Every childhood had its special treats and nostalgic candies, and we asked a group of Canadians about theirs.
BeaverTails
This is a quintessential cold-weather indulgence and summer festival snack. The wide, flat pastry made from whole-wheat dough is stretched until it resembles a beaver’s tail, then fried until warm and toasted.
After tossing it in corn starch, they’re served fresh and steaming with any number of toppings. Though kids love loading theirs up with everything from chocolate hazelnut spread to crushed cookies, the classic version with cinnamon and sugar is hard to beat.
Kinder Surprise
Available worldwide, these hollow milk chocolate eggs were a huge part of childhood for Canadians growing up. Smooth on the outside with a coating of milk chocolate and sweet white milk on the inside, the thrill for any child is opening it up to discover the plastic capsule with the toy inside.
Timbits
No road trip, Saturday morning hockey practice or classroom birthday party is complete without a multicoloured cardboard box of Tim Hortons’ bite-sized donut holes.
Kids enjoy choosing their own mix from the display and debating endlessly about which flavour is best. Parents usually choose honey dip or apple fritter, while kids tend to heavily favour the neon sprinkle-coated birthday cake or chocolate-glazed.
Hawkins Cheezies
This unique Canadian snack leaves every kid’s fingers coated in bright orange dust. They are a crunchy corn snack staple at birthday parties and school lunches across the country.
Not to be confused with puffed, airy cheese snacks from elsewhere, these are real chunks of aged Canadian cheddar, densely packed into a highly irregular and insanely salty crunch. They have been maintaining this same taste for generations, creating devoted snack allegiance in kids from coast to coast.
Jos Louis
Introduced by Vachon, this popular French-Canadian treat has been a childhood favourite for years. It has two layers of moist red velvet cake with a layer of white icing between them. The entire confection is covered in chocolate. Opening the package to reveal the round piece of cake delights children everywhere.
Coffee Crisp
This crunchy wafer bar is loved by Canadian kids of all ages and is considered a staple for any kid’s Halloween trick-or-treat haul. Layers of light vanilla wafer and light coffee flavoured cream are swirled together and coated in a creamy layer of milk chocolate. This candy bar is light and airy instead of thick and overly rich, making it a uniquely crunchy version of a solid chocolate candy bar.
Mr. Big
It’s hard to find anything bigger than Mr.Big in the candy aisle. With a thick, crispy vanilla wafer rolled with gooey caramel and peanuts, all tucked inside rice crisps and coated in chocolate, it’s a snack bag staple for kids trying to fill up on the cheapest calories possible.
And since they’re essentially twice the size of your average candy bar, pulling this out of your bag is like hitting the jackpot.
Smarties
Canadian Smarties aren’t the chalky sour tablets of the same name that you’ll find south of the border. They’re actually rainbow-colored chocolate buttons with a milk chocolate centre covered by a hard, crunchy candy shell.
They snap and rattle against each other in the famous retro cardboard tube. Children often open the cardboard tab, sort them by colour and bite into them, crunching through the candy shell.
Popsicles
When the humid Canadian summer finally arrives, children head straight up to the freezer or local corner store ice cream cooler in search of a classic twin-pop. Made to be broken perfectly in half on two wooden sticks, these frosty cones are intended to be split and shared with your best friend while you sit on the curb.
Though they can be found in multiple traditional fruity flavours, Electric blue raspberry and classic cherry are always the first flavours to go.
Nanaimo Bars
The Nanaimo bar, named after the British Columbia city of Nanaimo, is a creamy three-layer bar that you can find at every school bake sale, holiday party and family potluck.
Needing no baking whatsoever, this treat consists of a chocolate-graham-coconut crust, topped by a thick layer of sweet yellow custard icing and finished with a layer of silky melted chocolate.
Aero Bars
Popular for its unique texture, this milk chocolate candy bar is known for having thousands of small, airy bubbles inside. When you bite into it, it melts away easily and folds over on the tongue.
This creates a sensation entirely unlike eating a regular solid bar. Although the original Aero is popular, the bright green mint Aero is also very popular among children.
Hickory Sticks
Kids will happily snack on these matchstick-cut potato sticks by the fistful. Fried extra crunchy and packed with an intensely flavorful smoked hickory barbecue seasoning, they’re about as far from your basic potato chip as you can get.
And part of the fun for kids is flipping the tiny bag upside down into their mouths to catch every last salty, smoky crunch at the bottom.
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