Sweets & Chocolate

I love sweets. I do a lot of baking and whilst I appreciate freshly baked sweet treats there is something inside me that really loves the processed sugary wonderfulness that is sweets. And chocolate, I am a sucker for cheap sugary chocolate whilst also liking dark chocolate too.

Every day after school I used to go to the corner shop and buy a chocolate bar or a bag of 10p (20p if I was feeling rich) penny sweets. There was a brief phase of those sherbet sticks that you could buy for about 3p which everyone in school had and for some reason I remember them being of particular concern to teachers. Maybe because kids were pretending they were cocaine and snorting them, maybe that was it.

If you've read Stephen Fry's Autobiography (the first one) which includes a long section listing all the sweets he loved and loves that is just about how I feel about sweets too. Even though most of the sweets I used to eat still exist now there is always a heap of nostalgia associated with them.

Here comes the list, my favourites include: foam shrimps, lemon bon bons, apple laces, strawberry laces, sherbet dib dab, black jacks, fruit salad, foam mushrooms, foam strawberries, cherry lips, aniseed balls, fizzy cola, chewy cola, giant cola bottles, fizzy blue bottles (not the flies, the drink) coconut rolls, love hearts, foam teeth and toothbrushes, refreshers, drumsticks (one of my teeth came out because of a drumstick lolly), flumps, rhubarb and custard, Wham bars, candy sticks, candy necklaces, fried eggs.... the list is pretty much endless.

Although there are some sweets I don't like. I'm not a big fan of hard sweets save for bon bons and rhubarb and custard. And I never understood why people liked those white mice. I'm not a big chewing gum person although I did used to buy those long packs of bubblegum which were about 15p a tube. They never tasted sweet for very long so I could easily chew a whole pack in a couple of hours.

Chocolate wise the list is quite a lot smaller than the sweet side of things. At the moment I am favouring Galaxy over Cadburys - have Cadburys changed their recipe? I am inclined to blame Kraft Foods for the less chocolatey nature of their Dairy Milk lately. My favourites at the moment (which changes often!) are Galaxy Caramel, Galaxy Ripple, Wispa, Milky Bar and Crunchie. I am still mourning the loss of Kit Kat Peanut Butter which has been replaced by the rubbish Kit Kat Caramel - which isn't really caramel inside at all is it? Do we not get peanut butter as much in the UK as our American counterparts. There should be more peanut butter in confectionary in my opinion.

My favourite chocolate bar ever was the Cadburys Fuse bar, which was discontinued around the late 90s. It had basically everything going for it - chocolate, raisins, nuts, FUDGE PIECES and crispies. And the packet design was pretty cool too. I miss those.

So there you are, an essay from a sugar addict. I still do need to have at least one bar of chocolate a day, and it is a need, I think. I get a bit crabby otherwise. And you have no idea how glad I am that retro sweet shops have become popular again, Mr Simms Olde sweet shop in Cambridge is one of the best places to go for all kinds of sweets.

Now I am off to the shop for some sweets. I hope you enjoyed reading my post!


Sweetie images from Handy Candy - http://www.handycandy.co.uk and google image search

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sweeties

I like two things a lot. Sweets and beads.


There are two new things in Cambridge - a bead shop and an old fashioned sweet shop.


These two things formed the basis of my Saturday!

First I popped along to the Beaderie in Cambridge, the last bead shop closed here about two years ago and was no where close to the quality of the Beaderie. I had a long chat with the lady who runs it, actually somebody I'd met via Handm@de Craft Fairs last year. She's very much into Etsy and the new wave of interest in the handmade scene, something I was glad to hear. A lot of bead shops I have been to are run by the more 'old school' style crafters who focus more on hobbyists rather than those who are looking for good supplies for the work that they sell.And excitingly, the Beaderie should be stocking vintage beads in the future - yay!

I picked some lovely glass beads and unconciously I ended up picking an assortment of spring time colours. I got some lovely glass flowers, beautiful green shell beads, some pretty pink glass and some beautiful high quality glass pearls. I'll definitely be back!
Next up - the sweet shop.

I'd popped in before but having spent way too much money on pork pies and posh chilis in the Cambridge Cheese Shop the same day I couldn't justify the sweeties. This time I did get something though.

A Wham! bar - anyone remember those? And a bag of rhubarb & custard and a some lemon bon bons. All wrapped up in a little paper bag as an olde fashioned sweet shoppe should.

Now I must be careful to eat the sweets and not the beads. They are both yummy looking.

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