Sugar Savvy

This Friday, September 22nd is Rosh Ha Shannah, the Jewish New Year. It is the tradition on this holiday to dip apples in honey, signifying hopes for sweetness in the year to come. I can only guess that it was in this Rosh Ha Shanhah spirit (honey on the brain) that I was drawn, uncharacteristically, to the Bit-O-Honey. Check me out…I’ve managed to incorporate age-old religious traditions of My People into my candy eating. How spiritual am I?

And, in light of my recent oral surgery and doctor’s orders to eat only “soft food”, (see last week), I thought that the best candy for my healing mouth would, indeed, be of the extremely sticky and chewy variety. Throwing caution to the wind, I reached for the Bit-O-Honey, perhaps for the first time in my life.

(Before you go thinking I’m a TOTAL moron, there were NO teeth involved in the consumption of said Bit-O-Honey. Only tongue and roof of mouth were engaged.

As a kid, I rarely, if ever, ate Bit-O-Honey’s for some reason. I’m not sure why. I remember my friends enjoying them with regularity, but they somehow never made their way to the top of my candy must-have list. My allowance was only so big, and I had to budget accordingly. Seems that Reese’s and Jolly Ranchers (and about 30 other types of sweets) regularly won out over the Bit.

I had forgotten that the bar is portion-controlled… love that!. Perhaps I’d only ever had the bite-size version and had never actually seen the full-size bar in it’s neatly-divided sections of six, but I was very impressed. Other taffy and nougat bars are not so sharable: (Laffy Taffy, Big Hunk, etc.) I appreciated this thoughtful extra touch. Candy bars should always be portioned, if you ask me. And come to think of it, many of my all-time favorites are: Mounds, Reese’s, 100 Grand.)

I have to say, I quite like the Bit-O-Honey. Despite the fact that the ingredients cite no actual honey, it does seem to possess an earthy taste (“earthy” being quite relative, of course. Like, “earthy” compared to, say, candy corn and Fun Dip.) This may also be due in part to the ground almonds, another highlight of the candy of which I had not been aware. The taste of the almonds (ground so fine as to be undetectable in texture) add a great balance to the sweetness.

As I mentioned above, I did not chew the taffy. This was in order to spare my teeth the stress and agitation, but I actually really enjoyed eating it this way. Not only did it make the candy last longer, but I think that by sucking I was able to cull more flavor and depth. My “bit” o honey became more like a nice lingering stroll of honey (and almonds) across my tongue and palate.

First introduced in 1924 by The Schutter Johnson Company of Chicago, Bit-O-Honey was (big surprise) acquired by Nestle in 1984.

So, I’m a Johnny (or Joanna)-come-lately to this old classic, it seems. It’s not bad, not bad at all. I can easily see why it has “stuck” around all these years.

Photo at top of page courtesy of oldtimecandy.com