I feel I talk a lot about tuck boxes. This is maybe because, ignoring conveniently the dark side of them, I do fetishise boarding schools. This was fuelled early by Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s books. Books to which I returned often, way into adult hood, when the world seemed too big.
There was always clear justice in Blyton’s books: you do good and you come good, you do bad and, well, you’re forgiven because you’re sorry and promise to do better. This was justice, and reflection, often lacking in the topsy-turvy real world. And then there were the tuck boxes, brimming with implausibly paired goods, such as sardines and tinned peaches and birthday cakes, that defied delivery services to arrive intact and raring to be sliced into greedily.
I thought of this as I got a Heist postal service delivery of its Spanish Almond Caramel (how exotic this would have been in a 1950s tuck box, positively an invasion). A thick – 190g – brick of a chocolate offering; bar is too humble an interpretation. It’s wrapped in brown paper, of course, and inside is a Peruvian cocoa, milk chocolate-covered caramel bar studded with toasted Spanish guara almonds. It’s one of those bars you really need a knife for, don’t tell matron, and once breached this bar will ooze its Welsh cream-based caramel.
On a warm day it might benefit from being placed in the fridge for half an hour before consumption. Not a place I’d usually recommend keeping chocolate but we must be realistic.
It’s very sweet, be warned, but a delight for those of you who usually rear up at my darker recommendations.
It would make an excellent present (at £12 a bar), for yourself, if your child is going off to university next month. Or even just back to school.
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