Jelly Belly: Recipe Mix

Happy Easter, beanie babies! This season’s finale will bookend its premiere by featuring another Jelly Belly collection: Recipe Mix. The conceit behind the name is spelled out on the box: “Two flavors in every bean.” It’s a conceit we’ve seen before with Starburst Crazy Beans. Let’s see how the Jelly Belly take on it compares.

As always, because Jelly Belly beans are so amazingly consistent in their size, shape, chewability, and texture, I will refer you to my reviews of Jelly Belly Snapple and Sours for details on those categories.

Size and shape

4 out of 5 beans

Chewability

2 out of 5 beans

Texture

5 out of 5 beans

Taste and flavor

I take some issue with the “two flavors in every bean” billing for a coupe of these beans. The most obvious thing is that “muffin” is not a flavor; muffins don’t inherently have a flavor. And while meringue has a flavor, it’s not like there are just meringue-flavored things out there, so it’s kinda weird to say that Lemon Meringue Pie is two flavors in one.

That said, Jelly Belly continues to reach a high standard for interesting, high-quality flavors.

• The S’mores bean clearly features both a strong marshmallow flavor (though not as strong as the Peeps Jelly Beans) and chocolate (though a bit more of a malted chocolate than a creamy Hershey’s-esque milk chocolate).
• PB&J has a good, strong strawberry jelly presence on the front end and the peanut butter comes through in the finish.
• Blueberry Muffin is the weakest of the bunch. The blueberry is basically non-existent, and, well, as noted before, muffin is not a flavor. That leaves this just tasting like a mild brown sugar bean.
• The Lemon Meringue Pie bean is a triumph. It hits you with a nice burst of lemon (with some actual acidity, unlike many mild lemon desserts) and then you start to notice the accurately-flavored meringue layer as you chew. Delightful!
• Finally, Chocolate-Covered Banana is another winner – a classic flavor combination reproduced beautifully in this jelly bean.

The sad Blueberry Muffin bean takes some of the wind out of the sails for this package, but aside from that, we have four very good flavors here.

7 out of 10 beans

The one-of-each test

Perhaps the ultimate test of a bag of jelly beans is how enjoyable it is to take one of each flavor and eat them all at the same time.¹

Looking back at the Cold Stone Creamery and Krispy Kreme reviews, I’m realizing that I violated my own rule given in the footnote linked above. Those flavors were not all fruit flavors, but given their nature of all emulating desserts, I suppose it seemed reasonable at the time to try them together. Given that precedent, I will do the same here. These flavors all could potentially work together.

And I think they actually do! It’s quite an interesting mix. I can pick out most of the individual flavors, with the jelly, banana, and peanut butter flavors coming to the forefront.

Still, the concept of these beans is already to marry two flavors in a single bean, and taking ten of those component flavors together (well, eight if you discount the non-existent Blueberry Muffin flavors, and the fact that chocolate is a component of two of them) is maybe a little overkill.

7 out of 10 beans

Conclusion

With this latest collection, Jelly Belly again shows that they can put together some really interesting specialty flavors. Lemon Meringue and Chocolate Banana are two of my favorite flavors of the season!

And speaking of the season, it now draws to a close. Hard to believe it’s been six seasons already. I left a few things in the queue for next year, and have some others on my to-purchase list, so we’re not done here yet! See you soon.