We were very pleased that we recently won two awards for our shop, one was Regional Online Sweet Shop of the year and the other was National Online Sweet Shop of the year for 2012 !!

We got 2 groovy awards that are now pride of place in our shop !!!

You can enter the awards at www.sweetshopawards.co.uk

1. Jelly Babies were originally called “Peace Babies” and were launched by Bassett’s in 1918 in Sheffield to mark the end of world war one.

2. In the 1800′s doctors commonly recommended their patients eat chocolate to help mend their broken hearts.

Gigantic Whirly Pop Lollypop 10.5in wide 1360g

3. Lollipops were invented by George Smith in 1908 and were named after a racing horse named “Lolly Pop”.

4. The world’s largest chocolate bar was manufactured in Armenia in 2010 and weighed in at 9,722.39 lbs, setting a new Guinness World Record.

5. Snickers bars were originally called Snickers and NOT Marathon, when first launched by the Mars company in 1930. They were named after a horse.

6. 100 years ago, doctors blamed sweets for the spread of polio.

7. Smarties don’t contain crushed beetles, anymore. Until recently Smarties used a red food colouring called E120 also known as cochineal. Cochineal is made from crushing bugs.

8. In the Harvard Depository is a box, and in the box are samples of candy lozenges produced by Fobes & Hayward approximately 150 years ago.

9. During Easter children will run through fields and gardens to search for over 60 million chocolate bunnies and 15 billion colorful jelly beans. Enough to circle the globe more than four times!

10. Sweets do not promote tooth decay anymore than any other food. Any food containing fermentable carbohydrates can contribute to tooth decay. It all depends on how often we eat and drink these foods and how long they remain in our mouths.

By definition, sweets have the taste and flavour characteristics of sugar or honey. Often made with sugar or other sweeteners this is usually combined with other flavours such as fruits, nuts or even rosewater to produce tasty treats.

Honey was the earliest sweet enjoyed by people since prehistoric times. It was the first and most widespread sweetener dating right back to 2100 B.C. where it has been mentioned in some Babylonian writings, but is presumed to be even older than this. Ancient people would snack on honey straight from the hive.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the average worker bee will only make approximately one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey during its entire lifetime?

Sweets resembling the types that we know today were not invented until the nineteenth century. Although Turkish delight was invented in 1777 it didn’t become popular in Europe until the nineteenth century. Turkish delight can contain many types of exotic fillings but the most preferred remains the simple rosewater type. It often comes in cubes and has powdered sugar sprinkled on them.

Before this sugar was a luxury that very few people could afford. As it became cheaper, new types of the more traditional sweets became available.

Fun Fact: Did you know that Jelly beans started as an American form of Turkish Delight?

The earliest documented use of cacao (a bean-like seed from which cocoa, cocoa butter, and chocolate are made) was 3100 years ago. Some researchers discovered traces of the plant in pottery dating back to 1100 BC. It is believed that chocolate was originally invented in a beer-like form and was seen as a status symbol for the Aztecs and Mayans as well as being a form of currency.

The first manufactured chocolate bar was made in 1847 by the Fry’s chocolate factory, located in Union Street, Bristol, England. The first wrapped chocolate bar that is still being produced today is the Hershey bar which started out selling for just 10 cents.

Fun Fact: Did you know that during the Aztec reign, a slave could be bought for 100 cocoa beans?

Pick n Mix refers to a popular method of selling sweets in the UK. Companies that specialise in selling confectionary by this method will provide manufactured bags in which a mixture of sweets can placed into, these are usually priced by weight. In the USA Pick n Mix is usually called ‘penny candy’ and is sold by the piece in five and dime stores.

Pick n Mix

Typically sold at kiosks and supermarkets, the customer can choose how much and which types of sweets to purchase and place them into a Pick n Mix bag or cup, usually this will done with a scoop. The total price will depend on the weight.

Selling loose sweets became popular in Britain in the late seventies when it was also sold in pieces rather than by weight. They would usually be sold from glass jars behind a counter, bagged by the retailer rather than the customer and affectionately known as ‘penny sweets’. However because of inflation and a decline in the value of a penny, these sweets are now more frequently sold as Pick n Mix. Due to the space required to provide a decent amount of Pick n Mix sweets, smaller retailers will now often only sell pre-packed bags of different types of sweets.

Pick n Mix is available to buy from The Sweet Store at a cost of £1.50 per 200g

The usual thing is to send your mum flowers, but what about flowers she can eat ?

We’ve got range of small and large chocolate flowers in our Novelty Section or just type in Chocolate Roses in the search bar and they will come up.

Or why not personalised your own chocolate bar for a special message for mum ?

The Duchess of Cambridge looked radiant as relaxed as usual when she visited her favourite section of Fortnums and Masons, The Sweet Store, whilst on a visit to the store with the Queen and The Duchess of Cornwall. 

The Duchess of Cambridge commented that all girls love chocolate and that she has a real love of sweets as do we all !!

She was presented with a hamper which had treats for both Her and Prince William and their new puppy !!

http://www.itv.com/news/queen-kate-and-camilla39507/

I have seen or thought of uses for Chocolate Bananas but I’ve never seen anything like this!!!

THE BIGGEST SWEET SHOP IN THE WORLD IN DUBAI !!! YUM YUM !!

The biggest sweet shop in the world is now open in Dubai, with over 10,000 square feet of shop space it is a truly amazing place.  With almost every sweet you can think of from M&Ms in every colour and flavour, a vast array of Jelly Beans, Chocolate Bars, Lollies, Candy Canes, Traditional Sweets and Pick and Mix in fact almost anything sweet you can think of.   What a great way to spend your holidays !!!!

A huge chocolate tree embedded with colorful lollipops stands 10 meters wide in the centre of the shop – along with the largest ‘Pick and Mix’ wall in the world!

THE HISTORY OF THE EVER TASTY JELLY BEAN:

Jelly beans are a small bean-shaped type of confectionery with a hard candy shell and a gummy interior which come in a wide variety of flavors. The confection is primarily made of sugar.

The Turkish Delight, a Middle Eastern candy made of soft jelly, covered in confectioner’s powder, with roots dating to biblical days, was an early precursor to the jelly bean that inspired its gummy interior. However, it is generally thought that jelly beans first surfaced in 1861 when Boston confectioner William Schrafft urged people to send his jelly beans to soldiers during the American Civil War. It wasn’t until July 5, 1905 that the mentioning of jelly beans was published in the Chicago Daily News. The advertisement publicized bulk jelly beans sold by volume for nine cents per pound, according to the book, “The Century in Food: America’s Fads and Favorites.” Today, most historians contend that in the United States, they were first linked with Easter in the 1930s.