Hi-Chew for me and you!

Thanks to my dear Channy chan-chan, I replenished my collection of weird-flavoured Hi-Chew candy today!

(Hi-Chew, in case anyone wants to know, is a highly chewy but flavourful Japanese candy that can also be used as a substitute for squash or tennis balls, hence the ).


[TOP: High conc. [sic] black sesame milk candy which are not Hi-Chews. I think the "conc" is for "concrete"; BOTTOM: A new kora (cola) Hi-Chew package!]


[I think this one says is is spadorini flavour or something. I can't really read but maybe spadorini is Japanese for cheese drink.]


[I think this ones is sour plum, or umeshu something-something.]


[An older cola flavoured Hi-Chew packaging with the red banner! Untouched and unscathed! ]

[Ramune soda flavour (a nutsoid Japanese soda that has a bottle with a fandangled bottle with a marble in it. Ramune is supposed to be a transliteration of "lemonade" but as we all know, Japanese people went to the washroom when they were handing out the letter L so now they can't pronounce them.]

I don't really eat candy which is why they tend to accumulate but I like the packaging for Hi-Chews. Nothing tastes like aged vintage candy!

Look what I made!

[Cocoa meringue doodie cookie!]

I've never had a sweet tooth, especially for strange extra sweet confections like meringue cookies [jump to thekitchn.com] that look like CJ7 left behind. Unfortunately for me (and those subject to my confections), the egg whites didn't hold their form so the cookies kind of collapsed into its turd form.




[A pilfered image of CJ7 from eastday.com who probably pilfered it from the film distributors. Gotta love China!]

Though meringue doesn't require cream of tartar, the acidity helps neutralize the alkalinity in egg whites to give them stability and volume, making the doodie cookies less doodie-like!

My mistake was substituting lime juice for cream of tartar (3 times the required amount of cream of tartar) which added liquid to the egg whites, thus adding water in addition to acidity... big meringue-o no-no!

(Evidently, if you rub cut lemons around the inside of a bowl and let it dry, the white powdery citric acid that is left behind is a good substitute for cream of tartar).