Food Part 2 - a sweet tale

To continue the subject of missing food from yesterday (not food that went missing yesterday but the discussion yesterday of food that I miss...) but moving onto another food group - chocolate and sweets.

Germany has a huge selection of both chocolate and sweets, there are some great independant chocolatiers here selling simply divine pralines and truffles and although you might find that in the bigger cities or the tourist locations in the UK, here?
They're everywhere.
Kettwig has its own little chocolate coffee shop - what could be better than a cafe where the coffee is delicious and you can have 2,3,4 truffles of your choice with your beverage (the owner could be less grumpy admittedly)
The area of Essen where my hairdresser is has a slightly bigger chocolate cafe - where the emphasis is more on the chocolate than the coffee, their hot chocolate is TO DIE FOR and they even have a chocolate fountain...B&J were visibly drooling while they drank their hot chocolates!

Then there's the huge range of Milka chocolate that is available and the Ritter brand, as well as serious grown up bars offering 60/70/80% cocoa solids with chillies/mango/pistachio etc etc etc.

But none of this quite scratches the Cadbury itch that persists - probably due to the fact that 40 years of my life were spent in the Midlands and have been around the Cadbury factory several times (hey, I have 2 children) and was practically weaned on Cadbury Freddo bars and chocolate buttons. There's just something about the smooth chocolatey milkiness of Cadbury chocolate that the German pretenders can't match.

Of the huge range that Cadbury produces in the UK, here we can get the CurlyWurly and the Wunderbar. Not a Crunchie or a bar of Dairy Milk in sight not even a Flake....sigh, and don't mention the sad lack of the Cadbury creme egg...

And now, to add insult to injury they've gone and sold out to the Yanks!

How could they?

How could the British people allow this last bastion of British manufacturing to be gobbled up by the monstrous food giant of Kraft?

And what exactly does Mr Kraft know about chocolate? Their product range goes from cheap and nasty coffee (Mellow Birds anyone?) through to plastic 'cheese' (dairylea) and finally to chocolate (Terry's chocolate orange (which I do have a bit of a liking for) and Toblerone (my dad's big passion).
But Cadbury have been making chocoalte for 2 whole centuries, that's a whole lotta experience there - I just hope Mr Kraft makes use of all that expertise, although I've heard nasty, nasty gossip that some of the brands might get the boot...the CurlyWurly for example having such a small market might vanish...maybe it's time to start laying in supplies!

Although if the finger of fudge is consigned to the history books I wont be sorry, one finger alone is too sweet and sickly for me!