Name: Unican Milkita – Chocolate Milk Candy
Origin: Indonesia
Found at: H-Mart, Irvine
Cost: $1.99
Ingredients:
Glucose, Condensed Milk (Fresh Milk, Skim Milk Powder, Vegetable Oil, Sucrose), Sugar, Cocoa Liquor, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Tri Calcium Phosphate, Butter, Chocolate Flavor (contains sulfites), Emulsifier (Distilled Monoglyceride and Lecithin) Antioxidant (BHT)
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Why I Bought It:
If there's one thing I've noticed that seems a constant in snacks from other countries (and this one), it's this: Candy, especially when it involves milk as a major ingredient, will always be marketed to kids by way of a cartoon. This one is no exception. In other flavors, the cow wears different costumes, but always look like a stuffed animal and without hooves.
Tasting Notes:
It's exactly as you expect it to taste, but it has an unexpected texture. Though it looks and feels like hard candy in your hand, eating one reveals that it's actually halfway soft, sort of like a Now and Later, or a firm Starburst. It's also sticky: the kind of candy you'd be better off slowly dissolving in your mouth than chewing outright, lest you want it to bond with your dental fillings. True to its word, you are left with that familiar aftertaste of having had chocolate milk.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.