Kev's Snack Reviews

Whilst looking for Cadbury's Wispa hot chocolate in Tesco recently, I spied these Haribo Rhubarb and Custard Splats and couldn't resist giving them a try. I was never a huge fan of the original Rhubarb and Custard boiled sweets but this jelly version sounded a lot more to my taste. I like Haribo jellies, especially Tangfastics, and these Rhubarb & Custard Splats really lived up to the intense fruity sourness you get from those. The only difference being the rhubarb and custard flavour, which is quite unique. There wasn't much of a custard element, just a sour-rhubarb-dominated taste, which suited me just fine because I don't like the idea of custard in sweets anyway! They were verrrrry addictive and it didn't take me long to demolish most of the bag. Texture-wise they were kind of soft and chewy, but not too chewy like some gummy sweets are. Overall, if you like sour jelly sweets or rhubarb and custard boiled sweets, I would highly recommend the

It wasn't so long ago that fellow snacks blogger Creamy Steaks wrote a post decrying the lack of interesting ice cream flavours here in the UK . And it's true; whilst the US are treated to new Ben & Jerry's varieties such as Red Velvet Cake and Key Lime Pie, the most exciting new flavours we get here in the UK are Karamel Sutra and Apple Pie. To be depressed and see what other nice flavours we can't get, check out  On Second Scoop , a blog dedicated to the latest in US ice cream releases. Luckily, Ben & Jerry's UK must have sensed our pain and have recently added this new "Peanut Butter Me Up" variety to their "Core" range, as well as a "Blondie Brownie" variety. Described as "A raspberry jam core surrounded by peanut butter and vanilla ice creams with chocolatey covered peanut butter cups", I found this in Sainsbury's for a hefty £4.99. The ice cream contains only 4% peanuts, which had me doubting how &q

A big thankyou to Monster Sweets who sent me these Milka bars to review recently after reading of my disappointment with the Milka Lila Pause . Apparently it's common for a lot of imported Milka bars to be poor quality, and it's best to stick with German stock. Luckily, Monster Sweets sell a lot of German Milka bars for a good price and cheap postage. They also sell Ritter Sport's range, including the new seasonal flavours, as well as many American imports like strawberry and grape Fanta. I highly recommend their site:  http://www.monstersweets.co.uk/ I've been curious about these Milka bars for a while now, they sounded a bit weird but potentially amazing. Milka with TUC Milka with TUC crackers: This had to be perhaps the weirdest bar of the two, as it contains salty TUC crackers. The crackers are stuck to the chocolate on both sides of the bar, but many of them had fallen off, which looks like it might be a common problem. Luckily some ha

If you like peanuts and chocolate, this is the bar for you! I found this Mr Tom Chocolate bar in Poundland recently for the price of...you guessed it. It's described as "Milk chocolate with 35% caramelized and roasted peanuts", contains 30% cocoa solids and is made by the company Hosta  who also produce the original Mr Tom peanut bar. I remember this being reviewed on Jim's Chocolate Mission ages ago and thought it would be one of those foreign chocolate bars I'd never get to try, so I was very pleased to see it in Poundland! It's also been reviewed here by Foodstuff Finds , and it didn't fare too well with them. The bar is a nice thick block and you can hopefully see here that there's plenty of nuts embedded in the chocolate (they make up 35% of the bar infact). The chocolate is quite sweet, as mentioned by Foodstuff Finds, but I thought it was nice. I've had far, far worse in my time that's for sure. It's the

After seeing these McVitie's Double Chocolate Digestives on A Review A Day , I knew I had to seek them out - they sounded like the Ultimate in chocolate digestives. They're described as "Chocolate flavoured Digestive biscuits with chocolate chips, half coated in milk chocolate". This pack cost me £1.35 at Sainsbury's. Opening the wrapper they certainly smelled more chocolatey than a regular chocolate digestive, and the digestive base was much darker, although not quite the intense darkness of a Bourbon Cream or Oreo, which is what I was really hoping for. Breaking them up revealed some chocolate chips randomly embedded throughout the digestives, which hopefully you can see here: Taste-wise...they were nice. Very chocolatey, and the chocolate chips certainly enhanced the experience, but I doubt these will be taking the Chocolate Digestive crown any time soon. They're not quite amazing or wow enough for that, and I would have preferr

Whilst browsing my local Polish store recently I noticed these Wawel chocolates near the till. For 20p each, I thought there was no harm in giving them a try. Looking at the pictures on the boxes they were in, I assumed the Tiki Taki was coconut flavoured and the Malaga Plum flavoured. I thought their shapes were a bit mismatched with the flavours. The Tiki Taki has an almost hazelnut-like shape, whilst the Malaga has an almost orange-segment-like shape. Left: Tiki Taki                                  Right: Malaga Cutting them open revealed two very different types of filling. The Tiki Taki had a creamy duel-layered praline and coconut truffle type filling: Tiki Taki Whilst the Malaga had some kind of gooey "jam" type filling, with little bits of dried fruit in: Malaga I had no idea what I was actually getting with these, so it was nice trying to guess. Biting into the Tiki Taki, I could mainly taste a dry, crumbly coconut truffle, with some ki

Whilst scouring the shelves at Tk Maxx for imported chocolates recently I came across this Corné Port-Royale White in the reduced section, for £1. At that price I could hardly refuse. I've never heard of Corné Port-Royale before, but according to google they are a Belgian chocolatier with quite a history , and have 20 boutiques in Belgium as well as 15 in France. Despite their impressive sounding history, this chocolate was very disappointing, and I can understand why it was reduced in price. The best way I can describe it is pointless. It does nothing. It's neither a cheap and cheerful milky white chocolate like Milkybar, nor is it a smooth vanilla flavoured chocolate like Lindt Touch of Vanilla. It just tasted sugary and sickly without any emphasis on milk, vanilla or even cocoa butter. I threw most of it in the bin, which is something I rarely do. Overall, this is one to avoid. I haven't tried any other Corné Port-Royale chocolates before so I'll reserve

I recently visited a local Japanese store and was quite overwhelmed with the many unusual and unique products being sold there. Flower flavoured soda, coconut jam, mochi ( as reviewed here by the legendary Gobble Monkey) and Meiji Meltykiss! I'd heard about these before on other blogs and they always seem to be well received, so I was hoping for something special. Honestly though? I don't get what all the fuss is about. They were labelled to be stored "below 23˚C". I live in Britain so it's always a fair bet it's going to be cold, so no problems there. Presumably it's to preserve the melting filling. Maybe I ate these wrong or something (is that even possible?), but I just wasn't impressed with the texture. The centre is basically vegetable fat and sugar, and was quite hard and waxy. Even when I allowed it to melt in my mouth, it just tasted of strawberry flavoured melted vegetable fat and sugar. The strawberry flavour was pleasant e

The only reason I'm reviewing these Belgian Mousse Truffles is because Sainsbury's tricked me into buying them. I found them in the Valentine's gifts section marked half price, yet after examining my receipt when I got home, found I'd been charged the full price of £3.49. Don't you just hate it when that happens?! Annoyance aside, I was intrigued by the flavours of these mousses: Dark chocolate with Raspberry, Milk Chocolate with Lemon, Milk Chocolate with Passion Fruit and Dark chocolate with Ginger. I've always assumed that "mousse" was just another marketing word for praline or truffle (I've certainly eaten plenty of chocolates described as "mousses" that were in fact truffles), but these chocolates surprised me because they had real mousse centres that were very light and er... mousse-y. I was a bit disappointed to be honest because they seemed so light and insubstantial; I would have preferred something more dense and butte

If I were to sum up this Milka Chocolate Dessert in one word, it would be AWFUL. But that's too easy, and maybe a little unfair. I'm sure it's not normally so horrible, but the one I tried was. It was a little past it's best before date (by less than a month), but I still don't think that's an excuse for how bad it tasted. When I bought this for 40p (from a discount store, naturally) the lady at the till informed me I could get three for a pound, which I politely declined. I knew why she was trying to get rid of them... because they were obviously rubbish! Still, being the snacks hunter I am I had to give one a try for reviewing purposes. The things I put myself through... This was described as "Milk chocolate with alpine milk and whipped cocoa filling". I was expecting it to be a simple cheap truffle type filling, but it was much worse than that. The vegetable fat must have gone rancid or something, because the taste was just awful. I can'

Morrisons are one of my main local supermarkets. They don't have the greatest range of chocolate around but have started to change that recently and introduced some new varieties (including the Afternoon Tea Selection I reviewed recently). Adding salt to chocolate seems to be in vogue at the moment, so I suppose it makes sense they've brought out their own salted chocolate bar. I didn't really pay much attention to the wrapper when I picked this up, I just wanted something chocolatey and sweet and assumed it was yet another salted caramel bar. Described as "milk chocolate with salted butterscotch pieces", this cost £1.39 and contains 32% cocoa solids. It's basically a Morrisons version of Milka with Daim, but with richer chocolate and salty butterscotch pieces. And I'm not really sure if I liked it or not. It had a certain addictive quality because of the salty crunchiness of the butterscotch, and the chocolate had a decent rich taste, but...I th

Today's review is thanks to Nero & Bianco who kindly sent me some samples of their chocolate range recently. Nero & Bianco are a new ethical and fairtrade chocolate brand whose bars are available at Holland & Barrett, as well as other health food stores. To be quite frank I wasn't expecting a lot when I received these as the packaging design doesn't really "grab" me. It doesn't make me think of luxury like the designs of other chocolate bars in the market do. I am very happy to be proven wrong; these bars tasted amazing and were better than a lot of other brands with much fancier packaging. They are also fair trade, organic, and contain a high percentage of cocoa. Nero & Bianco Milk Milk: This bar contains 39% cocoa, and I was expecting a bog-standard tasting milk chocolate which just happened to be fair trade, however I was very wrong! Biting into it I was met with a delicious creamy hit; it was very smooth in texture, and melted in

I can't help but smile when it comes to these sweets. Firstly, because the name Donkers sounds funny, and secondly because they tasted ace and reminded me of being a kid again. I found these in Family Bargains for £1. After trying the Gnaw Go Bananas recently I've been searching for some decent quality foam bananas, and these fit the bill perfectly. The only problem is they aren't really "foam" bananas, they're more like jelly bananas and are made from pectin, which according to the online dictionary is: "A soluble polysaccharide present in ripe fruits and used as a setting agent in jams and jellies". They're produced in Holland. The taste of the pectin was very evident and made these Choco Bananas taste absolutely delicious. They had a fruity taste and an almost gooey texture that was extremely moreish and addictive. I couldn't stop eating them! The banana flavour was very realistic. The chocolate however wasn't anything

When I found these Chocolate Donuts in TK Maxx recently I had to give them a try; I've never seen donut shaped chocolates before, so was quite intrigued. They cost £2.99 for a box of 18 and are basically hazelnut praline rings coated in white chocolate, with a base of milk chocolate. I liked how they were packaged, I felt like these were a special treat when I opened the lid and saw the gold foil wrapper. Opening the wrapper I was met with a strong smell of hazelnut, which reminded me of Guylian Seashells. The chocolates looked very appetizing and just like miniature white donuts. Splitting one in half revealed the praline filling: Unfortunately the taste of these let down what could have been a nice novelty product. The praline filling was a bit boring and tasteless; I felt like I was mostly eating vegetable fat. And the white chocolate was a bit non-descript, it just tasted sweet and without any real creaminess or other distinguishing features. I'm not