Reese’s Fast Break (America)

Recently I have been involved in the most amazing candy swap with Gigi Reviews over in The States, we have both sent a stash of goodies to each other in order to compare and share items from different countries. I explained to Gigi that the thing that bugs me most about the British market is the complete lack of peanut butter chocolate bars, and oh my she has sent some fine examples for me to try.
I decided to write first about this Reese’s Fast Break, it was chosen a little at random, mainly because she sent me so many lovely things it was hard to pick where to start. Fear not though, I shall be making my way through them and letting you all know how I get on.
Strangely in the UK ‘Break’ in a product title tends to mean the literal break and the item usually has some sort of crisp biscuit. This is not the case for this bar, as its contents are actually quite soft and made with nougat. In fact the bar is ever so slightly chewy where the nougat is, but soft for the peanut butter layer. I absolutely loved all the different textures in this bar, it made it a pleasure to eat. The peanut butter has such a wonderful salty nutty taste, and goes perfectly with the chocolate, this was one amazing bar and I loved every bite. Regular readers will know me as a bit of a Milka fan girl, I think I have to add Reese’s fan girl into that basket too. If this bar is anything to go by, I’m going to love trying all the other wonderful choccies, thanks Gigi. :-)

Bonne Maman Apple Tatin (Waitrose)

This dessert is an apple tart that is heated in the microwave and served hot. I have to say I have been rather impressed with the Bonne Maman range to date and was rather looking forward to this. I am pleased to say it did not disappoint.
These tarts have the most amazing rich toffee flavour mixed with a sweet fresh apple taste. The strength of the flavours are quite intense, and I mellowed them by serving them with a dollop of crème fresh which seemed to go perfectly. The flavour that this reminded me of was toffee apple, there isn’t a noticeable taste of cinnamon, just wonderfully rich toffee sauce and lots of apple. It made a quick and easy dessert, which gets full marks for flavour, providing you have a sweet tooth! Yum!

Cadbury’s Crunchie and Caramel Biscuits (Sainsbury’s)

These biscuits were in a strange place in my local Sainsbury’s, they were on a promotional stand, in the chocolate and sweet isle, and not in the biscuit section. I think perhaps the reference to Cadbury’s chocolate bars, confused whoever were putting these out, because they are undeniably biscuits.
The Caramel version consists of a layer of buttery shortbread biscuit, with a thick layer of runny caramel all coated in Cadbury’s chocolate. I loved that these biscuits contained proper caramel and that the chocolate proportions were generous. All the flavours went together really well, and made an absolutely fab biscuit.
The Crunchie biscuits were also good. The biscuit base on this variety was a rich golden coloured and was flavoured with cinder toffee. On top of this is a layer of Crunchie pieces, broken quite small, but a decent layer all the same, and again it is coated in Cadbury’s chocolate. The Crunchie biscuits were sweet and rich and the cinder toffee flavour was lovely and sweet and undeniably Crunchie. Another rather tasty biscuit in the range.
I thoroughly recommend both of these biscuits, it is hard to call it between them, but they both represent their chocolate bars perfectly, with lashings of flavour.

{via @Nli10} MilkyWay Minute (red flavour), Juicy Fruits Crvena Naranca (Blood Orange?)

Dobar dan!

Recently I spent a week in Croatia on holiday and thought in the interests of the site I would check out the local snack foods and report on the most interesting ones.
This week covers a couple of snacks I picked up from a small shop in the old town part of the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia. First up is the MilkyWay minute, which a quick Google tells me is actually quite a widespread snack. In Eastern Europe It's essentially a breakfast bar, with a hard biscuit base with protruding sides which are filled with a mix of yogurt and bits of fruit. These fruit parts seem to depend on the colour of the wrapper with apple and cinnamon being mentioned a lot, but being the red flavour this had either strawberries or raspberries in it. I'm not quite sure which as the wrapper did not make it home.
Like a lot of bars with dried fruit the flavours in this are really quite strong, and the yogurt and biscuit means that despite their small size (drink in picture was for scale) they are actually fairly filling. If they did these in the UK then I think I'd buy them for work breaks, and as we do get a lot of Eastern European foods popping up in 99p style shops it might be worth a hunt.

The drink, shown pictured from the walls of Dubrovnik, was a strong orange flavour leading me to think that the translation of the label is blood orange. I remember Orangina's version been mentioned on these very pages by Cinabar some time ago, and while I was a fan it wasn't something you could drink in large quantities. This was a lot smoother, and a welcome purchase as we did a lot of walking on the day I picked this up (although not as much as on the day we went to the top of the hill in the back of the picture)!
I think the fact that this was a blended drink from concentrate actually helped the flavour as it's a lot more refreshing experience and a lot more drinkable than some of the stronger tasting drinks over here. I saw a lot of adverts for similar drinks so I think that in Croatia it's probably one of the leading brands.

Bacchus Belgian Raspberry Beer {via Spectre} (Sainsbury's)

Generally when anyone mentions raspberries to me, the first thing that crosses my mind is fart gags. Like most people, I'm not a fan of traffic wardens and have been caught on several occasions blowing raspberries at them in the street. I can also entertain myself for hours blowing a diverse range of noises on Cinabar's tummy! I do like raspberries. Well, artificially enhanced things that taste like raspberries (example: raspberry ripple ice cream... er... that's about it). Oh, oh... I like raspberry jam! And as far as I know, that has raspberries in it somewhere. I also like beer. Though mixing the two together seems like violating some unwritten code. Raspberry beer doesn't sound like a manly drink, sorry to sound sexist, but hey, I prefer my beer to have some bite at the back of my throat. Don't get me wrong, raspberry beer sounds like a good idea in principle. It might make a good pudding beer to have with something sweet, such as ice cream, cake or chocolate, or especially if you're having the missus for dessert... At the ultimate least, if you drink tonnes of the stuff then it might taste great on the way back up! With all this in mind, as well as my previous episodes with odd flavoured ales (see *bane of banana beer* and *cherry beer catastrophe*), I unwrapped and popped open the bottle. Although it was the same reddish colour as the cherry beer, no overpowering aroma of berries blasted me off my feet. I took a tentative sip and was surprised at how sweet, but not unpleasant this beverage was. I drank a little more of this beery berry wine, and although I couldn't quite tell that it was specifically raspberry flavoured, I found it strangely moreish. Was I finally getting in touch with my feminine side? Whilst humming the theme tune to Friends and after some strange looks from Cinabar, I tore open a bag of Nando's HOT flavoured crisps in an effort to blunt the syrupy taste and kill the camp feeling. I was surprised to find that they went rather well together. The hot spices complimented the sweet tasting beverage and I suddenly noticed both beer and crisps had gone. Although I don't think I'd dash out to buy another, at least I can say I marginally enjoyed drinking a fruit flavoured beer for a change. I just have to learn to steer Cinabar away from the new / weird flavoured beer section in the supermarket...