Candy Review: Dollarama Sugar House

Thursday, December 25, 2008 - by Laurie

The holidays are made for candy indulgence – but does indulgence have to break the bank? We’ve attempted to discover just that in the first two parts of It Came from the Dollar Store: The Cheapo Holiday Candy Special. In Parts 1 and 2, we reviewed the tasty Whipped Creme Santa and the not-so-tasty Marshmallow Treats Santa. Now, I bring you the third and final Christmas candy from the fine folks at Dollarama: the Sugar House.

The concept behind the Sugar House is a simple one. It’s a house… made out of sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. It’s then given a gummy “occupant” – in this case, a strange little orange gumdrop man with a Santa hat and Popeye arms who seems to be radiating red icing “heat waves” – perhaps he’s an anthropomorphic flame? Is the Sucrose Shack meant to appear as if it’s in imminent danger of melting into a Caramel House? (In the company’s defense, they also do versions with a pretty decent-looking Santa and snowman.)

As if that weren’t already enough pure sugar to send anyone into diabetic shock, the house and occupant are then liberally decorated with icing. The icing detailing is actually surprisingly nice, with rainbow-colored Christmas lights and a brown chimney on the roof, blue icing “windows” on the sides, and even blue snowflakes (two shades of blue!) and white squiggles on the back of the house where they could easily have gotten away with skimping.

The house is housed (hah!) in a clear plastic cube, but it’s also shrink-wrapped, with a piece of gold string on the top so you can hang it on your Christmas tree. That was my first clue that the Diabetes Domicile is probably meant to be a decorative item first and a candy second. Like the Marshmallow Santa I reviewed in Part 2, it has no name brand, just “Imported by Dollarama.”

When I remove the Chateau d’ Cavities from its protective plastic, I’m surprised to find that it has a citrusy scent – I’d assumed that it was made from pure, unadulterated sugar. It’s a stale scent though, like old icing – it kind of smells like you’d expect those Styrofoam sample wedding cakes in bakery windows to smell. I begin by divesting the Sweet-za Hut of its gummy occupant. Not as easy a task as you’d expect given the copious amounts of icing cementing him to his sugary residence – I wind up having to tear the little guy in half in order to get him out. The gumdrop tastes like, well, an orange gumdrop, not as stale as I feared, with an interesting crunch from the icing. Removing the gummy also reveals a strange icing detail that had been hidden:

Yeah, I’m as confused as you.

Now for the moment of truth. I lift the Confectionery Condo to my mouth and attempt to gnaw off enough to sample. The crunchy royal icing tastes like you’d expect, but the sugar part of the house is surprisingly tooth-friendly. Rather than being grainy like a sugar cube, as I’d originally thought, it’s actually more like a very firm orange-flavored fondant. The thin bottom is hard, but the thicker sides are actually surprisingly soft, almost crumbly. Even the first nibble is enough to set my throat burning from sweetness.

In all, it’s not as bad as I’d feared, but I just can’t eat 100 g (480 calories’ worth) of pure orange-flavored sugar – and you and your loved ones probably shouldn’t either.

So what has our exploration of dollar-store holiday candy taught us? While there is decent candy at the dollar store, particularly if you’re lucky enough to find name-brand items, it’s wise to be picky when it comes to no-name candy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to wash the taste of all this budget candy out of my mouth with some nice, expensive, good-quality dark chocolate.