Jelly Meerkats from The Honeypot (@NLi10)

I was brought this bag of jelly sweets from a visit to the Lake District and a little shop that we loved.

  

It’s Jelly sweets - but in the shape of tall Meerkats!

And they are suitable for vegetarians! This is good for me because they are more gummy than your usual jellies. And they are very, very fruity.

And they look ace too. These are sometimes two colours too which is nice  as you get twice the variety.  One to pick up as a treat I think.

Li Jing Lemon Saison Biere (Gloucester Service Station) By @SpectreUK

I sometimes look into stuff a bit too much, I guess… Looking up Li Jing resulted in several Chinese commanders from different ancient dynasties, to a rather fetching actress, to a deity in Chinese folklore. The deity seems to match the image on the can created at the University of Cumbria for the Eden River Brew Company. Li Jing didn't get on with his third son and battled him after his reincarnation finally trapping him in a burning tower… Anyway, I'm not sure what that has to do with lemons, but perhaps neither would Li Jing or his ill fated third son?

This 5.6% saison beer was created in the traditional Belgian style of fruity and possibly spicy beer, with the omission of bottle conditioning, I'm sure, as it's in a can! It's made with Savinjski Golding hops and New Zealand Motueka hops, and some lemons to add to the already citrusy boost from the hops. This misty pale golden coloured beer is certainly big on fizz and almost filled my glass with a huge fluffy white head. There were spicy citrus and lemon aromas from my glass as the beer was slowly calming down. On taste the warming spices from the hops intermingle with the citrus and lemons all the way through the flavour, with sweet pale and crystal malts swimming around somewhere underneath all the white fluff. I'd certainly have this again, especially washing down another tuna sandwich.

Aero Bliss Mixed selection (Asda) By @Cinabar

A year ago I wrote about Kit Kat Sense selection box from Nestle and as I looked at these new Aero Bliss Selection also from Nestle I could see similarities. It started with the box, the first time I saw it (on the Kit Kat Senses) I thought it was wonderfully innovative, opening up into a bowl like structure and this box of Aero Bliss Mixed selection is the same. I’m not criticising, I think it is a lovely packaging idea.

The flavours were similar too, a nutty one, a salted caramel one and plain one in the Aero box, here we have Praline, Salted Caramel and Milk Chocolate. I see what they did there. The chocolates themselves though are obviously very different, these aren’t in the least like Kit Kat. The chocolates are domes with a filling of what I assumed would be Aero chocolate but that didn’t seem to be the case either.

Milk Chocolate
The Milk Chocolate one wasn’t filled with Aero bubbly chocolate but something more similar to a mouse with bits in it, which were cocoa pieces according the the box. It was a nice chocolate, smooth and soft and was sweet and pleasant. It wasn’t something that was obviously Aero like.

Praline
I love nuts and chocolate so I like the flavour here, it was sweet and the roasted hazelnut worked well with the mousse like filling. That was my problem though, where is the solid Aero filling? If it didn’t say Aero on the wrapper I wouldn’t have minded.

Salted Caramel
Now the taste of this particular chocolate was amazing, the caramel and salt were strong and the salt enhanced the toffee like flavours. Each crystal in the mousse worked remarkably well. I really liked this chocolate but couldn’t get passed the missing Aero section.

To me these are just soft truffles in a box. I’d go as far as saying they are tasty and enjoyable soft truffles in a box, and very much worth trying. Unfortunately I couldn’t work out the Aero connection, mousse and Aero aren’t really the same thing. As much as I liked the flavours and the packaging, if you are an Aero fan you might be disappointed with the contents. I wanted solid chocolate bubbles with interesting flavours not just mousse.

Easter left-overs from McVitties (@NLi10)

A colleague at work visited Tesco and Found all the Easter snacks reduced to 25p. This is the result.

While most of these are not unusual things I thought I’d have a go at all the McVitie’s ones

 

These are Alice in Wonderland themed, because rabbits, and it works well. We are off to the loopy dotty hatters tea party.

 

He’s not on time for an event of large importance!

 

And the resulting lemon Jaffa cake bar is gorgeous, if not a little small... more please!

Here is the tiffin!

It’s a little disappointing - I thought the biscuit would carry it, but it’s just not that exciting.

Here we have the dotty Choc crunch - it’s basically the same as the tiffin 

Again it looks pretty, but it’s just not that exciting. Worth 25p of anyone’s money, but not that special .

I’d just get the lemon bars first.

Frijj After Dinner Chocolate Mint Flavour Milkshake (Asda) By @SpectreUK

I'm a big fan of Nestle's After Eight Mints. I usually receive a couple of boxes from relatives at Christmas and can down a whole box in a couple of sittings. I do usually like chocolate milkshake also, so Cinabar thought she was onto a sure thing when she bought me this Frijj After Dinner Chocolate Mint flavour milkshake to try. I'm not so sure for some reason. I don't think I've ever had a chocolate mint flavoured milkshake before, and have an acquired taste where chocolate mint is concerned. Having said that, I can't think of any chocolate mints I don't actually like off the top of my head, but After Eight Mints are certainly my favourites… I just can't understand why I'm not looking forward to trying this Frijj After Dinner Chocolate Mint flavour. Perhaps the clue is in the title? Maybe it's because I like After Eight Mints and this drink is trying to mimic that flavour rebranding it After Dinner Mints? If this mimicked flavour isn't right, maybe adding a load of milk will ruin the taste further?

After a good shake, there was a light whiff of After Eight Mints on opening the bottle. So this After Dinner Mints flavour could be pretty close to the original Nestle version. However, this initial chocolate mint smell was then mainly drowned out by the familiar Muller Frijj Milk aroma. It actually tastes pretty good though. Not completely After Eight Mints, but that would be a bit odd considering the amount of milk that's in the drink. This After Dinner Mint flavour runs entirely through each mouthful doused with oodles of Muller Milk. I do like it though and would consider it a good liquid pudding. It's a shame it's a limited edition as around Christmas time especially, this Frijj After Dinner Chocolate Mint flavour would sell like hot cakes, I'm sure!

Information on the bottle;
The 400ml bottle contains 74 calories per 100ml, with 1.6g of fat, 10.2g of sugar, and 0.13g of salt. See photograph for ingredients.