Marks & Spencer Soft Caramels

These were one of the many goodies I picked up in M&S recently. Caramels are a perfect Saturday night treat, they're so easy to mindlessly shove in my mouth in front the telly and that is exactly how this Saturday night went down - which explains my fabulous Liquorice Allsort spare duvet cover providing the backdrop. As I've preached to everyone, don't bother with throws and blankets just get a cheap duvet and use it just for on the sofa, it is so cosy and comfortable! 

The M&S Soft Caramels aren't new but they do have a new recipe. Not that I'd tried the old recipe, if I've said it once, I've said it a million times - I'd spend a hell of a lot more money in Markses if they put their products on the website, I can never be bothered to wander round on the off chance there might be something I want to buy.

Underneath the bright pink wrappers the chocolates are up to Marks & Spencer's usual standards. I barely looked at the actual chocolate after I'd unwrapped them and it would have been easy to just stick a lump of chocolate with some caramel inside but they looked as nice as they would have had they been displayed in a box of chocolates rather than hidden inside some foil. 

Initially I could only smell chocolate. Again M&S high standards play a role, in other bags of wrapped caramels it's not unusual to find a couple of broken chocolates where the caramel has oozed out but as always these were in perfect condition and the thick chocolate shells had sealed the caramel and any scents away. 

The caramels only contain 30% caramel centres to a decent 70% milk chocolate shell and with those sorts of ratios I'd expect to taste even a hint of chocolate but that was not the case at all. It might not take up even a third of the overall product but 99% of the taste was the caramel. 

It's thick, runny and gooey - I went to brush my teeth after eating these and my chin was covered in caramel - I'm not usually that messy of an eater! A perfect consistency for soft caramel in my opinion but the flavour let it down somewhat. It's a very tasty caramel flavour but it's soon overpowered by a burning, sickly sweetness. I hadn't even finished one mouthful when I said to Mr.1T "wow these are sweet aren't they?" and in fact the word sickly came from him, not me - and that's saying something! 

The caramel was thick enough to be scooped out, Creme Egg style, so I got a good taste of the unadulterated chocolate too. I've had a few M&S milk chocolates recently and continue to be surprised at the quality. Even when used in flavoured bars or bags where the chocolate isn't a predominant flavour they don't fob you off with the cheap stuff. It's milky yet still has a proper chocolate flavour and is really quite good quality stuff. There was still a lingering sugary sweetness though and due to the overpowering nature of the caramel I'm unsure if this was a left over from that or the chocolate was on the sweet side too. I think I'll give M&S the benefit of the doubt, none of the other milk chocolates have had that problem, and blame it on the caramel. 

Rating:

Overall I think I'd give them a 6/10 but if we pretend I wasn't a greedy guts and only had 1 or 2 it'll be 

7/10 

M&S Chicky Choccy Speckled Eggs

So this was another gift card purchase from the M&S Easter aisle, I'm still on the hunt for Cadbury replacements and I convinced myself that was reason enough to buy them - I'm sure I would have anyway, I always give in and buy things when I can see them through those damn clear packets! 

The Chicky Choccy Speckled Eggs are supposedly 

Milk chocolate Mini Eggs with a speckled candy shell 

but they're hardly mini eggs, more of a medium I'd say - you can fit about three Cadbury Mini Eggs in one of these bad boys! 

My bag contained three different colours and they mostly had an egg shape, some were a bit squashed but they were eggy enough. The speckles finish it off nicely and they really do look like tiny coloured real eggs, I reckon if they were a bluey colour you could pass them off as Quails eggs but there is never any question to Marks & Spencer's attention to detail. 

I find whenever I've had Cadbury Mini Eggs (recently anyway) that they do smell of chocolate but it's more of a sugary 'candy' chocolate but the Chicky Choccy Speckled Eggs smelt as if I'd just opened a bar of proper chocolate. 

The scent seems to be partly due to the fact the candy shell used is very thin, it's more than enough to give the crunchy crack like quality that makes Mini Eggs of any kind so addictive but overall it has a much more intense chocolate flavour. 

My favourite thing about this M&S product, and any I've tried actually is that they never scrimp on the quality. Say you go into Tesco and buy a packet of own brand Mini Eggs, the chocolate they use isn't the standard own brand stuff sold on the shelves, it's the everyday value stuff or at least a poorer/cheaper version. M&S have used the exact same 30% cocoa solids chocolate inside the Chicky Choccy Mini Eggs that they're selling in the milk chocolate bars and boy, does it make a difference! They are delicious, very milky with a proper chocolate flavour - no sugary crap and certainly no throat burn. Of course the shell is pretty sweet but the thickness of it and the pure amount of chocolate compared means its a pleasant sweetness that compliments, not overwhelms, the chocolate. 

Rating:

I need more right now. They are a grown up tasting Mini Egg, far too tasty to be given to kids who won't appreciate them. They aren't a replacement for the Cadbury Mini Egg, they just can't be compared. This will be the first of many bags of these I get through this Easter! 

8/10 

Marks & Spencer Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns are one of the few cakes (buns to be specific) I enjoy. The word enjoy doesn't do justice to my love of the sweet, sticky balls of dough - adore, covet, obsess - these are all more appropriate words. Of course they're sold all year round unlike other Easter treats but the special ones are saved for the few months between Christmas and whenever Easter falls. 

You can't beat a normal Hot Cross Bun, I don't think there is a bad way to eat one - plain, with butter, toasted, untoasted, for breakfast, lunch or a snack they are pretty much a perfect food! 

Last year I tried (though I dont think I reviewed) the Tesco fresh bakery Double Chocolate Hot Cross Buns but I had vouchers to use up this year and so Marks & Sparks it was! I picked up two different flavours as a 2 for £2.50 promotion and got 8 decent sized buns for my troubles. 

Toffee Fudge & Belgian Chocolate

First up had to be these. If I had to pick 5 of my favourite confectioneries , toffee, fudge and chocolate would be three of them (that would be purely confectionery - junk food in general I wouldn't know where to start!)

My excitement to eat these only grew once I'd got a look at them out of the wrapper, they're quite large and had that glistening sticky look which meant I knew before I'd even tried that these weren't going to be a stodgy dry bun. 

They mainly smelt of normal Hot Cross Buns, though once I'd actually got up close and personal I could smell some deliciously chocolate undertones. 

 Sometimes appearances aren't deceiving and you should judge a book by its cover.. It was just as moist (shudder) as I expected, with a thick, quite dense mouth feel but it was far from stodgy. My first bun didn't have that many additional pieces to be fair, so around half of it was just a plain hot cross bun - the toffee, chocolate and fudge are in chips and pieces - and to be truthful, I'd have been perfectly satisfied with just this! It's sweet with the usual spices that aren't so strong to be overwhelming but enough to have that unmistakable Easter taste. 

I'll be straight, in the first I was seriously lacking on the toffee front to the point I didn't taste it at all, but I didn't miss it in the slightest. The first and stronger flavour was the Belgian chocolate, dark and rich with a delicious flavour it complimented the spices of the bun and the sweetness of the fudge perfectly. The fudge pieces were an odd one, they provided the sweetness to wrap the overall flavour up neatly and while I could taste a milkiness to them that the Belgian chocolate chips didn't have, I'm not sure I'd have known they were Fudge had that not been in the name, I'd have probably guessed a milk chocolate. They were very tasty either way! Mr.1T's buns and the second one I had were chocked full of Toffee though, so I think its luck of the draw.

Speaking of the second bun, my God I should have tried it this way first!! I toasted it literally for seconds, just so it was warm but still soft and squidgy and it was even better. The extra toffee and fudge pieces were delicious, sweet and both had the appropriate flavour but the dark Belgian chocolate stole the show. It melted immediately into pools of gooey rich chocolate, its going to be a pain in the backside to clean my toaster but it was oh so worth it. Amazing. 

Rating:

Delicious!! I have another M&S gift card left, would it be wrong to spend it all on chocolate buns??

8/10 

Berries & Cherries 

We'd have both been quite happy with just the chocolate buns but pushed the boat out as we weren't paying and decided to take M&S up on their 2 for £2.50 offer. There were a few other choices, but the idea of apple or orange in my Hot Cross Buns didn't seem to appealing and we went with the fairly safe Berries & Cherries option - raspberries, cranberries, blackberries and cherries. 

They don't look as tempting as the previous pack, but stick some chocolate on top of nearly anything and I'll want to eat it! That said, the actual bun looked drier and I pinched the juiciest looking ones for myself before Mr.1T noticed. The berries and cherries stood out, except for the blackberries which looked a lot like raisins, and a lot of the dough had been stained various shades of red. 

They were the complete opposite to the Toffee, Fudge & Chocolate flavour - whereas that smelt like a Hot Cross Bun with a little chocolate this had a much fruitier scent and the spices of the bun seemed like an afterthought. 

As before I tried each flavour twice, the first was un-toasted and I was a little surprised. Considering these should be the same base bun just with different ingredients (the chocolate/fruits) it had a completely different feel. I did eat the chocolatey bun the day before the fruity but there are still 4 days before the use by date. Where the bun was beautifully moist before it had a stodgier, chewier feel in the berries and cherries. It seemed a lot more work eating it if that makes sense, it probably wouldn't have seemed inferior if I'd eaten these first but the quality seemed poorer and I'm not sure 24 hours would make that much difference - and I picked the juiciest looking! 

Texture aside, it seemed to have less of a Hot Cross Bun flavour to it too, the traditional spices were a lot duller and the dough tasted less sweet too. 

The fruits were good though, very vibrant, juicy and fresh tasting. Happily there were four clear individual flavours and it didn't all mesh into one big vaguely 'red berry' flavour - they are the star of the show for sure. 

Unlike the previous buns, the Berries & Cherries didn't taste very different toasted, the only real change was in the texture. Toasting it seemed to make it feel less doughy or stodgy so it was a slight improvement but not enough that if there were any more left I'd move my lazy arse off the sofa to the toaster! 

Rating:

It sounds like I'm really slating these but they weren't that bad, sadly they'd just suffered the fate of being eaten after the delicious Toffee, Fudge & Belgian Chocolate Buns! 

7/10

M&S Mini Easter Biscuits

I seem to be getting stuck in these obsessive cycles, some people call them fads but its definitely an addiction! At Christmas it was all about the mince pie, I'm addicted to chocolate year round so Easter is the turn of the humble Hot Cross Bun! 

Thanks to the vouchers and Marks & Sparks being one of the first to roll them out, I obliterated their Easter aisle - keep your eyes peeled for the reviews in the coming weeks. 

I've been wondering on twitter if someone would release a Hot Cross Bun flavoured ice cream, I really hope they do but until then I'll settle for biscuits! 

Technically they're called Easter Biscuits but the description makes it a little more specific; 

All butter fruity & lightly spiced biscuits...

All butter spice flavour biscuits with currants, sweetened dried cranberries and candied lemon peel. 

If you aren't a weirdo like me who reads the packet in depth before tucking in, the scent will soon clue you in. I could tell these were going to be good instantly, the traditional and familiar Hot Cross Bun scent was so strong and if I'd shut my eyes I could well have believed I was sniffing an actual Hot Cross Bun.

The biscuits are "mini" but they aren't that small really, slightly larger than Mini Maryland Cookies but easily a one bite mouthful. One or two looked quite plain but the majority were stuffed with currants and cranberries, I couldn't see too much lemon peel (thankfully) but after tasting I have no doubt it was there. 

The biscuits themselves are beautifully buttery and crumbly, firmer than Shortbread but not as crunchy as a standard everyday biscuit. They'd be perfectly nice alone actually, they're sweet but not too much, the butter means they didn't make my mouth dry at all and running all throughout are those spices. They smelt a lot like Hot Cross Buns but they tasted even more so -in fact, I'd had a real Hot Cross Bun a couple of hours previously and these tasted more authentic than those! 

The currants seem huge in the small biscuits and they're very juicy and chewy. The cranberries have a sweet, vibrant flavour and the lemon peel that I couldn't see had a slightly tart taste which rounded the whole shebang off perfectly. 

Rating:

It's not too often flavours remind me of seasons but these just tasted like Spring if that makes sense. M&S please remove the word Easter and sell these year round, everyone else sells Hot Cross Buns all the time! Absolutely delicious, they couldn't have got 'Easter' flavour more spot on. 

8/10

Marks & Spencer Spicy Chorizo Flavour Sweet Potato Snacks

We got married last year and got given a shed load of vouchers for various shops, however we've been together for 11 years and lived together officially for the last five of those and there is literally nothing we need! We've also decided we're sick of saving things - whether its "clothes for best" that never get to see the outsides of wardrobes or bottles of champagnes for celebrations that ain't happening - we were determined not to hold on to the vouchers for something special before realising they'd reached the use by date.

We'd very kindly received a decent amount in vouchers for Marks & Spencer, not enough for say a new bed, but too much to waste on overpriced photo frames or candlesticks! We've walked round and round in circles for the last 7 months and I've trawled through the website before we thought sod it - good food is better than things bought for the sake of spending money! A few sushi platters later, we had roughly £10 left on a gift card and went down the snack aisle, so expect a few M&S reviews in the near future.

Don't worry I didn't spend all the money on 'healthy' snacks, 90% was chocolate but as chorizo and sweet potato fans these seemed rather interesting. 

The ingredients list is suprisingly healthy, literally nothing on there that can't be found on a spice rack with the exception of the actual sweet potatoes. Not only are there no hidden nasties, they are baked not fried, contain 30% less saturated fats than standard crisps but they're suitable for both vegetarians and vegans, Although I don't know too many vegans that would want to eat a meat flavoured snack..

Looks: 

A lot fancier than a normal crisp! On the thin side but to be fair despite only weighing 23g, there were quite a few more than you'd find in an average 30g sized bag of crisps.

Smell:

The snacks/crisps/you know what I mean, had a distinct chorizo scent. Sometimes I find with meat flavoured crisps that there is just a general meaty smell but these were clearly chorizo.

Taste:

The texture was a little strange, they are very hard and a weird kind of crunchy. I've not actually had a sweet potato crisp before so I'm unsure if its the actual potato itself or the fact they're baked not fried that causes the slightly off feel but it was obvious I wasn't eating an ordinary crisp. It's not that I didn't like them, they were just different.  

The flavour was extremely mild, nowhere near as strong as the scent would lead you to believe. I could taste a small amount of the chorizo to begin with, what I could taste was very nice actually - again no mistaking it was chorizo but it wasn't spicy at all.  The chorizo didn't last for very long at all before a delicious sweet potato flavour overtook. Considering chorizo is a strong flavour I expected it to overpower any sweet potato but it was completely the opposite and it was the sweet potato I could taste on my tongue long after I'd finished. 

M&S should do themselves a favour and save some money - lose all the extra 'spicy chorizo' flavours - the sweet potato is delicious alone and the chorizo barely registered. These would have got a higher rating if that is what they were supposed to be, but Spicy Chorizo is what I was promised and Spicy Chorizo is what I expected dammit!

6/10

  

Marks & Spencer Chocolates

Marks & Spencer have released a number of new chocolates, they've been out for a while but I've been so distracted by the amazing looking Christmas products I missed them until now. There are a few new small, one portion bars and three 100g bars; A caramel filled milk chocolate, a bar made up of milk, dark and white chocolate and a milk 'bubbly' bar. 

I skipped the Bubbly, aerated bars don't give me enough of a chocolate hit to enjoy them and got myself one of each of the other two. 

Caramel Filled Milk Chocolate 

I find sometimes when caramel is included with chocolate, that all I can smell is the caramel but the sweet milky chocolate was all I noticed to begin with.

It looked good, still sectioned into easily snappable small squares but more interesting than a normal block. 

I managed to drop mine before I'd even opened it and this led to the discovery that the chocolate shell is quite thin - one of the corner squares completely shattered. 

Hidden inside each square is a thick pocket of caramel. The top half of the chocolate as I mentioned, is quite thin so although percentage wise there's a lot more chocolate than caramel, it didn't feel or taste like it. The caramel is delicious - smooth and sticky with a lovely rich caramel flavour. 

The chocolate was a bit of a pain to eat as it melted very quickly and combined with the thin, easily breakable texture, I made a total mess of my hands, face and clothes! Still, it's of a good quality - creamy with a strong chocolate flavour that combines with the sweet rich caramel and rounds it all off nicely. 

It's quite a sweet bar but the sugary sweetness is countered by the richness of the caramel and the creaminess of the chocolate. Good all round! 

7/10 

Milk, Dark & White Chocolate 

This was the bar that caught my eye initially. It's such a good idea and I'm not sure why it's not more popular, I know I've been stuck deciding between the three types of chocolate before! 

I like how it looks, if three differently coloured chocolates didn't grab your attention straight away then the weird way it's all sectioned out will. It made it hard to snap blocks off but I never planned on this lasting more than one sitting anyway. The bar didn't have a predominant scent - just a general chocolatey one, nothing too sweet and pretty tempting. 

The way it's sectioned meant it was near enough impossible to break a clean square of just one type of chocolate but I suppose that is the whole point of this bar. I managed to nibble corners off to try each flavour individually and was pleased with what I found. I managed to split my wrapper right through the ingredients but I'm 99% sure the dark chocolate says 50%. That's not quite dark enough for me normally but I appreciate lots of people don't like dark chocolate, still it has a decent dark chocolate flavour that actually seems a little richer and deeper than it probably should do against the white and milk. The white was quite sweet alone as I expected but it had a good flavour too, like a better quality Milky Bar. The milk chocolate was fine too, quite creamy and smooth - another nice quality chocolate. 

All three flavours blended well, even though they are in blocks it tasted as though they were all swirled together and all combinations of the three were delicious. I liked the idea of the bar but I thought that Marks & Spencers might have cut corners - essentially it's a bit of a novelty bar and most companies would just shove any old chocolate in there. I was very pleased to find this wasn't the case with M&S though and I was impressed with the quality of the chocolates they used. I'd be perfectly happy with any of the three alone but the mix of all three is one I think I'll go out of my way to buy again in the future. 

8/10