I live in Japan and definitely some sweets that I’ve brought back from the US to share as well as recipes I’ve made (from my grandmother’s cookbook) were too sweet for a number of folks (usually men, so there may be something else going on here with cultural images/norms and the like as men aren’t generally “supposed to” be overly fond of sweet stuff). Still, the vast majority of people liked them and wanted more. I do find myself toning down sugar in recipes, though. Less in grandma’s cookie recipes, less in the cornbread recipe I found online, etc.
Thank goodness for the scribbles, otherwise I might have learned who wrote this thing I liked and we can’t have that.
Sweden here. If the candy isn’t trying to destroy your mouth, it’s no good.
Coming from Germany, I can confirm that the objectively correct level of sweetness is what they sell over there. America/UK are too sweet (obviously!). Japan is not sweet enough (duh!).
In other news, sweetness, just like spicyness, seems to be acquired taste and once you got brainsugared by one country’s Big Sweets you never come back.
Does the EU have Pixy Stix?
They’re literally just tubes of slightly flavored powdered sugar that you pour into your mouth.
Dollar stores used to sell generic ones for $0.01 each, and you could find jumbo ones that were like 20 of them in one tube.
sound like the perfect remedy to my depression
Pretty sure I gave the cashier depression when I figured out buying less than 13 at a time meant no sales tax… (I was 8-9y/o, every penny mattered)
I’ll give you this one, most “European” milk chocolate tastes better when there’s no lipolysis involved, which is common in Hershey’s.
Then again, there’s Chocolonely which blows the competition out of the water.
Yeah, I got a bag of mixed Hershey’s minibars from the US and that stuff was vile.
The mixed bags of candy always taste bad.
I’m not going to go out on a limb to defend fucking Hershey’s but I can say with confidence that the mixed bags of candy are universally a step down in quality.
It’s shitty candy meant to be given to children who don’t care. Individual bars will be better. Still fuckin Hershey’s don’t get me wrong but better.
USAmericans not understanding just how sweet their sweets are compared to European sweets is just too good.
I prefer Nordic and Icelandic candy. Ammonium chloride covered black licorice is better than sugar coated high-fructose corn syrup.
Those are incidentally some of the happiest nations in the world. Depression is hardly an export.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/03/these-are-the-happiest-countries-in-the-world/
To add more evidence: Japan is not in the list and people here find licorice disgusting. You cannot find it anywhere except at ikea which is far away from here. And even there they only have one type which is okayish at best. PLZ SEND HELP!
Ha, my friend is half-Finnish and would go back to see her family. She’d always give me some salty black licorice as most people here don’t care for it. I never used to, but my tastebuds changed at some point (or, I guess, I only like the version from the Nordics; I haven’t had the versions from the US in decades so I can’t compare those).
Duh, they don’t keep the depression for domestic distribution - it’s exported.
Helps to have good social programs.
I don’t know about candy but when I follow a bakery recipe from an American source I always cut the sugar amount in half and it still ends up a little too sweet for my taste.
I’m am American baker and I know this is anecdotal but I’ve always cut sugar in half (or more) and I have nothing but rave reviews. Someone just paid me $100 for a cake. And I’m a hobbyist.
I think that most people here just don’t know better, have never tried it any other way. And when you show them how it can be… they fall in love.
ETA: from recipes I get elsewhere. Most of my repipes are my own at this point.
Does “Europe” include “UK” (I mean not geographically but in terms of candy sweetness)?
I had coworker bringing some sweets from visit in UK and those felt extremely sweet to me. I grew up in Europe but live in US, and it felt sweeter than US candies.
Yes. It’s only the EU political union we’re no longer in. From what I’ve tasted of other European sweets they’re about the same.
Hmmm, so I’m starting to have theory that with local confectionary one already knows what they like and what they don’t, and when someone brings candies from another country you’re trying candies that normally wouldn’t eat at home so they might seem too sweet, too sour, etc…
LoL depression as they main export.
Dude obviously never went there.
Americans are all hyped up on Xanax.
hyped up on Xanax
🤣 you’re right. It’s more like sedated than hyped.
