocer.com. I had tried a lot of Mexican food while living in the city, but on the site we found an amazing selection of candies and treats I had never heard before.
The main one I have tried so far is called De La Rosa Mazapan. Alex swears by these candies as his stepfather used to pick them up at the market sometimes. I didn’t know what to expect other than that it was made from peanuts. I like peanuts though, so it couldn’t be bad. I also hoped I’d enjoy it, as we’d gotten a 30 piece box. Oy!
De La Rosa mazapan is a peanut confection (dulce de cacahuate) made similarly to marzipan (made from almonds). It is simple and only contains three ingredients – peanuts, sugar and artificial flavors.
This candy is fairly simple looking – a small silver-dollar-sized tan disk wrapped in cellophane and has a giant rose logo on the top. Upon opening the plastic wrapper, I noticed that it was not as paste-like as I had expected and actually more like a compressed powder. It broke off in crumbly chunks and then smoothed into a paste on my tongue. It was very sweet but not too sweet and the nuttiness of the peanuts was a swift change to American confection peanut butters. Most nutty things in our candy culture are usually either a filling or whole nuts. The texture is definitely the unique and surprising part and wasn’t like anything else I’d encountered in a candy before. I can’t say that I’m going to be eating a ton of these, but a once in a while snack after I get used to it might be good enough for me.
If you are a peanut candy fan or into nut paste type sweets, you will definitely enjoy this. It might also be a good idea for people who are allergic to chocolate. (But not nuts!) Just beware of the dustiness.
Look forward to more Mexican treat entries soon!