My favorite auntie used to come see us from Illinois, and when she did, she’d always bring something for us that I’ve never seen anywhere else.
Background- at the time, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Walt lived RIGHT across the highway from the original Heath toffee factory and they were close friends of the Heaths. If the wind was right you could smell the chocolate and boiling butter. Good memories there. 
She’d bring a huge box of triple-dipped squares of Heath toffee, about 1"x2" and a third of an inch thick before the triple chocolate dip. My mom kept them in the freezer and doled them out according to our behavior, but that’s another story. They were so bloody good, and I’m pretty sure that was before they switched from butter to margarine. Eventually they sold the brand to Hershey, I believe, and that was the end of that.
Aunt Ginny was one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. I just adored her, and not just because of the Heath toffee.
What are your sweet treat memories?
I remember us going to Canada fishing and getting the BEST raspberry jam. Gobbled it right up. Mulkins, me thinks, is the name.
Sugar/cinnamon on buttered toast
Baklava hit me right
Whatever in the hell my Albanian buddy’s family called cookies
Push up pops
Grandma’s coffee candy
Boring ole chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies
Honey any and all that I’ve had was good, (save for the dollar store corn sugar honey)
Angel food cake for my Bday
Salerno Mint Cremes.
Crunchy vanilla cookie, mint cream. Chocolate coating. They were a local bakery that got big enough to put stuff in stores all over the Chicago/Wisconsin/Indiana area. As is the way of these things, they were eventually bought up, closed down, the brand went through a couple of owners and the recipe changed hands once or twice and is now gone, afaik.
They also did fabulous butter cookies shaped like daisies with a hole in the middle. Convenient for stacking on fingers. A VITAL childhood activity.
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In elementary school in the 70s, the PTA always had candy sale fund-raiser every year with candy that was produced by a confectioner in the neighborhood. The aroma in the old gymnasium on the day the candy was brought in… incredible. I especially loved the caramels and the nonpareils.
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Fudge was very common, homemade, showed up at every covered dish and at the holidays and at the beach. Talk about an incredible sugar rush! I’m such a big sweets maker, but I don’t think I’ve ever made fudge.
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Christmas cookies were HUGE round here. The best were the Pa Dutch “sand tarts,” which we made every year (just like everybody else.) These days you can buy these at farmer’s markets, but they’re never as good as homemade. Back then, to my knowledge, they couldn’t be bought.
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Quick breads. These were huge growing up. In my house, my mother made banana, lemon, strawberry, and pumpkin.
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Strawberry pie: my mother made this every year with local berries. Homemade blind-baked crust, then a layer of banana instant pudding which you let set. Then a big layer of fresh sliced berries in strawberry Jell-O. Served with Cool-Whip, which I will not eat anymore, but back in the day it was the biggest treat. I had Cool-Whip long before I ever tasted real whipped cream.
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Filled cupcakes: at some point in the 70s (decades before cupcakes became an over-engineered trend) it became fashionable to take your cupcakes and tunnel a big hole in them to fill with frosting. Then you’d pop the lid back on.
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FASTNACHTS: once a year, every year. When I was little, my mom made them at home. She had to learn how to make them (not being PA Dutch herself) but learn she did
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Birthday cake: at your birthday, you got to pick what you wanted for dinner, and the kind of cake you wanted. I don’t remember what I picked (the choices were probably yellow, white or chocolate) but homemade birthday cake was special.
Homemade fudge…
That brings back some food memories.
My grandmother’s linzer torte cookies… the only thing she made that was worth a darn.
My grandmother’s coconut cake!
This is great- thank you!
My mom, for all her flaws, made one hell of an angel food cake. Always set the pan upside down on a Cinzano bottle to maintain the loft for several hours. Not sure why the Cinzano bottle, but that’s what it always was.
My grandma taught me to use a ketchup bottle…back when Heinz came in glass bottles
A friend of my mother used to make this pecan pie without a crust. The bottom of it would be like a pecan candy bar… so good.
Jell-O Pudding Pops
Banjo candy bar
Reese’s Swoops
I had an aunt who made what I came to understand were spritz cookies that I appreciate, and another who made what I came to understand was New York cheese cake, and also appreciate.
My older sister made peach cobbler with canned peaches and Bisquick, and at the time, I appreciated that as well.
I liked Girl Scout Cookies “Thin Mints”, and maybe those peanut butter ones in the seventies.
Shrugs.
Still not a huge fan of sweets, although my son reminds me I passed on to him a childhood taste for Baskin Robbins “Pralines and Cream”.
I have a hunch it was mostly because it fit in the hole of her cake pan and was at hand…
She was the unofficial town baker…she mase angel food cake for everyone’s birthdays…and handmade noodles with all those yolks.
Wow, churning up a bunch of sweet memories here…
Olgilvie’s (a village bakery) had chocolate fudge thumbprint cookies, Austrian coffee cake (I used to call it Australian) and almond Bear Claws
Our elementary school’s oatmeal cookies and chocolate sheet cake
Frozen Super Bomb Pops (red, white and blue) and Missile pops (the orange and cherry ones) in the summer
Local bake sale black bottom cupcakes and Lemon Surprise cupcakes
Ice cold Delaware Punch, Hawaiian Punch and Black Cherry Soda pop
Dreyer’s Toasted Almond Ice Cream and B & R Lemon Custard Ice Cream
Pretty sure the Cinzano vermouth bottle was our house’s version of your house’s ketchup bottle. We always had vermouth around- and gin. 
I miss Four Treasures
And Four Flavours
From the Good Humor ice cream truck, peach ice cream coated in (real) raspberry sherbet, on a stick. They MIGHT have called it peach melba, but I was in elementary school and can’t remember.
oh yeah, i remember a LOT of angel food cake. i associate that with the mistaken but prevalent low-fat dietary guidance of the 80s.
