As a child, I watched Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in awe, dreaming of the mad but magical world of roast beef chewing gum and Scrumdiddlyumptious bars.
And now, years later, my dream finally came true when I was invited down to Nestlé's chocolate factory in York to see how they make the UK’s favourite Christmas treat - Quality Street.
Instead of a purple suit-wearing Gene Wilder greeting me with a forward roll and a jump, I was welcomed by lead confectioner Vikki Geall, donning a white lab-style coat and hairnet. And instead of an everlasting gobstopper, I was handed my very own hairnet as I walked through the door on my way to the chocolate test kitchen - the place where Nestlé products come to life.
Vikki, who has previously been dubbed the female Willy Wonka, or Whilemina Wonka if you will, has been working for the iconic brand for almost 15 years - but her chocolatey career came by complete accident.
She initially intended to study art at college, but after spending three months on a placement with Thorntons, she quickly fell in love with confectionery and her career plans changed. Thankfully it all worked out and the 46-year-old is now a crucial part of the Nestlé family, helping to make between 100,000 to 150,000 products each year in the kitchen.
Her unique job involves brainstorming different flavours for products like KitKats and Aero, as well as creating new recipes and figuring out how to make ideas become a reality. And yes, she gets to eat a LOT of free chocolate.
I won’t lie, when I heard that the role involves tasting up to 15 chocolate bars a day, I was tempted to quit my job and run off and join the Nestlé circus - but I was soon brought crashing back down to reality after trying my hand at making some popular sweets as it turns out it's much harder than it sounds.
After a tour of the kitchen, during which I saw a lot of fridges, a spinning Easter egg machine that looks like a mini fairground ride and a 'secret' cupboard full of experimental flavours, Vikki showed me how to make my favourite Quality Street - the Strawberry Delight. She tells me this type of sweet is known in the 'biz as a 'Cream' thanks to its fondant filling. It’s one of three types of sweets in the much-loved tubs, along with toffees and chocolates.
The tubs always include the brand’s four 'core' sweets - the Purple One, the Green Triangle, the Caramel Swirl and Toffee Finger - but the others come and go over the years. The 2022 tub includes the Orange Crunch, Strawberry Delight, Orange Creme, Fudge, Milk Chocolate Block, Toffee Penny and Coconut Eclair.
But back to the Strawberry Delight, and Vikki had already whipped up a bowl of the basic fondant mix before our arrival, but she saved the most exciting bit for me, adding the flavours.
After popping the bowl on a set of scales, Vikki used a pipette to add lactic acid, which provides "sharpness" to the sweet strawberry taste. She then dropped in some of the berry flavouring before giving it a stir.
While the science experiment aspect was cool to watch, the numerous vials of acid and other chemicals did make the whole thing feel a little less appetising.
With the fondant ready to go, it was time to pipe it into the round moulds and to leave it to set. Strong arms are required to do a good job here as the mixture is rather firm, making it tough to squeeze out of the bag. I gave it my best shot, but honestly I'm a weakling and clearly need to spend more time at the gym as my attempts were rather messy and sad. I don't think they'll be rushing to hire me anytime soon.
Next came the best bit, the chocolate itself and it might surprise some to know that Nestlé has different chocolate recipes for each of its products - so the chocolate used on Quality Street sweets is different from that used on Yorkies.
For the Strawberry delight, we used dark chocolate and Vikki demonstrated how they temper it by hand in the kitchen.
"The first thing you have to do with chocolate is temper it," she explains. "If you don't temper it you might as well not even bother."
Tempering is a process where melted chocolate is cooled down to stabilise the fat crystals within it and it involves scraping liquid chocolate over different temperatures on a stone slab. The more you move it, the cooler it gets and as it cools it thickens.
Like with the acid, the mention of fat crystals was a little off-putting, but all my concerns were quickly forgotten when I was let loose with the chocolate.
Scraping it back and forth across the slab was incredibly therapeutic and I can see why Vikki says she often zones out while doing it.
"You go into a world of your own but then you have disasters because there's chocolate on the ceiling up there and you're not quite sure how it happened," she admits.
Once we'd brought the chocolate down from 45C to 29C we were ready to put the finishing touches on the sweets, running a 'curtain' of melted chocolate over the set fondant rounds, before stamping the top with a wire tool to create its iconic pointy pattern.
As well as the Christmas essential Quality Street, the factory also makes another festive favourite - Matchmakers - and I was allowed to have a go at making these as well.
And while I love the mint and orange flavours, I was in for a real treat as Vikki let me raid the flavour cabinet containing every taste you can imagine - from birthday cake, to grapefruit and butter caramel.
After spending a long, long time trying to decide on a flavour - I finally settled on making Blueberry Muffin Matchmakers - and I really think I was onto something with this pairing.
Sorry to tease you all with a sweet that doesn't actually exist, but they were a revelation. Nestlé can give me a call whenever they wake up and realise they should be selling these bad boys.
The Matchmaker masterclass was pretty straightforward and involved adding sugar crystals and the blueberry muffin flavouring to more melted chocolate. This was then piped into long match stick strips, before being left to set and cut into pieces.
And while I was keen to get stuck in with the tasting right away, Vikki warned that the flavour would be very strong immediately after being made.
She explained that while they do often taste chocolate the day it is made, as well as a week after and several weeks after that to help determine the shelf life of a product, flavoured chocolate is actually at its best after three to four weeks.
This is because it starts out strong and over time the flavour drops and becomes "more level".
Years of taste tests mean Vikki no longer craves chocolate when she's not at work, instead opting for savoury snacks. However, she claims her job has done little to dampen her love of chocolate and the sickly sweet smells at the factory don't ever prove too much, as you simply "get used to it".
While we’ve got Vikki to thank for lots of our favourite Quality Street sweets, she doesn’t actually get to decide which treats make it into the tubs.
This instead falls to the brand team and brand manager Emily Gimbley, who has been working with the company since 2020. She tells me that deciding what goes into the Quality Street mix all comes down to one thing - you and me, the consumers, and what we make clear that we want.
"We do a lot of research and speak to a lot of consumers, but everyone's got different favourites and a different opinion, so we're trying to please everyone," Emily said.
"We categorise it into toffees, creams and chocolate sweets and try and do a fair mix of them so that there's something for everyone in there.”
And when it comes to choosing which sweets get taken out of the box, the company tries to avoid axing products as much as possible due to the "outrage" it causes.
"People love Quality Street and they don't like us to mess with it too much so we know that all of the sweets in there are really loved, so I don't feel like there's too much need to mix it up," Emily continues.
"We don't axe sweets from the tubs very often because it causes outrage, but when we do, it all comes down to consumer research, speaking to customers and then trying to see whether we can optimise the mix to give people a better experience.
"It's just trying to get that balance right."
As we wrap things up I can't help but once again voice my preference for the Strawberry Delight and cheekily suggest Vikki and Emily get creative with the creams and the contents of the 'secret' flavour cabinet.
But I’m put firmly in my place when they tell me it takes about five years for a new product to become a reality, what with the rigorous recipe and consumer tests they have to go through.
So for now I’ll just have to continue scoffing all the Strawberry Delights out of my family's Quality Street tub - but keep an eye out for Blueberry Muffin Matchmakers in 2027…
Which Quality Street is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.
