Iceland's "pepper" sweets craze
The pepper flavoured Nóa Kropp was supposed to be a limited summer edition. Consumers are demanding that it stays. Photo: Nói Siríus
Icelanders are mad about strange flavoured sweets, mixing chocolate, licorice and hot "pepper." This culminated in this summer's limited edition of Nóa Piparkropp, a version of the candy so popular that it's beaten all records.
Tomorrow, Icelandic customers will be able to vote to keep Nói Piparkropp in production, on the Facebook page of confectioners Nói Siríus. The original version of Nóa Kropp is a puffed wheat ball covered in chocolate. The pepper version is basically the same thing but covered in a coat of brown pepper powder.
Brand manager at Nói Siríus, Silja Mist Sigurkarlsdóttir, says that the Nóa Piparkropp is becoming their most popular product.
The pepper craze in Iceland has not only appeared in sweets. Ice cream shops sell pepper flavoured ice cream (which comes in an an unappealing slate grey colour), there are pepper flavoured cakes in high-end bakeries and even cheescakes are available with pepper flavour.
Asked by mbl.is whether the pepper-craze is unique to Iceland,. Sigurkarlsdóttir replies that she honestly doesn't know whether pepper sweets are popular anywhere else except Scandinavia. "We're exporting the Nóa Lakkrís pepper pearls to Scandinavia in ever increasing quantities."
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Nóa Pipar Kropp consists of wheat puffs covered in chocolate and pepper.
