The Best Apple Crumble Mince Pies (Morrisons) By @SpectreUK

I do love mince pie season. I remember a year or so back when we reviewed every mince pie on the market and rated them. Ah, good times.

We try to have mince pies every weekend. They go especially well with rum and lemonade, or mead, and after a cheese and cold meats, and French Bread meal.

These Morrisons The Best Apple Crumble Mince Pies are short crust pastry filled with apple, caramel and vine fruit, topped with all butter crumble. On first bite I noticed the crumble on the top falls off quite a lot. There was sweet apple to start with as the pastry melted in my mouth. Then there was a mincemeat vine fruit flavour and sweet caramel to finish. This was a mouthwatering mince pie indeed. Yum.

Information on the box: 4 x Mince Pies at 176 calories per pie, with 5.7g of fat, 16g of sugar, and 0.28g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Margarita Pizza Puffs (Tesco) by @Cinabar

Our Tesco Express does not seem fully committed to the idea of new Christmas snacks yet. They have some lovely seasonal products in stock, but they are hidden right at the top of the shelves rather than being proudly on display. Once Halloween has passed I am quite happy for Christmas goodies to be out, but for now I am having to keep my eyes open.

These Margarita Pizza Puffs do not sound especially festive, but the design on the bags place them firmly in the new Christmas range. We had them on a film night and watched Fantasia on Disney to mark the eighty fifth anniversary of the film yesterday. I poured some into a bowl and could not believe the size. They are enormous. I was expecting something Wotsits sized but these are huge and tower over everything. They do look great in bowls though.

I gave one a try and the first thing that hit me was the crunch. It is spectacular. They are super crisp to start and then soften a little. I love the texture on these giants.

The flavour is spot on. There is plenty of tomato, a good hint of cheese and lots of Italian herbs. Spectre thought there was a touch of pesto too. They are undeniably Italian and wonderfully seasoned. I loved them and we will definitely pick them up again well before Christmas. As for Fantasia, there was not as much Mickey as I expected, but the film is full of imagination and very clearly was ahead of its time.

KFC Stranger Things Burger of Redness [@NLi10]

 All the fast food places are on themed promotions in the UK at the moment.  McDonlds has their terrible international menu, but KFC have the TV show that thinks it's a movie - Stranger Things.

I've never seen the show as we didn't have Netflix when it came out, and now - well there is just so much content out there - We'll get around to it.  I played red-box D&D in the actual 80s so I mean I've basically lived through it.

Here we have the nice KFC chips, and the tea as the drink because the sugar rules are different here.

But - what's in the box?

It's a burger - but red - and at KFC where the burgers are the least exciting menu option.  It's not even upside down, which would have been a fun thing to do.

What's the burger?

Sticky red chicken! The sauce has a really odd consistency like it's all cornflour or something.  The chicken was the normal decent chicken, and the spicy sauce added to it nicely.  It's a faff to eat though and I'd rather have just dipped the chicken into the sauce.  The slaw was fine too.

The red burger is more off-putting than a feature, but it does look fun.

Overall this is a fine meal - but a little pricey at £11 for a large- but I'd consider having this again unlike the McDonalds Canadian burger.  The wrap of the day with the nice chips and the ice-tea is still probably preferable and cheaper too.

Candy Kittens Lemon Sherbet (M&S) By @SpectreUK

Some service stations we stop at on the way back from comic cons have some pretty posh nosh. These new gourmet Candy Kittens Lemon Sherbet gummies are a fizzy gummy reimagining of the original retro sweet.

Made with real fruit juice, these Candy Kittens Lemon Sherbet gummies were produced with a plant based vegan friendly recipe. On opening the packet the Lemon Sherbet gummies had a sugary sweet aroma and more than a hint of lemon rind.

In taste these Candy Kittens Lemon Sherbet gummies had a fizzy natural Lemon flavour, just not sour at all, but sweet and zesty on chewing. I couldn't quite gel with them myself though, I was hoping for something a bit more face twistingly sour.

Information on the bag: The 140g contains 349 calories, with 0.1g of fat, 60g of sugar, and 0.04g of salt. Please see photograph for te ingredients.

American Screwball Dessert (Hickory’s) By @Cinabar

We’ve been going to Hickory’s a little more often than usual recently, as it’s one of our favourite restaurants. They’ve just launched their Autumn/Winter menu, and the Gumbo is back, always a highlight. It’s a hearty stew with sausage, chicken, rice, and beans, and it’s a firm favourite of ours. It returns every year and never disappoints.

We don’t usually order dessert, but today we decided to make an exception when I spotted the American Screwball on the menu. When it arrived, it looked fantastic, ice cream covered in red and blue sauce, with white marshmallows completing the colours of the American flag.

A British ice cream Screwball usually hides a gobstopper at the bottom, but this version didn’t. Instead, it featured plenty of fro-co (frozen custard, or vanilla ice cream) and lots of marshmallows, which made it fun to eat. The red sauce was fruity, while the blue had a more tangy, sour edge. I suspect the blue colour might have come from melted sprinkles, though I can’t be sure. Either way, it was bright, cheerful, and very enjoyable.

By the end of the dessert, I realised my tongue was blue, which made me laugh. It’s nice to be reminded you’re still young at heart sometimes!