Kev's Snack Reviews

When I spotted this "New" Snowball Crunch amongst Marks and Spencer's bagged range I was itching to give it a try. Not just because it's a new and limited edition Christmas product, but because it's popcorn coated with white chocolate and cinnamon - two of my favourite flavours! This combination sounded fantastically novel and I imagined it would make for a perfect tasty treat. Alas - it didn't turn out to be all that amazing! Mainly because it was too sweet, thanks to the dusting of icing sugar on the already overly-sweet white chocolate coated popcorn. The description on the pack reads "Toffee popcorn covered in white chocolate with cinnamon (34%) and dusted with icing sugar (9%)". That may sound like a small proportion of icing sugar, but it dominated the overall flavour of the popcorn - it was mega  sweet! All I could really taste was a strong, sugary milkiness. There was no real flavour of white chocolate, and only a faint hint of ci...

When I saw this Noisette bar in Tesco recently, I thought it was a new flavour of Milka at first. I've never seen it in any other supermarkets or shops before...but there was no "new" label on it so I presume it's a flavour that already exists in Europe but has been imported into the UK. I paid £1.40 for it in Tesco, but I've also seen it in Discount UK for a mere 79p over the last few days - bargain! The bar is a simple combination of rich alpine milk chocolate with a smooth hazelnut filling. Opening the wrapper I was blown away by just how intensely nutty it smelled! I snapped the bar in half and bit into a piece. It had a delicious full-on hazelnut flavour that was very rich. It melted in my mouth like butter - it was so smooth! It reminded me of the hazelnut cream in Ferrero Rocher, although it was a lot richer. Overall, this is a fantastic Milka variety which I would highly recommend if you like hazelnuts, Nutella or Ferrero Rocher! Also If you ...

Whilst browsing the Halloween stuff in Poundworld recently I came across this rather gruesome product...a strawberry liquid candy-filled blood bag! I was a little surprised to be honest as it seems a bit of an "extreme" product for kids, but hey maybe I'm just out of touch! The bag comes filled with a "sour strawberry flavoured gel candy", which tasted rather cheap and artificial. You can suck it from the straw part of the bag so as to pretend you're glugging on blood like a vampire; which is either really cool or gruesome depending on the person...personally I think the concept is a bit gross! Overall, I suppose this is a good novelty Halloween product for those who like this sort of thing, but I think I'll stick to biting the heads off of gummy spiders instead! Price : £1.

Many thanks to the makers of Peanut Hottie for sending me this jar of their new peanut butter-flavour hot drink to review! Peanut Hottie is aiming to "make a storm in the nation's tea cups" with this drink, which is available exclusively from Sainsbury's. Apparently it's the first peanut butter hot drink on the market, which is surprising to me as I would've thought someone would have tried making one before now! Even more surprising is that it's made in the UK by a British company (not many of those left these days!) using American peanuts. Peanut Hottie is also caffeine-free, suitable for vegetarians, contains no artificial additives or colours, and is under 100 calories per cup. Impressive stuff! I made a cup as directed but added a little milk to make it creamier. This produced a brown, nutty-coloured drink with a slight froth on top as you can see in the pic above. It tasted slightly salty and intensely nutty, but also surprisingly ...

After hearing about how good Aldi's chocolates supposedly are I thought I'd give one a go this weekend and see what all the fuss is about. I've tried their Moser Roth range before and really enjoyed it, but this time I was tempted by this Rum & Raisin bar from their Choceur range. It's described as "Smooth milk chocolate with rum, raisins and hazelnuts". Rum and Raisin chocolates are quite hard to find these days - Cadbury's no longer make Old Jamaica, or at least I haven't seen it in years. I was hoping this would be a worthy replacement, but unfortunately it was pretty poor as rum flavoured chocolates go. In a nutsehll, it tasted cheap and sugary. It comes in quite thick blocks (no pic I'm afraid), and after eating a piece I found myself eating a few more just to try and get a "taste" of something... anything! But it turned out there was no real taste to the bar at all...it just tasted of sugar and milk! There were some raisi...

I was delighted when Hotel Chocolat offered to send me a product from their Halloween range to review recently. I had trouble choosing as there were so many fanatastic chocolates to pick from, but I eventually decided on this "Trick or Treat" box with its cool-looking Halloween shapes in milk, white and dark chocolate. The box contains 64 individually-wrapped chocolates (690g) in total.  The dark chocolates contain 70% cocoa solids, whilst the milk contains 40%. The white contains 36% cocoa solids and 27% milk solids. All the chocolates are alcohol-free, gluten-free and suitable for vegetarians. Firstly I have to say I loved the presentation - the chocolates come in a massive box filled with shreds of spooky black paper, with the "trick or treats" hidden underneath. It took me quite a while to find them all!   There were many different shapes including ghosts, skulls, monster claws, cats, bats... ...and these "death by chocolat...

Whilst in Tesco over the weekend I spotted these new Nestlé Halloween "Special Scary Editions". They're only available at Tesco and Tesco Express, so if you're a fan of stuff like this head there to stock up! Rowntree's Randoms Phantom Mix: Opening these I was met with a variety of colours and shapes, but I was surprised by just how many white foam sweets there were - they seemed to take up quite a large proportion of the bag: They were all in ghost shapes...boo! Overall I found 8 different jelly shapes in an assortment of colours. The shapes included skulls, spiders, spiders webs, ghosts, monster claws, bats, witches hats and pumpkins. I'm not sure if there's supposed to be more, so if you've found any others please let me know in the comments! They were very tasty - slightly tangy and with a delicious fruity flavour. I'm not sure how they compare to regular Rowntree's Randoms, because in all honesty I've never tr...

A big thankyou to Bring Back Banjo Chocolate for kindly sending me this cool-looking wafer bar as part of a snacks package recently! Please take a moment to sign the petition to bring back the Banjo Wafer that was made by Mars Foods in the 80's. If you remember Banjo bars please do leave a comment! If not (shame on you!) see HERE for an introduction. Basically they were wafer bars similar to Kitkat that contained a hazelnut cream filling and were coated with chopped peanuts. There was also a coconut version, which sounds right up my street! I think there's definitely room in the UK snacks market for a return of such a unique retro chocolate bar...are you listening, Mars?! Moving on...this Flame wafer has a really cool-looking triangular shape and is filled with chocolate cream. It reminded me of Kitkat Chunky, although it's much thicker in size. The texture is different from a Kitkat Chunky though; it's lighter and puffier, kind of like the wafer you get in N...

When I saw these Terry's Chocolate Orange Minis in Sainsbury's I wasn't all that excited to be honest. I like Terry's Chocolate Orange, don't get me wrong - I see it as a "Christmas staple", one of those products you just have to have in the house every Christmas whether you like it or not. Over the years though I feel like Chocolate Orange has gradually gotten sweeter and sweeter in taste, to the point where it's now just a sugar-bomb. Either that or my tastebuds have evolved...I'm not sure?! So when I saw this Minis version I was a bit "meh", but since they were on a £1 introductory offer I thought I'd at least try some in the name of snacks research! I have to say I do like the packaging - it's very vibrant and has a matte feel to it, similar to Cadbury's bagged range (which makes sense since both Terry's and Cadbury's are owned by Mondelez). It's also reclosable so you can save some for later...not that ma...

There's a lot of new and limited edition Christmas products popping up in shops recently that I'd love to try, but there's no way I can buy them all to review so I thought I'd snap a few pics for an Xmas edition of Spotted in Shops instead! Here's what I found... Lindt Lindor Limited Edition Dark Chocolate Orange: I saw these Limited Edition Dark Orange Lindor in WH Smith. They cost £4.99 per box and are described as "Dark chocolate truffles with a smooth melting filling". They sound right up my street; I'll definitely be putting these on my Christmas wish-list! Thorntons The Snowman & The Snowdog White Chocolate Snowman: WH Smith also had this fantastic looking Thorntons White Chocolate Snowman, based on the popular animated film "The Snowman and the Snowdog". I think it looks super-cool and would love to get one of these for Christmas! Maynards Christmas Jellies Santa: I've seen these new Maynards Christmas Jellies...

After seeing sachets of these new Horlicks Cappuccino in supermarkets for the last few weeks my curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to try one. I wasn't too interested in them initially due to the rather dull-looking packaging, but the idea of a Cappuccino Horlicks had me intrigued. "Aren't coffee and Horlicks polar opposites?", I thought. After all Horlicks is usually advertised as a drink to help you sleep. It turns out that Horlicks have thought of this and created a cappuccino you can drink at bedtime, by using decaffeinated coffee. Genius! It's described on the sachet as "The perfect fusion of real coffee and smooth Horlicks goodness" and contains added Vitamin D, plus other vitamins. It tasted pretty good - like a milky, coffee flavoured cup of Horlicks, basically. Because of the malt it almost felt like a meal in a cup and was very satisfying and filling, but with a milky coffee edge. An interesting hybrid for sure! Ov...