Big Turk Candy Bar: "Um, Actually" or "Yum, Actually"

The Big Turk is a candy bar available only in Canada. I now live in the USA and one of the main reasons I moved here was to get as far away from Big Turk bars as possible. Yuck.

Out of its wrapper, it looks like a normal chocolate covered bar. And that is how it tricked me when I was a child.

I never saw any advertisements for it. Saturday morning cartoons had commercials for Oh Henry’s and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, not Big Turk. I may have never known it existed, but it was my father’s favorite candy bar.

It looked like a chocolate bar and I liked chocolate bars, so I bought one. I should have remembered that my dad also liked to put raw onions in his peanut butter sandwiches.

When I bit into it, here is what I didn’t find under the chocolate coating: nougat, caramel, peanut butter, fudge, nuts. Instead, I was eating a gooey, chewy reddish goop that tasted like soap.

It left an indelible mark in my psyche. Big Turk bars are only for adults who like eating weird things. What maniac would coat a gummy in chocolate? A lot of them as it turns out.

I’m not against snacks having a gummy center. In fact, I’m currently in a rehab program to break my addiction to Nerds Gummy Clusters. I carry around a syringe of Nerdsloxone in case I relapse.

So here’s the “Um, Actually” part of the story. Big Turk is not a gummy. There’s no gelatin in it. The center is Loukoum, known as Turkish Delight.

Loukoum is made by cooking starch and sugar until it forms a gel, and then flavored, often with rose water. It is cut into cubes and coated with powdered sugar so they don’t stick together.

It was popular in the Ottoman Empire and visiting British people who struggled to pronounce “loukoum” instead called them “lumps of delight” or “Turkish Delight.” The Brits must have really liked them because in the Chronicles of Narnia, Edmund betrays his family to get a supply of Turkish Delight from Tilda Swinton.

But would anyone betray their family for a Big Turk bar? I seriously doubt it… but it’s been decades since I tasted it. It was worth another try.

The first bite was pretty interesting. Not horrible as I remember. The center is like a gummy but less sweet. The flavor is floral (probably from the rose water) and explains why it gave me soap vibes.

Maybe my palate has evolved and Big Turk’s mature taste profile makes it a candy bar for adults. This made me reevaluate my opinion of my father. Maybe I should try onions in a peanut butter sandwich.

The second bite was less interesting. By the third and forth bite, my stomach was like, “What’s going on up there? Are you drinking hand soap?”

Ooof. Sorry, Dad, but my family is very safe from Tilda Swinton (unless she has Nerds Gummy Clusters.)