My entries for this year's Malaco sweets contest

Malaco just presented this year's Din Påse contest where those of us with a sweet tooth can compose our own mixed bags of sweets. If you live in Scandinavia at least. This year the finalists are chosen by a jury, but everyone can still have their say about which bags they like, just click the 'gilla' button under each entry. (Gilla = like.)

Malaco always have some exotic and unusual flavour to choose from in their Din Påse contests and this year was no different. I was excited to find such flavours as jasmine along with "superfruits" as goji, cupuacu and acai. For my first entry -- I love making these things so I always compose several -- I got inspiration from the jasmine and I began thinking of the Middle East, mint tea, sweet peaches and jasmine incense. To that I added another more "everday tea flavour", liquorice. Instead of plain liquorice I like to choose from their mixed flavours, in this case liquorice- blood orange and liquorice-cupuacu. I want to taste cupuacu, that's why I went for that one eventhough it's a bit off theme.

The name is a merge of the words exotic and tea, the "theme" of my composition. The yellow colour I choose, well mostly because I wanted a warm colour and yellow looks bright next to red. It was so difficult to choose, but I keep going for green and purple so this time I wanted something different. To see -- and "like" -- this entry, click this link.


Then, of cause I had to make more... Next up was Solkatter. A play on words that doesn't work in English. Sol means sun and katt means cat, put together it means a reflection of light. Perhaps it got its name from the fact that cats enjoy playing with these reflections on floors and walls? Anyway, all yellow cat-shaped bits with the flavours cupuacu, mint, watermelon and pineapple-lemon. Plus black cats -- all light cast a shadow, right? -- in liquorice-pomegranate. This bag can be found here.

Ah, and then I had to make a third one... Of cause. Not very creative, but with autumn more or less already here (early autumn this year, I feel) I had to make a cozy autumnal mix too. Couldn't come up with a good name so it became Höstglädje, Autumn joy (oh, dear). But I've used Höstdrömmar and Höstlängtan one time too often... Anyway, for this one I was inspired by the sights and tastes of autumn with apple, pear, rosehip, blackberry and chestnut. Have never tasted chestnut, but can't imagine autumn without seeing our big horse chestnut trees with their giant leaves and spikey cupules hiding shiny brown nuts. This third, and probably last, entry of mine can be found here.

If you're Swedish and like sweets, you really must give this a chance -- it's pretty fun making these bags. And you can win not just sweets (2 kg for all weekly finalists), but a tour of the Malaco factory in Denmark with three friends.


(EDITED TO ADD: I've made yet another bag, min-min, featuring jasmine and mint with touches of capuacu, blood orange-liquorice and pomegranate-liquorice. The name comes from the two first ingredients, but min also means my or mine in Swedish.)