Tony's Chocolonely Littl' Bits Milk Marshmallow & Biscuit Mix (Ocado) By @Cinabar

Where is the letter 'e'? Why would you miss it and replace it with an apostrophe? Why does this bother me so much? I might be getting old! I’m just going to have to come to terms with the title of this new product and move on. Here we have Tony's Chocolonely Littl' Bits Milk Marshmallow & Biscuit Mix.

On a more positive note, these new chocolates look lovely. They are small chocolate balls filled with marshmallow and biscuit, which is a lovely sounding combination. I was impressed with the paper-based bag too; it ripped nicely to open, and a fold at the top holds well enough for portion control. The chocolates are small; think less than half of Maltesers. I gave one a try, and the first thing I noted was the quality of the chocolate; it was fairly thick, and it tasted rich and had a well-defined flavour. The texture was really nice too, with a bit of crunch from the biscuit and a bit of soft, gooey goodness from the mallow. These are easy to eat, and I found myself reaching for more. There are other new flavours in this range, which I will keep an eye out for, as these are lovely new chocolate treats. 

Squeaky Bean Cooking Chorizo (style - it's Vegan!) [@NLi10]

The vegan aisle is a treasure trove at the moment, it seems like everyone is trying to get something out before the craze vanishes like it did in the USA.  Fortunately the UK is more likely to accept these things as a lot of religious diets are vegan friendly and vegetarianism has always been pretty big here.  This means I can buy crazy stuff that fills the hole in my diet left by not eating meat much at home, and still not freak out my vegetarian partner.

Well - until you buy something as realistic as this.  This is possibly the first vegan product I've put back on the shell as it's too realistic.  I obviously changed my mind later - but we were looking for picnic food and I noped at that and decided I'd cook with it instead.

This is a bad picture for the ingredients list, but essentially it's bean protein instead of pork derivatives - then all the usual stuff.  The key phrase that made me pick it is 'produced in Spain' - surely they can't let us down?

No way the veggie is trying this... Halloween review comes early - argh my finger!

And it looks reasonably close when chopped up too - its just a suspicious thing to have high quality textured chunks in this stuff from a UK supermarket.

Ate the first bit cold with the potatoes - decent enough.

The second bit found it's way into the warmth of the pie filling and it became absolutely magical. This is just good quality chorizo, no qualifiers required.  This is the happiest I've been with one of these reviews in absolutely ages - this is going in the 'must have in stock' pile. I'd make special trips to Sainsbury's especially for it - but I'm guessing it's everywhere.  You could put this in a recipe and meat lovers would be so happy with it.  I'm already planning a paella, and thinking that I can use this in veggie carbonara.

Except I probably can't - the texture and flavours here are so achingly close to the real thing I'm guessing it'd put off any vegetarians that tried it. 

For me though - as a lapsed vegetarian who now adds a little meat to the side to spice things up - this is absolute perfection.  Hopefully there is a whole range of Squeaky Bean products to try.

Dead Man’s Fingers KFC Spiced Rum (Amazon) by @Spectreuk

I do like a KFC sometimes. I usually have a bucket of chicken to myself and some extra hot wings, because they taste "finger lickin' good". Alright, sorry, I couldn't help it.

I originally wanted to save this Dead Man's Fingers KFC Spiced Rum for a Halloween blog, but other reviews have been pretty bad on it, and Cinabar told me this rum has now become a limited edition.

Flavoured with the eleven herbs and spices used when cooking KFC chicken, this Dead Man's Fingers KFC Spiced Rum was produced by Bristol & Bath Distillery. The bottle recommended to try this rum with cola, but I haven't liked cola much for many years. When I have spiced rum or honey liquor, I usually have it with 7UP. After trying many different lemonades, to me, 7UP is the best one to have with liquor because of its slightly stronger lemon flavour.

I've heard reviews have mentioned the odd flavour of Dead Man's Fingers KFC Spiced Rum. On trying it, initially I thought I could detect the creaminess of vanilla, which I love as an ingredient in spiced rum. There was then a herby flavour, rather than any spices, which I was disappointed by, and then the vanilla creaminess came back into the aftertaste.

Dead Man's Fingers KFC Spiced Rum may have gone better with cola and a bucket of KFC, as suggested on the bottle. Although I've been told it goes well with ginger beer, which I'll have to try. I usually have spiced rum in the winter time, so I tried it with Cinabar's delicious homemade mince pies, which went okay, but the herbs in the middle of flavour was too much of a distraction. Same with a cheese and cold meats meal, which I usually enjoy with liquor or a big glass of port. I can see why people haven't liked this rum. It just needed more spice than herbs in my opinion.

Oreo Wafer Roll (Local Shop) By @cinabar

There is a little shop next to a petrol station where we live that sells some really interesting foods. They have a wonderful import selection, and that is where I found this packet of Oreo Wafer Rolls. I was trying to work out where they were from, and Google Translate seems to think Spanish, but the back of the packet also mentions Vietnam, so I’m just not sure.

 

Inside the box are just three packs of biscuits in total, which seemed a bit mean; they could easily have fit in four. Each sealed pack has three wafer biscuit sticks.

The biscuits are pretty and twirled in pattern; they remind me of some wafer biscuits my mum used to get to decorate ice cream sundaes. I gave one a try, and they were very much Oreo in flavour. The texture is light and crispy, and I felt like if these were filled with Oreo stuff filling I would be living the dream. They are hollow, despite the picture on the box, and this makes the texture crispy. Even without it, they were fun to eat, sweet and tasty, with lovely Oreo flavours running through. I ate my pack of Oreo Wafer Rolls straight, but perhaps I’ll save another pack for ice cream.

Tic Tac Sprite Lemon-Lime Flavoured (WH Smiths) by @Cinabar

We were on our way back from a night away, and we stopped at a service station for a bit of a break. This gave me the chance to have a nosey around the branch of WH Smiths for Foodstuff Finds. I did manage to find a couple of things to write about, and one of them was these Tic Tac Sprite Lemon-Lime Flavoured Sweets.

The Tic Tac sweets themselves are yellow, which is cool, but they were lacking something. When they did Coca-Cola Tic Tac sweets, they put the cola logo on each one, so seeing these as just yellow seems like an opportunity missed. I gave one a try, and the flavour was gentle to start, and then it became very specifically Sprite. I’m not sure what is so identifiable, but it must be the balance of lemon and lime. I thought this would be a generic lemon lime flavour, but I was surprised that the flavour was so specific to Sprite, which was rather impressive.

These are lovely sweets and were very enjoyable on our drive back home. I still think they could have added a logo to the Tic Tac sweets for super cuteness.