Kev's Snack Reviews

Recently I broke my "sugar free" diet and went on a mini snacks binge, so since Heron Frozen Foods were selling these limited edition Haagen Dazs I couldn't resist giving them a try. I loooove Haagen Dazs ice cream, it's probably even nicer than Ben and Jerrys for quality. This limited edition is one I've only seen in Waitrose before; I'm not sure if it was meant to be a Summer Edition, but it seems it's now being discontinued so these probably won't be in shops again for a while. It's basically regular vanilla Haagen Dazs with chunks of almond florentine and swirls of orange flavoured caramel. The combination is very interesting and naturally very tasty thanks to the delicious Haagen Dazs ice cream, but I'm not sure it works perfectly as a combination. It's not something I would choose over other Haagen Dazs flavours, but it's something that's nice to try as a one-off. I can see why they're only limited edition. ...

Cadbury have recently added a few new products to their Bubbles of Joy mousse range: a limited edition white chocolate variety, an orange variety and also this Mint Duo. It looks suspiciously similar to the Aero Mint Mousse already produced by Nestle...there seems to be a bit of copying going on in the snacks world lately! I found these for only 50p in Heron Foods, they were still in date so I'm not sure why they were being sold so cheap. There didn't seem to be much in each pot, they're very dinky so I'm glad I didn't pay too much. There's a section of green-coloured mint mousse and regular chocolate mousse. It's basically just light mousse that tastes somewhat minty and chocolatey. I didn't like them to be honest, the texture wasn't airy enough and was rather gelatinous. If you're a fan of Aero Mint mousse I would stick with those instead! RATING: 6 out of 10.

Recently, Cadbury's PR sent me a huge box of the new Cadbury Milk Tray flavours to review, I wasn't too excited about the prospect to be honest because as we all know Cadbury's stuff just isn't what it used to be. The new flavours are Salted Caramel Charm, Apple Crunch and Chocolate Truffle. Not the most inspiring flavours, but at least Apple is a flavour not often used in chocolate! Unfortunately all three were pretty rubbish. The Apple Crunch is described as "Apple flavour white chocolate truffle with a cinnamon crunch" and has been "specially crafted to celebrate 100 years of delicious Milk Tray moments". Cutting into it didn't excite me much...no crunch to speak of, it just looked like a pale cream filling. And that's how it tasted...very mild, not much flavour, pretty boring really. It's unfortunate because it did have potential to be nice, what flavour there is was quite mild and subtly pleasant, you can taste the c...

Last week, Nestlé UK announced the launch of new Caramac Giant Buttons, apparently the first product extension in the brands history (although they've strangely glossed over the fact that they produced a Kitkat Caramac in the mid 2000's, as well as a Caramac Breakaway). The Caramac name apparently comes from an amalgamation of the word caramel and Mackintosh - the company that originally produced Caramac before being taken over by Nestlé. The bar has been a staple of newsagents for a long time indeed, and as many will know it has a buttery, almost fudgey caramel flavour, although unfortunately it's gotten a lot sweeter over the years. The original bar actually used to contain butter, treacle and condensed milk, but unfortunately these new giant buttons don't contain any of those ingredients...boo! :( Apparently 10 buttons equals one serving, which doesn't seem too bad an amount compared to some products (*cough* half a tiny Aero Mousse! *cough*) ...

Continuing on with my journey into the sugar free side of life, I've decided to invest in some good quality 100% cacao chocolate bars to keep me sane when cravings hit. As much as I love Hotel Chocolat's 100% cacao bars, they're a bit pricey for the amount you get so I decided to go one better and get the good stuff from websites like chocolatiers.co.uk (I highly recommend them for quality chocolate!) and cocoarunners.co.uk. I found this bar of Francois Pralus 100% cacao on cocoarunners.co.uk, and for a very reasonable £4.50 (when you consider that Hotel Chocolat charge around £7 for similar bars that contain less grams) I decided to order one. I've tried similar bars from The Grenada Chocolate Company before but fancied something perhaps a little milder and less acidic. The reviews for this suggested it might be what I was looking for. Well, I can say that it's certainly milder than some 100% cacao bars but it still packs a strong, acidic cocoa punch. It...

Before I started my sugar free health kick, I went out in style and bought loads of these Joe Delucci ice creams while they were on offer for £2.99 at Tesco. I heard about them thanks to my fellow snacks buddy over at Reaching For Refreshment ( check out her review here ), and they sounded so good I just had to track them down! Joe Delucci's do lots of interesting flavours such as rum and raisin, tiramisu, mascarpone, apricot, hazelnut etc...sounds good eh?! Check out their website for more info and where to buy. Tesco currently only stock the Pistachio, Berries & Cream and Coconut varieties, but hopefully they'll include more flavours in future!  Berries & Cream: I wasn't expecting to love this one to be honest, I've had fruity ice creams before and they usually don't do much for me. However this one was divine! The ice cream tasted extremely fresh and creamy, with the berry ice cream being extremely fruity and also very fresh tasting. It...