After a cracking first day in Birmingham which included not just the Back to Backs but also a quick tour of the trendy Digbeth neighbourhood and a choral concert in Birmingham Cathedral, I was ready for more adventures and some company. But first I enjoyed breakfast at a ridiculously friendly café near the AirBnb, where I lingered in the warmth, read the paper, and basked in the glow of a truly excellent Full English, killing time before going to meet my four companions for the day when their train from London arrived at Birmingham New Street and we transferred for the short hop to Bournville, the physical and spiritual home of the Cadbury chocolate dynasty.
John Cadbury opened the first Cadbury shop in Birmingham in 1824 where he sold tea, coffee and a chocolate cocoa drink he prepared himself using a mortar and pestle. These hot drinks were intended as replacements for alcohol, which was frowned on by Cadbury’s Quaker faith. The shop was successful enough that in 1831 he started a commercial factory nearby producing 16 varieties of drinking chocolate and 11 kinds of cocoa. In 1847 an even larger premises was secured in central Birmingham. And by 1861 John Cadbury retired and passed the business on to his sons Richard and George, who planned the company’s next steps.
When a further expansion was needed in 1878 George Cadbury decided to try to create a factory that was a world apart from the dirty industry of Birmingham’s 1000 trades and crowded Back to Backs. Instead he sought out a parcel of land just four miles south of the city and convenient to both the railroad and canal where he built not just a new factory, but an entire model village to house Cadbury factory workers and their families. (And here I use “model” in the sense of “ideal”, not this.) Which is why we had to travel the short distance to Bournville, still a happily inhabited village and the aforementioned premises of Cadbury’s for the last 138 years.
Along with establishing a new factory, George Cadbury paid for the construction of a number of cottages for factory workers to ‘ameliorate the condition of the working-class and labouring population... by the provision of improved dwellings, with gardens and open space to be enjoyed therewith'. The village grew and George built more and more houses, along with extensive parks, field hockey and football pitches, and indoor and outdoor swimming lidos for the benefit of his workers. In 1900, he established the Bournville Village Trust, which still manages the rental of low income housing and maintains many green spaces and other facilities. Bournville is still a going concern and in 2003 was touted as the “nicest place to live in Britain”, though the one notable lack in the community is the absence of pubs. (Shock! Horror!) True to his Quaker faith, George Cadbury did not allow drinking establishments in Bournville, a prohibition that stands to this day.
And now, finally, on to the chocolate! In addition to the actual development and manufacture of chocolate, Cadbury’s now also operates Cadbury World - an attraction for visitors that’s so popular we had to buy timed entry tickets in advance. And while Cadbury’s chocolate is now manufactured at other sites as well, the development of every Cadbury product, including the iconic Dairy Milk, Flake, Milk Tray, Double Decker, Wispa, and Creme Egg happens at Bournville.
When we finally got to the front of the queue after killing time in the World’s Biggest Cadbury Shop, we were each given two full sized chocolate bars to sustain us through the attraction - a Crunchie and a Dairy Milk Oreo. (For the record, among the myriad varieties that have been spun off from the classic Dairy Milk are Dairy Milk 30% Less Sugar, Dairy Milk Big Taste Toffee Wholenut, Dairy Milk Big Taste Triple Choc, Dairy Milk Big Taste Bacon Blast, and Dairy Milk Premier League Pitch. One can only hope that the last one refers to the shape of the bar and not the flavour.) (Also, I might have made up one of those.) Thus fortified, we ventured in.
The story quickly turns to the Cadbury family, complete with the video commentary from actors portraying the Cadburys, père et fils. Thankfully, there was only a minimal amount of the tedious live action role-play that vexes me so much. There was, however, a very cheesy video about chocolate making where the audience seating benches actually shook back and forth to mimic the agitated journey of the cocoa beans through the manufacturing process. I think there was also a puff of air somewhere around our ankles at the point where the cocoa husks were blown away from the beans. Truly, it was a multi-sensory experience. There were further displays on manufacturing, but it was more fun when we got to attempt for ourselves the notoriously tricky process of tempering liquid chocolate.
After that extra sugar injection, it was on to a section about Cadbury’s advertising through the ages. It think this was probably the favourite area, despite that fact that only two of the five of us had grown up with Cadbury’s advertising and hence the rest were mostly baffled by the nostalgia reminiscences of the cheeky Wispa commercials and the Fudge Finger song. Still it was amusing to see the early print adds touting the health benefits of cocoa.
But best by far was the oddly morbid but brilliant 2008 campaign for Creme Eggs, “Here today, Goo Tomorrow.” These short spots featuring stop motion animated Cadbury Eggs meeting their doom in various Heath Robinson-esque ways and are so utterly fantastic that you have to watch all of them right now.
Soon after we exited through the gift shop, home to a predictably dizzying array of chocolate products at such suspiciously low prices that it was hard to contain oneself.
After we escaped the gift shop and were back in the harsh light of day we tried to visit one of the other attractions - the 4D Chocolate Adventure - but the queue for that was 45 minutes long and we’d already been shaken in our seats like naughty cocoa beans, so instead we popped into the Bournville Experience, a small museum on the history of the town itself and George Cadbury’s philosophy behind it. There was also a large display of almost 2,000 bits of Cadbury memorabilia gathered by one Gill Cocks, who donated her entire collection to the company in 2009. What we most assuredly did NOT do was stop in the Cadbury Café which had on its menu such delights as “Beef Chili with Cadbury Chocolate Sauce” and “Chilli Con Carne and boiled rice with Cadbury chocolate and tortillas”.
We eventually escaped Bournville and its satanic mash feeling slightly queasy from too much chocolate and ready to find a drink and dinner. (Or at least I was most definitely ready for that.) After a brief detour for some sight-seeing in central Birmingham and a pint at a warm canalside pub we were ready to contemplate one last adventure, in the form of an unexpected but famous Brummie specialty.
Balti is a particular form of curry dinner that is popularly believed to have originated not on the crowded streets of Delhi or steamy southern beaches of Goa but in Birmingham in the 1970s. Balti refers to the meal itself and to the dish it comes in - a balti dish being a individually sized wok-shaped metal bowl pressed out of thin steel in which the meal is both cooked and served. It’s normally accompanied by naan bread instead of rice, with the bread used to scoop up the food and wipe the dish clean. Balti Houses, most of which are clustered in Birmingham’s famed “Balti Triangle”, are normally not licensed but allow diners to bring their own alcohol. Birmingham’s Balti heritage is so strong that in 2015 it was given EU Protected Name Status, like Melton Mowbray Pork Pies or Cornish Clotted Cream.
I’d never had a Balti before so I was excited to give it a go, especially since we’d taken pains to go to a particularly recommended Balti House - Adil’s - that served the famed “table naan” - bread so big it’s meant to cover the whole tabletop. How could we not go to a place that serves food the size of furniture?
The Balti itself was nice, but I didn’t find it particularly different from any number of other Indian dishes I’ve had before. It’s meat and veg in spicy sauce, in a metal dish. True, there were a lot of possible variations on that theme - Adil’s had twelve different styles of Balti, each available with chicken, chicken mince, chicken tikka, beef, beef mince, lamb tikka, vegetable, prawn or king prawn. Or you could mix and match your own combination. It was frankly a bit hard to navigate and despite everyone ordering something different what ended up arriving all looked (and to some extent tasted) pretty much the same. Still the food was tasty and the naan was huge and by that time in the day I was just glad there was nothing on the menu that came topped with Cadbury Chocolate Sauce and slices of Creme Egg. The only real snag was that the neighbouring shop-that-sold-wine didn’t open in time for us to have a glass with dinner (which seems like appallingly bad business sense on the part of Tom’s Wines and Spirits, through we eventually got over it).
And that was Birminghan, Day Two. However before I sign off, I'll let you know what I did with that Bournville Old Jamaica bar on a subesquent Sunday afternoon, when Storm Ciara hit. Tucked up at the marina there was no real danger, but the winds were still fierce and the boat rocked and the ropes creaked and the rain poured so I literally did not set foot outside for the whole day. Instead I hunkered down and, inspired by my reminiscences of Cadbury's, whipped up a batch of brownies from the collection of recipes on their website. (Which include this little number. I'm surprised it doesn't appear on the menu at the Cadbury World Café.) The only chocolate I had hanging around that I wanted to put in brownies (as opposed to putting directly in my face without the intervening baking processes) was the Old Jamaica bar and a rogue Dairy Milk. Hence the rum and raisin twist I imposed on the more classic recipe.
Bournville Old Jamaica Rum & Raisin Brownies
Ingredients:
120g Bournville Old Jamaica Rum and Raisin Dark Chocolate (Astute GSWPL Readers without access to this delight could probably substitute other dark chocolate and add a splash of rum extract.)
120g butter or margarine
2 eggs
165g sugar
50g flour plus a bit
30g cocoa plus a bit (I even had actual Cadbury's Bournville cocoa on board!)
1 ounce rum (Rum! Mark my words, it's going to be the next big thing. We've reached Peak Gin. Gin is over. Rum's the thing.)
1/3 cup raisins (Just don't even think about bringing any raisin-hate my way. Or claiming it's an abomination to add raisins to brownies or whatever. My blog, my rules. Give me raisins or give me death!)
Method:
Soak the raisins in the rum. Let them sit for at least half an hour. (It helps to stab them repeatedly with a fork so the rum soaks in better. Also it’s fun.)
Preheat the oven to 175C (350F).
Line an 8” x 8" (20cm x 20cm) cake tin with parchment paper.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler (Bain Marie for UK readers) and then cool slightly.
Whisk together the eggs and sugar until thick and creamy and then fold into the slightly cooled chocolate/butter mix.
Mix the flour and cocoa together and stir it into everything else. (Note the recipe called for sifting this, but we know my thoughts on sifting already.)
Once you get tired of soaking the raisins squeeze off the excess rum, down it in one shot, and then dust the raisins lightly in a mix of flour and cocoa.
Fold the raisins into the batter.
Pour into the tin and bake for 20 minutes, until the middle is set but not too set.
Allow to cool before cutting.
John Cadbury opened the first Cadbury shop in Birmingham in 1824 where he sold tea, coffee and a chocolate cocoa drink he prepared himself using a mortar and pestle. These hot drinks were intended as replacements for alcohol, which was frowned on by Cadbury’s Quaker faith. The shop was successful enough that in 1831 he started a commercial factory nearby producing 16 varieties of drinking chocolate and 11 kinds of cocoa. In 1847 an even larger premises was secured in central Birmingham. And by 1861 John Cadbury retired and passed the business on to his sons Richard and George, who planned the company’s next steps.
An early advertisement for Cadbury’s Cocoa
Along with establishing a new factory, George Cadbury paid for the construction of a number of cottages for factory workers to ‘ameliorate the condition of the working-class and labouring population... by the provision of improved dwellings, with gardens and open space to be enjoyed therewith'. The village grew and George built more and more houses, along with extensive parks, field hockey and football pitches, and indoor and outdoor swimming lidos for the benefit of his workers. In 1900, he established the Bournville Village Trust, which still manages the rental of low income housing and maintains many green spaces and other facilities. Bournville is still a going concern and in 2003 was touted as the “nicest place to live in Britain”, though the one notable lack in the community is the absence of pubs. (Shock! Horror!) True to his Quaker faith, George Cadbury did not allow drinking establishments in Bournville, a prohibition that stands to this day.
And now, finally, on to the chocolate! In addition to the actual development and manufacture of chocolate, Cadbury’s now also operates Cadbury World - an attraction for visitors that’s so popular we had to buy timed entry tickets in advance. And while Cadbury’s chocolate is now manufactured at other sites as well, the development of every Cadbury product, including the iconic Dairy Milk, Flake, Milk Tray, Double Decker, Wispa, and Creme Egg happens at Bournville.
When we finally got to the front of the queue after killing time in the World’s Biggest Cadbury Shop, we were each given two full sized chocolate bars to sustain us through the attraction - a Crunchie and a Dairy Milk Oreo. (For the record, among the myriad varieties that have been spun off from the classic Dairy Milk are Dairy Milk 30% Less Sugar, Dairy Milk Big Taste Toffee Wholenut, Dairy Milk Big Taste Triple Choc, Dairy Milk Big Taste Bacon Blast, and Dairy Milk Premier League Pitch. One can only hope that the last one refers to the shape of the bar and not the flavour.) (Also, I might have made up one of those.) Thus fortified, we ventured in.
The experience starts with a fairly standard issue set of slightly creepy dioramas on the origins of chocolate, an area called the "Aztec Jungle”, which skips through the discovery of the Mexican delicacy by western explorers.
One of two large tables where the ubiquitous purple-coated oompa loompas demonstrated tempering chocolate by hand. There were large signs nearby warning that we were NOT to eat this chocolate. However, we had recently been given ANOTHER full Dairy Milk Bar, so it’s not like we were gagging for the stuff anyway.
Poised to display my savant-like skill in manual chocolate tempering.
Or possibly in spackling walls.
Or possibly in spackling walls.
Soon after there was this bar where you could get a little cup of liquid meted chocolate that most assuredly was for eating, topped with various crumbly yummy things like Cadbury Buttons and crushed Oreos and mini marshmallows. Like a sundae bar, but without bulking up the whole thing with tedious scoops of ice cream.
“Contains in a remarkable degree those natural elements of sustenance that give the system endurance and hardihood… Light refreshing and invigorating to the jaded mind and body” - Family Doctor.
Don’t even think about skipping this. It’s too brilliant.
For instance these Dairy Milk bars were about half the size of that small child for a mere £5.00. They also have what purported to be the world’s largest Toblerone bars - 4.5 kg of triangular goodness for £45.00. I was relatively restrained and only picked up a few bars of the new Dark Milk variety and a slab of the recently reintroduced Bournville Old Jamaica.
And this abomination. Shudder. For the love of all that is holy Cadbury, give it a rest!
Balti is a particular form of curry dinner that is popularly believed to have originated not on the crowded streets of Delhi or steamy southern beaches of Goa but in Birmingham in the 1970s. Balti refers to the meal itself and to the dish it comes in - a balti dish being a individually sized wok-shaped metal bowl pressed out of thin steel in which the meal is both cooked and served. It’s normally accompanied by naan bread instead of rice, with the bread used to scoop up the food and wipe the dish clean. Balti Houses, most of which are clustered in Birmingham’s famed “Balti Triangle”, are normally not licensed but allow diners to bring their own alcohol. Birmingham’s Balti heritage is so strong that in 2015 it was given EU Protected Name Status, like Melton Mowbray Pork Pies or Cornish Clotted Cream.
I’d never had a Balti before so I was excited to give it a go, especially since we’d taken pains to go to a particularly recommended Balti House - Adil’s - that served the famed “table naan” - bread so big it’s meant to cover the whole tabletop. How could we not go to a place that serves food the size of furniture?
It really is big.
And that was Birminghan, Day Two. However before I sign off, I'll let you know what I did with that Bournville Old Jamaica bar on a subesquent Sunday afternoon, when Storm Ciara hit. Tucked up at the marina there was no real danger, but the winds were still fierce and the boat rocked and the ropes creaked and the rain poured so I literally did not set foot outside for the whole day. Instead I hunkered down and, inspired by my reminiscences of Cadbury's, whipped up a batch of brownies from the collection of recipes on their website. (Which include this little number. I'm surprised it doesn't appear on the menu at the Cadbury World Café.) The only chocolate I had hanging around that I wanted to put in brownies (as opposed to putting directly in my face without the intervening baking processes) was the Old Jamaica bar and a rogue Dairy Milk. Hence the rum and raisin twist I imposed on the more classic recipe.
Bournville Old Jamaica Rum & Raisin Brownies
Ingredients:
120g Bournville Old Jamaica Rum and Raisin Dark Chocolate (Astute GSWPL Readers without access to this delight could probably substitute other dark chocolate and add a splash of rum extract.)
120g butter or margarine
2 eggs
165g sugar
50g flour plus a bit
30g cocoa plus a bit (I even had actual Cadbury's Bournville cocoa on board!)
1 ounce rum (Rum! Mark my words, it's going to be the next big thing. We've reached Peak Gin. Gin is over. Rum's the thing.)
1/3 cup raisins (Just don't even think about bringing any raisin-hate my way. Or claiming it's an abomination to add raisins to brownies or whatever. My blog, my rules. Give me raisins or give me death!)
Method:
Soak the raisins in the rum. Let them sit for at least half an hour. (It helps to stab them repeatedly with a fork so the rum soaks in better. Also it’s fun.)
Preheat the oven to 175C (350F).
Line an 8” x 8" (20cm x 20cm) cake tin with parchment paper.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler (Bain Marie for UK readers) and then cool slightly.
Whisk together the eggs and sugar until thick and creamy and then fold into the slightly cooled chocolate/butter mix.
Mix the flour and cocoa together and stir it into everything else. (Note the recipe called for sifting this, but we know my thoughts on sifting already.)
Once you get tired of soaking the raisins squeeze off the excess rum, down it in one shot, and then dust the raisins lightly in a mix of flour and cocoa.
Fold the raisins into the batter.
Pour into the tin and bake for 20 minutes, until the middle is set but not too set.
Allow to cool before cutting.
Enjoy!
1 Comment:
Well, I know where my next vacation is going to be! Bring me ALL the Cadbury's.
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