Mexican Peanut Marzipan

Mexican, peanut and marzipan don't really belong together and certainly shouldn't be describing any one thing. Still, that's exactly what my young son and I recently encountered during our trek to the grocery godsend that is Raley's. Aside from great produce and quality meat the store location in Elko, Nevada, also happens to feature a hefty variety of Hispanic and Asian food items. In fact, the variety fills an entire side of an aisle, and then wraps around to the other side with Kosher and Cajun/Creole/Southern-style offerings.

When my son wants something, I'm a big sucker. After knocking over an entire row of canned pinto beans, I sat him in the cart against much protest, and as we strolled along past the pickled pig's feet and jarred cactus strips we came up a modest, but no less diversified offering of Mexican candy. The kid gets sugar all day long, so the peanut marzipan looked interesting.

Admittedly, it tastes OK. But only OK. The ingredients are simple: Sugar, peanuts and natural flavor. They also warn it may contain traces of tree nuts, soy and milk. Not sure how the milk would get in there. The round patty of what amounts to sweetened raw peanut paste is quite crumbly and is almost like somebody literally ground up some peanuts, mixed in some powdered sugar and pressed it into a big tablet. The package contained four patties. My son likes it, and it's cheap, so we "might" get it again. But, it's one of those things where you don't know unless you try it, and I want my son to be as diversified and multi-cultural as possible, yet not at the expense of his own identity or family heritage. Candy is candy.

True marzipan is almond meal and sugar. Some cultures use cashews or even dried peach kernels. What threw me off the most is I was expecting the typical American candy form of peanut butter like that found in commercial candy producers' peanut butter cups. And commercial peanut butter is chock full of sugar and has been made creamy with the addition of oil. This candy is more in line with freshly ground pure peanut butter. Still, this was an interesting treat, but probably not one that will make its way onto our shopping list again anytime soon.

de la Rosa "peanut candy marzipan style"

A cross section of a de la Rosa peanut marzipan patty.