Sugar Savvy

Life was rather slow growing up in our little London suburb, and my sisters and I soon discovered that there was only one sure-fire distraction from overcast skies and blown plastic bags, and that was… chocolate. It’s a life-long obsession that has stayed with me ever since, even beyond my diagnosis of diabetes, which was pronounced like a death sentence (confectionery makes me melodramatic) just last year. I suppose it may seem rather odd, then, my joining a website dedicated to all things sugary? Call me narcissistic, but I like the idea of reliving the old glory days when a small chocolate truffle was enough to take me straight to Pleasure Town. Now it takes three sugarfree diabetic chocs to drop me off at Pleasure Village, which is not nearly as good.

When we were younger, my grandparents would visit once a week, always with the same gift: a triple pack of Kinder Surprises. For all those of you who don’t know (a mere handful, no doubt), Kinder Surprise is that rare thing, a chocolate bar which rides entirely on its gimmick. Inside the papery-thin milk chocolate shell hides an oblong plastic egg, and therein lies the “surprise” – a mass produced, poorly cast toy. Despite the sub-standard chocolate and inevitably disappointing innards, Kinder Surprise remained a staple of Sunday nights for a good few years. Just a few months ago I snuck one from my babysitting charges’ sweets cupboard and unwrapped it excitedly, thinking that one taste would transport me back to my early childhood. The egg itself was gone in a few bites (splintery shell, mediocre chocolate) and I remembered the most frustrating thing about the Kinder Egg: the little orange toy-holder is nearly impossible to open.

Another childhood staple was the tin of Cadbury’s Roses, which we received at least a couple of times a year for various birthdays or festivals. It would sit on the biscuits shelf, unopened, until one of us was brave enough to break the seal and start a scuffle for the favourites. The strawberry cream or fudge went first, usually, although my secret favourite was always the caramel. I have always been a sucker for its gooey, gushing centre, no matter what chocolate, no matter what manufacturer. To me, there is nothing more satisfying than spending a good five minutes licking the chocolatey outside of a caramel sweet before hitting its golden centre, and sadly there is no diabetic’s alternative to that.

The best caramel chocolate bar is, without a doubt, the Galaxy Caramel. The chocolate is sweet, milky and satisfying, and the caramel is just the right consistency, flowing but just firm enough. If you prefer it to be a tad more like fudge, then the fridge is the way to go. Don’t even get me started on fudge – though I fear that is a story for another time, and I won’t bore you with it now.

Not just content with chocolate, we coveted biscuits, too. My mother would always pack us a snack bag after school, and in the pre-obesity crisis days (and besides, we were all skinny whippets… back then) it was considered perfectly acceptable to stuff ones children full of sugary treats. Inside the bag was usually a funsize chocolate bar, a carton of juice and a packet of biscuits. If we were lucky, our rustling unearthed the ruby-red brilliance of Jammie Dodgers, which I always ate in the same way – carefully prising the buttery top biscuit off with my teeth to reveal the jam within. Synthetic, cloying and artery-clogging they may have been, but they were vastly preferable to the dull, dull, dull Iced Gems we were sometimes landed with. On a dry, tasteless biscuit base lay a chalky, sugary topping which often fell off in the bag anyway. However, on special days my mother would treat me to my ultimate favourites, mini Jaffa Cakes. I believe they are still available in the same little orange multi-pack pods. With a spongey is-it-cake-or-is-it-biscuit base, refreshingly zesty orange slice in the middle and a deep, dark chocolatey coating, even the smell of a Jaffa Cake these days is enough to make my throat close up with longing. These were the most fun to eat, and could take me up to an hour. Whether it was prising the sponge bottom off with my teeth and then breaking off the chocolate to leave the orange middle to be satisfyingly slurped, or licking the chocolate off and leaving the sponge until last, this chocolatey treat was, and remained, my favourite to the end.