Chocolate mice

Chocolate mice are small, brown, mouse shaped sweets flavoured like milk chocolate. The UK retailer Sweets and Candy describes its chocolate mice as smooth, creamy milk chocolate flavour candy, and the ingredients show why it says flavour.

What is in them

Chocolate Mice, as listed by Sweets and Candy. Sugar, palm fat, whey powder from milk, wheat flour with added calcium, iron, niacin and thiamin, fat reduced cocoa powder, rapeseed lecithin as an emulsifier, and natural flavourings. The retailer lists them as suitable for vegetarians.

Chocolate flavour, not chocolate

There is no cocoa butter in the list. The chocolate taste comes from fat reduced cocoa powder, carried in palm fat. In England, the Cocoa and Chocolate Products Regulations 2003 set minimum amounts of cocoa for anything sold as chocolate: milk chocolate, for example, needs at least 25 per cent dry cocoa solids and 14 per cent dry milk solids. A candy made this way is sold as chocolate flavour instead: see how is chocolate made?

A family of candy shapes

The same base of sugar, palm fat, whey powder and wheat flour turns up across the pick and mix counter:

• White mice leave out the cocoa: see white chocolate mice
• Pink and white mice add carmine for the pink: see pink and white mice
• Jazzies and snowies are discs of it topped with hundreds and thousands: see sprinkle buttons
• Hannah's Chocolate Animals, as listed by The Candy King, are strawberry, chocolate and cream flavoured candy shaped like an elephant, a lion and a monkey, coloured with carmine and carotenes.

Allergy points

• Milk. The recipe contains whey powder from milk: see milk in sweets
• Wheat. It contains wheat flour, so it is not gluten free. The added calcium, iron, niacin and thiamin are there because, in England and Scotland, the law requires them in most wheat flour: see wheat in sweets
• Soya. This recipe uses rapeseed lecithin, but other candy recipes in the same family use soya lecithin, so check the label if you avoid soya: see soya in sweets
• Nuts. Sweets and Candy says its sweets are packed where peanuts and nuts are handled: see pick and mix and allergies

For real chocolate in the pick and mix, see chocolate raisins

In our pick and mix

We do not sell chocolate mice, but we do sell White Chocolate Mice and Pink and White Mice. Recipes differ between makers, so each card opens up to show the full ingredients and allergens for the sweets we actually stock.

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