Kisses is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe various items of small sugar
confectionery, defined by their shape rather than a similar recipe. The most famous brand using this name is
Hershey's Kisses
Hershey's Kisses is a brand of chocolate first produced by the Hershey Company in 1907. The bite-sized pieces of chocolate have a distinctive conical shape, sometimes described as flat-bottomed teardrops. Hershey's Kisses chocolates are wrapped i ...
, which were first produced in the US in 1907. It is sometimes applied to confections with a hard exterior and a soft filling, such as
chocolate
Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec civ ...
-dipped
marshmallow
Marshmallow (, ) is a type of confectionery that is typically made from sugar, water and gelatin whipped to a solid-but-soft consistency. It is used as a filling in baking or normally molded into shapes and coated with corn starch. The sugar c ...
s, or two small
biscuits or
cookies sandwiched together with a soft
icing. There are corresponding terms in other countries, such as the Italian ''bocconetti di mandorla'' (
almond kisses) and the Indian cool kiss.
History of kisses candy (United States)
In the US, kisses were a common name for candy bits around the turn of the 20th century. By 1910, the Annual Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture shows that its chemists had analyzed the ingredients of 13 individual chocolate confections it categorized as "kisses". Nor were kisses candy only made of chocolate. In 1915, the Novelty Candy Company was offering three flavors of kisses - cinnamon, molasses and nut butter - according to the International Confectioner.
In the early 1920s advances in wrapping equipment specifically for chocolate kiss foil wrapping allowed companies like Hershey's to differentiate its chocolate kiss product from competitor kiss candy producers. In 1924, Milton S. Hershey received a registered design trademark (Reg. No. 0186828) for "foil wrapped conical configuration with plume". This parchment paper plume was printed with the "Hershey's" name and stuck out from the top of the aluminum foil wrapper. It allowed customers to distinguish the Hershey kiss from other chocolate kisses.
Other Hershey kisses trademarks followed until The Hershey Company was awarded trademark registration number 2416701 in January 2001 for the name KISSES.
See also
*
Drops (confectionery)
References
External links
Official Hershey's Kisses website
Sugar confectionery
Candy
{{confectionery-stub