Soft, Sweet, and Natural
Upper East Side, NYC — I've always decreed that you have to be out there in the world to have a good idea of what's going on in the world, and believe that the food world is no different. And as I stay out there —discovering new spots or revisiting old ones — there comes occasion when I discover a new food venture while revisiting an old one.
Such was the case recently as I made a quick local trip to my favorite candy store The Sweet Shop NYC to see friend and proprietor Kelly Jaime.
Upon entering I noticed a young woman in front of the shop offering candy samples to passerby. I assumed she was just under the new employ of the store. Turns out, as Kelly explained, that the young lady, Andrea Patel, is the owner of her independent candy company called Sweetcicle's, which handcrafts, in small batches, all-natural, plant-based soft chew candies.
Andrea is a lifelong soft, "gummy" candy fan, expert, and former candy food blogger, who decided to turn her passion into a business, incorporating her vegetarian ideology and culinary sensibilities into candy products with unique flavor properties, produced wholly from the wonders of nature.
“We’re slightly obsessed with the flavors of planet Earth. Fruits, roots and even shoots are our inspirations.”
Andrea Patel, owner of her own sweets company Sweetcicle's, explains why and how she came up with the idea for her all-natural, plant-based soft chew candies that she's begun selling around New York City.
The candies — whose recipes she perfected over time in her own New York City kitchen — are indeed delicious and have the same nostalgic chew of the soft candies many of us grew up with. And it is obvious that Andrea developed these not as a gimmick, but out of love, of both candy and of nature.
Which explains how a pleasantly and charmingly natural, sweet candy could come from a driven, independent food-lover with those very same qualities.
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Andrea Patel | Sweetcicle's | available at The Sweet Shop NYC | sweetcicles.com
