Terry's Chocolate Orange in Canada: Tap It, Unwrap It, and Every Version We Carry

You are supposed to tap it. Everybody knows that. Everybody also whacks it.

If you have never been handed one, a Terry's Chocolate Orange is a ball of chocolate moulded into segments like the real fruit, wrapped in foil and sold in a box that is the shape of nothing else on the shelf. You knock it on something hard, the segments break apart inside the wrapper, and you peel it open to find what looks like an orange made of chocolate, because that is exactly what it is. For a lot of us it lived in the toe of a Christmas stocking, under the satsuma, and you could tell by the weight which was which.

Yes, you can get it in Canada. We carry the Terry's range in Halifax and ship it across the country: the milk, dark and white oranges, the two bars, the truffles, the advent calendar, and the mint and caramel versions that are the same shape and not orange in the slightest. One of them is the one I would buy with my own money, and I will tell you which.

Do you tap it or whack it?

Tap. The instruction is tap. I say this as somebody who has whacked.

Leave it in the foil. Find something hard and flat, the kitchen counter or the edge of the table, not the arm of the sofa, which absorbs the blow and achieves nothing except a dent in the upholstery. One firm tap, from the wrist, not a swing. You will hear it. A sharp crack, the ball goes slack in your hand, and the segments inside have let go of each other. A dull thud means it is too warm and you are about to make a mess.

Then unwrap. Not before. This is the whole point, and the part people new to it get backwards every time. Unwrap first and you are holding a solid ball that you then have to go at with a knife like a man carving a turnip.

The whack camp will tell you one tap never does it. They are frequently right and still wrong, because the second tap is also a tap. A whack is a different thing entirely. A whack is what happens at about four in the afternoon on Christmas Day when patience has gone and the orange is still being stubborn, and a whack produces shards, and shards are chocolate nobody asked for.

Canada adds a wrinkle. A chocolate orange that has spent a week in a porch in December is cold right through, and cold chocolate is brittle. Tap that one gently or you will have an orange in nine pieces, none of them segment-shaped. The opposite problem is a house at twenty-four degrees with the fire going, where the segments soften, hold hands and refuse to part at all. Ten minutes somewhere cool and it comes back to its senses.

How many segments, and what is in the middle?

The second question first, because it is the easier one. Nothing. I have taken apart more of these than I should admit, in the name of quality control, and the segments meet in the centre the way the real fruit does. No cream, no surprise, no hollow. Just the point where every slice joins, which is also where the last stubborn bit always stays behind.

As for the number, Terry's say twenty. My own counts have never agreed with each other, mostly because counting a chocolate orange involves eating it. Tap yours, lay the segments out on the table before anyone gets to them, and count. If you get twenty, tell us on Facebook. If you get nineteen, I know what happened.

The York story

Say Terry's to any Brit and they will say York back, and they are right to. The firm started as a sweet shop in the city in the 1700s, became Joseph Terry and Sons in the 1800s, and in the 1920s built the factory on Bishopthorpe Road that generations of York families worked in. The orange was not even the first idea. There was a Chocolate Apple first, in the twenties, and it sold for nearly thirty years before it was quietly retired. The Chocolate Orange arrived in the early thirties and never left.

York made it until 2005, when the factory closed after the brand changed hands, and the chocolate orange has been made elsewhere since. The building is still there. If you grew up anywhere near the city you will know somebody who worked in it, and they will have a story about the smell on the way to school.

What I can vouch for is what is in your hand. Somebody decided a sweet should look like a piece of fruit and come apart like one. That is an odd idea, and odd ideas in confectionery mostly vanish. This one did not. You were given it, and now you are the one buying it, and that is the only history that matters at the till.

The advert everyone can finish

There is a line from the television adverts that every British person of my generation can finish for you, and most of them will, unprompted, the moment they see the box. I am not going to quote it. Partly because I would get one word wrong and spend the rest of December hearing about it, and partly because you have already said it in your head.

Nobody reads the side of the box. They hear the line and start looking for a hard surface. A slogan that turns into the instructions is a rare thing, and it is why the tap survived long after anyone needed telling.

If you are Canadian and have no idea what I am on about, ask the nearest Brit. Give them a moment. They will do the whole thing, and they will be slightly embarrassed afterwards, and they will not be able to help it.

Every version we carry

The Milk Chocolate Orange, 145g is the one. The stocking one, the one on the box in your memory, the one that gets tapped. Sweet, unmistakably orange, and gone by Boxing Day.

The Dark Chocolate Orange, 145g is the one I would buy for myself, and I will defend that. Orange and dark chocolate were made for each other, and the milk version, much as I love it, is sweeter than it needs to be once you are past the age of twelve. The dark one tastes as though a grown-up was consulted.

The White Chocolate Orange is 147g, which makes it two grams heavier than the others. Make of that what you will. It is a lot of sugar and a lot of orange and the people who love it really love it. I am not one of them. I know several of you are.

Then there are the two that borrow the shape and leave the orange at home. The Milk Chocolate Caramel Ball, 145g, is for the person who has been politely accepting a chocolate orange every Christmas for thirty years and quietly wishes it were just chocolate. The Milk Chocolate Mint, 145g, is mint and chocolate, the other great Christmas pairing, and to my palate it is the cleaner of the two. Both get tapped exactly the same way, which I find oddly reassuring.

For the pocket, there is the Chocolate Orange Bar, 90g. All of the flavour, none of the ceremony. It is what you want on the drive home when a full orange would be excessive and a full orange would also be eaten. For the person who felt the 90g was a bit stingy, the Chocolate Orange Large Bar is 330g of the same thing, which is more chocolate orange than most households should be trusted with in one piece.

Beyond the oranges, Terry's does Chocolate Orange Truffles in a 200g box, a Milk Chocolate Mint Bar at 90g and Mint Crisp Minis at 80g. The truffles are the ones I would put out on a plate when people come round. And there is the Chocolate Orange Advent Calendar, 106g, which I have written about in full in our guide to every advent calendar we carry.

Come spring the orange goes egg-shaped. That is a different month and a different article.

Stocking or table?

This is the real argument, and it splits households more cleanly than the tap-or-whack business ever did.

A stocking orange is private. You find it by weight before you have opened your eyes properly, you tap it on the bedpost, and it is half gone before anyone downstairs has put the kettle on. There is nothing wrong with this. It is one of the few pleasures of Christmas morning that requires no cooperation from anybody.

A table orange is a performance. It sits in the middle after dinner, somebody announces they are going to do it, and there is a hush. The tap either works, and the room nods, or it does not, and the room has opinions. Then it gets passed round and the segments vanish at a rate that has nothing to do with how full anyone is.

My answer is both. Milk in the stocking for the children and for the adults who are still children about this. Dark on the table for the people who have had their pudding and would like something that tastes of something. If you are putting together a full British Christmas over here, the Christmas food guide covers the rest of the day, and the stocking filler guide covers what goes in beside the orange. Our whole Christmas range is in one place if you would rather browse than read.

Not Terry's, but orange all the same

Terry's does not own the idea of chocolate and orange together, it just owns the shape. If you like the pairing in sweet-shop form, Bonds of London Chocolate Oranges are the jar-sweet version of the idea, a bag of little chocolate oranges for the pick-and-mix end of the stocking. And for the orange-and-chocolate person who prefers a biscuit with their tea, the McVitie's Jaffa Cake and Jonuts Tree is a box shaped like a Christmas tree and full of Jaffa Cakes, which settles the argument about sharing: hand round the Jaffa Cakes, keep the orange.

If you are buying a few of these, GBS Rewards puts a bit of money back on the things you were going to buy anyway.

Questions people ask us

Can I buy Terry's Chocolate Orange in Canada?

Yes. We carry the Terry's range at The Great British Shop in Halifax and ship across Canada, including the milk, dark and white oranges and the mint and caramel versions in the same shape.

Do you tap it before or after you unwrap it?

Before. Keep it in the foil, tap it firmly on a hard surface, and the segments come apart inside the wrapper. Unwrap first and you are left with a solid ball and a knife.

What is in the middle of a Terry's Chocolate Orange?

Nothing. The segments meet at the centre like a real orange. There is no filling and no hollow, just the point where they all join.

Is the dark or the milk one better?

The milk is the classic and the one most people want in a stocking. The dark is the one I would buy for myself, because orange and dark chocolate suit each other and it is less sweet. That is opinion, firmly held.

Is there a Terry's Chocolate Orange advent calendar?

Yes, a 106g one. It is covered with the rest in our advent calendar guide, and it is the calendar I would point a chocolate orange person towards without hesitation.

Can I send one to someone in another province?

Yes. We ship across Canada from Halifax, and everything you need to know about delivery is on our shipping page.

Tap it. Then unwrap it. Then hide the dark one somewhere the children have not thought of yet.