Seabrook freeze-dried candy

I remember looking at the strangely-shaped candy about a year ago. I was at the mall and the candy I was gazing at looked like blown up versions of childhood favorites: peach rings, Skittles, and salt water taffy. I would soon learn that this was freeze-dried candy.

There isn’t a bigger trend in the confectionery world at this time. Freeze-dried candy is all the rage and it actually doesn’t taste that bad.

This is what freeze-dried candy looks like.

The process of creating the candy is semi-scientific (after all, freeze drying is the method NASA uses to send food to space). The candy goes through a freezing process in an actual freeze-dryer. Once the candy is frozen, the pressure is reduced in the machine and a vacuum is created in the chamber. Heat is then introduced and evaporation occurs, thus dehydrating the candy and giving it the “blown up” look.

As someone with a sweet tooth, I was intrigued by freeze-dried candy but I wasn’t motivated to the extent that I needed to try it. So as the treat continued to pop up in other places, I didn’t “bite” until this past summer. While we were in Seabrook on our summer vacation, the town’s cute little candy store had a display devoted to the candy. Sloan decided it was the one thing she couldn’t live without and used some of her vacation allowance to buy a bag of freeze-dried Skittles.

Sloan holds the freeze-dried Skittles she bought at a candy store in Seabrook.

Part of the deal of her purchasing the candy was that she would have to let me try it. Well, after I ate that first Skittle I had to amend our agreement so I could eat a few more 😂. The candy was crunchy, airy, and so flavorful. Basically, it was very satisfying. We enjoyed this new take on an old favorite so much that Sidney and I would return to the candy store to buy our own bag.

Kind of like the phenomenon of not realizing how many vehicles of a certain model are on the road until you buy the model yourself, it seemed like freeze-dried candy was even more prevalent after our Seabrook experience. One example truly illustrates this: When we were in South Carolina in November, we went to a Christmas tree farm. This particular farm had a green space with a handful of vendors. Out of those five vendors, two of them offered freeze-dried candy as their signature product! (yes, we got some).

For this past Christmas, I knew the perfect gift to get Sid. I went back to the candy shop in the mall where I first saw freeze-dried candy and I purchased my wife’s favorite sweet treat in freeze-dried form—Nerd Clusters. Needless to say, she was thrilled.