Free Shipping on Orders over $49 (Retail Only)

Shop Now

Easter Candy You May Have Missed

Easter Candy You May Have Missed

This Easter, why not discover the Easter candies you may have missed. They taste great and are rich with meaning. One of my favorites is St. John’s bread, thought to be the food that nourished John the Baptist while in the desert. Here’s what’s amazing – and delicious! Saint John’s bread is actually carob which we use as a healthful snack and low cal and nutritious replacement for chocolate. The “bread” is actually the pod which you can eat as-is for a unique culinary experience (not the seeds! they’re impossible to digest). Other favorites are chopped carob pieces mixed with another ancient fruit – dried grapes, aka raisins, the most often mentioned fruit in the Bible. Or try carob chips, mixed with another ancient food and symbol of spring – pomegranate seeds.  AND – don’t forget…carob tea. The possibilities are almost endless…as is the history of this wonderful food.

Here are some other important Easter treats you may have missed:

  • Date, fig, and pomegranate syrup, are among the “honeys” mentioned in the Bible. Great in tea, in baked Easter goods
  • Stuffed dates, stuffed with ancient nuts and simple syrup or a dash on bee’s honey – both known to the ancient palate.
  • Marzipan, and ancient candy made with almonds, a true spring nut. In fact, almonds were long valued as they represented good beginnings. And why? Because almonds were the first tree to flower in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
  • Cinnamon almonds – a tasty duo with ancient roots, familiar and traditional, both cited in the Bible.
  • Mann Salwa. This ancient sweet is rich with flavor, texture, and meaning. Made over 2,000 years ago, many consider it the food God gifted to Moses and the people of Israel to sate their hunger. Perfect with tea, coffee or as a snack. A personal favorite.
  • Turkish delight – a favorite worldwide under many guises. Vegan, all-natural, and rich with association with its starring role in Chronicles of Narnia. Turkish is also a best-seller here at True Treats. This is a wonderful quote from one of our customers: “Rose Turkish Delight is something I leave with every time I visit!” – Ashley G.

What Else Did You Miss This Easter?

The Remarkable Life and Times of the Jelly Bean

Turkish Delight

The story of the  jelly bean is remarkable, spanning cultures and centuries, involving sultans and ancient apothecaries, wars and great literary figures. It began around 226-652 CE in the Persian Empire where the ruling power, the Sasanids, enjoyed a sweet called “abhisa” made of honey, fruit syrups, and starch.  By the 9th century, it appeared in the Arab apothecaries as a remedy for sore throats called “rahat ul-hulküm,” later shortened to “lokum,” meaning “throats ease” which many still use today. The sweet had a more or less humble life until the 1750’s when Sultan Abdul Hamid I fell in love with it and, according to legend, had his chefs prepare daily batches to satiate his many wives. Trade being what it was, word spread and folks in England started enjoying it, too, renaming it “lumps-of-delight.”

Then, in the mid-1800s, it took on a literary life, starting with Charles Dicken’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1870) where character Rosa Bud announces: “I want to go to the Lumps-of-Delight shop.” Soon, the candy was called “Turkish Delight”: a name which has endured in the English-speaking world ever since. Most notably, the Turkish Delight appeared in C.S. Lewis’ classic, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” where it reigned as young Edmund Pevensie’s greatest passion. Thanks to the book and, more recently, the movie, most Americans seem to know the Turkish Delight although far fewer have tried it. Or so they think.

War and Love in the U.S.A.

In the mid-1800s an unknown candy maker panned the confection–a 16th century process of rolling a nut, seed, sugar crystal or other food in layers of sugar for a smooth shell. Soon after, in 1861, Boston candy-maker William Shrafft reportedly encouraged Bostonians to send his jelly beans to Union soldiers in period-style care packages.

Record Cover              
Early Jelly Beans

Eventually that sweet become part of a new confectionery family known as “penny candy,” an inexpensive and fun sort of confection that allowed everyone, rich and poor, access to sweets. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle mentioned the candy on October 2, 1898 and soon a pound was selling at nine to twelve cents. It was in this new, penny candy guise that the panned delight took on a yet another name: the “jelly bean.”

But why “jelly bean”? Obviously it resembled a bean. But culturally, the name sprouts up everywhere; it referred to a fellow who shows up for a date well dress, nicely coifed, but has nothing else going for him. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story “The Jelly Bean” in 1922, in which he wrote: “’Jelly-bean’” is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I have idled, I will idle.” And Phil Harris wrote a song “Jelly Bean (He’s a Curb-Side Cutie)” in 1940. In other words, this guy was useless.

The Jelly Bean Shines

               David Klein

The jelly bean won its most enduring acclaim around 1930, as an Easter candy, reasons unknown except that, since the late 1800s, candy-makers were busy finding a niche at religious events, the stripped candy cane (late 1800s) an excellent example. About 40 years later, enter the Jelly Belly. Candy distributor and entrepreneur, David Klein, came up with the idea to infuse the entire bean with flavor, not simply the shell. And those flavors – why settle for overly sweet, washed out fruit flavors? Why not make them bold, unusual, delicious?  As for the name – Klein was watching blues musician Lead Belly perform on the 1970s sitcom “Sanford & Son.” Only, Klein thought the name was “Jelly Belly…” And the rest is food marketing history.

 

Since then, the jelly bean has made appearances everywhere, from movie theater concession stands to corner store displays. They showed up at a presidential inauguration in1981 and were the first candy to go on a space mission in 1983. In fact, people ate enough jelly beans last year to circle the earth five times, so says the Jelly Belly company on their Web site.

Jelly Belly Beans

Which leads to the not altogether happy ending of the jelly bean story. Klein was a candy genius but not a candy cook. So he hired his friends at the Herman Goelitz Candy Company to make the candy for him. The Goelitz family was so inspired they decided to buy Klein out (aka steal) the candy, concept, name, and flavors. After a five-year legal battle, and a movie  on the subject produced by Amazon, Klein received a small settlement. The multi-billion dollar company Goelitz family company is

Ad for Candyman
Movie about Klein

now called “Jelly Belly.” Their multi-billion dollar owners have left Klein a scant legacy – he can publicly acknowledge he invented the candy.

Of course, events like these, large and small, are part of the landscape of human experience and demonstrate the timeless importance of comfort foods like candy.