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Simply Recipes / Fruit Riot
As a kid, I gravitated toward the most intensely sour candy I could get my hands on. If it didn’t threaten to turn my face inside out, I didn’t want it.
Sour Patch Kids and Trolli Gummy Worms? Too tame. Instead, my allowance went toward Cry Babies, Warheads, and Tear Jerkers, which I would pop in my mouth on the bus ride to school as a way to impress whoever sat next to me.
I had almost forgotten about my sour candy obsession until last year, when I started seeing a new frozen treat all over TikTok. It was called Fruit Riot, TikTok creators vowed it was the most sour thing ever, and I had to find some for myself.
What Is Fruit Riot?
Fruit Riot is frozen fruit that’s been splashed with lemon and rolled in a sour candy coating. I like to tell friends that it has the taste of youthful exuberance itself.
Fruit Riot transports me straight back to listening to Spice Girls on my Discman on the school bus. It’s bright and surprising and fun, the exact opposite of serious, obligatory, or dull, and, thus, it's exactly what I, a 41-year-old mother of two, need in my life.
The first product in the Fruit Riot empire was Sour Grapes, a bag of frozen red and green grapes coated in sour goodness. The grapes are intensely sour with a pleasantly slushy frozen texture.
The rest of the lineup includes the Sour Grape Mix, which introduces three sour flavors (lemon lime, green apple, and my favorite, mixed berry); Sour Mango; Sour Pineapple; a Spicy Mango that plays on the classic pairing of mango and Tajín; Extreme Sour Grapes, which is a collab with Warheads; and Candy Crunch Cherries, a collab with Olipop that isn’t sour but is nonetheless delightful.
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Simply Recipes / Whole Foods
Why I Love Fruit Riot
Aside from making me feel more alive, what I love about Fruit Riot is that it’s an easy treat to enjoy straight from the freezer.
Though it is coated in ‘candy,’ at its core, it’s still fruit, which helps assuage any guilt I might feel about eating half a bag while watching Love Island. (Though now that I think about it, maybe the guilt is more about what I’m watching than what I’m eating.)
The best way to enjoy Fruit Riot is in what I call a frozen fruit salad (not to be confused with the retro recipe of the same name). In this version of fruit salad, I chill a ceramic bowl in the freezer until it’s nice and cold and then load it up with a mix of sour grapes, sour mango, and sour pineapple, which I eat with my fingers until the inside of my mouth feels like a toxic wasteland in the best possible way.
I can see a long life for Fruit Riot if they continue to introduce new sour fruits and flavor combos. I’d love to see blueberries enter the chat and more flavored coatings, like sour grape or blue raspberry.
No matter what comes next for Fruit Riot, I’ll be hoarding bags in my freezer.
Where To Find Fruit Riot
Fruit Riot was difficult to track down. Last year, thanks to its social media buzz, it was nearly impossible to locate a bag where I live in Richmond, Virginia. Lately, I’ve had success sourcing them at Wegman’s, Whole Foods, and Target.
I heard they’re available at Costco, too, which has made me consider renewing my long-dormant Costco membership. I need a supersized bag of sour fruit!