Milka Blueberry Cream and Hazelnut Cracknel (Germany)

I always put my hands up before writing about Milka and confess that it is my favourite chocolate! I think it is because I love nuts and chocolate, and the chocolate itself always has that lovely nutty ‘alpine’ taste. One of the best things about Milka is that they do come up with interesting combinations of fillings. As someone who always likes to try things that are different, this gives me another reason to love the brand!
So, as you can imagine, I adore the chocolate in this bar, but the filling itself is also rather amazing. The blueberry centre is light and creamy in texture, with an added crunch from the cracknel. In flavour of the blueberry is sweet, fresh and zingy, and nicely balanced by the honey nut taste. Put it all together and this is a bar that really says summer, if only we had the weather to match!

Go Ahead! Oat Squares Apple & Blackberry (Waitrose)

‘Go Ahead!’ specialise in making healthier cereal bars, biscuits and other similar items. Inside this pack were five individually wrapped squares of a flapjack like product. I am not a big flapjack fan, as I find them a little stodgy, but these did not have that problem. Consider them to be a light flapjack. They are fairly thin too, which I think helps with the texture.
Although they do not have the syrup taste you may associate with flapjacks, they do have the rather lovely fruit flavours to sweeten the treat. I have to say I actually really enjoyed these with my coffee at work, and have to give the product credit where it is due. They tasted far naughtier than I expected from a lower calorie item and made a lovely afternoon treat. They have also released a mixed berries variety of Oat Squares which I will be keeping my eyes out for too.

Mars Treets (Sainsbury’s)

This is a product re-launch of some choccies that used to be available up until 1988. Mars are reviving an old brand in the hope that it will stir up reminiscence sales, much like for the recent Wispa bars. But this product confuses me for a couple of reasons. Firstly I do not remember the originals, which makes no sense as they include both chocolate and peanut and I usually have a good memory for such confectionary! Secondly my initial thought is - aren’t these just one colour peanut M&Ms, a product that is already available and also manufactured by Mars? The image in this link does give the impression that Treets somewhere along the way became M&Ms? http://jetube.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/mms_treets.jpg
All of that aside time to tuck into the product. I do like the fact that they are in a sharing bag, I suspect in their original form they weren’t in an easy re-sealable pack. I was surprised by just how much I liked these chocolates too. Compared to a peanut M&M, there is definitely more chocolate around the peanut, and it tastes stronger too, I even thought that it was almost a dark chocolate in taste. The shell has a good crisp crunch and sugary flavour and I actually found myself rating these over M&Ms. From a bit of research, I’ve found that they also used to make chocolate and toffee varieties too, I wonder if Mars will be releasing those? As these are such a tasty product, I do hope the other options will follow soon!

The Simpson’s Caramel Choco’s Biscuits (Sainsbury’s)

After the High School Musical branded cereal from the other day, I have found another ‘new’ branded product. This one is a brand I feel a little more comfortable with though – The Simpsons. This is a packet of biscuits, inside of which are further portioned packets each containing two biscuits. The idea is that it makes them perfect for lunch boxes, and it also helps with calorie control as it measures out a portion for you. It also means there is a fair bit of potentially excess packaging though, but that is a different issue.
Inside each packet were two shortcrust biscuits, filled with a splodge of caramel and chocolate. They are very pretty looking biscuits, with the shortcrust pastry making a nice pattern around the edge.
They also taste rather good, as the pastry melts in the mouth and chocolate and caramel flavours add to the taste perfectly. The branding may boost sales, but that is irrelevant as the biscuits are yummy.

Mild Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce – (Selfridges)

This sauce is the natural opposite of the Hot Tabasco Habanero Sauce I wrote about a couple of months ago. Instead of being extra hot, this sauce is labelled as being mild.
Smelling the product all I could really pick up on was a scent not unlike roasted peppers, which was rather inviting, but did leave me worried that there wouldn’t be much spice to this at all.
However when I tested the sauce I was pleased that the roast pepper element was still apparent, but that there was also a lovely tingle of a burn too. I actually tried this sauce with cheese on toast, and thought it went perfectly. But the more I ate, the stronger the chilli burn and the heat really does creep up on you! The moral of this story is that if Tabasco use the word ‘mild’ they do not mean the sauce is mild, they mean it is mild compared to regular Tabasco – i.e. still hot!!!