TOKYO, Aug. 29 — Candy apples, iconic summer festival treats in Japan which have been popular for decades, are evolving into fine-tuned sweets in recent years.
Specialty stores are popping up, offering cute-looking products coming in different flavors using good-tasting domestically-grown apples. DIY kits are also being sold for those who want to make candy apples at home.
The popularity of candy-coated apples is spreading, as not only women and young people but a wide variety of people now enjoy them as everyday sweets, giving apple growers the opportunity to boost consumption of homegrown apples.
Pomme d’Amour Co. in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward uses apples from Aomori Prefecture to make candied apples sold at its specialty store Pomme d’Amour Tokyo.
The firm uses a patented technique that “enables candy coating while maintaining apples’ own flavor and scent,” said Takatoshi Ikeda, the firm’s president.
Pomme d’Amour offers candy apples in various flavors, including plain for those who want to enjoy the very taste of apples, as well as the ones coated with cacao powder or matcha.
The products come in a variety of colors and different flavors are sold seasonally.
Customers are mainly women and young people, but the shop is receiving a wider variety of people. “Surprisingly, there are many male customers as well,” Ikeda said.
It is seeing brisk sales particularly on weekends and when students are on vacation. It sells nearly 1,000 candy apples a day at most.
Macure, a food manufacturer in the city of Aomori, markets a candy apple sweets kit at 1,620 yen.
The kit contains Aomori-grown Alps Otome, a mini apple variety, and candy handmade by a partnering confectionery shop which can be used after being heated in a microwave oven.
The maker says the kit proved popular among a variety of people including families with children because of the size of candy apples that fits in a hand and the easiness of making them.
The kit is sold only during the apples’ harvest season, with the coming season expected to be between November and February next year.
JA Zen-noh Aomori, a local agricultural cooperative in the major apple producing area, released a recipe for candy apples using Sun Fuji apples, a major variety, as one of the recipe recommendations it is making in an effort to increase consumption of Aomori-grown apples.
“We hope to further expand consumption of raw apples” through promoting easy-to-make candy apples, a spokesperson for the farm coop said.
1. Candy apples offered at candy apple specialty shop Pomme d’Amour Tokyo PHOTO COURTESY OF POMME D’AMOUR CO.
2. Candy apple sweets kit which can be used to make candy apples at home PHOTO COURTESY OF MACURE
