Califia Farms - Pumpkin Spice Cold Brew (Ocado) By @Cinabar

 

This is my season, I love cinnamon. From here all the way to Christmas, warming spices are everywhere. We start off the season with this Pumpkin Spice Cold Brew by Califia Farms. I ordered this bottle online and I actually ordered two because I didn’t know how big the bottle was. Yes, I know it tells you on the site but only in the small print, I thought the bottle would be a one serving, whereas it actually lasted me a couple of days.

I poured some into a glass and could already pick up the spice. I gave it a sip and it hit the spot completely. There was plenty of spice, and the coffee was sweet but not overly so. There was lots of cinnamon and nutmeg and it had a lovely warming flavour despite being from the fridge and being cold. This was an excellent pumpkin spice coffee. The milk in the drink is almond and it is very mild, just a hint of nuttiness but mostly a thick creamy base. The only thing is, it is a bit weird drinking ice coffee in the autumn. I couldn’t get enough of it in the summer. However, if it is pumpkin spice I’m still in - I’ll just put that jumper on, get my slippers on and have myself an iced Pumpkin Spice Cold Brew.

Kit Kat Chunky Lotus Biscoff (Tesco) By @SpectreUK

Finally someone listens to me. Okay, so it probably wasn't me, but at least Nestle have created what I wanted. A couple of months ago I blogged about a mini Kit Kat Lotus Biscoff. I said that compared to the amount of calories that were in it, the bar was way too tiny. I also said that all I could think about at the time was a Kit Kat Chunky. Well, now Nestle have produced a Kit Kat Chunky Lotus Biscoff.

I had a good cup of fairly milky tea with a couple of original Lotus Biscoff on the side to compare their flavour with this Kit Kat Chunky Lotus Biscoff. On opening the wrapper I could see the thick coating of Nestle milk chocolate. On first bite there was a topper of creamy Lotus Biscoff followed by three wafers underneath. This bar had a good crunch and a little spiciness from the Lotus Biscoff flavour. Not as spicy as the original Lotus Biscoff, but the flavour was there all the same, and all covered in luscious milk chocolate.

This Kit Kat Chunky Lotus Biscoff was very flavoursome indeed and I'd definitely have it in regularly. It went rather well with my cup of milky tea and original Lotus Biscoff on the side. I even managed to save a little calories for some toffee popcorn and vanilla ice cream too.

Information on the wrapper; Per 42g bar was 221 calories, with 5.8g of fat, 18.9g of sugar, 0.12g of salt. Please see see attached photograph for the ingredients.

Quality Street Favourites - The Purple One (Tesco) By @Cinabar

The greatest of all the Quality Street sweets is The Purple One. There is no contest, these are the ones I pick out of the tin each year. I love nuts, I love oozing caramel and a chocolate layer and I’m not sure how you could improve that. I guess this year you could go back to the proper packaging. I’m not a fan of the new paper wrappers. The old wrappers were biodegradable by the way, despite reports in the press of them being plastic, they were entirely plant based. So who knows what that was really about?

This new bar, Quality Street Favourites - The Purple One, is a representation in bar form of my favourite chocolate. The bar is well a bar, so quite flat. How are they going to pull off oozing caramel and a hazelnut? Well, only one way to find out. I broke a piece off and immediately the caramel showed up, and it was runny, which was a really good sign. I gave it a taste, and it worked, it recreated all my favourite flavours. Yes, the nuts are in smaller bits but there were enough of them to give flavour, the caramel was pretty plentiful and had the sweet golden flavour and the smooth sweet milk chocolate enveloped the whole thing. It was gorgeous. This bar didn’t last long. I only intended to have a couple of pieces as a taster but I couldn’t stop myself.

Sadly, the wrapper on this Quality Street Favourites The Purple One bar doesn’t recycle in our home recycling bins and it doesn’t biodegrade. I hope they work on fixing that.

Walkers Baked Cheese and Jalapeño Crisps (Ocado) By @Cinabar

I haven’t yet found any of the Walker’s Christmas flavours of crisps, perhaps it is still too early, but there are still some new varieties coming out in other ranges of theirs. I spotted these Cheese and Jalapeño Walkers in their Baked range, so they sounded perfect for lunch times. The crisps are baked, not fried, so they have lower calories. I tipped the pack out onto my lunch plate and did think that there weren’t that many in the bag, which seems to happen with multipack bags.

The crisps are hexagon in shape, because they are reformed and made from potato flakes instead of slices. I guess this is to help them cook while baking, or give texture. They are nice and crunchy. The positive bit about the shape is that they do have a tiny bit of ridging to catch and hold the seasoning, which is helpful. I gave one a try and was actually rather impressed. The cheese flavour is about right, a good cheddar-like flavour and a nice bit of heat from the jalapeño, there is a touch of sweetness from the chilli too, which really worked. It reminded me of the cheese you can buy with the chillies running through it, a hit of spice but just enough milky cheese flavour to tame it. These are a win, I think I just want a few more in the bag.

Popcorn Shed White Chocolate Popcorn (Popcorn Shed) By @SpectreUK

I do love everything white chocolate, but I've never had white chocolate popcorn before. This Popcorn Shed White Chocolate Popcorn may be a decent late night snack, especially accompanied by a pot of low calorie vanilla ice cream. The back of the packet stated that this popcorn was flavoured with caramel and white chocolate. I mean, this snack is sounding better every second.

 

On opening the packet you can see from the photograph that this Popcorn Shed White Chocolate Popcorn looked pretty much like any other regular popcorn at a glance. On closer inspection (yes, we do that here), the popcorn had a light covering of white chocolate over caramel. On taste the initial flavour was creamy white chocolate followed closely by sweet caramel. On mixing the vanilla ice cream with the white chocolate, sweet caramel and popcorn flavours, this was an indulgent flavoursome heavenly treat to watch with a good movie.

Information on the packet; The 24g packet was 103 calories, with 3.5g of fat, 10g of sugar, and 0.2g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients, which are all natural and gluten free.