Here at that sweet lyfe, we are truly candy fanatics. We love candy of all kinds, and we’re always looking to expand our horizons and try candies from all over the world. That’s how we discovered the Japanese candy, Hi-Chews. They’re a sweet, taffy-type candy that definitely tops our list of favourites!
These candies were created by Taichiro Morinaga, who owned the Morinaga & Co candy company in Japan. In Japan, there’s a sort of unspoken rule against taking food out of your mouth. This makes chewing gum pretty hard, as there is nowhere to put it once you’re done with it. So, Morinaga came up with Hi-Chews – a chewy caramel that makes a delicious treat! These candies were actually originally called Chewlets, but Morinaga had to restart his company and rebranded them as Hi-Chews in 1975.
These are a super fun and tasty treat that we love! They’re sort of a cross between gum and candy. They come individually wrapped, and they’re a fun, sweet, fruity treat to munch on.
Since we love these fruity candies so much, we decided to put them to the test – the freeze-drying test. How did they turn out? Keep reading to find out!
When we freeze-dried the Hi-Chews, they puffed up and became super crunchy. If you read our blog about Jolly Ranchers, you know that Jolly Ranchers also puffed up a lot (think golf ball puffy). Freeze-drying the Hi-Chews gave a similar sort of product – they weren’t as airy as the Jolly Ranchers became, but definitely puffy.
But the real magic happened when we bit into them. Oh. My. God. When we bit into this now-crunchy candy, the flavour of the Hi-Chews exploded into our mouths. It was incredible! It was like a burst of fruity flavour. We couldn’t get enough! Our rating: 5 stars!
So, what did we prefer – the original Hi-Chews or the freeze-dried version? To be honest, we loved both! Personally, we really do love taffy-textured candies, so the original will always be our first love. But the freeze-dried Hi-Chews are undeniably amazing. In our ideal world, we’d sit down with a bowl of the original and the bowl of the freeze-dried ones, and feast!
This was one of our favourite experiments so far. If you haven’t heard of Hi-Chews, you need to go try them ASAP! But more importantly, you need to freeze-dry them. You’ll experience flavour like never before.