Boxed chocs for comfort and joy

Part of me has a real penchant for slightly naff boxed chocolates: specifically all the same kind of choc, in a box. I think it’s due to thinking they were the dernier cri of sophistication as a child, but also they are the sort of thing you got in funny little department stores or in the Lakeland catalogue at Christmas, a read so reassuring, so stabilising, I sometimes keep it way into cherry-blossom season.

Some of these boxes seemed so luxe that, even though I can afford them now as an adult, the child in me thinks they are ‘not for me’. I remember one: the memory of which is so golden I purposely don’t scrutinise it now for fear of finding out it’s actually a variant of Toffifee. But I think it involved buttery caramel, chocolate and Brazil nuts – the nuts posh people ate when I was growing up.

Thus it was that I found myself splashing £12.99 – £12.99!* – on Niederegger Walnuss, last year in a little shop in Holt, Norfolk. Six pieces – do the sums! – of walnut atop rum butter, on marzipan and coated in chocolate. I mean, did I eat them all? Yes I did, strictly rationed. Did I enjoy them? Yes I did. Did life change? No it didn’t.

Last week I could not resist Schluckwerder’s Pflaume in Madeira (£5.50/10 pieces, souschef.co.uk): plum pulp in madeira on rum marzipan, coated in chocolate. Yes I’m sensing a theme. Boozy discs, individually wrapped in a pull-out box. Delicious. Can’t decide if you want a chocolate or pudding? Have one of these.

*I know I’ve spent more than that on chocolate – there is no rhyme or reason here.