Coming in a close second to Junior Mints as my favorite candy would be the BING candy bars, which are made in Sioux City, Iowa.
I grew up in a small Iowa farming community about 60 miles east/southeast from Sioux City and about once a month we would trek up to Sioux City to go shopping for items we couldn't find in the small towns. A couple of times around Christmas time my mom would go to The Palmer Candy Company Store and get the fresh made, straight from the factory, no plastic wrappers BING bars. They tasted devine! Even though my mom has a Christmas candy recipe that is like a BING bar, it's never the same. For the most flavorful experience, you have to have the one made in Sioux City. The rest of the year we would buy TWIN BING bars at the local grocery stores, and happily ate them even though they came in wrappers.
So, what is a BING bar? Well, it's a cherry cream center with a chocolate nut coating. And while many people try to compare the BING bar to a Cherry Mash, it is not even close. BING bars are more flavorful and less sweet. Thus, they don't overwhelm you with flavor. The chocolate nut coating is crunchy, and you can taste the nuts through the chocolate, so it doesn't seem as sweet. The cherry cream as a vivid cherry taste, yet isn't overly sweet. Instead, it accompanies the chocolate.
Where can you find the BING bar? Well, you just can't wander into any place and find them. In fact, the bar you see above I found at a Hy-Vee in Omaha in the specialty candy aisle. Omaha is not usually stocked with KING or TWIN BING bars, even though Sioux City and Omaha are only about 100 miles apart, so I felt privileged and bought 4. Needless to say, we don't have many left. So, I usually grab one when I go back home to Iowa. If I was smart I would ask my brother, who just happens to live in Sioux City, to grab some for us. I'm sure my other brother, who is in college but goes through Sioux City to go home, would forget, so I can't ask him.
If you're reading this and really want to see what they're like the company has a website, www.palmercandy.com, that sells them.
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