So, I might be about to lose all respect as a candy reviewer, but I LOVE all those gummy sweets in various shapes made of disgusting corn syrup and fake fruit flavoring by General Mills.  You know the type: Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Roll Ups, Gushers, etc.  I can’t help myself and eat them entire boxes by the time.  (As a result, I very rarely purchase them.)  My sister and I once found a sale on Fruit Roll Ups - ten boxes for a cheap ten dollars!  Rather than act like a rational person and get a box or two, we were tricked by the advertising and actually bought the full ten boxes, giggling like madwomen the entire time.  I don’t know that I’ve EVER been so pleased with a purchase as that one.  I think my share was gone within the week, but it was all a big sugar high blur.So, why am I telling this story?  Besides the obvious nostalgia factor, and the fact that it will be months (MONTHS!) before I’m able to gorge myself on this candy again, in Morelia I was pleased to discover a candy that reminded me of Fruit by the Foot.  I’ve already written about Morelia as the city I was in this Easter, but I haven’t really written about any of the candy there.

Morelia is well known in Mexico as the birthplace of the soft candy made of the guava fruit ate and its various permutations.  The central market in the city has a well-known section full of candy stores (although it’s largely useless as prices are higher than in stores in the surrounding area, bargaining didn’t seem to occur, and every store basically has all the same candies for sale.)  It’s worth a visit just to see stall after stall of enormous stacks of candy beautifully arranged, but probably best to buy elsewhere.

A better place to spend a few hours is a small museum, the Museo del Dulce, located in the back of a candy store (De La Calle Real) stocking delicious sweets at reasonable prices. The museum includes videos describing the history of candy in Morelia beginning with the pre-Columbian era and culminating with the achievements of De La Calle Real and candy-making exhibitions. Unfortunately, the museum doesn’t cater much to the English tourist and the majority of the visit is fully in Spanish, so my notes are a little sparse.  Of course, the final exhibition, a candy-making demonstration, featured free, warm, freshly made ate for the tasting and required no translation! 

 

As with so many other candies native to Mexico, the ate was invented by nuns in a Spanish convent who mixed lots and lots of sugar with the paste from the guayaba fruit (English word guava.)   This paste is then heated until it is solid enough that a spoon placed in it and then removed no longer drips. It can then be packaged, much like butter, and sold.  The ate produced by the candy store the museum is associated with actually won multiple awards at World Fairs in the early 1900’s and continues to sell in high quantities across Mexico.  In 1932, searching for a way to better store, package, and distribute the ate, De La Calle Real began spreading the paste out to dry in the sun and selling rollas de frutas - a precursor to fruit roll-ups!

 Of course, I had to buy some of the rollas, made of the fruit of apple, guava, peach and quince.  The rolls are coated with sugar and absolutely delicious.  They taste much more natural than Fruit by the Foot, but maintain a sweetness with the tremendous amounts of sugar added to the paste and then coating the roll (I am not complaining here, I loved it!)  The various colors all had slightly different tastes although I suspect they all have guava as a base.  As the rolls are dried, the material is much tougher than normal ate and requires quite a bit of chewing.  These are one of my new favorites in Mexico - nice, fruity, sweet, and unique, despite their similarity to Fruit Rollups or fruit leather.  I actually bought a second package to send to a sponsor of this webpage, so hopefully I don’t give into temptation and eat them first!

***

Thank you for reading! If you like my blog, feel free to nominate it for the 2008 Travvies - I happen to think it’s pretty good and unique and not at all like a normal travel blog, but not many people know about it.  Even just a nomination for this can help spread the word.  Thanks!