♫ Gumdrops keep sweetening my head ♫

Following the Easter celebrations, zillions of homes in the world are flooded with sugary treats brought by the bunny. While many people are now filled with guilt for binge eating chocolate, I invite you to go a different way. Instead of consuming yourself with worry about your body shape, let us dwell for a few moments in yet another sweet childhood memory in this blog: gumdrops.

Here in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, we call them balas de goma (literally: gum candies). In other parts of the country, they are called jujubas.

Strawberry, lemon, pineapple and tangerine-flavored gumdrops
Photo: Diego Mandarino 

I had the opportunity to meet these colorful sugar gems once again this Easter, after a long while. So much time had passed that I had grown doubtful about the quality of gumdrops, thinking it might have been a childhood passion that would not persist in adult life.

But... how surprised I was a few days ago when I chewed the first one from a small bag of ten. All of a sudden, my sugar-coated memories proved to be consistent enough, for the taste of the slightly sticky pellet brought those elusive sensorial remembrances back to life as it massaged all the areas inside my mouth and its aroma hit my tasting nerves.

The first thing I have always liked about gumdrops is that their colors are not random, but each one indicates a specific flavor. The second important aspect for me about them is that these candies are indeed fruit-flavored; our taste buds can feel the strawberry signature in the red drop,  the lemon trademark in the green drop, and so on. They are not bland at all, as is sometimes the case with other sweets. No; gumdrops have distinctive savors.

I like all gumdrops, but the pineapple one strikes a special chord. It's often the yellow one in a pack. The orange one, tangerine-flavored, is also special. 

What about you? Do you like gumdrops? How are they called where you come from? Do you have a favorite flavor? 

Milk sweet: a spread that tastes like home

Doce de leite. Such a Latin American flavor. It is one of the things I missed from home on the occasions I traveled overseas and was away for some time. 

In Spanish-speaking countries, it is called dulce de leche, just like in Portuguese: 'sweet of milk', 'milk sweet', or something of the sort. Since there is apparently no specific term in English, I will keep using doce de leite. 

It is basically a thick, creamy brown spread. It is delicious on a slice of bread, especially if you mix it with milk cream spread (nata), which is also commonly found in small containers on refrigerated supermarket shelves all over the country.

It tastes perfect on a slice of bread

Doce de leite is a great filling, too. It is the heart of the unrivaled South American alfajor, a most traditional confection in Argentina and Uruguay. It is the soul of the Brazilian churros, a deep-fried, tube-like dough.

This very sweet brown cream also goes heavenly with cheese; in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, doce de leite served with Minas cheese is a classic. The sweet commonly found there is of a lighter brown color than the one typically made here in Southern Brazil and neighboring countries.

Speaking of Minas Gerais, another specialty of theirs that makes a perfect companion to milk sweet is pão de queijo, or cheese bread. Pão de queijo is an authentic Brazilian dainty on its own, by the way, popularly accompanied by a cup of coffee in city cafes, bus stations, roadside gas stations and diners, and airports throughout the country.

In the pictures below, the doce de leite, Minas cheese and cheese bread were all made in the state of Rio Grande do Sul:

Minas Cheese and Milk Sweet: what a couple!

Pão de queijo and doce de leite, another scrumptious duo.

Oh, how I miss those good old days when I was a child in the 90's and it was still possible to find doce de leite and nata in bulk in supermarkets' display counters to be sold by weight. You could ask for a certain quantity and the attendant behind the counter would start collecting spoons of the desired substance, gradually filling a plastic container that stood on a scale until the approximate requested amount was reached. It seems to me that these foods tasted better that way. They don't sell them like that anymore due to sanitary regulations. 

The recipe for this brown manjar is quite simple; the making of it, not so much. The sweet is obtained by slowly heating milk with sugar. One has to be careful not to let it burn, stirring and stirring. According to my mother-in-law's account, who had the experience of preparing it at home in the past, the process takes hours and the resulting volume of sweet is a great deal smaller than the initial volume of milk. 

In Brazil, you can usually find jars containing doce de leite in supermarkets. The best brands are usually from Uruguay. When my wife and I traveled there last year, a little more than a month before the pandemic, we were surprised by the variety of products made with, or flavored like, doce de leite, including ice creams, yogurts and carton drinks.

You can also find it in small plastic bags here in Brazil. This is popular with kids, who bite these bags open and slurp its scrummy content. My wife got one in a food basket she was gifted by a group of students last year, which reminded her of childhood.

Do you feel like biting this bag open?

In South America, I can assure you that doce de leite is a superior sweet and a flavor to try, and one to never forget. 

Pitanga - the Surinam Cherry

This week I saw on Facebook a post from Teacher Fábio Emerim, who teaches English as a foreign language in Brazil, about how to say some fruits in English. In the list he mentioned pitanga: I learned that it's called "Surinam cherry" in English. 

The mention of this tiny round, somewhat mandarin-shaped (because of the apparent wedges it has), bright orangish-red cherry made me smile and brought back sweet and aromatic childhood memories for me. In my mind, I saw myself once again perched on a Surinam cherry tree (pitangueira) branch above the sandy gray soil beneath, in a coastal month of February, plucking off these juicy scarlet ornaments for my own summer delight. A genuine Brazilian flavor dream.

                                                Image by Gustavo Torres from Pixabay

Pitanga, or Surinam cherry, is undoubtedly my favorite fruit. It's sweet, but not much; it's a bit acid, but only a tiny little and by no means does it make your lips feel prickly; it's succulent; its stones are smooth and slightly soft, not causing any trouble and even agreeable to chew; and it gives off a pleasant and unique, sweet-sharp scent. 

Doing a little research on Google, I found out that pitanga can also be translated into English as "Brazilian cherry", though this might not be a precise term. It is apparently used to refer to a range of species, one of them being  jabuticaba, a black cherry that grows on the trunk of a tree (another good one to try!).

Anyhow, it makes me feel good that my preferred fruit is one of my own homeland. I don't really know why the Surinam cherry, as well as other native species, does not have a commercial value. Maybe it's because its quality depends on specific soil traits? That's pure guessing, though. I once tried a pitanga on my university campus in Porto Alegre; much to my disappointment, it had a very weak flavor and no aroma at all...

Those ones from my childhood memories, however, in a native tree garden near the Atlantic seashore, were the real deal. And that very tree I am perching on in my thoughts still bears fruit to this day in real life. My uncle and aunt (piblings?) even make jam out of its cherries. (But I would rather eat them fresh from the tree!). 

But, oh... how I wish there were Surinam cherry ice creams to be found anywhere around... and popsicles, ice pops, candies, juice, soft drinks, jams, and all the other treats they make out of fruits. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Brazil, whose people seem to sometimes turn their backs on what their homeland's nature has to offer. Or maybe that's just my cherry resentment speaking 😁

So, if you ever come across pitangas, the tiny cherries that you can see in the picture above, don't hesitate: try them. If you live in Brazil or if you ever come to Brazil, maybe you will be lucky enough to find a tree. It's not like it can be found anywhere, but it's not rare either: it is a legit Atlantic Forest element. So much so that some specialized gardening shops in the region sell Surinam cherry saplings; my mother-in-law even bought one a few months ago.

In case you have been wondering what the other fruits I like best are (you were probably not wondering), apart from the East South American delicacy I just described above, here is my personal top 10 fruit ranking:

1 - Pitanga (Surinam cherry)

2 - Maracujá (passion fruit)

3 - Pineapple

4 - Kiwifruit

5 - Melon

6 - Strawberry

7 - Grape

8 - Mango

9 - Banana

10 - Mandarin

What are your top 10?