Flying Saucers
© Denzil Green
Flying saucers are a flying saucer-shaped candy, about 2 inches (5 cm) wide.
The flying saucer is formed from crisp, edible rice paper, or foamed corn starch. This shell is coloured, but flavourless.
The hollow inside is filled with a small amount of sherbet candy powder with a tart but sweet taste that is otherwise unflavoured.
Each one is quite light, weighing only about 1 ⅓ grams. They are sold unwrapped in boxes in candy stores.
In America, where they are often called “Satellite Wafers”, you are likely to find variations that have teeny, hard (often) unflavoured candy balls in them instead of the sherbet powder.
The sherbet-filled varieties are particularly popular in Belgium, Canada, England, France and Germany.
In eating them, some people like to bite off an edge and fish out the powder with the tip of their tongue. Others like to put the whole thing in their mouth, and wait for it to dissolve.
Flying Saucer Ice Cream Sandwiches are made by the Carvel Company. They consist of two soft chocolate biscuits with a filling of soft ice cream in between them; they are sold in freezers, wrapped.
History Notes
Flying Saucers as a candy may have originated as a medicinal item, created in 1900 by a company called Belgica in Belgium. Belgica invented a flat, round starch-shell capsule to hold pill powder in, to make unpleasant-tasting medicines easier for patients to swallow. The Astra Sweets company of Belgium, which bought out Belgica in 1992, claims that this was the predecessor of the candy.
Flying Saucer candy seems to have been made since at least the 1950s in both America and the UK.
Sources
History of Astra Sweets. Retrieved July 2010 from http://www.astrasweets.com/astra2.php?language=UK&sub=1&thetitle=historie