MINI HONEY MANDARINS

mini honey mandarins: intensely sweet and full of flavour!a mini honey mandarin can be as small as a quarter (that's one of the new Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics quarters there) up to about the size of a Loonie ($1 coin)

At local Asian markets, the Mini Honey Mandarins (a.k.a. Sugar Mandarins, Mini Mandarins, Mini Sweet Mandarins) are here. While at Aberdeen Mall, I purchased a huge bag of these little sugar bombs for the kids because they love them! They are just as easy to peel as the regular Japanese mandarins, but are so small that you can fit 4 or 5 in your hand. The kids love them just because they're tiny, cute and super-sweet.

I saw them again at Kin's Market for $1.29/lb and bought a gargantuan bag. These were even tinier than the ones I purchased at the Aberdeen market, but not as sweet. In my own experience, I have found that the darker orange the little Sugar Mandarins, the more intensely sweet and full of orangey-flavour they are. Size has nothing to do with sweetness, I guess.

because they're so small, you can easily eat a dozen at a sitting.

Mini Honey Mandarins make for fantastic snacks and are perfect for kids' lunch bags. My kindergartener can eat 3 for a snack at school and has at one time eaten 8 at one sitting. My 2 year old, who has a heartier appetite can eat about the same as her big sister! I'm limiting myself to 1 a day because I'm watching my sugar intake !