I’ve been going cold turkey for the last few months. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been hard. But tonight, on Crown Street Surry Hills, I got a hit, and it was awesome.

I’m talking about the Swedish confectionary, Daim, which, until a few months ago was available from IKEA. In their wisdom, IKEA has stopped selling authentic Swedish food, replacing it with their own “home brand” merchandise.

So imagine my surprise tonight, when I went to my local convenience store to purchase some milk, and I saw Daim on sale on the front counter. “This is Swedish”, I said in a breathy excitement to the bloke behind the counter. He was nowhere near excited as I was, though he appreciated the excitement I was obviously feeling.

Daim is a seriously tasty treat, and there’s even a Wikipedia entry about it.

The Daim bar (originally known as Dajm in the original Swedish, and known as Dime in the UK and Ireland until 2005) is a crunchy butter almond bar covered in milk chocolate. The brand is now owned by Kraft Foods, but originated in Sweden and Norway in 1953, produced by Marabou and Freia respectively. Dajm was created after research into a similar product produced by the American company Heath. Marabou’s Vice President, Lars Anderfelt, asked to license the Heath product in the early 1950s, but Heath refused. However, they gave a list of the ingredients to Anderfeldt. It was tested in Stockholm in 1952 with great success, and later in 1953 it was launched in Sweden and Norway. Then in Finland (1964) and Denmark (1971). While not universally available in the United States, Hershey’s produces a similar product called a Skor bar. Daim bars imported from Sweden (manufactured in Upplands Väsby) are sold in all Australian, Belgian, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish IKEA Stores. IKEA America and Europe discontinued the product in 2011. Dime bars were featured in a successful mid-nineties television commercial campaign in the United Kingdom featuring Harry Enfield and armadillos. In it, Dime bars were contrasted with armadillos, with a Dime bar being smooth on the outside and crunchy on the inside, and an armadillo being smooth on the inside and crunchy on the outside. In 2007 a ‘Limited Edition Cappuccino’ Daim bar was released. A limited edition forest fruit bar has also been released. There has also been Coke Daim, White chocolate Daim, Dark chocolate daim, Blueberry Daim and Lemon-orange Daim.

Within minutes I rang Grant and Graeme to tell them, to equal levels of excitement. On arriving home, I realised Kraft, which has owned Daim for a number of years, was now importing them in to Australia. How exciting is that?