Posts from Do forum users like sweets? Auto-translated

As an employee of a confectionery Factory, I steadily support the domestic producer by diligently hauling kilograms of marmalade home, and on holidays, candies and gingerbread as well (all honestly bought at the local store, don't think otherwise). I'll share my impressions. I don't want to push the advertising too hard, but lately, I eat sweets mostly at the Factory, since I'm stubbornly trying at least not to get fat, but sometimes I really, really crave something tasty.

Gingerbread. I've already talked a lot about Tula gingerbread; they are my absolute favorite. I especially recommend the cranberry ones, but actually, all varieties are very cool, although they are thermonuclearly sweet. On the other hand, they are aromatic and beautiful.
Zefir. Vanilla with chocolate glaze is my love since childhood; I eat it constantly and it still hasn't grown old. Mom approves of the regular unglazed ones. Overall, our zefir is very tasty—not cloying, not chemical—especially tasty when it's still fresh and not even fully dried out.
Waffles. Good; everything is tasty when it's fresh, but I'm not a huge fan, and they aren't produced here often. But when they are, I happily munch on a couple while they're still crunchy.
Marmalade. Regular "domes," nothing supernatural, but mom loves it, and I find it quite tasty. By the way, there are two recipes: one just with molasses and one with added juice. The one with juice is much tastier, and the flavors themselves are more interesting, but the regular one is also not bad. Generally, I prefer gummy or "slices" more—they aren't as sweet—but ours is also quite, quite good.
Crackers. As usual, the tastiest are those swiped from the conveyor belt right from under the noses of the packers. I don't like cookies and crackers much, but I enjoy munching on ours when the occasion arises. Mostly salted (small loose pieces and standard "squares" of several flavors, approved by dad), but there are sweet ones too, also very tasty and "munchable" no worse than chips. I'll separately mention galettes: how I hated them during my internship (when I tried to grab them from the conveyor and shove them into a box, but they flew all over the workshop, mixed into a shapeless heap on the conveyor, fell haphazardly into the box in a pile, and then I got a scolding from the workshop foreman) and how I love them now. Approved by the whole family—dense, crunchy, bland taste, but very pleasant. My favorite cracker, alas, our Factory doesn't produce, but I'll say that I adore it when a cracker is thin-thin and the flavorings in it are punchy-punchy, especially cool if it's herbs or tomato, but it could be cheese or some other stuff.
Candies. Only three varieties, but what kinds! Liqueur bottles are especially cool to chew whole, when the liqueur flows out and mixes with the chocolate; it's particularly tasty. Grillage (there are several varieties made from different types of nuts) is soft, easy to bite and chew, and very tasty. And the "signature" blackcurrant soufflé in chocolate is another childhood favorite delicacy. Truth be told, the damn things are made rarely and are terribly expensive, but they are very cool.

Also, I've become hooked on agar-agar jelly. It costs significantly more than gelatin jelly and is usually exported from the Far East (I've come across what seemed to be Chinese, Korean, Malaysian). As a rule, it's generously filled with coconut cubes processed to be translucent. Dense, pleasant taste, although some manufacturers use too chemical flavorings. I recommend getting the transparent varieties; even from those Malaysian chemists, they taste milder and it really seems like they actually put real juice in there. And the Chinese have a great drinkable one (liquid enough to suck through a thick straw). And it's especially cool in some cases to fish out generous heaps of fruit pieces filled to the brim, which are much, much more than the jelly itself. After agar-agar, I struggle to perceive gelatin jelly. But the prices for agar-agar do bite noticeably; eating it by the kilogram every day is difficult.
Dessert puddings are also not bad; I especially love nut and coffee ones.

Lollipops are a special love! I especially adore the opaque striped ones; they are white inside and a bit tart. Although the regular "caramelized sugar + a pinch of flavoring per tank" also have their charm.
I've started buying gummy marmalade by weight; I know a couple of places. By the way, I once tried marmalade claiming to taste like pizza; to my extreme surprise, it was an excellent taste, very unusual and cool. However, I saw it in one place; I go there rarely and they don't always stock it.

Also, dad used to brew jam on pectin with stevioside. He intended it for himself, but by the time he got around to it, I had already eaten it all, and he grumbled for a long time. Expensive, but much tastier than regular jam—not cloying at all, with an interesting jam-like consistency.

In February, there was an Indian fair in our city; besides a couple of cute tunics for summer, I took some honey with cranberry to try. If it weren't for my conscience, a thirst for experimentation (like, how will it taste with porridge or kefir?), and fears for my figure/health, I would have eaten it for two hours instead of two days—it turned out to be such a delicacy. Not too honey-like, though (it was dense and opaque, as if there were a bunch of pollen or some other bee waste in there), but very pleasant and not cloying.

But the absolute best sweets are cherries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, and mango, that's it.
And I stopped putting sugar in my tea long ago, even if it's with lemon. When I'm sick, I throw in jam or honey, but otherwise—no way. I've even started drinking cocoa without sugar.

Well, usually I'll have some sugar-free tea, some sugar-free cottage cheese/yogurt, some meat stuff, some kefir stuff, and I consume sugar in food mostly in almost pure form as candies and gummies x)

I also got hooked on agar-based jelly. It's significantly more expensive than gelatin and is usually exported from the Far East (I've seen Chinese, Korean, and Malaysian varieties).

Not necessarily, agar is also produced in large quantities in the North (Arkhangelsk), and making marmalade from agar is not difficult. I also like it, by the way.

It's quite possible, but I've only seen the Far Eastern variety for sale.

And I also devoured two incredibly delicious cakes for my birthday. Unfortunately, I don't remember the brand. One was a mini-cake with banana and caramel (I hate bananas, but I ate it and didn't even notice, it was so delicious). The other was a sour cream cake with nuts. Both were very tasty and delicate, the sour cream one was slightly tangy. I generally like cakes, but if they're this good, it's even better.

My current ranking of Indian desserts:

You can view the pictures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_sweets_and_desserts

1. Rosgulla – ros(a)gullys, as we call them – are cheese balls in syrup.

2. Mishti-doi is a yogurt similar to our _homemade_ ryazhenka, but sweet. Actually, if I had known earlier that adding sugar to homemade ryazhenka creates such deliciousness, I would only make it like that at home.
3. Kulfi is a local version of ice cream. There is also another local version of ice cream - "frozen yogurt," which is also tasty.
4. Chana-pai doesn't translate to "Chinese pie" as I initially thought; it means "sweet pie" – essentially a sweet cottage cheese casserole with very little flour (and no eggs, because vegetarianism is everything for us). I encountered other names for this dessert, but didn't remember them.
5. Rabri is homemade condensed milk, made right in cafes. It’s very popular among locals, but in my opinion, it's too sweet to eat constantly. Like mishti-doi, it is usually served in disposable containers.
6. There is also a hybrid of items 1 and 5 with an unmemorable name – mini-rosagullas in rabri with various goodies. For example, they add pumpkin seeds and raisins here. And also edible silver foil (which they somehow add to half the desserts).

7. Kalakhand is something like chana-pai, but drier (although sometimes it seems to me that items 4 and 7 are the same thing).
8. Gulabi are sweet cheese and flour balls fried in oil.
9. Laddus: there are about 6-7 varieties of laddus in an average store, made from different types of flour and with different additions: some are made from semolina, some from chickpea flour, with coconut, with chili, with nuts... basically, for every taste. But since there isn't a drop of cottage cheese in laddu, I don't eat them often, only occasionally :).

10. All the rest: sandesh, jalebi, chom-chom… thousands of them; you can’t remember everything.

Just in case, for those who plan to visit Kolkata or Kathmandu, here are some tips on where I particularly liked:
Rosgulla is a traditional Bengali dish, so the best ones I tried were in Kolkata, most often at "Haldiram Food City" – a very pleasant cafe. In Kathmandu, the best ones I tried are sold near Durbar Square at "Pashupati Foods" and in the restaurant "Gulab." Near "Gulab," there is also "Calkutta sweets," but their rosagullas aren't very good, although I liked the other sweets. There is also a decent confectionery shop at "Sangam Sweets"; it's especially nice that they have branches in Birtamode, where I lived for more than a month.

I also want to brag about some exotic treats, but this time, they're Chinese.
My boss was on a business trip to the Far East last week, and he took the opportunity to visit China and brought back some goodies. I got a durian pastry and two candies with Mao Zedong on the wrapper.
I ate the pastry at work during lunch. It had a thin, flaky crust and a lot of filling, like a thick puree or something similar. The smell is quite unique; durian has a very distinct aroma, but it turned out to be quite pleasant to taste, although it's a bit strange and perhaps a little too sweet. I really liked the packaging; while we just add anti-caking agents directly to the dough, the Chinese included a neat little packet, like the ones you find in shoes and bags.
The candies with Mao are delicious! They're nougat with pieces of peanuts and a fruity flavor (one is banana, the other is lychee). I love nougat, and these also have a pleasant fruity aftertaste.
The candy wrappers look something like this, all shiny.

After work, I bought some marmalade for my mom, and on a whim, I also got myself a "Kis-Kis" caramel. I love this kind of caramel – it's chewy, sticks to everything, you can't really chew it, and you'll probably pull out all your fillings. But before you chew it, you need to hold it in your mouth for a bit to warm it up; otherwise, it's a good alternative to chewing gum and chewy marmalade. In general, I'm trying to eat less sugar and not on an empty stomach. Ideally, as I was told, the best sweet treat in this regard is fatty ice cream; the fat slows down the absorption of sugar, and the sugar rush won't be as intense. And I've entered a phase where I prefer cheaper ice cream with artificial ingredients over really delicious premium ice cream because THERE ARE FEWER CALORIES. At the same time, I eat it in completely indecent portions; what can you do, you can't have too much of a good thing, and I'm managing to stay within my diet. Sometimes, you can tell that they skimped on the good stuff and filled it with water, but sometimes you find a pretty decent product. And I also tried some very tasty marshmallows, a vanilla-banana assortment, with Minions from "Despicable Me" on the package. It's really great; I generally love marshmallows, and I keep a bag in the kitchen to throw into my sugar-free cocoa. And I have a really lousy job. Periodically, my boss asks me to check out what the competitors are up to, and I spend half the day drooling as I look at their products. The only thing that saves me is that half of the competitors' products simply don't reach us or are sold in one or two random stores that are hard to find. No, it's very difficult for me to give up sweets. I often crave something tasty while playing Skyrim or watching a series, and I only consider snacks and sweets to be truly tasty (and not even all of them). And I have absolutely no willpower (sniffles, life is pain, Kosha is a chubby glutton).

I bought a lollipop not so long ago, and I was carrying it around all day. It’s a nice thing.

Yes, that’s a cool thing.

I'm really going crazy for these candies. The other day, they brought a whole vase, and I just can't stop myself, even though I'm on a diet and don't even like blackcurrant. This is the most delicious soufflé, I've loved them since I was a preschooler; they've always been my favorite candies and were always included in the gifts given to my mom at the factory. Even now, I can't resist them, although I've already eaten too many. I recommend them, guys, although I doubt you'll find them outside of Tula.

Haha! It's a good thing that chocolate is expensive in Asia (in Siem Reap stores, for example, a 100g bar costs an average of $2-2.5) and, due to the heat, it is sometimes stored in improper conditions, so you have to wean yourself off chocolate, and even more so, off loose chocolate candies – they are an even greater exotic treat than chocolate bars, although if you set your mind to it, you can certainly buy some.

Therefore, I've become addicted to local dried fruits.
First and foremost, these are dried pineapples and coconuts – they are perfect with coffee. And, like coffee, they are produced in Cambodia on an industrial scale – you drive along the road, and pineapple plantations stretch out on both sides of you...
And I also discovered dry tomatoes – small tomatoes, dried whole. They taste slightly salty, but sweet, like giant-sized raisins – 1.5-2 cm in diameter.
In general, I always knew that tomatoes are berries, but only here did I see that they can be eaten as a dessert :)
Tomato juice is also sold as a sweet drink. More precisely, it's not salty. There is plain tomato juice, and there is tomato-carrot juice.
And there is tomato shake.
Any shake is made like this: ice with condensed milk is chopped in a blender, sugar is added, and any fruit of your choice. The classic local set: mango, lemon, pineapple, dragon fruit, passion fruit (also known as maracuja). Plus exotic ones, which are not always available: apple shake, orange shake, tomato shake. Yes, tomato shake too, with condensed milk, sugar, ice, and no salt.

Give me a whole cake (sponge cake with cream) – you’ll see it for the last time. Give me a bag of candies (with nuts) – I’ll leave one for fun in the evening. Give me a bar of chocolate (especially white or Nesquik) – in an hour (at most), you’ll forget what it’s called.

Give me a bag of candies (with nuts) – I’ll save one for later, just for fun.

My brother used to have a bad habit: he would eat all the candies and then wrap the empty wrappers and put them back in the bowl.

This stuff has taken over all our shelves. Nothing special, cream in a caramel shell, with a rice ball inside, but I can't just walk by. I took one candy to try, and then everything went hazy. I woke up surrounded by wrappers and with an extra five kilograms on my belly. I tried them all, except for the mocha flavor; my favorites are the cheesecake and coconut (JUST LIKE RAFFAELLO))))) In my opinion, they're even tastier; I don't really like nuts, but I adore rice balls. Maybe it's the name and design.



I don't like milk chocolate. But dark chocolate is a different story. This one is incredibly delicious, even though it has a filling, but it's a pleasant filling and there's not much of it. The only downside is that it doesn't break into neat pieces; it breaks randomly.

Following up on the previous post, this chocolate is also very tasty. I also tried the tequila, coffee, and caramel cookie flavors, but I liked them less; either the filling wasn't very good, or the chocolate itself was milk chocolate, and I just grabbed all the varieties that were available in the store.



And this is generally the most delicious product made from cocoa butter that exists. There's not enough kiwi in the kiwi chocolate, but the orange and raspberry flavors are simply amazing. It's intensely sweet, like all white chocolate, but it melts pleasantly in your mouth and doesn't fall apart into a plasticine-like consistency, like 95% of milk chocolate varieties. It's also very unusual in color and texture. It costs about 80-90 rubles per bar (which is half the size of a regular chocolate bar), but it's worth it.



A delicious treat from the same company that makes the "kitten" chocolates. It's much more expensive, but it's something incredibly delicious. If the "kitten" chocolates were simply the most delicious chocolate-like product, this one goes beyond all taste boundaries and aims for orbit. The pepper is very fitting; it provides a pleasant burning sensation on the tongue as you savor the piece.

And yes, this "Real Swiss Chocolate" is quite popular in Russia.

I don't usually like chocolate, but I'm eating it non-stop. I have the coconut "Marsianka" bar, but I'm eating the chocolate one -_- My body must be craving cocoa.

Sweet little Drakkoshechka.

I'm eating sweets non-stop, and I'll probably end up convulsing and choking on foam.