I have watched this one family make hand pulled candies in their shop in Australia on youtube for years. They put different colored logs of heated candy together in a pattern so that when you pull and cut it there is an image in the middle of each one. Well i recently found out two things. 1. They have new sugar free flavors. 2. They ship internationally. It was so mind blowing that i was going to buy candies made by hand by the people i had watched make candies on the internet for years in a different country. I bought an order of sugar free passionfruit and sugar free strawberry lollies and then waited for them to clear customs. It took a week to arrive in the US and about 3 weeks to clear customs. Thats about what its like to order tea from the UK. You’ll have what you were aiming at in about a month. So i was super excited when i actually got my hands on the package.
They are all cut by hand so they are not perfectly straight or uniform. I think that adds to their charm as they are bot mass produced but created in small hand pulled batches and each image in the center of each lolly was created by candy makers with a plan that was going to result in an image when the lolly was cut through.
They are sweetened with stevia. Citric acid adds a tinge of sour to the passionfruit one. They are not overly sweet and the flavors differ very little. The fun part is the texture. When they pull and stretch the lolly material on a hook on the wall they add air bubbles. They do this to the material used for the center of the lollies but not the colorful layer that wraps around the outside of the cylinder. The pulled part of the lolly dissolves faster in your mouth and has a very porous crumbly texture while the outside is smooth and hard. It is exquisite as it disappears over time on your tongue. Delightfully crunchy and crumbly on the inside and smooth and hard on the outside. It was really fun to try something from a different country and see what it was all about. They have a branch in the united states but i find the ingredients are a lot less pure. Every country has different standards about what additives are allowed in food stuffs and Australia’s restrictions are more severe than the United States.
I will probably wait until they come up with new sugar free flavors to order more, though i did order some australian flavors in the sugary varieties for my friend in Florida to taste test. Musk was not a hit. She said her daughter described it as soap mixed with ginger. Lilly Pilly was a big hit. They said it tasted like cotton candy and orange zest.