Deathmatch!

Once we’ve decided which flavors will graduate from the vigorous taste testing rounds to become part of our flavor collections, we still keep working to make them taste even better. Enter: THE DEATHMATCH.

In deathmatches, we usually keep a flavor’s ingredients the same, but change up the proportions to see if we can push the combination to its yummiest potential. Our taste testers love deathmatch season, where two versions of a lollipop enter the competition but only one will survive.

I recently took a pair of lollipops with competing recipes to an EtsyRAIN meetup (EtsyRAIN is the kick-butt Etsy street team for Seattle). The evening’s votes were very close: version A had a slight edge over B, and both versions were judged to be very good.

photo by EtsyRAIN’s fearless leader, Marlo M. Check out her blog about small object photography!

I personally preferred A and I also found A and B to be more similar than I had expected. I’ll probably make at least one more version where I really try to push one of the flavors to become significantly more prominent. We’ll see how that one fares soon!