Battle of the Buttons.. Nestle V Cadbury

I like white chocolate buttons, I like milk chocolate buttons. I like Milkybar buttons, I like Cadbury buttons. 

But which is better? There's only one way to find out...

You wait forever for a bag of mixed buttons and two come along at once! First up -

 Nestle Milkybar Giant Buttons Milkshake Mix Up. 

A mix of giant white chocolate buttons and giant chocolate milkshake flavour buttons. 

I was pleased to find a fair mix of both flavours in the bag and wasn't too surprised at the overwhelming sweetness that I could smell, after all they might not be exclusively Milkybar buttons but there's still enough of them in there. 

The white chocolate buttons are standard Milkybar; creamy, very sweet with the typical and familiar Milkybar flavour. Not really what I'd want to eat all the time but I have a soft spot for it all the same. 

The "chocolate milkshake" buttons are a little weird. Note that they aren't actually chocolate but rather chocolate milkshake flavoured... Visibly they aren't milk chocolate with a lighter almost creamier colour. They don't taste like milk chocolate and they don't taste like white chocolate but they don't really taste like a milkshake either! I don't know, but they aren't something I think I'd want to eat a whole bag of. 

A mouthful of both doesn't improve on the milkshake aspect, both can be tasted but the strong Milkybar buttons are the greater flavour and just stopped short of being all I could taste. 

Rating:

They're O.K. The chocolate milkshake was a bit of a fail, I'd have preferred Nestle to have just used an actual chocolate button - it probably would have created more of a milkshake flavour paired with the Milkybar. That said, there's something about Milkybar buttons, I never particularly crave them and sure, they burn my throat but they're super nostalgic and they make me happy while I'm eating them! 

6/10

Next in the ring -

Cadbury Dairy Milk Mixed Buttons

I know I've been swearing off Cadbury and going back on that a lot lately but I can say I've never properly slagged off my beloved Cadbury Buttons. They might not be up to much in the flavour stakes as of late but that's my childhood right there! 

Thanks to the new Dairy Milk Mixed Buttons bag, never again will I have to buy individual bags of each and mix them together. Lazy me is very pleased! 

Normally Cadbury Buttons in a sharing sized bag are the Giant Buttons but as there doesn't seem to be such thing as a Cadbury White Chocolate Giant Button, they've used the baby ones in the mixed bag. On the one hand you have to shove more in at once to get the same chocolate hit, but on the other judging by Dairy Milk lately you might be better off with not as much chocolate flavour! 

I didn't realise until I'd opened the Cadbury bag just how light coloured the chocolate milkshake buttons are - they make Cadbury Dairy Milk look like a dark chocolate! 

There too was a decent, near enough perfectly even mix of the two buttons but unlike the Milkybar bag this smelt mainly of milk chocolate with just a touch of something sweeter coming from the white buttons. 

The Dairy Milk buttons are far superior (even with the new recipe!) to the Nestle Chocolate Milkshake buttons. For starters it has a lot more of a chocolate flavour but even then its still kind of... blander or weaker than a standard Dairy Milk bar. As I said, I think this is due to the size of the buttons and while you might assume less chocolate is a bad thing, that's not necessarily the case. 

The Dairy Milk buttons don't compare to old school Dairy Milk buttons but they're much nicer than the sorry excuse we're sold today - yes there is a milder chocolate flavour than the bars and less of a milky flavour than before but this also means there's much less of the sickly sweetness the new bars seem to have. I think if I had a bar of 90's buttons and this bag side by side, I'd be disappointed but as it stands they're not bad and I'd eat them over any other Cadbury product right now. 

The white chocolate buttons are more of the same. I mean very, very few white chocolates have a proper chocolatey cocoa flavour but the Cadbury buttons are milder than the Milkybar with less of a creamy taste. Again this means less of the overwhelming sweetness too so it's swings and roundabouts - it all evens out. 

Together they're pretty good actually, a much better blend of the two buttons than previously where it was mainly about the white chocolate. 

Rating:

The Cadbury mixed buttons have positives and negatives, a milder flavour isn't great but the lack of throat tingling sugar burn is a huge positive. 

7/10 

Overall

Well done if you read all of that! If you skimmed over the pictures and ended up down here I don't blame you at all.. 

Anyway, if I had my way I'd take the Milkybar buttons (in moderation) and the Cadbury Dairy Milk buttons please. Failing that, as an all round bag the winner is shockingly Cadbury! 

(But Mr.1T still claims Asda own brand are the King of the chocolate button!) 

Mr Kipling milkshake cakes

I'm not a great lover of cake I have to be honest, we always have cakes in the house for my fiancée but they're usually from the bakery with lots of fresh cream - not for me. I noticed these new flavoured and smaller sized packs of milkshake cakes from Mr Kipling and if there's one thing I do like its a milkshake. 

All three have vanilla flavoured filling (14%) between the flavour of milkshake sponge topped with the chosen flavoured fondant icing (24%)

I decided to try the chocolate first, although I don't even want to think about how much chocolate I eat normally I can't remember a time where I've ever picked it as a milkshake flavour. Still it's a chocolate cake so should be easy enough. 

I don't really have much to say about the chocolate and vanilla milkshake cake. Some positives were the cake was soft, moist and pretty tasty. The negatives were where was the chocolate? This is the only one of the three to have two different flavour sponges - vanilla and chocolate and from the packets the only one not to have a flavoured fondant, just a decorated one. That came across in flavour, I could taste the vanilla filling but really the sugary fondant drowned out any chocolate I might have tasted in the cake. I tried this one first, and my other half last and he agreed it didn't really taste like a milkshake so I didn't just have a dodgy one either. 

Rating 6/10 

I went for banana milkshake for the next one I tried, he'd already had one and despite hating banana was raving about it so no pressure after chocolate! As soon as I opened the little individually wrapped square the smell of banana struck me. It was very strong especially compared to the chocolate. This has a banana flavoured sponge and fondant and mixed with the vanilla Mr Kipling has got the taste of banana milkshake bang on. There's nothing more to say really, I had no faults with this little cake, it's a delicious treat and I'll be fighting with the so called banana hater over the last one! 

Rating 9/10  

Last but not least I tried strawberry milkshake, my first choice when it comes to actual  milkshakes - the cake and fondant are strawberry flavoured like with the banana. As with the previous two the cakes are nice and moist, despite having been in my cupboard for a couple of weeks and nearing the end of their shelf life, with a thick firm fondant. The scent was again very strong when I opened it up but interestingly my immediate thoughts with this was that it smelt like strawberry milkshake - the banana smelt of a slightly artificial banana but this didn't smell like a punnet of strawberries or even strawberry sweets - more like a thick creamy milkshake from Wimpy (my guilty pleasure! You can keep the Bender in a Bun though, thanks). The flavour was again spot on - I'm not sure which was stronger, probably the strawberry but together. With the vanilla they combined to make a perfect milkshake taste in cake form. If I wasn't so impressed by the banana milkshake this would be a 9 too. 

Rating 8/10