Good Mother Purple Goop - Bonne Maman Blackcurrant Mousse (@NLi10)

The online shopping gauntlet is hard.  Sometimes expensive but lovely thinks pop into the basket - like these very purple mousses.

I am reliably told that the brand means good/beautiful Mother, which suggests that its a French idea.  And the strength of the flavours here certainly agree - it puts undiluted Ribena to shame!

The lighting appears to be a bit off today - no Instagram likes for me.  The cat isn't even clearly in shot.  Mainly this was to show how small they are.

They are just purple goop, with actual berries in there too.  If you could find a way to serve this presentably I think you could say this is restaurant quality stuff.  Pop it next to a tiny ornate pastry and charge away.  Maybe not the best way to hit your 5-a-day but a lovely way to finish a meal at home.

Flipz Salted Caramel (Ocado) By @SpectreUK

Cinabar has changed office location on Fridays to another town fairly nearby. She found a place a stone's throw away that sells freshly baked salted pretzels and generally has one for breakfast. I've never been all that fussed about pretzels. I know some people rave about them, but personally I prefer crisps. However I have had a few flavours of broken pieces of pretzels that were pretty good though.

As you can see from the photograph these Flipz are small bite sized salted pretzels with a salted caramel flavoured coating. It's funny because this morning I was lying in the sauna thinking that I should probably cut down on my salt intake, as I've been having a little too much lately. A few years back I spent a day in a spa going from saunas to steam rooms until my hands swelled up uncomfortably. Cinabar found out from the internet that this was because I'd been having too much salt in my diet. My hands did start to ache a little in the sauna this morning. Oh well, I'll start my salt diet tomorrow… Damn, I've got boiled eggs for lunch… Okay, Wednesday, definitely, Wednesday!

On opening the sharing bag there was a syrupy sweet smell from the multitude of small pretzels inside. Each pretzel was coated in a solid caramel sauce. The pretzels weren't sticky to pick up and the coating didn't melt on my fingers. There was a good crunch to these Flipz. On taste the salted caramel coating almost oozed over my tastebuds as I crunched through each pretzel. There was the sweetness from the caramel to start with, then its saltiness, then an almost biscuity flavour from the pretzel and also its added saltiness. These Flipz Salted Caramel are sweet and salty, moreish to the extreme and almost impossible to share. I can see myself eating these on a regular basis in front of a good movie or on a games night.

Information of the bag;
The 90g bag contains 108 calories per 22g serving, with 4.7g of fat, 8.6g of sugar and 0.2g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Mint Maltesers Buttons (Poundland) By @cinabar

I love both mint flavours with chocolate and malt flavours with chocolate too, but when I spotted these Mint Maltesers Buttons I have to confess I’m not sure I liked the sound of all three tastes being combined together. It just felt like it might be a bit much and I have to admit it sounded like it was a curious choice for a launch of a new chocolate.
The buttons are a few centimetres across and speckled with balls of malt, the aroma of mint is quite strong once the bag is open. I tried a button and found mint to be the dominant taste, it was sweet and fresh and I liked it, the chocolate is quite thick in its melt and rather rich and soothing, I liked this combined with the mint. The malt flavour (and bare in mind this is a Maltesers brand product so that should be dominant) was lost at first, but did develop towards the end of the flavour. I liked the crunch from the malt bits mixed in with the chocolate and I can’t say they weren’t malty, it is just they were very much mint with a hint.
Mint is an overpowering flavour, there aren’t many products I have had that have managed to combine it with something daring and win, (one exception is Limited Edition After Eight Mint with Mango-Pineapple). These Mint Maltesers Buttons are heavy on the mint but there is enough malt to make them work and enough of a light crunch to make them enjoyable to eat. I would buy these again very happily.

YumNut Plain Jane (Marks and Spencer) By @cinabar

This is a new launch from Marks and Spencer where they have combined to cake treats and morphed them into one. Remember the CroNut (Croissant Doughnut), well this is the YumNut (Yum Yum Doughnut). There are various varieties of YumNut being launched by Marks and Spencers, eg Simply the Zest which is Lemon Meringue but the only flavour available in my local branch was Plain Jane, which is just covered in plain icing.
The YumNut is a curious invention for various reasons. If you google what a Yum Yum is the general consensus on the internet is that it is a long doughnut rope. Greggs, the brand I most associate with the delectable Yum Yum describes it as a “doughnut twist”. This poses an interesting question, if a Yum Yum is doughnut in a different form when you make is round surely a YumNut is just a Doughnut? Except it isn’t, which is confusing.

A doughnut is usually spongey and fluffy, this YumNut is layered, like a Yum Yum (I don’t care what the internet says). The texture is fluffy, bubbly but firm, and a pleasure to eat. It has layers but is still a little bread like and a little crumbly, I thought it had an amazing texture. The icing on top was crumbly and sweet like a glaze, and giving a rather nice blast of sugary sweetness.
I still don’t know what a YumNut is, but I can tell you it was delicious. If you are a fan of textures in your food you will love this, it did make me smile. It might be called Plain Jane, but don’t let that put you off, it is far from a plain treat it was actually rather exciting to get my teeth into. I can’t wait to try the other flavours too, I have my eye on a Double Chocolate YumNut!

A Glorious Mash-Up! Cadbury White Bar with Oreo (@NLi10)

When Oreo (Kraft) purchased Cadbury it was a sad day for Birmingham.  A lot of the products that had been produced in smaller numbers due to the premium crumb were switched to the generic chocolate and became less special - but more available.  One of the upsides has been that there are a lot of cross-over products we couldn't see before, but unusually today we see another more unexpected one.

Cadbury White Chocolate has always been fine.  Not good, not bad, just fine.  I'd say that the luxury brands (and ironically milky-bar) have understood what works well at low cocoa concentrations (raspberries) and what just doesn't sell.

Here though I think Cadbury have hit on something - mix your new flavours and sensations with the less distracting white chocolate and let those flavours flow!

It doesn't photo well.  The outside is vanilla Cadbury white chocolate.  The inside is lovely Oreo biscuit.  The insulation in this cavity wall of a choc bar is a white mush that both my partner and I recognised, but I'm not really clear where from.  I think it's their previous wave of choc bars with Oreo inside, but the proportions and density are so different it may be a new recipe.  Either-way without the Cadbury Dairy Milk on the outside to overpower it this just works.

This is probably the best white chocolate bar on the high-street right now (ignoring luxury brands) unless there is a white choc Bounty that I can't see on Google.  It is still white choc so if you don't like that (or texture layers) then this may not be for you - but if you like any part of this I urge you to pick some up while it's still on the 4 for £1 special offer.