Treats

When I was growing up in Scotland, we spent summers back in New England. Upon our arrival each June, rumpled and weary from travel, the first thing we’d do was head to our local pizza place (there was no pizza to speak of in Scotland at that time) and feast. There would be Greek salad too, and Welch’s grape soda. The next morning we’d venture forth again for vast blueberry pancakes the size of dinner plates, doused in maple syrup and crowned with some extra crispy American bacon. And freshly squeezed orange juice (orange juice in the UK at the time was torturous, metallic stuff). These were the treats of my childhood summers, reserved for special occasions and best behavior.

But by the end of August it was another story. We were ready for purple candy to stop tasting like grapes and start tasting like blackcurrant again. We were ready for potato chips in flavors other than plain, barbeque, and onion – all that existed in the States then. We were ready for fish and chips, piping hot and fragrant with newspaper ink and malt vinegar. And as for the sweet shops where we’d spend out Saturday allowance, nothing we’d seen in America could quite compare.

Of course you love best the special treats you remember from your own childhood, but here, in no particular order, is some of what I missed most by the end of my New England summers, and what I occasionally sneak out for even now to our two British suppliers here in New York: Myers of Keswick and Tea & Sympathy. Outside of New York try online at British Delights.

Chocolate Biscuits – No mid-morning tea tray is complete without a plate of chocolate biscuits, faintly worn and crummy around the edges from life in the biscuit tin. There’s the barely sweet digestive with its one side of milky chocolate, salty-sweet, oatmeal hobnobs that are best in the dark chocolate variety, Penguin bars with their chocolate cream filling, and for special occasions, Tunnock’s Teacakes with their soft marshmallow centers quivering on a biscuit base and coated in paper-thin chocolate.

Jaffa Cakes – So vital, so memorable, that they deserve a category of their own, beyond the chocolate biscuit umbrella. There is dry biscuit – it might be cake, it might be cookie – topped with a sliver of bitter orange jam and a whisper-thin layer of dark chocolate. Any child’s birthday party without a plate of these is a travesty.

Jammie Dodgers – Crumbly, comfortingly nondescript cookie sandwiched around a thin round of brightly flavored red jam. The point is the chewy, thick, almost caramel-like texture of the jam, which holds together and stretches even as the biscuit disintegrates into sweet crumbs around it.

Crisps – My obsession, my downfall. A nation’s homage to umami. The array of flavors is dizzying. Particular favorites are Pickled Onion Monster Munch (sharp with vinegar and twang, breaks into appealing powdery shards in the mouth), Prawn Cocktail Skips or simple crisps (it’s the sauce, not the shellfish – sweet and sour perfection), Salt & Vinegar Hula Hoops (crunchy, very forward with the potato, wear on your fingers like fragrant jewelry before eating), and, awaiting a new shipment to arrive in New York at press time but no less essential, Cheese Quavers (sublime puffed-but-crisp texture, almost coquettishly subtle flavor), Worcestershire Sauce crisps (jammy, mouth-wateringly pungent), and Salt & Vinegar Square Crisps (an acidic, sense-obliterating baton to the head).

Twiglets – Filling in the only umami gap left by the wide range of crisp flavors, twiglets are light, crunchy, knobbly little sticks baked in Marmite. They’re peppery, they’re bitter. But they’re deeply salty, darkly savory, and utterly addictive. Twiglets separate the men from the boys. They are the Guinness of snack foods.
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Refreshers – Pleasantly fruity and smooth. Once you bite down though, the sherbert begins to foam lightly – an endlessly charming experience.

Sherbert Fountain – Dark liquorice wand for dipping in white, fruity, fizzy powder. Dip, lick, repeat. Earthy and sharply citrus all at once. Like a direct infusion of sugar to the blood.

Smarties – More substantially sized and more attractively colored than M&Ms, and with better chocolate inside too.

Cadbury’s Mini Eggs – Often discolored by the time they make it to the States – some of those eggs started life a delicate shade of robin’s egg blue. The flavor remains intact though. The candy shell is somehow unparalleled, heady with vanilla. And the chocolate within seems to melt more quickly than most but maintain an almost chewy consistency at the same time. These are too special to save just for Easter.

Murray Mints – Simple hard candies, but the flavor is transporting. For me, the sensory memory falls somewhere between a special trip to the cinema where I was allowed to choose one sort of sweet, and long car rides, when someone must have needed me to be quietly occupied for a while. These are creamy, vanilla flavored mints. Even children at the movies can’t resist.

Fruit Pastilles – Chewy, pleasantly dry fruit jellies crusted in sugar. The flavors are all bright and intense, but anyone in the know holds out for the blackcurrant and strawberry varieties. Exclusively blackcurrant flavored tubes are on sale now – something that would have seriously come in handy when I was about 8 and wished everything in my life could be purple or pink.

Soft Drinks – Avoid orange squash and lemon barley water whenever you can. They’ll be thrust at you at least several times a day, but if you require sugary, liquid comfort, there’s no need to be so insipid about the whole thing. You should hold out for the good stuff. Ribena, redolent with blackcurrant, is what you’re after. Or branch out into fizzy drinks. Vimto, electric, vaguely raspberry-flavored, forbidden and deeply chemical, holds special allure. The crowning glory of British soft drinks though is Lilt. Part pineapple, part grapefruit, impossibly effervescent and refreshing. It’s like the tropical islands and Ullapool all mixed into one.