Kendal Mint Cake

For a batch of sweets gone wrong, this confection has hit the highest heights. Ernest Shackleton packed it for his team’s bid to trek across the Antarctic in 1914 and it helped power Hillary and Norgay to the top of the world in 1953, where to celebrate the first ascent of Everest the two men ‘sat on the snow and looked at the country far below... and nibbled Kendal Mint Cake’. Norgay then broke a piece off and buried it in the summit snow as a gift to the gods.

Legend credits confectioner Joseph Wiper with its invention, when he over- cooked oked a mix destined for glassy glacier mints,nts, and decided the softer, opaque sweetweet had potential. He started production in n 1869 and two companies, Quiggin’s and Romney’s, mney’s, still make it in the Lakeland town, producingoducing bars of minty energy that have fuelled elled thousands of walkers through millionsllions of miles. It’s also available in brown sugar gar and chocolate variations, although Kendal’s ndal’s mint cake hasn’t translated to the USA:SA: in the 1950s customs officials deemed cakeke should contain flour and ditched a shipment hipment into the Atlantic.