The release of the final Harry Potter movie has me thinking about all the memorable treats to be found in the world of Hogwarts — butterbeer, pumpkin pasties, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor beans, just to start. But children's books are full of sweets, both real and imaginary, that stick in our memories for years after we read about them. Here are a few of my favorites:
• Horehound candy sticks from On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder: One day Pa comes home with a treat in his pocket for Laura and Mary: a tiny striped bag with two flat sticks of golden-brown horehound candy. Mary licked hers. But Laura bit her stick, and the outside of it came off, crumbly. The inside was hard and clear and dark brown. And it had a rich, brown, tangy taste.
• Turkish Delight from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: When Edmund enters Narnia through the wardrobe and encounters the White Witch, she feeds him magical Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very center and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious. He was quite warm now, and very comfortable.
• 3-course dinner chewing gum from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl: Bubble-gum-obsessed Violet Beauregarde chews a piece of prototypical gum that gives the sensation of eating a three-course meal, which she loves — until she swells up like a giant blueberry. "It's changing!" shouted Violet, chewing and grinning both at the same time."The second course is coming up! It's roast beef! It's tender and juicy! Oh boy, what a flavor!"
Though horehound candy and Turkish Delight are real-life creations, I have to admit I've never tried them. Part of me wants to keep the imaginary experience of these sweets undisturbed in my memory, because I have a feeling the reality will never come close.
What are your favorite children's book sweets?
Related: Make Your Own Harry Potter Butter Beer
(Image: Flickr member tibbygirl licensed under Creative Commons; Amazon)
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I don't know about anyone else, but the Mad Hatter scene in Alice in Wonderland really put me off from tea as a kid. He really weirded me out!
Anyways, I've had a craving for butterbeer from the first time I read Harry Potter. It sounds incredible.
I would love to try the potion from Alice in Wonderland that makes you grow taller...I've always been the shorty and I'd love a couple more inches!
I like horehound and Turkish delight in real life, too, though I expected Turkish delight to be chocolate truffles after reading the book. Maybe that's what would have turned me to the witch's side most effectively.
Horehound candy is actually quite horrible in real life. ... at least in my opinion.
I agree with talovetu! I was obsessed with the Little House books as a child, and my grandma gave me some horehound candy for Christmas one year. I thought it was the greatest thing ever till I actually TASTED it - blech!!!! It's like an awful cough drop mixed with chewing tobacco (to me).
Turkish Delight is delish. I do like the weirdness of Bertie Botts too...can't believe they actually managed to replicate those flavors. Science!
Maple syrup candy from the Little House books!
Oh man, i will always remember being completely disappointed after tasting Turkish Delight for the first time! I loved the Narnia books as a kid and the scene with Edmund eating it in the queen's sleigh made it seem like the most delicious thing ever, but in reality it's just chewy and...ugh. I imagined it being more light and melting away, like some sort of truffle/cotton candy hybrid. SUPER DISAPPOINTING! :(
loved all 3 of those as a child and of course the candies from the world of Harry Potter, chocolate frogs and cauldron cakes, so dream.
As a kid I really wanted to try a sugar plum, in part because of A Visit From St. Nicholas, but more because of Eugene Field's The Sugar-Plum Tree. I made them after seeing this kitchn post:
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/good-questions/good-question-what-is-a-sugarplum-015545
I loved them, but I'm glad that I didn't try them until I was an adult because they are not nearly as candy-like and sweet as I had envisioned as a kid and I might have been disappointed by them then.
The maple syrup candy scene from Little House in the Big Woods sounded so wonderful to me as a child. Even more wonderful? A field trip to Vermont with my class where they REALLY MADE IT! And guess what? It's just sugar. Tasty and all, but maple syrup is just not that exotic.
Love the sound of butterbeer. But think I'll keep it all in my imagination this time.
I had a vintage Cinderella book and they had pictures of this desert table and goblets filled with what looked like pastel colored bon bons....I always wanted those and then I realized they were prob. french macarons! And I love them.
Turkish Delight captured my imagination, too. It sounded so heavenly! I finally tried it as an adult; it's good, but nothing like I imagined as a child.
Ginger beer! Enid Blyton.
Oh, and I love horehound candy.
A really amazing movie theatre in Austin, Alamo Drafthouse, serves butter beer a la Harry Potter in the winter months. It's the stuff dreams are made of.
Turkish Delight. BAH
Most disappointing foodstuff ever. Even as an adult, I bought some at Harrods in London thinking, oh, I just need to try a better kind. Bah. Bah.
Funny. My reaction to butterbeer is always (that must be too sweet.)
I do like horehound candy.
In the original Johnny Gruelle Raggedy Ann & Andy books, they had cookie bushes everywhere and I would gaze at those drawings all the time.
Not a sweet but I remember being obsessed with pomegranates as a little girl (such a mess for my mom! all that stain removal!) because of the myth of Persephone....
I love this post! I guess the ones that come to my head immediately are: the cherry dumplings in The Boxcar Children, Butterscotch Krimpets from Maniac Magee, and Treacle Tart from Harry Potter.
I was also mildly disappointed when I tried Turkish Delight for the first time... It's good, but not what I imagined.
So excited there's another Enid Blyton fan here! She made picnic foods sound so completely scrumptious. In addition to ginger beer, there were boiled eggs, little sandwiches, shortbread, lemonade sweetened with honey,and more.
I love the sound of the Harry Potter treats but all the ones blogs come up with seem to miss the mark in truly creating the delicious treats. I suppose making a chocolate frog that comes to life and hops is a hard task... but I'm picky like that.
I do love all the treats in Harry Potter, it's one of the rich details that make the books so enchanting.
But the first candy I remember longing for after reading a book was the chocolate caramels Anne Shirley ate in Anne of Green Gables; they were, to her, the height of luxury. In my mind, I think they were more like Reisens than Tootsies.
Oh and the big pink ice cream in Richard Scarry's Best Word book - that would be a treat!
What a wonderful post and comments!
I had the best Roald Dahl recipe book growing up! It had everything from snozzcumbers to lickable wall paper! I never made anything from it, but I would sit for hours and and look at the pictures!
Look!: http://www.amazon.com/Roald-Dahls-Revolting-Recipes-Dahl/dp/0140378200
... while shelving at the Bainbridge Island library, I found these books:
Secret Garden Cookbook by Cotter, Revolting Recipes and More Revolting Recipes by Dahl, Fairy Tale Feasts, Fairy Tale Lunches and Fairy Tale Dinners by Yolen and of course, Green Eggs and Ham by Brennan.
Treacle tart is also mentioned in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
We throw an annual Wonka-Fest every year around February 1 (the date Charlie goes on his chocolate factory tour, at least in the book). We have a Violet's-gum themed meal (tomato soup, roast beef and potatoes, blueberry pie) and of course tons of chocolate. Fizzy lifting drinks too. It's a blast.
http://boydsnest.org/news/2011/wonka-fest/
That Roald Dahl cookbook looks amazing! The invented sweets in his books were definitely memorable for me, although none more so than the real candies he describes in Boy, his autobiography. The sherbet powder with licorice straws, the pear drops...I wanted to eat them all!
I thought Turkish Delight would be something chocolatey too. Instead it's chewy fruity gelatin coated in powdered sugar. Not bad, but not as good as chocolate.
And I love, love, love horehound candy. The first time I ever tried any though, my grandmother gave me some and I promptly spit it out. I guess it's an acquired taste, because anytime I go to Cracker Barrel, I always have to buy a bag.
not a book, but jelly babies from doctor who :)
I was very excited to try treacle toffee and turkish delight. yum! never had horehound candy tho.