Soft fruit sweets flavoured with raspberry and blackberry, set with fruit pectin instead of gelatine. Organic, made in France by Sophie M, in the brand's 80 g clip-top tin.
Pectin instead of gelatine, and why it changes the sweet
This is the substitution the whole product turns on, and it does two quite separate things.
First, it makes them vegan. Gelatine is collagen, boiled out of pig or cattle hide and bone. Almost every gum and jelly sweet in a supermarket contains it, which is why sweets are one of the harder things to buy for a vegan, a vegetarian, or anyone eating halal or kosher. Pectin is a plant fibre — it comes from apple pomace and citrus peel — so it removes the problem entirely.
Second, it changes the bite. Gelatine is elastic: it stretches, it is chewy, and it takes a while to break down in the mouth. Pectin is short — it yields cleanly, it does not stretch, and it melts rather than being chewed away. The practical consequence is that the fruit flavour arrives immediately instead of emerging slowly from under the sugar. If you have ever found gum sweets rubbery, this is a different experience.
There is a reason pectin belongs here in particular: pectin only sets in the presence of acid and sugar, which is exactly what fruit provides. It is the same chemistry that makes jam set. A raspberry sweet set with pectin is doing something a fruit sweet has always done.
Raspberry and blackberry
Two of the sharpest berries, which is a good pairing for a pectin sweet because the acid is doing structural work as well as flavour work. Raspberry gives the perfume; blackberry gives the darker, less obviously sweet note underneath. Both are natural flavourings.
What organic actually removes here
More than you might expect from a sweet.
Six synthetic colours widely used in confectionery — tartrazine, quinoline yellow, sunset yellow, carmoisine, ponceau 4R and allura red — must by European law carry the warning “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children” on the label. Organic certification does not permit them at all. Nor does it permit artificial sweeteners or synthetic flavourings.
The visible consequence is that these are less lurid than an industrial fruit sweet. That is what fruit and plant colour looks like.
The tin
The clip-top tin is genuinely useful rather than packaging for its own sake. Pectin sweets are soft and they dry out in an open bag within days; a sealed tin keeps them as they should be. It is also why these work as a gift handed over unwrapped — and the tin outlives the sweets by years.
Honestly
They are sweets. Sugar, fruit and pectin — no better for your teeth for being organic, and worth the same moderation as any confectionery. Not last thing at night.
Small children: whole sweets are a choking hazard for the very young. Cut them up or wait.
Vegan, lactose-free and gluten-free. Check the tin for the full allergen statement if anyone has a serious allergy — a workshop that makes several products handles several ingredients.
Storage
Cool, dry, clip closed. Heat softens them and humidity makes them tacky and stick together.
Sophie m
Hey Yum
Bonbon-France
