Los Angeles is home to numerous dessert shops that feature a range of treats from cupcakes to doughnuts to shakes. Urban Confections will select dessert restaurants whose only West Coast location is Los Angeles, highlighting students’ opportunities to taste the city’s distinctive flavors. Follow columnist Lindsay Weinberg around Los Angeles as she samples local confections and suggests how students can take advantage of these iconic desserts.
I blindly reached into a white paper bag that read “Ha en söt dag!” – Swedish for “Have a sweet day!”
From the bag, I retrieved a miscellaneous piece of candy that I’d purchased at Sockerbit, a Scandinavian candy store that offers bins of traditional sweets and Swedish candy for $12.99 per pound.
Customers enter the sleek, modern store on West 3rd Street in Beverly Grove and are greeted with rows of diverse candy; the clean white walls are purposefully simple to draw eyes to the rainbow of bite-sized candy nuggets. It’s easy: grab a white bag, scoop in any assortment of colorful sweets, weigh the haul and pay at the end.
Each bin of candy is labeled with the Swedish name and an English subtitle below. What’s more, Sockerbit prides itself on selling products with no high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified ingredients or trans fat, which truly does make the candies taste less artificial.
I went wild, wanting to try as many types of candy as possible; this meant that after I left the store, I had an adventure, randomly popping a candy in my mouth from a collection of creamy chocolates, chewy fruit candies and leathery gummies.
I quickly learned from an employee that candy is a huge part of the Scandinavian lifestyle, with three signature types: salty black licorice, sour gummy skulls and marshmallows.
Sockerbit means “sugar cube,” which was inspired by the store’s square marshmallows that I was enthusiastic to test. The cubes of pink were denser than other marshmallows I’ve nibbled, and customers might liken the tough texture to a stale “Jet-Puffed” marshmallow, a new experience of spongy and chewy, as opposed to fluffy.
I decided to try some of the popular salted licorice candies, with different types ranging in saltiness. The more mild pieces, called salta linser, look like squares of Chiclets gum, but are similar to high-quality candies of Good & Plenty – black licorice covered in a crunchy candy coating. The more salty varieties were overwhelming to my untrained tongue; admittedly, I involuntarily puckered at the wave of saltiness after I bit into a tablet-style licorice candy called Salta Salmiak Pastiller. It’s probably an acquired taste but still worth the adventure of trying.
Sour gummy skulls are a key novelty at Sockerbit. Even though I’m not the biggest advocate of sour candy, biting into the large skull-shaped gummy candies was a highlight of my bag of treasures. The large heads are made of two colors of gummies, dusted with sour sugar and made to taste like distinct flavors, such as apple or bubble gum. This Scandinavian specialty was balanced in terms of both acidity and chewiness – not too tough and not too soft.
The majority of Sockerbit’s candies are gummies, but each has a different sweetness and texture. The ovular so-called Banana Bubs were extremely tough to rip apart with my teeth. On the opposite end of the spectrum were the Sega Råttor, or fruity jelly mice, that were as easy to bite through as butter – one of my favorites.
The top shelf of the candy counter contains bins of metallic-wrapped candies, mostly chocolates like the hazelnut Geisha chocolates or extremely thick and sticky gingerbread toffee. A few shelves below, I tried a cola-flavored candy that had the precise texture of Swedish Fish. Nearby, I discovered Happy Chews, similar to giant fruit Mentos. On a shelf above, I found a candy titled Lakrifun, whose nickname was an edible piece of “chalk” because it’s a cylindrical peppermint patty coated in black licorice and covered in a dull, white powder. In a combination I’d never seen before, Lakrifun was faint in flavor and not as disagreeable as a newcomer might expect.
My recommendation would be to do as I did: Gather an arbitrary assortment of yogurt banana chips, chocolate-covered gummy bears, Sweden’s favorite raspberry gummy called Hallonbåtar and any other whimsical goodies into one bag. Take turns with friends selecting one piece at a time like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans in “Harry Potter,” watching each other react to the thick nougats, crunchy licorice and fluffy strawberry chews.
These high-quality candies offer something for every sugar-lover. Other than the fact that some lids were difficult to remove from bins, I had no complaints – even the candies I didn’t personally like, I appreciated for their originality and cultural value. Some of Sockerbit’s candies have a consistency that I was unfamiliar with, but the new styles and flavors made the experience a tasty Swedish adventure.
– Lindsay Weinberg
What
kind of Sockerbit candy sounds the most mouthwatering? Email Weinberg at
lweinberg@media.ucla.edu.