World Foods Part 3

Dark Chocolate Covered Cookie Dough Bites (USA)

I've seen these cookie dough bites around quite a bit, mainly in the supermarkets but just the ordinary or fudge brownie version. Typically after I'd eaten these and went to buy more everywhere seems to have stopped selling them! 

From what I've seen online these are a typical cinema snack in the US, people mix them with popcorn which I imagine is delicious! They wouldn't last very long with me in the cinema though, the chocolate is actually not bad quality, and although it overpowered the cookie dough flavour I still really enjoyed it - they're like malteasers but but with cookies inside! The biggest 'problem' I found with these are they are incredibly moreish, I got through this packet in no time at all, and I will be keeping my eyes open for the other flavours.

Rating 7/10 

Haribo Funny Mix (Halal)

These are a halal version of haribo, looking at the ingredients as expected the only difference is beef gelatine used instead of pork. Haribo also sell a vegetarian (or vegan I'm not too sure) version sold in a yellow bag. 

I couldn't taste any difference to tell you the truth, all the pieces tasted the same and the only difference that I can see is that the bag didn't include any of the fizzy/sour sweets, which may be because of the gelatine used? I'm not too sure. I would have marked this down but because the bag was more than half of my favourites that were supposed to be in my liquorice Allsorts but were suspiciously missing, it gets an extra mark. Yummy and just as good if you need to eat Halal. Thumbs up from me!

Rating 8/10 

Rittersport Cookies And Cream (Germany) 

These bars are available pretty much everywhere now, and most people know of Rittersports reputation for decent everyday chocolate. I'm not sure why seeing as the picture on the front shows milk chocolate, I assumed this was a white bar for some reason but it is Rittersport standard delicious milk chocolate. 

As usual it's split into 16 squares, which are easily broke into bars of 4 if you're that way inclined, which I'm not - this bar was eaten in one go! 

It has a very generous and thick cookies and cream filling, after eating the Cadbury Chips Ahoy bar the filling in this was more solid than I expected but that isn't a bad thing. A great texture and a lovely creamy flavour, as far as I'm concerned Rittersport can do no wrong! 

Rating 8.5/10 

World Foods Part 2

Dairy milk tiffin (Ireland)

This is another Irish cadbury bar I got from Tesco. Its dairy milk chocolate with raisins and biscuits and as you can see mine had quite a lot of biscuit in it.

The bar itself is your usual dairy milk chocolate - which is delicious, I'm not sure if the Irish bars are a little different or my imagination is playing tricks on me because it's still square but this tastes better to me than our dairy milk.

Anyway I love raisins in chocolate, fruit and nut is probably my favourite of our standard, non limited edition cadbury range and the raisins in this bar are no exception, however I'm not sure if my bar was old or stale but I couldn't really taste the biscuit. I got the texture - which was fine I love chewy and crunchy together as I say over and over and over (woops) again but I really didn't get any biscuit flavour which was a shame as I really enjoyed the other Irish bar and had high hopes for this one. 

Rating 6/10 

Cadbury Caramello (Ireland)

I decided to look the ingredients up after wondering about them in the previous review and interestingly the English version Cadbury Caramel has Glucose syrup as the 3rd ingredient and no cocoa mass that I can see listed and the Irish Cadbury Caramello has no glucose syrup listed as far as I can tell and cocoa butter and cocoa mass as the third and fourth ingredient. So maybe I wasn't imagining the taste difference. Also English Cadbury Caramel has a 40% caramel filling and the Irish Caramello has 26% filling.

I actually prefer less caramel, it doesn't overpower the bar and you get the taste of

the actual chocolate aswell as the delicious caramel flavour and I didn't end up with melted caramel all over my fingers which is always a result.

I really enjoyed this bar and I would take this over our version of the caramel bar any day. Lovely. 

 Rating 8/10

E wedel mleczna toffi

This is a polish 50% milk chocolate with toffee flavoured filling bar according to thesmall part in English on the back. That's all I can really tell you about it as all the google results are in polish and the translate button seems to have disappeared.

This comes in a 100g bar, and I actually bought this as part of an offer in Asda but Ive seen it in all the big supermarkets and lots of newsagents.

I was quite surprised that for such a big bar it only had 10 squares ( there goes my willpower) -  it doesn't feel like you're  eating a bigger "sharing" bar when there's so few squares and so I ate the lot in one go.

The chocolate is nice and creamy, I'm in the chocolate in the fridge camp, especially as my only cupboard is above the fridge so everything put in it that can, will, melt and almost immediately this had started. I'm not too sure what that says about the quality of chocolate, if anyone knows but this is nice.

The filling disappointed me a bit, it was quite mild. I had expected quite a strong overpowering toffee flavour and while the toffee was there it didn't stand out to me very much.

I'm  not sure if I'd buy this bar again, for price value (75p as standard in tesco) it's good chocolate but for taste over all others, I think I'd probably choose something else.

Rating 6/10

Hershey's special dark mildly sweet chocolate (USA)

Before I start this review I'll say I looked at the ingredients for this bar after the dairy milk bars and even though this is a "dark" semi sweet bar the first and main ingredient is sugar! Actual chocolate came in second…

Anyway this bar is OK, a bit on the thin side but it had a nice snap to it once I took it out of the fridge. I couldn't taste any of the sick taste that lots of people outside of the US associate with Hershey's but this was far too sweet for me to consider as a dark bar - nowhere even near Bournville or any of the other low percentage dark bars. It was nice though, nicer than Hershey's plain milk chocolate.

Rating 6.5/10

Oggi's Oven Dog Biscuit Baking Mix

 A bit of a random review today, I picked this doggy biscuit bake mix up in T K Maxx - obviously while waiting in the queue (why do they put all the good stuff there!) and today is perfect baking weather!

I don't think this can even be called baking really though, all you do is add 70ml of water, knead, roll out, cut bone shapes out with the cookie cutter and pop in the oven for fifteen minutes, so simple even I can do it!!

Why I actually bought this though are the ingredients. It says clearly on the box human grade ingredients and they are flour, margarine, egg powder, flavouring, gluten and milk - that's it! These are healthier than human cakes!!

The big difference I noticed when baking these was that there was no noticeable mmmmmm smell that you get when baking human cakes - but I suppose these aren't vanilla/chocolate flavoured.

My pup was fast asleep under blankets when I took these out, but after I let them cool I wafted one underneath and she came bolting out, she managed to get 3 down before I could put them away and has spent the rest of the day begging at the drawer she saw me put them in so I'm guessing that's a good rating from her :-P.

I'll definitely buy these again and I'm actually about to order the other mixes online now, I'm very impressed.

World food aisle part one

Hershey's Symphony Bar (USA)

First up is the Hershey's symphony bar. I saw this bar in B&M, I enjoyed the cookie bar when I'd tried it before so thought why not… I then read another review about this bar which wasn't good so I was pretty nervous about trying this! It wasn't awful - I like the toffee and almond pieces but they were pretty overwhelmed by the fact this bar just tastes to me like cheap Easter egg chocolate - not even the cheap supermarket ones - but the ones you get from the pound shop with a random celebrity/TV show/any old crap on the front of it. 

That really is the best way I can describe this bar. So if you don't mind that type of chocolate (I know some people do really enjoy it!) then you'll probably like this bar but if you're like me and think that stuff should only be eaten well after easter when it's been forgotten at the back of the cupboard but you reeeeally fancy chocolate then I'd probably avoid it!

Rating 4/10

Cadbury Dairy Milk Golden Crisp (Ireland)

I've had my eye on this bar for a while, I got it from the world foods aisle in Tesco but I'm pretty sure it's quite common now. 

It's described as the usual Dairy Milk chocolate with honeycomb pieces and as you can see it's pretty packed out! I'm disappointed Cadbury or whoever it is who owns/produces/distributes these, why aren't they a standard bar over here! 

This is a really nice bar of chocolate which I think would sell really well, but were just getting random limited edition crossover bars. I'd gladly buy this bar again the honeycomb gives such a nice flavour and texture I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating 7.5/10  

   

A few random reviews

Bassetts liquorice Allsorts

My local one stop finally started selling these in smaller bags, so I picked myself one up. It's been a while since I've had these and they tasted exactly as I remembered! My favourites are the crunchy ones and I was gutted to only get one in the packet. These make a lovely change to the usual sugar coated sweets that companies bring out now like the sours etc. They could do with a better variety in the bag mine was full of the square ones, but I guess that's a problem with any smaller bag.

Rating 6/10

Ryvita Wholegrain Crackerbread

I picked these up as they were cheaper than the plain/cheese/pepper varieties. To be honest they're as tasteless as the usual, I only buy them as I am the type of person who, come the evening when watching a film, has to be picking at something and there's only so much sweet someone can handle! Crackerbread are really just a vessel for whatever toppings you want on them - in my case lashings of cheese and marmite. They do the job well and are nice and crunchy (I even don't mind them a bit stale!) and are a low calorie, healthier option for snacking.

Rating 5/10 (alone) 7/10 with loads of marmite.

Heinz Five Beans

I was after the new Tuscan beans, but my Tesco had none and I've been getting a bit bored of plain beans. I am the weirdo who usually eats beans cold (please someone else admit to this too!) but I wasn't sure with these so I heated them up. I ate them on top of a jacket potato and they were lovely. Don't get me wrong with loads of cheese and butter you can't beat baked beans but these were really nice for a change and the different texture consistencies were really nice. I'd definitely buy these again.

Rating 6.5/10

Radfords Handmade West Country Fudge

Chocolate and Caramel

I received these as a birthday present a while ago, looking on their site they seem to only do bulk orders or as part of a gift box so I'm not sure where these where purchased from.

This is a lovely authentic fudge, quite crumbly as opposed to chewy and the chocolate and caramel flavours were delicious without being overpowering or sickly.

Just a small review because of the mega pick and mix one coming up but if you are a fan of fudge I would definitely recommend getting some from this company, their other flavours look delicious too! I might have to put an order in myself.

Rating 7/10 

Mega Candy King Pick & Mix Post

I think there is a fine art to buying pick and mix, I have two rules. Rule number 1. Don't go after any children - Ive seen kids half eat a sweet decide they don't like it and put it back in the tub…. And rule number 2. Pick somewhere busy like the cinema or a busy supermarket, they get emptied and refilled on a regular basis, no stale sweeties for me thank you very much!

I love good quality chocolate and treats but sometimes you can't beat a cheerful (note not cheap anymore! I miss woolworths!!) pick and mix infront of a film.

Bon bons

I've got strawberry, sour lemon and toffee, candy kings are nice and chewy just like a Bon Bon should be!

Chocolate covered fudge

Nice chewy, not great chocolate obviously but goes nicely with the big lump of fudge inside.

 Strawberry dream

Just like Swizzles Matlow squashies but bigger - sweet but sour nice and chewy

Cola meter

Nice but I prefer the strawberry version, I'm not a fan of the artificial cola taste and left this!

Skulls

One of my favourites,  strawberry and cream flavoured chocolate - it's cheap and can get sickly but yummy!  I may have purchased a case of just these on amazon….

Pink pigs

 I never noticed the little pigs had different expressions before! Strawberry flavoured chocolate, actually nicer than the M&S Percy pig egg I reviewed at Easter.

Fruit balls

Like giant versions of the jelly sweet in dolly mixtures. Nice soft jelly inside nice flavours too.

Ice cream cones

Same strawberry and cream flavour as the skulls, just smaller. I think the skulls taste better though it must be a psychological  thing.

Fizzy bubblegum

Not a fan of these, a bit too sour for my liking but it does break up the sweetness of my mainly chocolate pick and mix!

Brains

 Nice runny, jelly centres. Strawberry flavoured filling.

Giant Snowies

Everyone must have had these before! Nice and crunchy the bigger the better.

Giant jazzies

Same as the Snowies but just chocolate flavour. Lovely.

Milk  chocolate raisins

Actually a surprisingly decent quality considering they're really just filler!  They're massive too.

Magic carpet

Nice and chewy. Strawberry flavour is OK, makes a nice change to the rest of the chocolate/fizzy/sour sweets.

Pink and white mice

Mmmmm another of my faves! I think it's probably more nostalgia than the white chocolate taste but I love these!

White mice

Aboves little brother! Exactly the same just miniature.

Crispy bite

A crunchy chocolate covered fudge as opposed to the chewy chocolate fudge above. Probably my overall favourite, the texture is my idea of perfect. I really need to find a recipe and make these myself.

Berries

A fruit flavoured jelly covered with sprinkles. Nice and crunchy and decent fruit flavours.

Vanilla fudge

Just your standard vanilla fudge, I'm pretty sure it's Lonka but if not they must be made in the same factory. A soft chewy fudge but nowhere near as soft as the likes of Thorntons etc.

Banoffee fudge

Same as above just with banana and caramel flavours. They also have a chocolate fudge but I'm not keen on that one.

So I finally got round to reviewing pick and mix! At the time I love it but I always wake up with a sugar hangover the next day, and wishing Id bought a decent box of chocolates to have instead :-P

Rating 5/10