Hey Funhouse Fam!
This week, we’re staying in Asia to bring you a list of our Top 5 Chinese Snacks!
Just like last week’s Top Japanese Candy List, the criteria for our list is pretty straight forward:
First, everything has to come straight from China. We want to show you some really fun, unique, and special snacks that you can’t find at your local grocery store!
We're talking snacks so authentic they don’t even have localized packaging! The Canadian Bi-Lingual Ingredients and Nutritional Information is on a sticker!
Lastly, everything on the list has to be super duper delicious! Nothing on the list tastes pretty okay or is just novel for novelty’s sake. Everything on the list got at least one audible, “Oh, Wow!” during testing!
Two little guidelines is all it took to bring this list to life so we can share our favourite snacks from China with you!
So without further ado, we now present to you, our Top 5 Chinese Snacks!
Ritz Salted Egg Yolk Cheese
Ritz Salted Egg Yolk Cheese cracker sandwiches are a Ritzy take on a Chinese delicacy!
This exciting flavour is part of a trio of specialty Ritz cracker sandwiches modeled after cheese-based desserts that are popular in China. The other two flavours are Lemon Basque and Double Cheese (a Swiss cheese cheesecake).
This one is based on the Chinese pastry, Dan Huang Su (pastry moon cake), which features a salt-cured egg yolk surrounded by a cheese-custard-like filling.
The first bite definitely had some culture shock to it. The filling is rich, savoury, salty, and a little sweet in a way that was unfamiliar to most of our palates. Not unpleasant, mind you, just unfamiliar.
But like the second dive into a lake, the second bite was much more enjoyable! Once we knew what we were in for, we were able to really appreciate the intricate flavours at play! The sweetness of the custard, the salty unctuousness of the egg – it all came together beautifully! From that second bite onwards, we were completely in love with these Ritz sandwiches!
Ritz Salted Egg Yolk Cheese cracker sandwiches are a delicious way to broaden your snacking horizons! Experience a uniquely Chinese flavour cradled between your favourite buttery crackers!
Te Yi Shi Freeze Dried Chocolate Strawberries
Te Yi Shi Freeze-Dried Chocolate Strawberries are an elegant, alluring chocolate that bring an air of refinement and sophistication wherever they go.
Perfectly ripe farm-fresh strawberries are picked at the peak of freshness and quickly freeze dried to preserve their flavour. Then, each whole strawberry is dressed in a thick coat of decadent ruby-red chocolate.
Just the act of eating this grand bonbon is an exciting experience! The bonbon is a little smaller than a golf ball. The layer of chocolate surrounding the strawberry is very thick, and if you bite into it where the berry is thin, it seems like it goes on forever! But once your teeth make it through all that wonderful chocolate, they’ll crunch down on a crisp, fruity, freeze-dried strawberry!
Once uncovered, the light and airy berry bursts with field-fresh flavour bite after bite! As you continue to enjoy the textures and flavours, the strawberry slowly begins to crumble and dissolve into the chocolate – fully entwining their flavours for a fruited chocolate experience like no other!
If you pop in the whole bonbon, like many of us did, there is a small secret you might miss on your first taste: the strawberry is coated in an almost imperceptibly thin shell of ice cream cone crumble!
The Candyologists that ate it all in one go completely missed that detail! Those that bit into it from their fingers could see a very faint tan outline around the berry. Before tasting, we only read the translated copy on the bag, which made no mention of this genius inclusion. It wasn’t until we read the ingredients list that the secret was plainly spelt out to us!
On our subsequent tastings, the ice cream cone crumble coat was easy to detect now that we knew about it. It made the breakthrough to the berry just a little more crisp, and added a wonderful whisper of toasted wafer flavour!
For those who aren't resonating with this rich red chocolate, these incredible bonbons are also available in White Chocolate and Matcha Chocolate! Inspired by berries and cream, white chocolate brings the creamy sweetness of this confection to new heights! Matcha chocolate, by contrast, brings a deeply earthy flavour to keep the berry’s natural sweetness grounded.
All three flavours are complex enough to act as a delicate dessert, yet simple enough to act as an easy afternoon pick-me-up. They’re also refined enough that putting six or so into the right little bag makes for an impressive small gift!
If you love chocolate as much as we do, we cannot recommend these treats enough!
Pringles Steak and Foie Gras
For decades, Pringles has been pushing flavour boundaries to their limits! From down to earth street food to avant-garde expressionism – if a flavour can hack it, Pringles will stack it!
Pringles Steak and Foie Gras are so over the top decadent that I keep expecting the next one to come out of the can with gold leaf on it!
They have an unctuous, ultra-marbled, meaty, umami taste that just melts off of every bite!
The foie gras flavour is hard to pick out against the steak because it’s also very savoury and meaty. We felt its biggest contribution to this wholly unique Pringles experience was in the mouthfeel. We could feel the rich flavour of every chip melting off like rendered fat and coating our mouths in silky savoury deliciousness!
Maybe there's something to the chip that did it, or maybe we dreamt it all up and gaslit ourselves into over-experiencing a fancy flavour. Regardless, it definitely felt real to us!
I don’t know if I’ve ever described a Pringle as having a ‘heavy’ flavour before. You know that particular over-fed feeling you get when you’ve had far too much cured meat and cheese at Christmas, and you can almost feel the gout creeping in? That’s the feeling that sneaks up on you after more than a handful of these ultra-indulgent chips.
Now while that might sound like a negative review, it isn't! We only got to that point because these chips are really REALLY good! They’re rich, decadent, and ridiculously flavourful! And if you can keep yourself from eating more than one serving at a time, they’ll keep being delicious!
Pringles Steak and Foie Gras is part of a line up of Haute-Cuisine-inspired flavours along with Black Truffle Velvet Mashed Potatoes and French-Style Chicken Twister with Morel (which seems to be chicken cordon bleu with a morel sauce).
These flavours were created in a collaboration between Pringles and Michelin-starred Chef Morgan – based on recipes from her own fine dining restaurant.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell from my own research, Chef Morgan is not a real person. Which is a shame because that would be a pretty cool collab! And while there is a surprising number of high-end chefs named “Chef Morgan,” none of them seem to have worked with Pringles. If I’m wrong and you can prove the identity of the real Chef Morgan, please let me know in the comments below!
If you’re looking to snack like you’re in the 1%, there’s nothing that compares to Pringles Steak and Foie Gras! (Please snack responsibly)
Pepsi White Peach Oolong
Pepsi White Peach Oolong is a uniquely fresh, floral, and fragrant pop!
After a long day of sampling a mountain of rich and salty foods, nothing was more refreshing than this surreal soda!
Each first sip packs a prominent peachy punch! The flavour is sweet and fruity, like a peach ring, without the under-ripe tartness that some peach drinks have. Once the initial impact fades, the delicate flavour of oolong tea comes to the forefront and lovingly lingers all the way to your next sip!
But don’t think this is just a tea drink! While peach and oolong are dancing around each other in the front, Pepsi’s fizz and flavour provide a strong foundation so the other flavours can really shine!
We have no shortage of exciting sodas from China, and they’re all delicious in their own way! After trying them all, the consensus was pretty clear – Pepsi White Peach Oolong was the one going on this list!
Sweet and fruity white peach, mellow and fragrant oolong, all propped up by a smooth Pepsi undertone. If you love tea, peach, or Pepsi, this is a pop you’ve got to try!
Lay's Dried Pickled Mustard Chips
If you’ve been keeping up with the Candy Funhouse Blogs for a little while, you already know about these chips.
In our Top 10 Chips Blog, I talked about how they were too polarizing among the Candyologists to get onto that list without a little… editorial subterfuge.
But not this time!
This time, I was able to dig deep into my reviewer’s thesaurus and find enough flowery prose to sway the Candyologists into finally seeing what a remarkable can of chips these truly are!
For the uninitiated, Chinese mustard greens are the leaves of the, you guessed it, Chinese mustard plant! The leafy greens share a lot of the same spicy mustardy flavours as the seeds, but are much more tame and mild. They’re pickled with vinegar and salt, and enjoyed throughout Asia as a warmly spicy side dish.
Lay’s Dried Pickled Mustard Chips takes the warm mustard flavours of the greens, salt, and vinegar, and puts them on top of a uniquely crackery stackable chip!
They may not sound like much, but these are my favourite chips of all time! The chip has a perfect shattering crispiness, just the right amount of vinegary tang, and the mustard greens taste like a warm hug.
Until they stop making these life-changing chips, I'm going to talk about them at every opportunity!
There is nothing at Candy Funhouse I want you to experience more than these chips! So please, as a personal favour to me, your favourite candy writer, try them for yourself!
That concludes our list of our Top 5 Chinese Snacks!
We hope we’ve introduced you to something new you’re excited to try! There’s some pretty wild stuff on the list, so hopefully you’re feeling adventurous! Even if you’re feeling a little hesitant, rest assured that everything here has been 100% vetted and approved by Candyologists!
If you want to continue expanding your snacking horizons, be sure to check out our Chinese Snacks Collection!
How do you feel about our list? Do you agree with our choices? Is there anything you think we missed? What are you exited to try for yourself?! Let us know in the comments down below!
Until next time! Stay Fun!
