Cocoa Room Dragees Revisited

What on earth is a dragee?” a friend recently asked while walking into a home accessory and gift store on a recent outing in Toronto. 

She was referring to the colourful box of Cocoa Room dragees resting on the checkout counter. 

If you are not familiar with dragees, they are a a type of candy that can be used as decoration, hold symbolic meaning (fertility/abundance) at an event or for pure eating pleasure.   Dragees have taken on many forms over the centuries including almonds coated in honey, sugar to the more recent Smarties-like candy coating.  

The dragee downside is that they used to taste sickeningly sweet and were not very attractive.  The pastel looking almonds came with a matte finish, looked like an almond (not very imaginative) and overall, were in need of a makeover.  Exit stage left!

Enter stage right, the Cocoa Room (no drama).  This Chicago based company quietly crept onto the scene a couple years ago, glamed up the dragee colours (from matte to gloss), changed the product mix, the expanded the flavours, revamped the packaging and gave other dragee makers a run for their money.  This fabulous brand offers both monochromatic and colourful blends of chocolate covered almonds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, pistachios, dried cherries just to name a few, got the ‘O-List’ endorsement from Oprah are incredibly addictive to eat.   

For more information on how to gift, buy, taste or decorate Cocoa Room dragees, check out their website. 

Happy celebrating.