}

Friday, January 09, 2015

British (etc.) sweets


There are times, frankly, when I’ve got nothing. I usually find something to blog about, but sometimes, well, not everything goes to plan. Like today. Then, the Internet delivers.

The video above is the latest Anglophenia video in which Siobhan talks about British sweets. Not at all surprisingly, many of the candy items she profiles are common in New Zealand—and many of them are thoroughly disgusting.

Chief among them is “Flake”, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the single most disgusting “chocolate” confection ever devised by the human mind. It’s like a sadistic torturer said, “I’ll tempt you with chocolate, only it won’t be real chocolate, it’ll be Flake—THAT will make you confess!!” Truly vile. Trust me, you’d denounce your god just to get away from the stuff.

What I thought was interesting, though, was her highlighting Blackjack gum. My father loved Blackjack gum.

Love them or loathe them—or, simply never heard of them—sweets are one way of understanding a culture. There are worse ways to learn…

2 comments:

Andrew Dineley said...

The answer to Flake is Ripple, take the flakey crumbliness and wrap it all up in chocolate so it doesn't fall apart but is inside waiting to be devoured. Galaxy chocolate too which makes it even better :-)

Arthur (AmeriNZ) said...

We had a chocolate covered Flake here—not sure what it was called—which I thought was somewhat better. I seem to recall there was a "limited time only" thing of Flake covered in white chocolate, though I never tried it. In fact, it might still be around, for all I know. I was so scarred by Flake when I arrived in New Zealand that I've simply never had the courage to try another version…