Kev's Snack Reviews

A Spotted In Shops focused on cakes and biscuits today, since there are so many new treats in shops lately!  First up is the rather special Cadbury Heroes Party Cupcakes Selection. Now even though this is called Cadbury Heroes, the cupcakes only feature Cadbury Caramel, Cadbury Crunchie and Cadbury Flake. That's hardly "Heroes", Cadbury! Still these cupcakes with their caramel and chocolate buttercreams do sound pretty scrumptious. Spotted in Tesco. Cadbury Rocky Road Mud Cake: A new "gluten free" Mud Cake from Cadbury, made with Cadbury Chocolate that can be found in the Free From frozen section at Tesco. Although this is gluten free, it's made from wheat starch that has had the gluten removed...so if you're super sensitive to wheat I would advise caution with this. Otherwise, it sounds like a tasty cake indeed! Galaxy Chocolate Mousse Cake: A delicious new cake from Mars, this one features a biscuit base and layers of chocolate mousse, toppe...

Today's review is for a chocolate I have yet to feature and one that is long overdue. I've done most of Terry's Chocolate Orange range now but somehow this classic Dark variety slipped me by. Well not anymore! With Mondelez continually cheapening their chocolates with added sugar and vegetable fat I wondered how the latest version of this classic dark chocolate would taste. I certainly didn't expect it to taste quite as woeful as it did, so let this review serve as a warning and hopefully a wake up call: invest in better quality chocolate this festive season (the Magnum Signature Orange Milk Chocolate is much better quality!) The Milk Chocolate Terry's Chocolate Orange is a classic Christmas staple, and they've done some interesting variations over the years from Exploding Candy to Toffee Crunch , as well as White Chocolate ( which I reviewed back in 2013 !), White Chocolate Smasher and even a Chocolate Orange Goes Minty variety. All of them delicious...

A while back, Poundland announced they would be launching their own honey and nougat chocolate bar similar to Toblerone called Twin Peaks, "inspired by the Wrekin and Ercall hills". Yeah right Poundland! It's obviously "inspired" by Toblerone and apparently Poundland ended up in trouble with Mondelez over the bar , hence why it's taken so long to appear on shelves. But they've settled their differences and the bar is now in Poundland for a limited period - featuring a turquoise wrapper to make sure no one confuses it with Toblerone, looking similar to Poundland's store logo. The bar weighs 180g - 20% more than a small Toblerone which is 150g, and more than Toblerone used to weigh before they bizarrely changed the block design last year . It's described as "Milk chocolate with almond and honey nougat (10%)" and is suitable for vegetarians. The main difference of course is the shape - "inspired by the Wrekin and Ercall h...

Todays review is a face off...well...a jelly baby off between the new Tropical flavour Jelly Babies from Maynards Bassetts vs the Original Jelly Babies. It seems incomprehensible that a new variety could beat the originals, so this will be interesting! Firstly, I must mention the new name: Jelly Babies were originally labelled as Bassetts, but Mondelez have put both the Maynards brand (which is on things like Wine Gums and Sports Mixture) and Bassetts (which includes the likes of Liquorice Allsorts - who can forget the character Bertie Bassett?) I'm not sure it's a good idea to lump two brands together like this, but I guess it fits with Mondelez' marketing strategy of making everything the same. First up, the Tropical Jelly Babies. These come in mango, pineapple and BANANA (ooh!) flavours so straight off they are at a disadvantrage of containing less variety than the Originals, despite the fancy flavours. But are they good flavours? Yes, they are as it turns out!...

Mondelez have done a few questionable things in recent years, but perhaps the most questionable yet is their move away from organic chocolate within the Green & Blacks range. It remains to be seen if all G&B bars will no longer be organic, but so far they've been giving this new non organic Velvet Edition range quite a push in supermarkets. After the disappointing Almond & Blood Orange bar I wasn't going to bother trying any more of the range, however curiosity got the better of me with this Mint version. I do love a minty chocolate, and was curious how this might compare to the regular mint chocolate bar from G&B. The range is reduced to £1.50 at the moment in Tesco, which is still too much for inferior chocolate if you ask me. The bars contain 90g which I believe is less than a regular Green & Blacks bar. So not only are they non organic they're giving you less too. Way to go Mondelez! Do forgive my grainy photo, I took it as I was exiting...

I've been itching to try these new Toblerone Ice Cream sticks for a while now, ever since they first popped up on Instagram. And at last, just in time for the Christmas season they have appeared in UK supermarkets - hurrah! Or at least they have in Tesco. These were amongst the other bar ice creams such as Dairy Milk, which makes sense since they're both made by Mondelez. They cost £3 for three sticks, so £1 a stick which isn't too bad considering you would pay that for one in a Newsagent. There was no English writing on the front of the box, so presumably these have been imported by Mondelez rather than made for the UK market specifically. Looking on the back of the pack, English was low down on the list but eventually I found the description: "Chocolate and honey ice cream with milk chocolate with honey and almond nougat 2%, white nougat pieces 2% coated with milk chocolate 33% with white nougat pieces 3%". Phew, that's a lot of nougat! Nice to...

We don't seem to get many new Milka bars in the UK these days, since Mondelez just convert most Milka products into a Dairy Milk version, which is a shame really because MIlka has a distinctive flavour that's very different from Dairy Milk. Perhaps it's the alpine milk in Milka bars, or the higher cocoa content, but they definitely have that unique "something" that Dairy Milk can't replicate. So I was excited when these new "dark" Milka bars appeared in B&M and Home Bargains recently. They cost 79p, and consist of 45% cocoa dark chocolate with the addition of hazelnut paste and milk powder (so aren't suitable for vegans unfortunately). The chocolate tasted pretty good! It has that distinctive creamy Milka flavour of alpine milk, with the hazelnut paste adding a vague nuttiness in the background. It's very tasty and was easy to eat a lot of, but more of a richer milk chocolate than a true dark chocolate. Overall, this is qui...

One minute you're talking about a new mini product you'd like to see, the next minute it's in shops...that seems to be how Cadbury's roll these days, since a mini version of everything they make is inevitable now. Yes, Cadbury's iconic Curly Wurly bar is the latest to get the miniature treatment, although they actually did these in 2007 too. Looks more like fishing bait than a tasty snack, right? Not one to let that stop me, I decided to pull the head apart, as helpfully depicted on the wrapper. Hey, I'm just copying Cadbury's example, don't have a go at me! Trying to forget images of crawling bugs in my mind, I took a bite. And they tasted as you'd expect: chewy toffee coated in Cadbury's milk chocolate. They were kind of addictive, I have to admit, although they didn't have much actual flavour, since Cadbury's chocolate isn't great quality these days. I can't help thinking that an actual Curly Wurly would be infinitely ...

Whilst in Poundstretcher recently I couldn't help but notice a plethora of imported chocolates, from the likes of Marabou with Oreo , Marabou with Saltlakrits (Salty Liquorice) and these...Limited Edition Orange flavour Daim Minis. They were £2.99 a bag which I felt was a bit pricey, but I caved in and got them anyway. I had to...they're a limited edition! Mondelez have had a track record for messing up some of our beloved UK products, but thankfully it seems their meddling hasn't extended to their classic Swedish brand Daim (yet!). These bars contain 30% cocoa chocolate, and are described as "smooth orange flavoured milk chocolates with a surprisingly crunchy almond centre". They're suitable for vegetarians and gluten free. They tasted like the offspring of a Terry's Chocolate Orange and a Daim Bar...which is a good thing! The chocolate is pretty much the exact same sweet, orangey flavour as Chocolate Orange (before they made the recipe waxy...

I'd heard bad things about these new Cadbury Dinky Deckers from other reviewers, but curiosity got the better of me...could they really be that bad? Turns out that yes, they can, at least compared to the regular Double Decker bar. These are part of Mondelez/Cadbury's "shrink everything except the bathroom sink" strategy of making money from customers, and they're doing a good job of it...they now make miniature versions of most of their products, from Cadbury Caramel Nibbles, to Bitsa Wispa, to Twirl Bites...there's even Cadbury Fudge Minis now! Those other products stand up fine when made into minis but how does Double Decker fare? Not very well, it turns out! Shrunk down into miniature form, the ratios are all wrong, as noted by One Treat . The nougat and crunchy cereal sections have been flipped around, making the bites too chewy and without the crispy crunchy texture that should be more prominent. The chocolate and filling is also ridiculo...