Since then Kendal Mint Cake has become a firm favourite with hikers, climbers and visitors to the Lake District," John Barron, the current managing director of Romney’s Mint Cake says in a Cumbrian accent as thick as the sugar syrup mix which is cooling on trays nearby, reading from the back of the firm's most beloved product.
"Ten years ago Kendal mint cake was slowly dying a death as a touristy sweet treat," explains Jack Barker, founder of Kendal Mint Co. "Our idea was to try and bring what we think of as the original energy bar into the 21st century.".
Jack tells me how his Carlisle-based family firm Calder Foods teamed up with Quiggins - which itself claims to be the oldest manufacturer of the bar - to bring the mint cake into the modern day, “putting it back on the map” so it’s “not just left in the sweetshop as something your grandmother might bring back from a holiday”.
Legend goes that the mint cake first came into this world in 1869 thanks to Joseph Wiper, who overboiled a glossy mint recipe by accident, only for the mixture to turn cloudy and crumbly.
The Kendal mint cake is, arguably, the world’s first travel snack and energy bar.
