Tea Blog

by Stephanie Hanson

I have a confession to make, a confession that I am almost ashamed to make. I am an anglophile. I always think people obsessed with other countries are rather silly, after all, you should love the one you’re in unless it’s very horrible. Which our country is of course not. But we are always drawn to the exotic. For me, it’s the chocolate. English chocolate is just…so much better on a basic level. And they really have the best candy bars. Especially Cadbury. You can imagine how much I wanted to visit Willy Wonka as a child, and how much I envied Roald Dahl when I found out that he had a childhood job as a chocolate taster for Cadbury. Oh, I enjoy other traditionally English goods like clotted cream and bangers. But it’s really all about the candy. The chocolate. I think they must have better cows making the milk over there (actually English Cadbury has more milk than American Cadbury, which has wax instead).

For your basic chocolate bar, Cadbury has the Dairy Milk. It’s a classic. And it pairs well with a nice cup of English Breakfast or Assam. Something nice and malty to balance out the sweetness of the chocolate.

Then there is the Crunchie. This has to be one of the most decadent candies I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying, and I can only eat about half at a time because it’s so sweet. You see, the middle is a “honeycomb.” It’s not really, honey, but it sure tastes like it. So basically, it’s chocolate covered sugar. And what’s wrong with that? But because it is so sweet, it really needs to be paired with something on the other end of the spectrum. I like it with a nice spicy masala, something with pink peppercorns.

Then there’s the Yorkie from Nestle, which has to sell most of its bars because of the clever reverse-psychology slogan: “Not for Girls.” Apparently this was controversial, as a way of marketing to men, but I took it as ironic, and bought it happily. It’s chunky chocolate, but I did have a variety with raisins once that was lovely. It’s not much different than the Dairy Milk, but I feel like it needs a good strong tea just because of the name, so I go with an Irish Breakfast.

Go ahead. Look at the British chocolates, and just see if they look so much better than the bars in line at American grocery stores. I know where my allegiance lies in chocolate patriotism.

Stephanie publishes her own blog called The Tea Scoop. Check it out! It’s great!