We sometimes were given boxes of chocolates at Christmas.  Usually, they were Milk Tray, Dairy Box or Weekend.  Milk Tray was good, except for too many slimes (see yesterday).  I liked the turkish delight one, probably for the rose flavour – I still like Rose Pouchong tea.  Dairy Box had a lot of nut chocolates in, so went down very well.  Most, if not all of them were hard centres.  Weekend was a disappointment.  The fudge was fine but there was a nasty marzipan, I think, and some bright green number that I didn’t care for.  Overall, I think they were too sweet and not chocolatey enough.  We might also be given Roses or Quality Street – again, the former had slimes and I preferred QS, which had lots of toffee.

I liked those boxes of individually wrapped mini chocolate bars.  What are they called?  Inbuilt portion control too – I can eat a single chocolate or a couple of squares from a bar, but find it very hard to stop halfway down a Crunchie and no one in the world ever, surely, has succeeded in leaving half a Flake for the next day.

Although our post-Christmas chocolate eating was not monitored, there was an expectation that we would only eat a few at a time and make them last.  I remember once, when I couldn’t resist and over-ate, I put the wrappers back so that the pack would still look full.

I wasn’t very keen on plain chocolate in those days, probably because it is less sweet, though I prefer it now – also, a small amount is satisfying and, whilst I eat chocolate whenever I want to, I don’t want not to be able to resist eating more than I feel I should.  It was usually Cadbury’s – Milk, Whole Nut or Fruit and Nut, I didn’t mind.  Do you remember the advertisement? – a bar standing on its side with the wrapper torn and a glass and a half of milk being poured in?  If not Cadbury’s, it was probably Galaxy.

Did anyone ever explain why they renamed Opal Fruits? Starburst, I think.  Oh, and Munchies, what were they?  Chocolate around a filling of caramel and biscuit?  Rolos! Munchies were square, but Rolos were round, milk chocolate with a toffee filling.  Oh, and jelly babies.  Murray Mints (the too good to hurry mints), .

My Dutch au pairs used to give us presents for St Nicholas’ Day.  I have never been able to track down the lovely chewy gingerbread St Nicholas, though I looked when I was in Holland last September.  Not speculoos, they’re spice biscuits and crisp, not chewy.  They also gave us a big chocolate letter each – our initials, of course.  And a box of chocolates wrapped to look like Delft tiles – as we ate each one, we carefully re-folded the paper and put it back.