Ex-Yu Sweets

Here I am, circa 1984, stuffing my face with abandon. The culprit? "Domacica" cookies. The dawn of my weakness for chocolate. And below, a round-up of desserts from my childhood in Yugoslavia. I can still get my hands on a lot of these, and often just the crinkling of the wrapper is enough to trigger a flood of memories.

1. Bajadera, A smooth, layered chocolate-hazelnut treat. (ps. The colours inspired our bedroom wall paper!)

2. Plazma Keks. Despite the name and glowing girl on the box, Plazma is not radioactive. It's a delicious cookie that is recommended as part of a healthy diet of every Serbian child & adult. Watch an ancient ad here:"We love Plazma cookies, my grandma, mom and meeee...."

3. Eurocrem, a spreadable hazelnut treat, like Nutella. Best name ever, just don't try googling an image search (shudder).

4. Domacica cookies (meaning "Housewife"). As seen in the photo of me above.

5. Cokolino, a yummy, vitamin enriched (chocolate) baby food. But I never let that stop me. Most recently I got re-acquainted after I got my wisdom teeth out. Score!

6. Cipiripi, another hazelnut spread and Eurocrem's biggest competitor. I always put my money behind the manic squirrel. See him in action here and find out how to pronounce it.

7. Medeno Srce, meaning "Honey Heart". It's as good as it sounds (with a little ginger for good measure).

8. Zivotinjsko Carstvo. The wafer-thin milk chocolate paled in comparison to the excitement of collecting animal stickers included in every wrapper. Fanatics continue to trade them, but now on Facebook.

9. Krem Banane, soft banana filling covered in chocolate. Here's a recipe for the home made knock-off.

10. Jaffa Cakes, chocolate covered cookies with an orange jelly filling. Named after middle-eastern Jaffa oranges.

11. Munchmallow chocolate covered (do you detect a pattern here?) marshmallows on a cookie.

12. Chocolate Cigarettes. I believe these have since been banned (and I can't recall the brand), but I do remember happily puffing on these as a kid. Oddly enough, I never became a smoker but maybe I can blame them for a life-long chocolate dependancy.