Chocolate Pick and Mix: The Mice, the Jazzies and the Ones Worth Hiding

Every pick and mix bag has a chocolate corner. It's where the mice live.

It's the part of the bag that gets eaten in secret, in the car, before anyone else knows it existed. Jazzies under their sprinkles. Mice by the handful. A little foil cup you thought nobody else remembered. This is the chocolate that doesn't come in a bar, and it has been turning up in paper bags since before you were born.

Here's our edit: the classics, the grown up ones, and the ones worth hiding. There are around 30 in our Chocolate range.

The sweet shop classics

• White Mice and Choc Mice. The first thing small hands grab from the counter, and the first thing gone from the jar. Sweet, smooth and impossible to eat just one of.
• Jazzies and Snowies. A button under a snowfall of crunchy rainbow sprinkles. Jazzies are chocolate flavour, Snowies their paler, sweeter vanilla cousins.
• Chocolate Frogs. Solid, sweet and smooth. They do not jump, which is a relief.
• Icy Cups. Little foil cups of chocolate that melt cold on your tongue.
• Chocolate Coins. Real milk chocolate in gold foil. Proper treasure, and not only for Christmas.

A fact for the next handful: those sprinkles are properly called nonpareils, which is French for "without equal". Quite right too.

The grown up shelf

• Dark Chocolate Caramels. Soft, buttery caramel in a dark chocolate shell.
• Peppermint Creams. Soft peppermint fondant under a snap of dark chocolate. The after dinner sweet that has outlived every dinner party trend.
• Raspberry Ruffles. Raspberry coconut in a dark chocolate coat. The one your nan kept in her handbag, and she was right.
• Toffee Crumble. Crunchy toffee pieces in milk chocolate. Sweet, buttery and gone before the kettle has boiled.

The ones worth hiding

If you only try one thing from this page, make it a Chocolate Nibble. Rough cut biscuit nuggets in real milk chocolate, and the reason the word moreish exists. Once you've finished the original there's orange, mint, banoffee, jammie and birthday cake to get through. No, we can't choose either.

Chocolate from further afield

• Swedish: Fika Break is the cosy Swedish mix, with chocolate covered foam, crunchy toffee, chocolate bears and banana. Fika is the Swedish habit of stopping for coffee and something sweet. We approve.
• American: Shell Yeah is ten single colours of American M&M's in one bag, from silver and black to pink and purple.

Milk, dark or white?

Milk is the crowd pleaser: creamy and sweet. Dark is deeper and less sweet, which is why it works so well wrapped round something sugary like caramel, mint or raspberry. White is the sweetest of the three and tastes of vanilla and cream.

A good chocolate bag has a bit of each, plus one thing with a crunch.

How to keep chocolate at its best

Somewhere cool, dry and out of the sun. A cupboard, not the fridge: fridges are damp, and chocolate picks up other smells. If yours ever gets a pale, dusty film on it, that's bloom, where the cocoa butter or sugar has come to the surface after getting warm or damp. It looks a bit sad, but it's perfectly safe to eat.

In warm weather, bring your parcel inside as soon as it lands.

Chocolate as a gift

Our chocolate mix comes in every size of gift: a Gift Can for a little thank you, a keepsake Tin, a Just Because Box, and the Chocolate Thinking of You Vault, our biggest box of chocolate.

And if you'd rather someone else chose, Lana's Mix is a chocolate lover's bag put together by one of our own team, made for a cup of tea.

Chocolate sweets contain milk and often other allergens, so please check the product page, where the ingredients and allergens are listed in full.

Shop chocolate sweets