Cherry Hills (EJM x Chef's One Shot)

Hey, this is the recipe release for a discontinued one shot at Chef's Flavours in the heartrendingly beautiful EJuiceMakers line. Shoutout to Chef's and everyone who picked this one up.

The original description was: "Chewy candy with a classic blend of cherry, strawberry, orange, and lemon. Stellar and explosive." What I couldn't say was that this is a starburst recipe. But like all the starbursts at once. Whatever. It was a good recipe.

I figured it probably needed some actual development notes, so here goes...

I had been playing around with the platonic concept of "the starburst" for a long ass time. And I thought I was making some headway. I had originally posted a simplified version of this recipe as BURST. The key part of the recipe, for me at least, was trying to nail down the texture. And I feel like we mostly got there.

The Base

This base wouldn't have been possible without guidance/wholesale theft. Kopel originally put me on to the Vanilla Swirl as a taffy base idea, and yeah, it works. Most taffy has a background vanilla, and a vanilla swirl has this weird waxy, thick texture to it. I remember going through revisions and nailing down 2.5% as the amount of vanilla swirl you could add without the maltol in the flavor muting everything to shit. Marshmallow is added to further bring up that chewy, waxy texture. TPA Marshmallow is another flavor that mutes, so .5% is about as high as I could stomach for the integrity of the mix. The Greek Yogurt was ripped off from Steam's appermelon gummy recipe. I still don't 100% understand why it works, but a touch of FLV Greek Yogurt really does add to the chew of a recipe, and the butyric notes steep out really, really quick.

Those three flavors together make for a hell of a chewy candy base when slammed up against big, bright fruit flavors.

The Fruit

A traditional american starburst mix is cherry, strawberry, orange and lemon. FW Starburst Type (or Star Candy or whatever non trademark infringing name they are selling this under this week) has a pretty damn accurate starburst orange and lemon vibe. I don't get any strawberry or cherry from it, but the citrus parts are bold, bright, and sweet with a pretty intense bite. The muting properties of the base soak up some of the bite, but I think it still gets the point across. TPA Strawberry isn't the best strawberry for the job here, but it does work. I needed a big, pink candy strawberry with some softer edges. JF Sweet Strawberry at 3% works better. Maybe use that one if you have it, but the TPA still delivers.

...AND THE CHERRY. You can hack together three cherry-ish flavors for something that doesn't taste like gasoline and almost looks like a cherry in the right light. Or you can just use TPA Cherry Extract if you can deal with a weak, candied cherry flavor that isn't garbage. It's weak though! And it has some water in it! So you'll never get a bold, vibrant cherry out of it, but it works as a complement and that's all I needed here.

This only has .5% of FW Sweetener in there. Feel free to sub in CAP SS. The recipe works with it. I think this was from a transitional period before I fully embraced sweetener for candy-type vapes. If I had to do it all over again I'd probably switch to SS at .5% or FW Sweetener at like 2%.

So, this is my best attempt at a normal-ass starburst recipe. I liked it. Steeping with this recipe is a bit tricky though. I think it needs at least a week for everything to settle down and thicken. And I think it gets too muted after 3-4 weeks. So it's definitely not perfect, but it's the closest I've tasted to a mouthful of classic starbursts.