Kev's Snack Reviews

As plain as they may be, I do often find myself munching on rice cakes as a quick “healthy” snack when on the go. My favourite ones are Kallo Dark Chocolate Coated Square rice cakes, and I’ve rarely ventured into trying the more fancy flavours now being made such as yogurt, berry etc., but one newbie to the rice cake world that caught my eye recently were these Marks and Spencer Salted Caramel Rice cakes. They’re priced at £1.30 for 6 and described as “whole grain rice cakes with a white chocolate and caramel coating sprinkled with crispy salted caramel flavoured pieces”. With that description I was hoping for something a bit like a Caramac/Blonde chocolate coating, but that’s not exactly what I got. It’s pretty much regular white chocolate with caramel flavouring and colouring added. Not to worry though because these are still very tasty! Most of the flavour comes from the crunchy pieces which are very flavoursome indeed, nicely balanced between caramel toffee like flav...

I do love anything with coconut added to it, so when I spied these Kallo Milk Chocolate & Coconut Rice Cakes for only 39p in Heron Foods I bought them immediately. They're currently on a 3 packs for £1 deal so it seems like they have a lot they need to get rid of. They're simply just plain rice cakes with a thin layer of milk chocolate and some dessicated coconut sprinkled over the top. They tasted nice enough, they're a great snack and the coconut definitely makes them less boring than a regular chocolate rice cake. But they could've been better...they really needed more coconut! Overall, not a bad snack at all and they definitely make a nice change from regular chocolate rice cakes, but hopefully they'll add more coconut to the recipe in future! 7.5 out of 10.

When I saw these "White chocolate caramel" coated rice cakes in Tesco's Free From section recently I got rather excited...not only are they gluten-free, but it sounded like they were topped with a potentially Caramac-like chocolate coating! Yay! Sadly it tasted nothing like Caramac. The rice cakes were tasty enough and the coating did liven them up a bit compared to regular rice cakes, but it wasn't quite the caramel hit I was hoping for. I tried eating the topping in isolation which was difficult, I had to nibble bits off the rice cake, and it just tasted of regular sweet white chocolate with a vague hint of caramel. Nice enough, but nothing majorly different from the regular white chocolate rice cakes from Nature's Store. Overall, if you're looking for something gluten-free, healthy but slightly naughty, these are worth a try but I'd recommend the White or Milk chocolate versions instead. 7 out of 10.