Mango Tango

Hot Tamales, the classic chewy, spicy jelly candy, now comes in a tantalizing new variety: Hot Tamales Tropical Heat. Unlike the purely cinnamon originals, these new Tropical Heat Hot Tamales come in three fruity flavors: Limon Fever, Pineapple Picante, and my favorite, Mango Tango.

3% CAP Jelly Candy + 0.5% TFA Cinnamon Red Hot (no PG) + 1% TFA Sweetener. This is your classic Hot Tamale flavor. The candy starts off sweet and then the heat builds as you chew. It creeps up slowly, mostly hitting the back of your throat, followed by just a little burn around the sides of your tongue. The spicy cinnamon continues to build with each piece, so the more you eat, the more you feel the heat, until your tongue sizzles four or five pieces in. This vapes the same way. Weigh the TFA Cinnamon Red Hot carefully; it’s a powerful ingredient and being even one-tenth of a percent off will easily be too much or too little. TFA Sweetener is NOT optional and cannot be substituted with EM or a sucralose solution; Hot Tamales need both the sugar lips effect of a little sucralose and the sweetness-enhancing and flavor-rounding properties of maltol. You get more of a homemade, pectin-based gummy treat, rather than a mass-produced jelly bean-type candy, without the TFA Sweetener.

CAP Sweet Mango has the density and depth to infuse this recipe with mango flavor and the CAP Jelly Candy interacts with it in a way that curbs its tendency to taste like cloyingly overripe, fast approaching rotten, fruit. However, it’s still not quite vibrant and fresh enough to mimic the burst of bright mango flavor you get as soon as the sugary shell of a Mango Tango Hot Tamale crumbles on your first bite. TFA Philippine Mango is too weak to lead any mango profile without using a ton of it and bringing along a gnarly chemical off-note, but the addition of it here gives CAP Sweet Mango’s fleshy flavor a brighter, more nectary taste like the candy's mango flavor.