Dots Donuts - Forest Fruits - Ethical Delights! (@NLi10)

 The Junk Food Place at work (discarded food, not high-calorie food) has recently had a series of sweet treats for me to pick up. These are food that is out of date so the supermarket cannot sell it - but that is absolutely fine to eat.  If they didn't go to this charity then they would be disposed of - and that's wasteful!  These were £1.50 - then 64p then free for a donation for me!

For this you get 2 lovely doughnuts, sealed in a presentation box - and looking very luxurious.

I think the coverings are why they are called Dots (the other flavour I had later also had Dots on top).

And inside is a twin filling too! Yum.

For the first lot I just ate as is - for the Boston Cream flavour I microwaved it and it became a lush pudding.

My assumption is that this is a new brand that people haven't been brave enough to try rather than something that people haven't wanted - these are well worth £1.50 for two!  Not quite at Krispy Kreme level for the body, but the fillings are awesome and the toppings are interesting too.

I look forwards to eating more of these - whether for a donation or a trip to the Co-Op.

 

Nestle Kit Kat Orange (Co-Op) flavour By @SpectreUK

I'm almost sure I've had this before. This new Nestle Kit Kat Orange bar feels like it should have been around for years. Although Cinabar assures me that this format of four sticks just come out in the shops in the UK. Apparently they came out in a multipack as two stick packets a while back, but we didn't write about them then. However Cinabar did blog about the Kit Kat Chunky Orange flavour a while back.

I may have mentioned that we're not very adventurous here in the UK where chocolate flavours are concerned. I'm sure people would buy more of a range of flavours if they were available. Maybe we don't have a good reputation for an adventurous nature where snacking is concerned. I wouldn't mind trying a blackcurrant flavour Kit Kat.

There was an orange aroma on opening the packet. The four sticks had the usual Kit Kat wafers and milk chocolate coatings, and with an added orange tang to them. This tangy orange flavour was very flavoursome indeed. I really liked this Nestle Kit Kat Orange flavour and would definitely have them again.

Information on the packet; At 41.5g this bar is 208 calories for the four sticks, with 5.6g of fat, 20.5g of sugar, and 0.09g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Baked In Bagel Baking Kit (Ocado) By @Cinabar

I felt like a bit of baking and I liked the idea of trying to make something new. I have used the Bake In kits a fair bit and they always seem to work quite well and have pre-measured packs for ease. There isn’t anything pre-prepared for you, just measured dried ingredients and the recipe.

I followed the instructions and added the flour to a bowl, as well as the yeast and sugar and salt, mixing all of that together. I then added some warm water a bit at a time until it formed a dough. I kneaded it and left it to rise. This took nearly 90 minutes, if you aren’t used to making bread you need to include rising time.

After the dough has doubled in size you split it into six equal pieces, roll them into a ball, then put the end of a wooded spoon though the ball and spin the dough on the handle to create the bagel shape. I have to say this was not easy and my bagels didn’t look particularly even afterwards, but I did my best. Once shaped, set them aside for 10 minutes while you boil some water in a pan. The bagel dough balls each need soaking in the boiling water before being dried off and baked.

Mine was baked exactly to time and looked nice and brown, but still not equal in shape. Oh well, add some cream cheese and smoked salmon and the uneven shapes no longer mattered, they were a lovely treat.

Wotsits Giants - Prawn Cocktail (Ocado) By @Cinabar

I’m an easy sell. I like novelty. I buy things that make me smile, and Giant Wotsits work for me at that level. Plus, these ones are a new flavour I haven’t tried before. Here we have Wotsits Giants Prawn Cocktail flavour. The crisps are baked too meaning that they are lower calorie, but I guess this is a big bag and it really depends on how many I can eat.

We were having some of the Wotsists with lunch so I shared them out to go with our sandwiches. Even as I poured them out of the bag I was smiling, they really were giant curls of Wotsits.

Thankfully the flavour lived up to the hype too, these had a good strong prawn cocktail taste. There was plenty of zingy flavour, a hit of tomato, a splash of vinegar and a warmth of some spice too. They were spot on and I was so pleased the taste wasn’t too mild. My fingers did that thing that happens with Wotsits and were covered in seasoning. I ate all the Prawn Cocktail Giant Wotsits on my plate, then went back for the rest of the bag. My portion was defiantly not the recommended size, I think I might be hooked.

Coca Cola Signature Mixture 2 - Spicy - with Southern Comfort (By @NLi10)

I've had this little bottle of spicy Coke for ages - but not really a reason to crack it open.

 

My friend finished building the Lego Titanic on stream (28 hour build!) and we joked that we should drink Jack with one very large ice-cube to celebrate.  I didn't really  have that though, but figured this was the closest option.

See the finished titanic either on the video link above or on the pics here

It has lots of fire in it, but also lots of botanicals - could it be that Coke fears Fentimans?

Otherwise it sounds a lot like a Cola.

And I paired it with this - Southern Comfort & Lime from a previous review

Spirits don't go off do they?!

Using the traditional alcohol review glass

It fizzed up nicely and had a good smell

And it tasted great - basically like a Fentiman's cola cocktail with a kick of ginger - and then the fruity undertones of the Southern Comfort.

I'll have to either pick up more when Waitrose has them in at Christmas - or make my own by adding a dash of ginger beer to the cola like we did as kids!

Guinness Cold Brew Coffee Beer (Tesco) By @SpectreUK

Beer with coffee, whatever next. It's rare that I have a stout with my steak and chips. It's the perfect combination to me, but I'm usually blogging about some other beer on a Friday steak night. So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw this four pack of Guinness Cold Brew Coffee Beer turn up in the shopping. And then I noticed it was beer, and not stout.

It does say 'beer' on the label rather than specifically 'Porter', which can generally be brewed with coffee or have at least a coffee flavour from the roasted chocolate malt. So I'm expecting this Guinness Cold Brew Coffee Beer to be more of a Porter style beer. At 4% in volume it should go rather well with my steak and chips, even if it isn't a stout. Especially with its reported notes of coffee, chocolate and caramel. It almost sounds like an after dinner beer or pudding beer.

On popping open the 440ml can the excitable almost black frothy liquid inside blew up all over me, spurted out the sides of my gob as I tried desperately to catch it and then all over the carpet. So now the bedroom carpet smells like a bar room floor. Never mind. This sweet coffee, caramel and roasted chocolate flavoured beer tasted really good as it quickly covered me and everything else nearby.

Strong in coffee aroma, Guinness Cold Brew Coffee Beer smelled like a sweet caramel heavy coffee, with hints of dark chocolate to follow. On taste this coffee flavoured beer had a rich sumptuous caramel and coffee flavour to start with, which was quickly followed by a roasted chocolate malt.

This was a gorgeous deep aromatic and flavoursome beer that went perfectly with my steak and chips, and I managed to save what little was left for a bit of pudding, which was a Unicorn cake that Cinabar had baked that afternoon.

Cheers!

Unicorn Cake Baking Kit (Baked In) By @Cinabar

Its cake time! I was very kindly gifted this cake and this week has been a good week and deserved a bit of celebration. Spectre got a new job. I have used the kits from Baked In before and really enjoyed using them, so was really looking forward to giving this a try.

Inside the kit all the dry ingredients are pre-measured and ready to use, and my favourite part is it even contains the baking tins for making the layers of cake.

To start with, you add one of the dried bags to a bowl, mix in some butter, then an egg and a small amount of milk and whisk. All you do then is add it to a greased baking tin and repeat, four times to get four layers. They baked easily in about 20mins and rose nicely. The only hassle was cleaning the whisk and bowl between each layer to not cross-contaminate the colours.

Today was warm and the mixing of the icing sugar with the butter left me with a rather runny result. I did my best to layer up the sponges and put some on the top which oozed down the sides. I should have used less butter in retrospect to compensate, so apologies for the runny icing in the picture. It did still taste good. I also decorated it with hundreds and thousands and the cardboard cutout unicorn bits. It was super fun and made a very cute cake. The cake was delicious, I mean ever so naughty in terms of taste, sugary sweet baked goodness, but just what we needed for a treat.

Nutella Biscuits - Gooey Centred Crunchy Snacks (by @NLi10)

 These have been around a short while but I’ve managed to resist their charms. The latest biscuit craze does seem to be putting melty things in between two different sized biscuits - could they do a cheese version?

Here we have Nutella, the hazelnut version

With a lovely grainy biscuit base too

You get a decently weighty amount too - and they are pretty much all intact

Stylish too - with just enough goo

And even at English room temperature these are pretty melty.

A lovely gooey snack, and my preferred variety of these kind of things so far!

Cadbury Twirl Caramel flavour (Co-Op) By @SpectreUK

This is going to upset me. This is definitely going to upset me. Okay, so we're not all that adventurous when it comes to flavouring chocolate in the UK. Although caramel and milk chocolate do go exceptionally well with each other. In fact it's beyond doubt my favourite flavour of milk chocolate. Maybe I'm not all that adventurous when it comes to my indulgences, but I know what I like. So making this Cadbury Twirl Caramel flavour chocolate bar a limited edition is going to upset me.

I love regular Cadbury's Twirl chocolate bars. They're pretty much the neat version of a Cadbury's Flake. Well, unless you have a Dipped Flake of course. So I'm just going to adore this Cadbury Twirl Caramel flavour chocolate bar and wish it wasn't a limited edition. Well, you'd certainly think so anyway.

On opening the packet there was a milk chocolate and caramel aroma. The chocolate Twirl sticks inside looked just like the regular Twirl sticks. On taste there was Cadbury's milk chocolate to start with that was instantly followed by a gorgeous flavour of caramel. These two flavours wrapped lovingly around by tastebuds soothing my senses after a couple of days of tough job interviews. And the good news; I just had a phone call from my future boss, it looks like I've finally got some work to do.

Information on the wrapper; Each 21.5g Cadbury Twirl Caramel flavour finger was 114 calories, with 6.3g of fat, 12g of sugar, and 0.5g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Mini Viennese Vanilla Ice Creams (Aldi) By @Cinabar

Who doesn't love the classic Viennese ice cream layer desserts, and all of its retro goodness? Why wouldn’t you want to eat an entire (albeit miniature) one to yourself. Well, Aldi have put one on a stick and in the name of summer I’m giving it a try. I didn't need much encouragement to be fair.

I opened up the wrapper and two things stood out. Firstly, these are a small ice cream which makes sense as it does say ‘mini’ on the box. Still, I had been expecting them to be a little bit bigger. Secondly was how super cute these lollies are. They even have ripples down the side. There is a layer of chocolate throughout the middle as well as on the top and the base.

The ice cream is lovely and creamy and the chocolate is thin, but the dark nature makes the cocoa taste stand out. I like the crispiness of the chocolate which texture adds to theming of the original ice cream cake. My favourite thing, though, is the novelty. These Mini Viennese Vanilla Ice Creams look lovely and made me smile. A perfect treat on a warm evening.

Daim Cheesecakes (Tesco) By @Cinabar

I have been on annual leave today, extending my weekend, so it felt like it was time for a treat. We fancied a dessert so I had a little browse in the supermarket to see if I could find any slices of cheesecake. Although these aren’t slices, I was intrigued to find Daim Cheesecakes. They are in glass jars and there are two in the box. Once I opened the box, I could see the layers of the cheesecake nicely, a biscuit crumb base, a cheesecake layer and a topping of milk chocolate with Daim pieces. They looked seriously good.

The first thing to note is that the top layer is milk chocolate. Why am I pointing this out? Well, you store these Daim Cheesecakes in the fridge and that makes milk chocolate very solid, so I felt like I had to dig in to get the first mouthful. It was worth the effort though. They are a tasty treat. The biscuit layer was a chocolate biscuit crumb with a good flavour, the creamy cheesecake layer was spot on the Daim topping was lovely and had that fab nut brittle flavour. I found myself scraping every last bit out of the jar, a proper indulgent treat.

Mochi Cookies with Choc Chips & Artificial Matcha (by @NLi10)

Ah - cookies - wonderful American things. But wait - these are clearly international - Taiwanese to be precise.  But for the American Audience it seems.

It's in Oz! So American.

Pie Cookies also sounds very American - lets hope these taste at least a little international.

Look at these lovely little lumps, joyous little cookies that they are.

And they are just about gooey enough in the middle to match the pictures - so that's not so bad.

And the cookie part is quite like an American cookie with the odd aftertaste and everything. The green tea is fairly authentic - although it really makes me want a proper tea.

But...

A lead warning?  That's ... not something I want to see on my food.  Is this an Americanism like the 'please chew' warning? What on earth is going on over there?

Anyway - these are nice - not 'must buy' and something I'm happy to share with others.  The flavour is decent, and the Matcha buzz is there, but those warnings make me a little scared to have these again.

Juice Forsyth Juice Bonus Fruited IPA (Brew York) By @SpectreUK



Brew York Brewery must be a big fan. I always loved seeing Bruce Forsyth in anything. He was brilliant. An all round entertainer. One of the best performers that's ever been on TV as far I'm concerned. I was pretty upset when he passed away a few years back. The favourite programme I ever watched him in was The Muppets show. Brew York's favourite must have been 'Play Your Cards Right'.

At 5% in volume this Juice Forsyth Juice Bonus Fruited IPA was brewed with Cascade, Citra, CTZ (Columbus, Tomahawk, and Zeus), and Mosaic hops. This India Pale Ale had muchos pineapple, passion fruit, and mango added in the brewing. So this should be quite a tropical ale indeed, possibly perfect on a scorching hot day such as this.

On opening the can there was a fruity tropical citrus aroma explosion from the fizzy murky liquid inside. I could smell the pineapple, a touch of passion fruit and a whack of mango amongst the jumble of American style hops and sweet pale malts. This misty golden IPA had an initial tropical fruitiness that mixed with the multitude of hops, and then with sweet pale malts to the finish. 

Unfortunately I couldn't decide if a liked this Juice Forsyth Juice Bonus Fruited IPA. It was almost too heavy with tropical juice rather than with hops and malts that the confused flavours seemed to fight each other rather than work together. There was indeed such a wide variety of flavours all jumbling over each other, rather than complementing each other like Bruce's wide variety of talents.  I prefer the legendary performer myself rather than the beer. 

And you know what good old Bruce would have said; "Nice to see you, to see you nice!"

The Italian Stack and Tiramisu McFlurry (McDonalds) By @Cinabar

Gosh it is hot today, the sun is beaming down and I’m thinking summer is properly starting. So we decided we would grab a takeaway and and check out the new items at McDonalds from the summer menu. I picked up and Italian Stack burger and a Tiramisu McFlurry for dessert.

I was impressed by the burger when I saw it, it is quite large with its double burgers and there was plenty of crispy fresh salad in their too. Once you bite in you realise that switching the cheese to mozzarella does make it fun and stringy, but it is a nice creamy cheese. There is tomato and basil in the bread bun adding a gentle bit of Italian seasoning to the flavour but what really stood our for me was the extra onions, such a nice taste with the beef. A very enjoyable burger indeed.

We also picked up the Tiramisu McFlurry for afters, and have to admit the heat on their car journey made them melt a little, but they were still solid enough to enjoy. Mixed in with the ice cream were biscuit pieces and chocolatey Tiramisu sauce. I like texture so the biscuit bits were lovely to crunch on in amongst the soft ice cream. The sauce was good too, it had melted into the rest of the McFlurry but added a nice hit of coffee taste, just what we needed to cool down on such a hot day.

Evil Custard Bunny Bao - Possessed Snacks @NLi10

Is this a Halloween review? 

What are they?!  Why are the eyes like that?  What have they seen??!

Oh - Rabbit shaped Custard Buns.  They look quite happy and innocent on the package.

This suggests 3-4 minutes in the microwave - but that must be for the whole pack.

Ah - specialised steam box - I don't have that - luckily I have the steam bags from the other brand - have to get the timings right.

So menacing, but so cute.

30 sec each isn't too far off - much more and the bottoms burn and go hard.  The custard is hot but still gooey.

This one didn't go right and was over cooked.

Luna likes the little ears, but was not keen on the custard.  

A successful China discovery but maybe they also sell microwave bao boxes?