I bought these gummy candies because I wanted to make sure that cloudberries where somehow represented on this site. If you’re unfamiliar with cloudberries, they’re a small yellow/orange berry that commonly grows in the northern part of Europe. As far as I know there are few if any cloudberry farms. I’m not sure if they cannot be cultivated, or if no one chooses to grow them. Because most (or everyone) relies on these berries growing wild, and they are very rare. In fact they are so rare that there are stories of people in Finland guarding their cloudberry batch with firearms. There are many ways to enjoy cloudberries, but in Finland it’s very popular to make it into a jam and then spread this jam on a cheese that has been grilled.

I’ve tasted this cheese with cloudberry jam, and it is divine. I’ve also been lucky enough to taste a fresh cloudberry, and I would describe it as a more flavourful raspberry. This leads me to the only time I’ve ever eaten a cloudberry in candy form, these gummies. I’ll be honest, they’re a little disappointing. One of two problems seems to have come up. It could be that cloudberries just don’t work when mixed with too much sugar and gelatin. While I have yet to try a fruit that completely fails in any candy form, there are some fruits that are much better than others. The second problem could be that the folks at Arctic Delice aren’t using the proper ratio of ingredients to make the cloudberry flavour shine. They’re expensive berries, and there is little information about how one turns this rare fruit into candy. So it could be a bad recipe.

If I was to describe the flavour of these gummies, I would call them sweet. They taste mostly like sugar. Allison gave them a sniff and described the smell to be something like plum sauce, and I think that’s pretty spot on. It’s like an overly sweet plum sauce. I really didn’t get much of the unique cloudberry flavour at all. According to the package it’s full of real cloudberry flavour, but I just wonder if the only way to make this candy work would be to add even more. The problem with that is if you add too much cloudberry juice, the other parts of the candy won’t be stable.

If you find yourself in a Nordic country (specifically Finland mostly), I highly recommend that you sample something made of cloudberries. Judging by this experience I would probably suggest you eat something that has actual full cloudberries in it, and not just flavouring or juice.