Tunnock’s Real Milk Chocolate Caramel Wafer Biscuits

Brand: Tunnock’s

Cost: £1 for 4

Found at: Sainsbury’s

I don’t often buy candy in a brick, but when it comes to these biscuits, brick seems to be the best unit of measurement. There is a heft to this package of four cookies it that I do not usually associate with sweets, but there is also something charming about the utilitarian possibilities of this particular desert. For £1, I now have a means to prop open doors, shore-up unstable furniture, or defend myself against assailants on the street. It’s like a conceal-carry permit you can eat.

It’s also pretty tasty: a chocolate that exists at the happy intersection of a Voortman wafer cookie, a Twix, and a strobwaffle: its gooey and pliant and absolutely stuffed with caramel. It’s not like the flimsy chocolates that you might get at a patisserie with ‘mousse’ or ‘truffle’ or ‘kiss’ in the name. This is a chocolate with gravitas. It’s almost a meal – the kind of thing you’d eat to keep the cold Scottish winter at bay. So, it makes sense that it’s sold just about everywhere. I’ve seen it in museum gift shops, grocery stores, coffee shops, cigarette stands, pubs – pretty much anywhere that has a register has a display of these next to it. And it’s amazing how many times I have walked out of a store only to find that I’ve accidently bought one. After all, a girl alone in the big city needs something to defend herself with.