Swiss Miss Cinnamon Toast Crunch (Amazon) By @Cinabar

I’m not sure what I’m drinking. I’m also sure it wasn’t what I thought it was when I bought it. I love Swiss Miss hot chocolate; it is sweet and flavoursome despite being made with hot water and not milk. I have a sweet tooth; their drinks are sweet; they are my thing. I decided to google what interesting flavours they make, and I stumbled across one called Cinnamon Toast, and I was in. My favourite spice is cinnamon. I ordered it without paying much more attention.

 

I was expecting a hot chocolate-based drink with cinnamon flavour. I thought that right up until the moment I opened the first sachet and poured a white powder into my mug. It looked a bit disappointing. 

I added the water; it didn’t have a particularly strong aroma; it was just sweet and milky. I was still a bit disappointed. I opened up the second sachet of marshmallows, and I got a massive hit of cinnamon powder mixed in with the marshmallows. I added it, and it changed the milk base to a cinnamon speckled drink.

I gave it a try, and oh my word, this drink is amazing, not at all what I thought I’d bought pure heaven in a mug. I have since googled and found that cinnamon toast is an American breakfast cereal, and this drink is supposed to be a hot version of the milk the cereal leaves. I had no idea, but the taste is sweet, milky, and has lots of spice from the cinnamon, so I thought it was heaven. All the disappointment was gone, and now I’m just hoping I can get another box. 

Mr. Kipling Delicious Chocolate and Fudge Loaf Cake (Tesco) By @Cinabar

There are new cakes from Mr. Kipling; I picked up both, and the first up to try was this Mr. Kipling Delicious Chocolate and Fudge Loaf Cake. There is something about the toffee flavour that does feel a bit autumnal; this sounds like a comforting cake for a cosy night in. 

I opened up the wrapper and found the cake in a card case. The first thing that bugged me was that the toffee pieces on top were not very evenly distributed; we shared the cake out, and some slices had absolutely no toffee on top. I couldn’t redistribute it either, as it was baked into the top layer. The second thing was that it was a little stuck to the card when I cut the pieces. So much so that I scraped the card and there was a good dessertspoon full there, which wasn’t exactly in the nicest format for sharing.

Once past those initial things, there was the lovely moist chocolate sponge underneath. I only had one piece of toffee on my bit, which was a little lost. The flavour of the cake was chocolatey and good; I liked the rich flavour. This Mr. Kipling Delicious Chocolate and Fudge Loaf Cake isn’t one I’d rush out to buy again, nice though it was. 

Cadbury's Top Deck 2024 - but it's not the same bus as in 1993 [@NLi10]

 In the early 90s Cadbury were innovators, and they tried loads of new ideas in a short space of time (or at least it felt like it as a kid).

One of these that I'd forgotten about but never ever missed was the Cadbury Top Deck - the bar was milk choc, the 'bumps' were white chocolate and the effect was that of a sweeter, lighter bar.  Cadbury's saved on their precious Dairy Milk Crumb (which back in the day was so limited that only certain products used it) and could sell something legitimately new and interesting.  I think I bought these as the one strip bars which were maybe 25g

This however is a full big Cadbury bar!

Oh wait - 95g - for £1.65 (from Poundland no less) - what's going on here?  This does mean that 61% of the bar is Dairy Milk so that's not so terrible really.

And they do have the lovely blended lumps - white in first - then Dairy Milk to make the base.

So why am I being cagey?

Oh - this isn't the same bus as it was in 1993 - this is the Top Deck of the Short Bus.

I mean, this is Bart Simpson putting the 'You Tried' cake straight into the bin levels of disappointment.

Cadbury get a lot of flack now that Kraft have taken over for entering the low-effort era of confectionary manufacture - but even for them this is a new nadir.

The point of this bar was softer, lumpier white choc on top of the Dairy Milk, now it's just a thin veneer and not really worth a mention. Stick to the cheaper (£1.35 instead of £1.65), still shrunken (95g!), bars of Dairy Milk and add some white Choc buttons to the top if you want this sensation again.

Siren Broken Dream Breakfast Stout (Morrison’s) By @SpectreUK

At some point everyone wakes up part the way through a dream, good or bad, and wonders what could have happened next. This Broken Dream beer is a breakfast stout brewed with lactose for added sweetness, a selection of malts for chocolatey goodness, and carefully selected coffee for added flavour. At 6.5% in volume this a serious wake you up stout dosed with nitrogen for extra smooth creaminess.

On opening the can there was a delicious aroma of chocolate malt and coffee. On pouring this deep dark almost black stout oozed with its creaminess into my waiting beer glass. On taste the roasted rich chocolate malts danced from the darkness over my palate, smooth creamy sweetness followed with a nibble of herbal hops and then closely behind by that wake me up coffee flavour. Gorgeous, I'm not sure about a stout for breakfast, but it certainly washed down my IKEA style meatballs a treat. Cheers.

Cookies With Chocolate M&M’s Minis (Tesco) By @Cinabar

When I first saw that there were the new Mini M&Ms available, I thought that they would be really good for baking. They are the kind of size that would work well as a cup cake topping or indeed baked into cookies. Obviously I ate the bag of Mini M&Ms straight, in handfuls. Thankfully, they have pre-made the Mini M&Ms Cookies for me, so no baking is required and there is no temptation to eat them straight.

I opened up the packet and found that these Cookies With Chocolate M&M’s Minis were quite chunky, and they were colourful too. I could see the colourful Mini M&M’s shinning through. The taste was lovely. These are firm, crunchy cookies (rather than the American soft style), but the texture still works. The M&Ms are crispy and add a lovely chocolate taste. These are super nice biscuits. They are effectively a chocolate chip cookie, really with a bit of candy shell, but with the the colour they do look a bit more special. These were the perfect treat with my cup of tea, and yes, I dunked. The chocolates melted a bit too when I did, which really worked for me too.