QUICK BITES
Arizona orangeade hints of X-Change

By Wanda A. Adams
Food Editor

Arizona's brand of orangeade sells for about $1. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

For the uninitiated, X-Change, which is no longer sold here, was a canned liquid orange juice concentrate, ultra-sweet and probably highly chemical. But for budget-conscious Hawai'i families, it was an easy drink to stretch across numbers of thirsty children (you just added four cans of water to one of concentrate, instead of the recommended three).

Fresh Mainland fruit was relatively expensive and scarce here in the heyday of X-Change (the 1950s and '60s), and even frozen concentrate was something of a luxury. Boomer kids drank X-Change instead of soda and, while I can't say I exactly crave the stuff, it was a kick to find a product that brought back those memories.

Arizona comes in tall, 23.5-ounce cans and sells for about $1 at Foodland and other stores.

Ice cream creation any way you want it

For a while there, Maui had all the luck.

The Valley Isle was home to the first Cold Stone Creamery franchise in Hawai'i, and the Kihei store made a big impression on friends on my home island, who loved the gimmick. Which is this: You pick the type of ice cream, frozen yogurt or sorbet you want; then you pick the mix-ins you want (fruit, nuts, candy, cookies, brownies, etc.) and watch the crew members blend it all together on a frozen slab of granite. The ice cream remains at just about 5 degrees — cold, but still mixable. Now Cold Stone has opened a store here, at 2166 Kalakaua Ave. in Waikiki (923-3866).

Meanwhile, a young military man, Capt. Theron Nolen, 26, has launched a similar enterprise, Holotta Ice Cream, at Pearlridge Shopping Center Uptown (486-1009), serving ice cream and frozen yogurt made on the premises.

Nolen's partner is his girlfriend, DeEtta Barnes, who says the favorite combination since their opening Nov. 23 has been cheesecake with strawberries and almonds, but they've literally got everything from nuts to cookie dough.

Sizes range from "justabit" (6 ounces for $2.69) to "wholotta" (12 ounces for $4.19), served in a cup or homemade waffle cone.

Mini cheesecakes win mall contest

More than 300 shoppers voted in the Kahala Mall's Tasty Holiday Contest, in which recipes from various merchants were judged as to their tastiness quotient.

The winning recipe was miniature chocolate cream cheesecakes from VUE Hawaii. Yen King Restaurant's dry fried boneless chicken took second. Reyn's custard mochi was third. The winning merchants got free advertising and customers who participated became part of a drawing for a $100 mall gift certificate (Roy Lopez of Honolulu won that one).

The miniature cheesecakes sound yummy: First you scrape the filling out of each cookie in 1 package of Oreo cookies; the cookies become the base for the small cakes. Place a cookie in a cupcake liner inside of a muffin tin. Make a filling by beating together 2 (8-ounce) packages of cream cheese, fl cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 2 eggs. Place 1 tablespoon of this filling atop each Oreo and bake in 350-degree oven for 20 minutes. Cool. Prepare 2 boxes instant chocolate pudding according to package directions. Whip some cream. Form the cheesecakes by placing a dollop of chocolate pudding on top of each cake followed by whipping cream (or whipped topping) and chocolate sprinkles. Refrigerate until firm.

Send items of culinary interest to Quick Bites, Taste, The Advertiser, P. O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Fax: 525-8055. E-mail: taste@honoluluadvertiser.com.