As June marks National Candy Month, many sweet stores and production companies have taken to social media to share their manufacturing stories and snaps of sweets, as a way of celebrating over 100 years of candy production.
The Statista Global Consumer Survey reveals that Europeans and Russians have some of the biggest sweet tooths among nations, with the UK showing that 60% consume sweets or chocolates regularly.
According to Statista, in 2020, consumer spending on sugar, confectionery and ice cream in the United Kingdom amounted to 13.6 billion British pounds Confectionery retail.
Making up a large proportion of the confectionary industry are sweets from the Indian Subcontinent, Pakistan, and Kashmir, which have long been a way of celebrating, something sweet in the South Asian culture.
Popular South Asian desserts include ‘Gulab Jamun’, ‘Jalebi’, ‘Kheer’ and ‘Gajar Ka Halwa’, although the ‘mithai’ or sugary delicacies don’t just end there.
Other concoctions that have been made into traditional desserts include ‘falooda’, a Mughlai Indian version of a cold dessert, made by mixing rose syrup, and sweet basil seeds with milk, and vermicelli and often served with vanilla ice cream on the top.
The concentrated bright pink rose-flavoured syrup of ‘Rooh Afza’, pre-dates back to 1906 in Ghaziabad, British India and was created by Hakim Hafiz Abdul Majeed.
In recent years popular South Asian delectable desserts like ‘rassomalai’ and ‘Gulab Jamun have made it to big supermarket chains such as Asda, Tesco and Morrisons.
In the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, the practice of making sugar from sugarcane was discovered by Indians as a way of making honey without bees.
The liquifying lump of molten-gold unrefined cane sugar, that is known as ‘gur’ or jaggery, can be made from boiling concentrated sugar cane juice until it becomes solid and can be formed into blocks.
Today gur is commonly used for curing colds, constipation and reducing blood pressure, as the old-age remedy and natural immune booster, as well as being used in South Asian sweets.
Asian Sunday spoke to some of the pioneers of South Asian sweets across the UK, although most of the South Asian confectioners said they don’t take part in national celebrations like Candy Month, they still gave their thoughts on 100 years of candy production.
Akbar Mughal who started Mughal Restaurant and Sweet Centre in 1987, said that South Asians have been celebrating the making of Asian sweets, which traces back generations, for way more than 100 years.
He reminisced his childhood of eating jalebi and recalls the time when “Pakistan and Hindustan were one nation then, but the sweets are still the same, as they used to make back then”.
Mr Mughal talked about the evolution of South Asian sweets, saying “The ingredients that were originally found in sweets have constantly changed over time, however, the ingredients of the original sweets have been consistent, such as sugar, flour and khoya”.
The retired Sweet Maker reflected on the journey of sweet making and said, “When the divide happened, everyone still made things in the same way, so even though the partition happened it still brought us together, like Hindu, Sikh and Muslims, because we had one bazaar, we would get everything from”.
Regarded as one of the largest Asian confectionery producers in Europe, Nafees Bakers and Sweets has been serving its customers since 1979.
Asian Sunday spoke to the Operations Manager, Ahtazaz Asghar, who oversees all day-to-day transactions at Nafees, about how the start of the Nafees empire, began with an orange sphere of flour, fat, and sugar.
“It all started with a laddu and in the beginning, when you’re trialling something out, it’s not going to be 100% perfect, but although it wasn’t perfect, the people were so keen and happy when they knew that we can get this here, although it’s just a laddu, it’s quite a dedicated thing to make, but it was just a solid rock hard and people still used to buy it, because there was no other option and they never got anything like that from anywhere,” says Ahtazaz Asghar.
Mr Asghar said historically, “When the British allowed people from Pakistan and India to come over to the UK, the people from that region, did know what mithai, but in those days, it was very hard to get our traditional mithai from Bradford or the UK”.
Today Nafees Bakers, with over 37 stores in the UK, does all sorts of mithai, which range from 45/50 different types of mithai and 300 products in the bakery.
“There were a few people who had the background they knew about mithai, like Haji Sadiq, the founder of Nafees bakers, his father was a chef, so he had that background, and he was passionate as well”.
He further elaborates that “This was the start of mithai at Nafees, then slowly and gradually there were some improvements and then he went on to trial our signature rusks, which are now our famous Crown Cake rusks”.
Ambala was established in 1965, by Mr Mohammed Ali Khan, entrepreneur, and founder of the Ambala Foods Company, he named the firm after the city in India where he was born.
From the original single shop on Drummond Street in London, the company has grown to have more than a dozen stores across the UK.
Bradford store owner talks to Asian Sunday about the popular mithai shop, which is known for its traditional Pakistani and Indian sweets, including celebration boxes of mixed mithai and ‘habshi halwa’.
“Ambala is known for our Habshi Halwa, which is our best-selling mithai, the Gulab Jamun and plain barfi. We’re popular because we’re known for our consistency, as it’s always the same.”
An Indian dessert, Habshi Halwa is a rich, dark, and luxurious sweet made with wheat and pure butter ghee, and often topped with almonds, cashew nuts and pistachios.
A form of milk halwa that is made by curdling, sweetening and flavouring milk, it is a slightly tedious task to cook, as the process of making the halwa takes a long time to get it to the right consistency.
“It’s just in our culture to give someone mithai, not just at weddings, but when someone has a new baby and when coming back from Hajj and even on Eid, people give mithai”.
Bradford owner of the store says, “We used to have one small shop and now we have 20 shops in the UK, the next nearest one is in Manchester on Wilmslow Road, so all of our shops are on the best roads”.
We hope you celebrate #NationalCandyMonth with something sweet from South Asia!