Back in the Sixties and early Seventies, Christmas meant sweets in the UK.
Lots and lots of sweets.
Some of my favourites, mostly chocolate, were often clubbed together in that most fabulous of all human inventions, the Selection Box.
As much a part of the festive season as dodgy socks and dried stuffing, the Selection box was good to go at any time, whether it be part of the general manoeuvres through the whole of December or as a treat on the Big Day.
The best medleys included a Crunchie, a Curly Whirly, a bag of Fruit pastels, a Fudge and a Ripple. To be honest , it didn't matter what was in them. Even Caramac!
Far more important than any titchy chocs to be had in those flimsy Advent Calendars, Selection Boxes were essential gritty supplies to power you through the more boring rituals of the season.
Other sweets of note were sugared jellies or jellied fruits. Not my favourite at the time, a more sedate tid-bit to be found hiding on small coffee tables, the staple of visiting Aunties and my Mum's big-hatted friends.
Much more to my taste were Chocolate Brazils.
Always the same make, I forget the name, these rock-hard delights came in a flat box, with each nut nestled in a pleated paper cup. The chocolate around them was so thick you just had to eat it off like a fevered beaver.
A far more adult confection were chocolate liqueurs. I'm not sure I liked them that much back then, the injection of cognac or Tia Maria into my mouth a completely alien experience as a kid. I would eat them now though, no worries!
My final guilty pleasure has to coffee creams. Or is it cremes?
You know the ones, whether left behind in the chocolate box because nobody liked them or found in an entire box of cremes, this strange treat had a bad rep.
Less popular than the more suave peppermint variety or those pompous After Eights, the lowly coffee creme was an outcast in it's own munchbox.
I on the other hand adored them as a kid and to my good fortune, often found stragglers languishing in shame round the house at Christmas. Like a festive magpie I'd gobble them up before downing half a bottle of Tizer, that russet fuel of champions.
Ah yes, sweets at Christmas. Which were and are your faves readers?
Payne's chocolate brazils?
ReplyDeleteThe glory days must have been the late 60's/early 70's, when Rowntree and Mackintosh were separate entities. Then you could have a Mars stocking of various choccy bars, a Rowntree selection box AND a Mackintosh selection box. Plus, of course the obligatory huge tins of Quality Street (yum!)
We used to have the orange/lemon candied fruit slices (was there a lime one in the middle back then?), Meltus New Berry fruits, good old Matchmakers (the coffee ones were the best), After Eights, choccy liquers (I liked the cherry ones, we had DeKuypers cherry brandy too, which we were allowed to have a very small glass of).
Boxes of biscuits (probably something like Family Circle), tonnes of nuts (with some hardcore nutcrackers to get them pesky brazils opened), and oranges. Lots and lots of oranges. The only time of the year we would have oranges was Xmas-my dad was in RAF and brought a huge wicker basket of them back from Cyprus (as well as that delicious Commandaria).
Caramac was delicious, unlike Spangles (except the Old-fashioned flavour ones). Tubes of Jelly Tots, Smarties, Fruit Pastilles, and a box of Maltesers usually helped to overload us with sugar.
What state are your teeth in guys ?!
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