Tuesday 20 October

The Tea: Twining’s English Breakfast. The Candy: Jelly Babies. All rights reserved, 2020.

As I had finished my first trip out of the big city, I came back with food, as all good aunts send you away with. This being my first time living in the UK, she decided to give me a large Sainsbury’s bag full of British candies. Now I had tried a few before, as Canada has some overlap, and there’s a little store in the US that provides international goodies, called Cost Plus. I’ve grown up with Cadbury chocolates, most Maynard’s goods, Aero chocolate, and Terry’s chocolate oranges. However, here are my reviews of the candies my auntie fed me:

Cadbury Flake: Milk chocolate stick with the chocolate flaky, but also stuck together. Pros: chocolate that tastes better than most US chocolate. Cons: Flakes everywhere, and a bit boring. Review: keep the Flake in a 99 where it belongs. 5/10.

Maynard’s Wine Gums: gummy candy that comes in different naturally coloured and flavoured shapes. Pros: not as sweet as most gummies from the States, have the right amount of resistance. Cons: the green ones taste a bit strange, but they’re also addicting so I eat most of them in one sitting. Review: Yes please, 8/10.

Maynard’s Jelly Babies: soft gummy candy in the quintessential candy colours, with a white powder on the outside. Pros: small sweeties are always nice to have on hand. Cons: pretty much everything. The resistance is nonexistent, so just falls apart in the mouth, the white powder has no flavour and doesn’t add anything, and they’re a bit too sweet for their size. Review: sticking with Sour Patch Kids, unless you’re a 90 year old with no diabetes or teeth. 2/10.

Tunnock’s Chocolate Tea Cakes: soft biscuit covered in a mound of soft marshmallow, and all covered with thin layer of milk chocolate. Pros: great combo of flavours, the biscuit is a perfect size, and the marshmallow is sooo soft. Cons: as someone who likes roasting marshmallows, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there is way too much marshmallow for the size of the treat. Your teeth will hurt after the first one. Review: only buy these if you’re having a group snack. Although they are individually wrapped so that makes them not go stale. 6/10

Tunnock’s Chocolate Caramel Wafers: five layers of thin cookie wafer, 4 layers of thin caramel, and all covered in milk chocolate (at least the ones I had). Pros: COME TO MAMA. perfect sweetness and the quality of it all is much better than all US caramel/chocolate/cookie combos. Cons: pretty sweet, and also individually wrapped, which isn’t great for the environment. Review: EAT NOW these are candy crack. 10/10. (Also just learned that these are sold at Cost Plus too)

McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes: soft bread biscuit with a small disk of orange jam/smooth marmalade, and covered with a small layer of chocolate. Pros: never had orange jam in a candy before and pleasantly surprised. Cons: the biscuit is already dry and the chocolate doesn’t help the flavour. Review: just bypass these, to quote GBBO: “not worth the calories”. 1/10. (just for the orange)