Sparkle The Melting Unicorn Hot Chocolate (Aldi) By @Cinabar

I have bought another novelty hot chocolate, and it doesn’t get more novelty than this; Sparkle The Melting Unicorn Hot Chocolate. I found this in Aldi as part of their Dairyfine range, and it did make me smile. Here we have a white chocolate unicorn, filled with marshmallows and milk chocolate drops. The idea is that you drop in hot milk and have an amazing hot chocolate, which is really quite simple.

So once home, I opened up the box, heated some milk in the microwave, and set up the TV, ready to show the latest episode of Dragon's Den. I put the unicorn in the mug, and it nearly filled it! This is a big chunk of chocolate. 

I added the hot milk, and it soon melted from underneath and shrank into the mug. 

The top melted too, and out popped the chocolate drops, and the marshmallows rose to the surface. The best part of this hot chocolate was that I then added a spoon to the mix and found that the whole thing dissolved and mixed super easily; this was not expected given how much chocolate there was.

The flavour was yummy; it is very sweet and very creamy, as a white hot chocolate should be. The addition of the chocolate drops was brilliant, as it enhanced the cocoa flavour and brought a bit of balance. The marshmallows were lovely too; they looked pretty and added a nice bit of sweetness to the drink. 

This Sparkle The Melting Unicorn Hot Chocolate made me happy and was something I would buy again. It would make a lovely gift or treat in an Easter basket, even if it isn’t bunny-shaped. 

Swiss Miss Unicorn Marshmallow Coca Mix (Candy Mail) By @Cinabar

I recently had an online from an import shop and I couldn’t resist adding a box Swiss Miss to my order. They make hot chocolates and do themed ones like this Unicorn Marshmallow Coca Mix. They are instant hot chocolates but are generous with the powder and are nice and sweet. Good instant hot chocolates are hard to find, so I do like this brand, and they appeal to my sweet tooth and love of novelty.

Inside the box are double sachets, one half has chocolate powder and the other half has marshmallows. I poured the cocoa into my mug and I poured most of the mallows in too, but left a few for sprinkling on the cream topping. Now the whole box is centred around these being unicorn marshmallows and in reality they are just small bits, which is disappointing. I was hoping for them to have some shape. Not to worry, they looked pretty in the mug.

I added hot water and the cocoa dissolved super quickly. Then I decorated, and it did look smart. The flavour, too, is a blast of sweet and a lot of chocolate. It is a soothing drink and one of the few that passed the test for me in the instant section. I loved the fun nature of the drink and it is pretty with coloured specks everywhere, it looks like a party more than a unicorn. I will still smile when I make the rest of the sachets, they are good fun.

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.

Rice Krispies Squares - Dragon Creation (Sainsbury) By @Cinabar

So this is the latest snack review in our mythological creatures series. We have been trying out various products with varieties inspired by unicorns and etc, to see how these translate into foodstuffs. Generally speaking they have all sounded far more exciting than they are and left rather ordinary flavours and designs despite the potential. The latest item to join the category are these Rice Krispies Squares Dragon Creation edition an dI’m hoping there is a bit of magic. The packaging looks fairly bright and interesting and I was keen to see how the product looked outside the packaging.

I have to say I was really impressed when I opened up the wrapper, the bars do look very impressive. There are obviously lots of marshmallow Rice Krispies, but there are chocolate bits (dragon eggs I think) and smart looking candy dragon flames. There was actually some effort in the appearance and I have too say I liked the way they looked. As someone who likes interesting textures I also liked there added crunch and it made it fun to eat. I wish there was an added flavour to make it truly special, they should have gone with cinnamon flames, but the taste was quite plain and just sugar. Dragons don’t really say usual vanilla marshmallow Krispies to me, but at least there was some imagination used in the decoration.

McVities Unicorn Rainbow Crystal Cake Bars (Asda) By @Cinabar

Okay, another product that is on the mythical creature band wagon. I don’t mind the association with unicorns and mermaids, they are all on trend and cool, but I do kind of hope that any product that goes down this route has something special about it too. These new McVities Unicorn Rainbow Crystal Cake Bars promise rainbow crystals, so that at least sounds a bit different.
The sponge inside though is vanilla, and the creme on top of the sponge is vanilla and nothing says exciting like vanilla does it. The coating is the regular milk chocolate one around it, so basically all hopes are pinned on the rainbow crystals.

I took the outer wrapper off and found nicely individually packaged cake bars, they are the kind of thing that would make a kid smile if they found it in their lunch box. The packaging is cute and pink and very much up to the theme.
I cut the cake bar in half ready to witness the rainbow crystals spectacular.

I looked hard, there was a pale orange crystal, and maybe a pale pink one just visible in the filling. It was not much of a rainbow, and it wasn’t very exciting. Further bites revealed the same, not much to see here. The crystals did add a crunch when you are eating them, but the flavours are all vanilla so that was nice enough but again not really what I’d expect from something which is supposed to be a magical unicorn like experience. Oh well, these McVities Unicorn Rainbow Crystal Cake Bars will get eaten but frankly I want more novelty in my novelty items.

Blueberry Uni-Popcorn (Asda) By @Cinabar

Last week we discovered that the Co-Op (via some ice cream cones) thought that Mermaid as a flavouring equates to bubblegum. I can’t really work out the link, or what other flavour they could use. Today Asda is declaring unicorn’s are blueberry flavour. I get that these limited edition mythical creature items are right on trend, but it is bugging me that there isn’t much of an obvious flavour that goes with them. It is almost as if brands are using fairly regular flavours and then just packaging them up. Smarties decided that unicorns are milk chocolate, which was a lucky coincidence for them and cued the rather lazy tie in. I guess I probably wouldn’t have picked up this blueberry popcorn without the smart themed packaging either, so I have fallen for the trap too.

Inside the bag are six individual bags of Blueberry Uni-Popcorn, all at just 80 calories each. The design is quite pretty and the popcorn itself is a lovely purple colour too, which I did rather like. To be fair the popcorn was tasty, there was lots of fruitiness and these were heavily flavoured in sweetness. The popcorn pieces were crispy and tasty, I liked them. They have quite a high sugar content, but overall the calories aren’t too bad on the bag and it does make them something I would take to work. These are a success, the flavour is good, the packaging is fun and they make a lovely snack. I’m still not sure about unicorns, but this popcorn I can believe in.

4 Mer-Mazing Cones (Co-Op) By @Cinabar

If it isn’t unicorns or llamas it is mermaids. These current in themes kind of work for decorated items, think mermaids and unicorns on back to school pencil cases, I’d be okay if they left it there. I know these are the “in” things at the minute. I get confused how this translates to food though and to be honest food manufacturers seem to have the same problem. When I was in the Co-Op this box of Mer-Mazing Cones caught my eye, it is vey pretty packaging and is pretty much advertising mermaid flavoured ice creams which was weird enough to make me pick them up. In Co-Op terms though this flavour translates to bubblegum, I have no idea how but I’m thinking I don’t think I could have come up with anything better or less random.

Out of the wrappers the cones are prettier still, the ice cream colours are of the sea and look very smart and marbled. There are sugar decorations that look like little pearls and the dark cone is very dramatic. The taste is as you could guess very sweet, the flavour of bubblegum is quite in your face but you get used to it as you munch. The sugar decorations feel more like wafers and they have a very light texture, and the cone itself adds an unexpected hit of chocolate, which I liked. The bubblegum sauce is where the strength of the flavour is, but it grew on me. I’m actually looking forward to the rest of the ice creams.
If I stop and try to work out how mermaids and bubblegum are related then these Mer-Mazing Cones annoy me, when I can let that go I think these are well decorated tasty treats.

Flipz Unicornz Pretz Pinkz Sparklz Nomz (@NLi10)

When we were little we'd pick up sweets and treats in the supermarket - rush them to our mother and she'd say no because they were silly indulgences.  Dejectedly we'd dump them on the row end by the tills.  And there they would presumably be put back by the assistants, or so I thought.  As an adult who has no reason to go down those bits, I spotted this dumped with the batteries at the end of an aisle and snapped it up.  A new flavour of Flipz based around unicornz? Sweet! 

Look at these colourz, can you imagine the joy on the childz face when they spot this and take it to their bill payer. 

The bag even tells you that they are MAGICAL which is great.  I mean the kidz will probably be disappointed with the salty goodness of the Flipz but for me these are amazing.

As usual the helicopter view looks a little disappointing because of packing space, but the smell is amazing even if the colourz are not quite as vivid as the art.

But here it is in all it's glory, a bit battered from going backwards and forwards to work in the bag, but still recognisable and whole!

How do they taste?

Like white covered pretzels and magic and a little hint of fudge on top!  I could have eaten the whole bag but I needed to share these at games tonight so I resisted.  They totally should make sharing size bagz of these for partiez.

And now they need to do Blue(berry) ones based around Narwalz. plz.

Unicorn Edition Smarties (Asda) By @Cinabar

It isn’t a food related trend, but Unicorns are definitely in at the minute. You can find unicorn designs on anything and everything, be it a swimming pool float to a new mug the unicorn design has made it in 2018. This does have some problems with food cross-overs as there isn’t an obvious flavour, but Smarties gave it a try, and to be honest I don’t think they hit the mark.
The bag is nicely decorate in its pink and blue with a unicorn design on the front. The packaging says fun, the contents say regular Smarties, just blue and pink coloured ones. Yes the concept works, I’ve eaten enough regular Smarties to know the formula is okay, it is just that there is nothing new here.
For me it is the fact that they could have done so much more. Smarties with an edible glitter covering, a new coloured shell, or even a two-tone shell, how about a unicorn design on the shell? So many possibilities. Smarties containing popping candy, heck even something as simple as a white chocolate filling would have made it look a bit more like they made an effort. Unicorns are magical, so it strikes me there should be something magical, or at least a bit more unique and innovative about Unicorn Smarties, not just regular pink and blue ones in a bag. As much as I like Smarties I was a bit disappointed at the lack of effort for this tie in product. It is all about the packaging, there is nothing else new to see here. I get that the pink and blue colours might be useful if you have bought the bag for use in a baking project, but I hardly think that was the target market. Come on Smarties, you had the opportunity to impress us and you chose the minimum effort option. Personally I’ll stick to regular Smarties.

Unicorn Slices (feat. New Day) by @NLi10 and Mr Kipling

Here we have some Mr Kipling Unicorn Slices - and seeing as I was going to a Wrestlemania party i chose to eat them during the New Day match because they love unicorns too!

Here we can see the huge projector screen and the New Day entrance, featuring unicorns and pancakes.

There are even little people dressed as pancakes handing out pancakes - maybe I brought the wrong snack!

Turns out you can't really see food if you take it's picture in front of a projection screen.  This isn't ideal.

Luckily we had one left to take home for a decent shot.

Note the penguin themed scamper-pants.  These are your standard Mr Kipling slices - basically pure sugar.  At first I was upset they hadn't hid any kind of flavour in there, but then I realised that unicorns probably taste of pure sugar anyway.

If you want hyperactive children then get these, otherwise you can probably pick up other versions that have a taste too!

Unicorn Carrots [Oaklands - @Lidluk] (by @NLi10)

 While looking for green veggies to halt my cravings (settled on sprouts - even though it's not Christmas) I came upon this wonderful little package for £1.

 

This is just essentially a box of smaller carrots of a variety of varieties but where they are all pointy ones.  As baby carrots go we tend to just get the orange ones.

 

Here we have a lot of orange, a few white (parsnips really) and some dark and light purple ones - like carrots originally were in the wild!

 

They look very aesthetically pleasing, especially on the trendy green chopping board.

 

And inside they look particularly cool.  I didn't really need carrots, but I've been enjoying this little bit of variety in the veg. 

Branding healthy, whole food in a way that appeals to children and makes the adults job a little easier is a great idea.  'Eat your veg' isn't really appealing, but 'do you want unicorn carrots tonight?' is a much more tempting proposition.  Can we think of other ones? Can we find a way to rescue the broccoli princess? Would boys want to eat Goblin Sprouts?  More creative ideas in the comments please!

At £1 these are reasonably priced too, from the UK and something I've not seen outside of Lidl so a reason to pop in to pick up the fresh stuff (the blueberries were amazing this week - yum!).