9/19/2023 0 Comments Lifesaver mints spark in the dark![]() ![]() And for folks that like to preview a roll before they open it, it’s quite hard to tell the light colors apart. They’re so muted that I have trouble telling the pale yellow, lavender and white apart. The colors are quite a bit more subdued, as if Necco Wafers weren’t already a bit washed out. (I visited about a dozen stores in two states in a month looking for them.) I haven’t been able to find the large two ounce rolls in the stores near me, but I did finally find this package of the mini rolls at CVS in the Halloween section. (I’ve always had a problem with the pink ones having a bad bitter aftertaste.) ![]() Since no artificial colors are used I was hoping that the flavors would be truer. The current flavors are chocolate, cinnamon, clove, lemon, licorice, orange and wintergreen. Because of the new restrictions Necco placed on itself, they dropped one flavor from the original that could not be replicated adequately: Lime. This year marks a new generation of Necco Wafers now with all natural flavorings and colors. I know most folks who like them also searched the store shelves for one that had just the right mix of colors they preferred. The classic roll of Necco Wafers contained eight flavors and has always been a random assorted stack sealed in a glassine wrapper. ![]() What’s created is a beguilingly crunchy lozenge. The whole mass is loaded into a roller like it’s some sort of infinitely long pie crust then the disks are cut and stamped with the Necco name. Then after the base is created it’s customized with the flavors and colors. To make them, a dough of sugar and corn syrup is mixed up and stabilizers and binders such as gelatin, tragacanth, xanthan and gum Arabic are added. They’re not fussy but perhaps a little homely and dated. The product is rather unusual for the modern era of confections and is more similar to breath mints than regular candy. The wafers are lightly flavored and colored disks of sugar. Necco Wafers were available in different sizes and were a popular penny candy of the time. By the time they’d been around for almost fifty years they finally settled into their present day name, assortment and packaging style in 1912. Chase later merged with Ball and Forbes and Bird, Wright and Company to become the New England Confectionery Company in 1901. They also innovated machinery and techniques to create confections like the wafers. ![]() They were known for their hard candies (boiled sweets), lozenges and “Oriental style” sweets including Turkish Delight. Necco Wafers were introduced in 1863 by the Chase and Company candy makers. In the early years of Candy Blog I tried to concentrate on candies I’d never had before, but it became apparent that in order to discuss things that were new (or new to me) I had to cover the classics as well. Try to survive in the darkness of endless Dungeon full of ancient secrets and terrible creatures.It’s hard to believe that I’ve never reviewed Necco Wafers. What terrible secrets keep dark depths in themselves? Is there a limit to the Abyss? Who lived here before us?
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