One of our most popular snacks here in South Korea is the French Pie. While it might be at the top of the list for the best snack these days, it has been around for a long time and many people still enjoy eating it.
The French Pie is a puff pastry dessert with a sticky layer of jam or other sweet filling on top. Made by the Haitai company, these days French Pies come with either strawberry, apple, or chocolate custard as the topping filling.
I remember eating these frequently when I was younger, and I was very surprised, and interested, when I was at my local grocery store and saw that there was now a French Pie Jelly candy in both strawberry and apple flavors. I decided I had to try them, and so I picked up a package of each, as well as a box of the original French Pie, in strawberry flavor.
The French Pie Jelly comes in 56-gram packages, and actually don’t have a large amount of calories considering that there is probably a lot of sugar in the snack.
French Pie Strawberry Jelly
The first thing I did is open up each of the packages.
French Pie Apple Jelly
I noticed right away that they both had a strong smell of their respective fruits and I was very hungry at the scent coming from the packages.
After laying them out next to the original French Pie, I was struck by how similar the jelly candy actually looked compared to the original treat.
The French Pie Strawberry Jelly had a nice pink hue to the top portion, and it really did look like the jam that comes with the pastry treat. The pastry color was a bit off, as it looked whiter than a nice light golden brown that the original has.
The French Pie Apple Jelly had a lovely golden top to it and was a perfect representation of the apple jam on the original version. Again, the “pastry” portion of the jelly candy didn’t quite match up in terms of color.
Of course, the taste is really the most important part, so it was time to dig into these jelly snacks.
I tried one of the original French Pies to see it if was still good. The pastry was flakey, although a bit soft without a sharp crispness to it. The strawberry jam on top was tasty and sweet.
The French Pie Strawberry Jelly is a nice treat. It was of course very sweet, and the strawberry flavor was pretty natural tasting, without a lot of chemical flavor to it.
The French Pie Apple Jelly candy was even better, and the strong apple taste with just a hint of cinnamon to it really made it taste like an apple pie.
For me, the big difference is the texture, which seems obvious, but it is really important. The flakey pastry that is part of the original French Pie makes such a world of different. The flavors between the two different styles of treat are not that noticeable but missing that pastry hurts!
In short, if you like jelly candy and don’t like pastry, then you will really enjoy the French Pie Jelly snacks. However if pastry is more your speed, then I would definitely recommend getting the original treat instead.
