16 things you didn’t know about the jelly bean

Candies like the jelly bean make the world go round.

They are sweet and tangy for people who like sweetness and tanginess.

They are sometimes savory with choosing specific flavors.

They’re so colorful you could build a rainbow; and versatile too.

Here’s a few interesting facts you may not know about your favorite candy plus a couple of things you can do with leftover jelly beans.

Make oatmeal and jelly bean cookies – you make them the same way you’d make traditional oatmeal cookies, using softened butter and oatmeal, only you add 1 cup of jelly beans to the dough. The candy will keep its shape during baking and you’ll get chewier cookies.

Garnish sweet alcoholic drinks – If you like sweet drinks or you like serving them at parties, jelly beans are great to add as garnish to your preferred cocktail recipe. Just picture those colorful little things in a glass and you’ll never again prepare your drinks as before.

Make a kiddie birthday cake – you can just decorate with jelly beans on top or stir jelly beans into the batter also and give kids the most exciting birthday cake. If the birthday queen or king has a favorite, surprise them!

There are all sorts of creative ways to use jelly beans when you’re not eating them as is, and all sorts of interesting things about them. For example:

April 22^nd is National Jelly Bean Day when you can find lots of bargains for your favorite bean flavor.
President Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans so much he’d eat a handful of them in one go. His favorite was licorice.
The president inspired the blueberry jelly bean. The Goelitz Company who supplied roughly 40 million jelly beans for the 1981 inauguration invented the blueberry beans for the festivities.
Buttered popcorn is America’s favorite jelly bean flavor, with black licorice ranked second and cinnamon third.
Producers need as many as 7 to 21 days to make a jelly bean, which may or may not explain why some brands are so expensive.
Jelly Belly sells Harry Potter themed beans with flavors like sausage, vomit, soap, earthworm, rotten egg, earwax and booger, if you dare to try.
Kids and adults alike play games where they challenge each other to try gross flavors and chew them without gagging.
Jelly Belly were the first to sell jelly beans in single flavors and the brand was also first to create unconventional flavors like Chocolate Pudding.
The Jelly Belly Company releases special holiday flavors every year.
Also, Jelly Belly are considered the gourmet of jelly beans candy.
Americans eat more than 16 billion jelly beans on Easter.
A confectioner from Boston, William Schrafft popularized jelly beans during the Civil War by encouraging customers to send the candy to soldiers.
No one can say who exactly invented jelly beans.
But historians claim they could have been inspired by Turkish delight, a sugar confection from Turkey that is as well chewy and jelly.
Ladies men in the 1920s were referred to as jelly beans.
You can buy natural variety jelly beans.