A buddy of mine went to jolly Eng-a-land and brought me back, as requested, edible souvenirs! Now I frequent the British candy stores in Edmonton whenever I can and have developed, for example, a serious, serious addiction to Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers, but he brought me some stuff that I’d vaguely heard of but never considered, you know, eating.
This was one of them. “A Flake bar?” I said aloud to my empty condo. “A ‘Flake’ bar? ‘Flake’? What the hell is it made out of, dandruff?”
In fact it is delicious milk chocolate that turns into strange splinters and shards in one’s mouth and vanishes instantly! Oh, those wacky Brits.
And these are Vin Diesel mints… either that, or you have to be over eighteen to eat them, I’m not sure. Anyway, I’ve survived rounds of super-sour Japanese candies and entire tins of Altoids, so I scoffed at the ‘super-strong’ claim on the wrapper.
Sorry there’s no scale here. Listen, these are big suckers. It’s about as tongue-stingingly minty as an Altoid, but rougher and huger and yes, it’s like having a burning icecube in your mouth. Seriously, I almost spit the first one out because my sinuses were starting to vibrate. Now I’m addicted to them and I’m nursing the rest of the tube because I don’t know when I’ll get my next fix!
This one was by far my favourite. I had seen the gaudily wrapped packages of Jaffa Cakes in the stores and dismissed them because my brain somehow went Jaffa = java = coffee-flavoured.
But there’s no coffee involved at all!
Aw yeah, that’s the good stuff. Dark chocolate and some kind of fragile processed cake and a layer of resistant, not-too-sweet orange jelly. The entire thing was wadded into my mouth like a Twinkie after the first bite that I took for the benefit of the photo. I could eat a crate of these things.
No more FruitSponge bars for me. All Jaffa all the time. MUST HAVE MORE. MOVING TO ENGLAND BRB.
Readers, got any favourite ‘foreign’ treats or sweets?
Our cuisine is supreme!
Really? Because I read somewhere that the French live to eat and the British eat to die.
(With that said, you crazy island people still make some keen sweets. Up Britannia!)
My family moved to England for nearly two years when I was 10 years old.
The other day I was reading my old journal from that time period and it’s full of the usual stuff: car getting vandalized by yobs who thought we were American, crying myself to sleep I was so scared of my teacher (who WAS Miss Trunchbull from Dahl’s Matilda) and discovering the wonder of ice cream trucks that sold soft serve with Flake bars stuck into them. They were amazing. Marble Slab can screw off, Flakes are the original “mixin’”
Also: Japanese candy is off the hook. They have millions of kinds of Kit Kat and hard candy that tastes like tonkatsu, a popular kind of breaded pork chop, and also beer. And, one word: Pocky.
Also: I just saw this topical post on Regretsy
http://www.regretsy.com/2009/10/19/crapstack/
You can buy those Flake bars here…I used to buy them ALL the time when I used to work at London Drugs. They are wicked! I think I will need to get one since it’s been a while since I last had one. Yum.
Me, I’m partial to Pudding Delicious Snack, despite it not being pudding. (It’s more like a slimy, gelatinous custard; very tasty, though I’ve had a hard time coming by it lately).
Also, I have now just wasted a ton of time on Regretsy. Thanks, Kelly.
Regretsy is blocked at work! I have a sadness.
But I could definitely see Flake bars as a delicious ice-cream mix-in…as opposed to tonkatsu candy, eww. “Why, a lozenge with the delicious flavour of chicken-fried pork! What a good idea!” :-Q
The Superstore near my condo sells Pocky in a million flavours!
Also, Mark, what’s up with the packaging of the Pudding Delicious Snack?! It looks like it’s made out of processed puppy.
Kelly, you’re right on the mark with the Flake-ice cream business. Flakes are a zillion times better when stuck in a soft-serve cone. I mean, they’re tasty on their own, but once you stick them in a cone… magic!
I discovered a few other random chocolate bars while in England, but I can’t say I’d recommend them. One was a plain milk chocolate bar called a Yorkie. The flavor wasn’t the problem – my issue with it was the slogan: “NOT FOR GIRLS”. What’s that supposed to mean, jerks? The other random one I tried, the Double Decker, was downright gross. It was a layer of milk chocolate with crispy cereal (like a Crunch bar or whatever they’re called) and a layer of nougat. Sounds good in theory, but in practice it tasted like plastic. I’ll have to report back once I dig into my stash of random British candy that I brought back with me. Here’s hoping there’s something to recommend in the pile.
Yorkie bars are an awesome marketing ploy – they were originally advertised as being big and mean chocolate bars for big mean long distance lorry drivers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMDjLNxI9vE
And now it’s become all post modern and stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GVXnyD93qc