Oaks Hampers - Chocolate Box (@oakshampers) [by @cinabar]

So Christmas is coming and we all have that person who we just don't know what to buy for, and it's difficult to think of something. I recently received this fantastic hamper from Oaks, the Chocolates Box.
It comes all tied in ribbon, and opening it is a total pleasure. I alway love recieiving parcels, but hampers are extra special. It's just such a treat and then such a wonderful voyage of discovery going through all the exquisite goodies within.
Some of the items were from brands I recognised, like the chocolate popcorn from Joe+Seph. It has a generous coating of chocolate and the ultimate addition to a movie night in.
I have also tried Willies Cocoa chocolate before, and those bars really are the best. His white chocolate in particular is outstanding and well worth a try. This set contain three bars, white, milk and dark. They are expensive chocolates, but this is all about having a treat.

One of the best finds in this hamper was that wonderful jar of chocolate and raspberry Love Jam. It was quite runny when I opened it, but spread remarkably well onto a hot toasted crumpet. The flavour was outstanding, it had loads of zingy berry flavour all mixed with the tones of dark chocolate. Magic. It is literally one of my favourite spreads, and I'm going to have track down some more as my jar didn't last long at all. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a jam jar quite so quickly.
Talking of raspberry goodness no hamper would be complete without some biscuits, and the chocolate and raspberry biscuits in this box are delicate and perfect with a cupper, as is the rich piece of Panforte.
To finish things up we had hot chocolate made with the Gnaw Hot Choc Shots. They melted into my mug making a lovely drink which came topped with marshmallows. Heaven.
This seriously is the perfect gift for a chocolate lover, the ideal extravagant treat. It was great to try some new goodies and rediscover some lovely items from luxury brands, everything was so well selected.

By Cinabar

Holy Lama - Spice Drops [By @Cinabar]

This is a bit of a new product on the market. These new Spice Drops consist of droppers which are filled with concentrated liquid spice. The first advantage is that they take up a lot less room in the spice drawer than traditional pots, but the other key point is that they mix with liquid a lot easier. Not to mention they are easy to measure out exact portions with too. For me these new Spice Drops meant one main thing, flavoured lattes!

I am a big fan of flavoured lattes, we have a Tassimo at home and I do have a few bottles of syrups to add variety. My main problem with them is that they don't just add a bit of spice they add an extra hit of sugar too. That's okay but if truth be told I don't put sugar in my coffee, so I'm never that fused by the calories of the extra added sweetness. I’d rather just have the extra flavour, which is why these Spice Drops sounded perfect.

The drops don't add the sugar, they are just spice and they mix really easily into my hot drinks as they are already liquid. I have tried both cinnamon and cardamom in my lattes, and both are heaven. You just add a few drops and they mix in really well, and add a lovely natural none-syrupy taste. The packet advises how much to put in (the different spices do vary) but they add a lovely spicy hint to my hot drinks. I feel it is a much truer cinnamon latte than I’ve had before, with its woody warm hints making a brilliant soothing winter drink. The cardamom in coffee was a magic find. It was one of those that I wasn’t sure whether it would work or not, but again the clean spicy flavour was natural and added a lovely twist to the drink.
I also have tried the mulled wine spices, and I’m sure they would be fab being used with their intended purpose, but I still had hot drinks on my mind. I added it to hot chocolate and discovered it makes the most wonderful Christmas drink in the world! The chocolate just works so we well with all those seasonal spices. It’s my new favourite hot chocolate flavour!
And while I’m being creative I have every intention of making mulled wine flavour cupcakes using these drops as a seasonal treat too!

Holy Lama Spice Drops are available at: http://www.holylama.co.uk/

By Cinabar

Little Doone Sweet Balsamic Dressing - Chilli (Lake district) [reviewby @NLi10]

This one is another holiday find.  Whilst on a nice long walk on one of our last days in the Lake District I spotted a small shop with lots of local and indie foods.  These were mostly ingredients and not snacks, but I did find a few ranges that other people may be able to get that I hadn't seen before.

One of these was this Little Doone sweet balsamic dressing.  We do tend to get through a decent amount of balsamic vinegar, although I do like rice vinegar too.  The idea of a premixed dressing using it was appealing, especially one with a chilli hint.  The little book contained an extra chilli eclipse too so I knew I wasn't going to be regretting the heat too much.

While the lid didn't have a built in pouring mechanism the liquid was thick enough so that drizzling wasn't a problem.  I decided to try it one one of my favourite things to add balsamic to - bacon!

I'd got some sizzling streaky bacon and American style fries that I could try it out on.  The balsamic is definitely the main flavour in the dressing, with the chilli coming as a bass flavour which underpins things nicely.

It livened up the chips no end! Since this initial meal I've tried it on a variety of things (including a future review) and it's worked really well. While the chilli could have been a little stronger I really like this and have been conserving it just in case I don't manage to find more.

Tabasco Pepper Cheese (Waitrose) [By @spectreUK]

I've tried Tabasco pizza before, which was absolutely spicy scrumptious. This time McIlhenny Company in Louisiana, USA, has teamed up with Long Clawson Diary in Melton Mowbray, England, which was established 1911, to produce Tabasco Pepper Cheese. On the net packet label there was a medium two pepper heat mark which sounded perfect for a wake me up spicy treat in my lunchbox at work. Popping open the red slab packet and placing it amongst my sandwiches, crisps and cut up tomato, you'll see from the photograph that the yellow cheese had been liberally machine gunned with red pepper flecks. The mentions of Tabasco sauce, the fire engine red packet and the multitude of red pepper shavings throughout the cheddar cheese made me start to panic a little before trying. Okay, okay so how hot can two peppers be? Well, I guess it depends how big the peppers are. I recently ate a hearty meal in a steak restaurant the other day where a friend had a full big long red pepper, I'm talking about eight centimetres, placed on her plate and passed it to me as she didn't want to risk it. Someone else at the table said that the bigger peppers are the less hot they are. Though I can't remember if that was me just being wrong! That pepper didn't half make me sweat! Anyway, I digress. There was an immediate Tabasco tang from this cheese slab followed by a creamy strong Cheddar Cheese flavour. The spicy heat just kept on pumping throughout every succulent bite, beating up my taste buds in a hot red peppery creamy cheesy way. Don't worry though, as the cut up tomato pieces from my lunchbox stopped me from melting into a puddle in front of my colleagues. I really enjoyed this spicy cheese snack and can see it will definitely be a regular in the fridge next to my Marmite Cheese and Goat's Cheese Babybel lunchbox treats.

Information on the label:
Mature Cheddar Cheese blended with original Tabasco pepper sauce.
5 x 30g cheese bars in the net packet total 150g. Per 100g there were 422 calories, with 35.8g of fat and 0.1g of sugar.
Ingredients included; Mature Cheddar, 3% Tabasco brand pepper sauce (distilled vinegar, red pepper, salt), and red pepper flecks.

Milky Way Stripey Spread (Sainsburys) [by @cinabar]

As a bit of a chocoholic, it's no surprise that I regularly enjoy chocolate spread on my toast. Generally though there isn't much variety, it's either chocolate or chocolate and hazelnut, and both of these products are invariably in jars. The new Milky Way spread from Mars comes in this fab looking squeezy tube and is flavoured with milk chocolate and vanilla, best of all the two tastes are entwined in stripes! Fab!
The small child in me was desperate to give it a try, effectively liquidised Milky Way, and I remembered we'd ordered a packet of crumpets on our last online order, so I cracked open the packet and switched on the toaster.
When they were ready I started to squeeze the spread onto the crumpet, and loved that the spread really was half white vanilla and half brown for milk chocolate. By the time it melted into the crumpet it became a rather pretty marbled chocolate topping.
I loved the flavour, although the sweet milk chocolate taste was the most prominent flavour, the vanilla added a creamy smoothness to the mix with an extra hint of sweetness too. It did have a hint of Milky Way about it, just with a heavier emphasis on the chocolate part.
The stripes and the squeezy tube are a fab novelty and did make this really fun to use, and tomorrow I'm looking forward to having Milky Way on toast for breakfast, just because I can!

By Cinabar