Food in Finland III: Sweets, candies and ice cream

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There is a huge selection of sweets in Finland, especially candies and chocolates. One of the largest producer of sweets is Fazer and Finns consider this brand of chocolate to be the best in the world. Before I came to Finland, I had tasted only Geisha Fazer chocolate which is the only type available in the Czech republic. But I´m not so much a chocolate person, I more often reach for candies, for example Fazer Tutti Frutti Passion.




My favourite Finnish sweets are fruit jellies alias marmalades. Most well known are Vihreitä kuulia. Translated as "green balls", which have pear flavour. They look like small rubber balls, have the consistency of jelly and taste like marmalade. The green ones are the most typical, but there are also marmalade boxes which contain several flavours of different colours - blackcurrant, apricot, strawberry and lemon. Marmelades are spectacular in appearance and have an interesting history. They were sent in a wooden box as a coronation present to British King Edward VII in 1902 and later as a wedding present to Queen Elizabeth in 1947. For this reason, the lid of the box bears a picture of the crown. There are now more brands of marmalades available which have also other shapes than balls, most commonly squares. Of the special flavours, I had spruce tips and then orange with cardamom. 




Salmiakki

Very common is the use of Liquorice in many sweets. A specialty that has a lot of haters, but also its fans are black candies salmiakki. They contain liquorice and ammonium chloride extract. The taste is strange, a bit salty. And the consistency is stiff, it almost doesn't melt in the mouth. When I was taking a Finnish course in Prague, once our teacher brought us these candies to the class. Only one of all of us triumphed over the salmiakki; the rest of us spat them gradually into the bin, where they stuck to the black bag which made them invisible. 




work. Jirka looked at me with a shock after tasting one salmiakki and asked "Markétka, don't you want to reconsider moving to Finland, since the sweets taste there like this?" However, there is a possibility to buy many products that have only salmiakki flavour, such as ice cream and chocolate. As a typical Finn, Petri will not say anything negative about anything Finnish. Sometimes I try him. I asked him specifically about salmiakki, which I know he doesn't like, hoping to squeeze something out of him. For example, that salmiakki are a shame of all candies. However, Petri got out of it by saying that there are plenty of Finns living abroad who miss salmiakki very much in their lives and would pay gold for it. I´m not sure about that, I don't think there will be that many.

Ice cream

Maybe one would guess that in Nordic country ice cream is not very popular. But surprisingly it´s just the opposite.  I read that Finns have the highest consumption of ice cream in Europe. Well, I have to admit that during the summer there are ice cream stands everywhere and there is almost always a queue. I think that it is related to the Finnish summer which is beautiful but short thus every moment of it should be fully enjoyed. Every sunny day should be appreciated with an ice cream to enhance the summer feeling. Even in my Finnish textbook Suomen mestari is ice cream mentioned very much. There are conversations about prize, how many scoops of ice cream and which flavours. Apparently it´s important knowledge for life in Finland.




Last summer I started to like very much rum raisin ice cream and I was eating it during the whole summer. I can honestly recommend it.

 

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