There's a pervasive belief in the Netherlands that this unconventional meal helps lift the national mood.

"I think I'm an addict, basically," says Marije Nicklin, who grew up on the Dutch island of Terschelling. The Dutch expat, who has been based in West Yorkshire, UK, since 2002, is obsessed with hagelslag, carefully rationing the packets her parents post to her and the bag-loads she brings back on the ferry. "I've got quite a lot in storage," she says. "I do start to twitch when I see the end is coming."

Translated as "hailstorm", hagelslag are crispy, oblong-shaped sugar strands, just a few millimetres long. They are most commonly chocolate-flavoured and coated in a shiny glaze. In a supermarket in any other country, you'd likely see them in the cake toppings section reserved for a special occasion, but in the Netherlands, where more than 14 million kilograms of hagelslag are consumed per year, many people eat them every week, sprinkling them liberally onto buttered bread as a quick breakfast, snack or lunch. The hagelslag sandwich (broodje hagelslag) is surely an anachronism in this age of sugar awareness, but there's a pervasive belief in the Netherlands that this unconventional meal helps lift the national mood.

Good hagelslag is crunchy on impact but then melts in the mouth. Each season sees new variations appear in the shops: little bunnies for Easter, for example, or orange hagelslag for Koningsdag, an annual orange-themed street party to celebrate the King's birthday. The small packs seen in many hotel breakfast buffets are ideal for novices, and a few years back, one supermarket even experimented with pick 'n' mix. Whichever variety you choose, the habit is widespread, with an estimated 750,000 hagelslag sandwiches consumed each day.

Strictly speaking, hagelslag is a sugar-based vermicelli sprinkle that is chocolate or fruit-flavoured, but the name has become associated with other cheerfully packaged sugary toppings found on the same supermarket shelf, such as curly vlokken (chocolate flakes) and muisjes, sugar-coated aniseed seeds that look like tiny mice and are typically served on beschuit (rusks). In the 17th Century, aniseed was thought to aid lactation and help the womb contract, and pink or blue muisjes on beschuit are still served today to celebrate the arrival of a baby.

For Nicklin, whose favourite variety is the

© BBC