One of the lucky Christmas candy gifts bestowed upon me (they know me too well!) was a beautiful box of fruit pate from Whole Foods. I’ve never had fruit pate/jellies before, but I have eyed them many times before on the shelf at the local gourmet store.
Fruit pate are of French origin (hence the name, which means “jelly”) and are made of real fruit which are then lightly dusted with cane sugar. Essentially a nice simple candy that combines two great ingredients and is just bursting with flavor.
This set of pate comes in 6 flavors: black currant, mandarin, apple, quince, passion fruit and raspberry. I had a hard time deciding which to try first but I finally decided on the black currant and mandarin. I was rewarded with an explosion of flavor in my mouth. Wow. It may sound crazy, but these little sugar coated gems are so flavorful that they rival the fruit they’re made from! Texture and shape aside, I was really eating a bushel of mandarin oranges. My second bite was just as amazing as the first. Next thing I know I had devoured the first tier of the pate (as in one of each flavor). They were all so delicious! Each were really the next best thing to eating a real fruit (or maybe not….).
The texture compliments the candy so well. The jelly is firm yet yielded nicely to my teeth, while the sugar coating gives a nice extra touch of sweetness. With each flavor I tried I found a new favorite. They’re all that good! I’d highly recommend these to everyone, especially lovers of fruit flavored candy.
Editor’s note: These look and sound very similar to Cactus Candy – minus the Cactus.
That sounds awesome. I tried a lot of fruit pates this week and have great respect for how they choose the fruit and condense them without losing the amazing fresh flavor.
I haven’t tried this particular brand but I can say that Cactus Candy is nothing like a good fruit pate … (I actually tried the Cactus Candy this week) … there’s a lot more fruit taste in there, the cactus stuff is more jelly than fruit. It’s making my mouth water just thinking about it.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:02 pmI love pates de fruits! I’ll look for them if I get to Whole Paycheck!
January 24th, 2007 at 2:20 pmOhh, I’m jealous Cybele! You’ve gotten to taste all different types at the Fancy Food show! Which one have you liked best so far? I’m officially hooked on this stuff!
So are you saying Cactus Candy is more of an intensely flavored furit jelly rathar than a pate?
January 24th, 2007 at 2:23 pmThe Cactus Candy has very little flavor, if any at all. It’s a nice texture but very sweet and without the tangy true-fruit notes that the pates have.
I tasted a bunch of the fruit pate at Charles Chocolates booth – they have two lines, one plain fruit and the other is wine flavored. I like their plain raspberry. I also had some French stuff at an importer called Crystal … but I don’t remember the name of who made it. It was orange and had some wonderful deep honey notes to it.
I found a fruit jellies place too but I can’t remember the name of it that had a bunch of different fruits like mango and pineapple and of course my fave … pink grapefruit. They didn’t have a card or any literature and now I can’t even remember their name.
January 25th, 2007 at 6:00 pm