Aniseed balls (next to a metric ruler for scale).
Aniseed balls are a type of hard round sweet sold in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. They are shiny and dark brownish red, and hard like Gobstoppers, but generally only 1 cm across. They are generally sold by weight- traditionally, for example, they were sold by quarter pound. Today, sweets are sold by metric units in sweet shops in the UK and Ireland.
They were a staple traditional sweet in the 50s and 60s in Australia and New Zealand but have become rare in recent years.
They are flavoured by aniseed oil, have a very strong aniseed flavour, and last for a long time in the mouth before dissolving. In the centre of the ball is normally a whole rapeseed, which is used for forming layers of sugar around, although other nuclei are sometimes used, for example a sugar crystal.
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Traditional British sweets
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