Gobstoppers

Few sweets have a name as honest as the gobstopper. Gob is slang for mouth in Britain and Ireland, and a gobstopper fills it. In Canada and the United States the same sweet is called a jawbreaker, which is also fair.

What is a gobstopper?

A gobstopper is a hard, round boiled sweet, usually 1 to 3 cm across, although giant ones as big as 83 mm have been sold. Like most hard sweets it is almost entirely sugar. What makes it different is the way it is built: not poured into a mould, but grown in layers around a tiny core. The result dissolves very slowly, and that slow melt is a big part of why gobstoppers have been sold by weight from sweet shop jars for at least a century.

What is inside?

The core can be a pressed ball of sugar, a single anise seed or a small gumball. Around it go coat after coat of liquid sugar, added in large rotating heated pans, with colours and flavours added along the way. Because the colours go in as the layers build up, a gobstopper can change colour as you work your way through it. The method, called hot panning, is explained step by step in how gobstoppers are made.

A schoolboy favourite

Gobstoppers were a favourite of British schoolboys in the first half of the twentieth century. Roald Dahl remembered a jar of them in a prank he played on his local sweet shop in 1924, and later gave the world the Everlasting Gobstopper in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a gobstopper that never gets smaller. For how they are made, see how are gobstoppers made?

The biggest one ever

The largest on record weighed 12.6 kg and was made in Ontario, Canada, in 2003, after 476 hours of work. See the biggest gobstopper ever made.

Similar sweets

If you like a sweet that lasts, aniseed balls are made the same way on a smaller scale, with layers of sugar built up around a tiny seed. Aniseed Balls are in our pick and mix by the 100 g, with the full ingredients and allergen panel on the card.

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