In short
One bite, one bridge and a very promising piece of candy on our nose.
Almost ten years have passed since I last visited Belgium and roamed around the streets of Ghent.
But one memory from that trip has never quite left me...
While exploring Ghent, we stopped at Groentenmarkt and noticed the colourful little carts selling the city’s famous cuberdons. We had seen these funny little sweets before, so we decided it was time to try them for ourselves.
They are called cuberdons, also known as neuzekes, which means “little noses” in Dutch. They are small, cone shaped sweets with a sugary outside and a soft, syrupy centre. The traditional flavour is raspberry, although there are now plenty of other flavours to choose from.
So, as expected we bought the traditional raspberry ones and were ready to try them.
But the nice vendor had other plans... He told us that if we were going to try them, we had to follow the rules.
What rules, you may ask?
Well, apparently you need to bite first the base of the cuberdon and then stick it on your nose. Yes you are reading that... so did we followed the rules ? Of course!
We took our little cuberdons and walked towards Grasbrug, the beautiful bridge nearby, and decided to properly follow the tradition there.
And this is where things got interesting....
The taste was quite unusual. The traditional raspberry flavour is very sweet and fruity, with a soft and sticky centre. We are not going to pretend that we became huge fans after the first bite. I would rather say that the taste was like marzipan mixed with toothpaste.
Definitely strange, but still worth trying!
Would we buy a whole bag again? Probably not.
Would we recommend trying them when you are in Ghent? Absolutely.
After all, we can't confirm the science behind it, but we do felt pretty lucky that nobody filmed it.