This is the Guangming Red Bean Ice Bars, a frozen red bean dessert featuring sweetened red bean and osmanthus. It contained 21% red bean.
The ice bar presented in a rounded paddle shape, with an opaque light red-brown colour and darker red beans concentrated towards the narrower tip.
Initial contact revealed a very hard, dense structure that was difficult to bite through without allowing it to soften first. Once bitten through, the red beans in the upper half provided a firm, chewy texture, although this was not the bouncy, QQ chew associated with tapioca-based sweets. Instead, the beans seemed insufficiently rehydrated, giving them a somewhat dry, resistant chew.
The beans themselves had a mild red bean flavour, although their firm, slightly plasticky texture detracted from what could otherwise have been a tender, starchy character. Once through the bean-rich upper section, the remainder of the ice bar developed a much more pronounced sweet, beany profile, resembling a smooth frozen version of sweet red bean soup.
Overall, this red bean ice bar progressed from a hard, dense frozen structure with firm, under-rehydrated red beans to a much more pronounced sweet red bean profile in the latter half. The textural development was less successful, with the hard ice and resistant beans detracting from the otherwise recognisable red bean flavour. We were not particularly fond of the bland, under-rehydrated beans.
This Guangming Red Bean Ice Bars contained 960 g (96 g x 10). It was produced in China and purchased in Sydney, Australia in 2026.