Galaxy Duet - Toffee & Popcorn

There's a new chocolate bar on the block! Galaxy have added Toffee & Popcorn to its Duet line. You won't find many Galaxy chocolate reviews on my blog, I was, until recent years, a Cadbury girl but Cadbury are sadly pants now and I'm a sucker for new and 'strange' flavours. 

The bar itself looked the same, same shape as the other Duet bars and the same distinctive sheen of Galaxy chocolate. Things didn't start off well as it smelt sickeningly sweet - even by my standards - paired with a not too pleasant toffee scent. 

The toffee is actually a toffee flavoured caramel filling, so no lovely chewiness but that thick gooey caramel isn't a bad consolation! The bars are on the narrow side anyway, sectioned in to two separate fingers make things even smaller but they'd managed to pack a fair amount of each in. 

As with the previous two bars I tried each finger individually before eating it how it's intended.

The 'toffee' side which smelt a lot like toffee but looked a lot like caramel thankfully was bang in the middle of both. A lovely toffee flavour that was nowhere near as sickeningly sweet as it smelt with the thick luxury feel of a caramel. Pleasingly the toffee is still strong enough to distinguish from caramel though - it doesn't taste like the other Galaxy caramel flavours at least! 

The popcorn side wasn't quite as good. I enjoyed the crunchy texture as I knew I would but there was nothing really 'popcorn' about it - it could well have been crisped rice or bland nuts for all I could tell, I didn't notice any popcorn flavour at the time anyway. Some pieces did have a softer chewier bite like proper popcorn but the majority were crunchy.

I wish I could say that both flavours eaten together improved, any slight popcorn flavour that might have been there was overwhelmed by the strong toffee until half way through I realised I wasn't getting much popcorn at all... 

... Thanks for that Galaxy! It did return eventually but to tell you the truth the gooey sticky caramel and the thick smooth chocolate really diluted what crunch there was. 

Apparently there are toffee pieces included somewhere in the bar, which side I couldn't tell you! I didn't notice any toffee flavour in the popcorn side and there were no harder pieces inside the caramel so who knows where mine got to, maybe it was hiding wherever my section of popcorn went! 

Rating:

It's O.K. The toffee flavour was nice but I think the popcorn side would benefit from being in a larger bar to squeeze in some bigger pieces. I said I didn't taste the popcorn alone and that didn't change throughout but I am left with a slight saltiness in my mouth afterwards, a bit more of that and they could well be on to a winner! 

7/10 

Trio Bar

So the Trio is back! I'm afraid I'm not as excited as everyone else because I know I've not eaten one before. This is because I was probably the most boring person ever when it came to food. I've mentioned it quite a lot but I've made a helpful tool for future reference:

How To Know Whether One Treat Ate Something

Chocolate

Was it plain milk chocolate? If the answer is no, the answer is no. If the answer is yes, the answer is maybe. 

Sweets

Were they Dolly Mixtures? If the answer is yes then the answer is yes. If the answer is no then the answer is no. 

And that pretty much sums up my childhood! 

Using my very helpful questionnaire we can immediately deduce that the Trio was a big no-no.

Milk Chocolate with an irresistible toffee flavour cream and a crunchy biscuit

Now I don't have any previous experience to compare the Trio's much awaited return to but I'm hearing good things online. It seems like McVities are one of a few companies who aren't compromising quality over costs and have in fact stated that although there have been a few modifications to allow for modern manufacturing processes, the ratio and tastes should be exactly the same, and, rather than shrinking the size like so many other companies, the Trio is actually 15% bigger than it used to be! 

Well I'd have hated to see how small they were before! Short and quite fat, they're larger than a two finger Kit Kat but nothing like a proper chocolate bar. To be fair the Trio is more of a chocolate biscuit but you know what I mean! 

I have to wonder if McVities and Nestlé are in some way affiliated. Google claims not but the Trio really smelt like Nestlé milk chocolate, in taste it tasted more like the chocolate used in McVities Chocolate Digestives though. 

The biscuit comes through next, it is a biscuit and claims to be irresistibly crunchy but mine had a softer crunch - almost like a wafer. Mr.1T says its like a Kit Kat with a toffee cream and I can see what he means, there's a lot more of the biscuit but it does have a similar crunch, though again, how much of that familiarity comes from the Nestlé Kit Kat like chocolate, I'm not sure. 

Finally the thick toffee cream. Once I'd munched through the chocolate and biscuit I was left with a mouth full of a thick smooth cream. It's very tasty actually, quite sweet with a lovely toffee flavour and was the flavour left lingering on my lips long after the rest of the bar was gone. 

Rating:

I feel a bit scared to say anything bad about the Trio to be honest, what with an army of mega fans over the moon that it's returned. It's very tasty don't get me wrong but I'm not sure I'd have spent the last 13 years begging for its comeback... Who knows maybe you had to be there the first time round?

7/10  

Soreen Squidgy Cake Minis

I looove this time of year, there are so many new foods out at the moment - Valentines treats, Easter goodies, the beginnings of the spring lines and a few sneaky ice creams (just in time for it to get cold again!) Today's review comes courtesy of Soreen, famous for their Malt Loaf. 

I've found Soreen to be a bit hit and miss, I enjoy the original Malt Loaf, I love the Banana loaf and I was so disgusted by the Toffee Apple loaf that it remains one of the only things I've left uneaten to this day. 

 However today isn't a 'Loaf' - they're a pair of "Squidgy Cakes" I don't really know what the difference is considering the ingredients are near enough identical, just swap raisins in the original for toffee/chocolate but I suppose they have more dessert/treat like flavours. 

Anyway, they are both described as having 

"All the taste with 60% less fat and 50% less sugar compared to standard cake"

Hopefully that won't mean 50% less flavour! 

Toffee Squidgy Cake Minis

First up was the Toffee, as I said before it has the standard Malt Loaf ingredients but includes Butterscotch Sauce, Caramel Syrup, Caramel Flavouring and Toffee Flavouring in the loaf/cake itself and Toffee Pieces dotted throughout. 

Oh dear.. It looked identical to the Toffee Apple. Right down to the darker burnt looking bits that turn out to be the toffee pieces. It certainly looks like a Soreen loaf, nothing cake-y about it! 

The similarities stop there, thankfully. The Toffee Apple had 10% toffee pieces and although this isn't bursting at the seams at 12%, that extra 2% made a difference. I could smell both the toffee and the malt loaf but this time round the toffee was the stronger of the two - I couldn't smell it at all previously. 

I'm surprised, writing my review up, that the loaf is toffee flavoured too. I'd assumed until I actually read the ingredients, that all the toffee came from the pieces as they were the only place I could really taste them. The cake/loaf/thing itself tasted of an ordinary Soreen loaf but the pieces do have a lovely toffee flavour. 

Rating:

It was nice though, sweet and moist and the toffee went well with the already quite enjoyable malt loaf.

Not tastier than a toffee cake - it's not a cake - but it is an improvement on the Original Malt Loaf.

7/10

Chocolate Squidgy Cake 

Next up was the Chocolate Squidgy Cake. It had a lot to live up to, chocolate cake can be amazing but bad chocolate cake can be awful. I ate this after the toffee so I expected that it wouldn't be like a proper cake but I was interested to see how it'd work out. 

As before, its again a Malt Loaf just with added cocoa powder and chocolate chips. 

Well it looked a bit weird! It's supposed to have 14% chocolate chips as opposed to 12% in the toffee but I definitely didn't have as much chocolate as I'd had toffee. 

It smelt as strange as it looked, it had a not quite chocolate, not quite malt loaf scent. There were little hints of normal Soreen but mainly a strong cocoa-like-but-again-not-quite (!) smell. Weird, not like any chocolate cake I've smelt before anyway. 

The cake/loaf had a different texture to any other Soreen I've had too. it was a lot firmer and tougher and not as 'squidgy' as the toffee, original or any other for that matter. I've given enough benefits of the doubts lately so this isn't getting a pass - it's in date until the 10th of March and so it's got to be purely due to the addition of cocoa powder for some reason. It was still chewy though so it ended up with a strange rubbery burnt brownie ends like feel. 

I could taste the malt base before but I didn't at all in the chocolate flavour and it tasted as it smelt - something vaguely chocolatey about it but not quite right. The chocolate chips were lovely though, large and very chocolatey and they provided the chocolate hit I'd been looking for. 

Rating:

It's just a bit..weird. I would never choose this over chocolate cake, despite the less fat and sugar and I think I'd choose a normal Soreen Loaf over it too. It's a shame but if you want a chocolate cake, buy a chocolate cake. 

5/10

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

Sainsbury's Gingerbread Ice Cream

There's nothing particularly Christmassy on the packaging of this new Sainsbury's Gingerbread ice cream so it could possibly well be a new addition to their range rather than a seasonal. Still there are a few flavours associated with Christmas and gingerbread is up there with the best of them so if this is going to be a year round product, Sainsbury's couldn't have picked a better time to release it! 

Gingerbread flavour ice cream with a toffee sauce and gingerbread crumble 

The lid of the tub claims it to be "packed full of gingerbread biscuit crumble & a rich toffee sauce". I could see both before I'd even scratched the surface so so far, so good. 

If you don't like gingerbread you might as well stop right here. 

Wow. The ice cream has an amazing, extremely strong gingerbread flavour. It's a very warm, spiced flavour - incredibly moreish and absoloutly delicious! The gingerbread crumble is just that, don't expect any large chunks a la Ben & Jerry's they're diddy little bits but what they lack in size, they make up for in flavour and texture. They're very crunchy with an (if possible) even stronger gingerbread flavour. 

To tell you the truth, I only noticed the quality of the ice cream after the flavours - if you normally read my reviews, when it comes to ice cream, the quality is normally what I comment on first. I didn't expect top end, luxury ice cream and to be blunt it's not. But it's very good for a supermarket own brand, creamier and thicker than I expected. Perfectly acceptable. 

Besides the small amount on the very immeadiate top of the tub, I was yet to find any toffee sauce or strangely any dark chocolate. Dark chocolate? Well it's listed in the ingredients, but missing from the description and the whole of my pint, so who knows! 

I finally found some toffee swirl, a very small toffee swirl! Trying it alone was dissapointing. Compared to other brands swirls this has a very mild toffee flavour and somehow no real difference in texture from the ice cream. Strangely I noticed the swirl more against the ice cream. I thought it would be easily overpowered but while I couldn't really taste outright toffee there was a sweetness balancing out the spiced gingerbread. 

Bloody lovely, they should do something about the sauce though. Either get rid of it all together - the rest is more than good enough alone and it's a waste of toffee sauce or add more and make it stronger. It's a bit irrelevant at the moment. 

8/10 

Sainsburys Toffee Apple

Remember, remember the fifth of November!

I had a bad experience a couple of weeks or so ago with a Parrs Milk Chocolate Covered Apple that I bought in Tesco, there was a toffee apple version that I wanted to try in time for Bonfire Night but I decided to go with Sainsbury's own this time round, thanks to the poor quality of the apple previously. 

I couldn't smell much apart from sugar, Mr.1T tried to bite into his first but immediately had to give up due to a few fake teeth and some seriously sticky toffee. 

The toffee coating is deceptively thin and didn't have much of a proper toffee flavour, more of a sugary syrupy taste but despite this I enjoyed it much more than the chocolate apple. The toffee has a much shorter shelf life and it was actually best before the day after I ate this (the chocolate had about 5 days left on it) but it tasted so much fresher;  sweet, juicy apple - the kind that leaves juices dripping everywhere! I think it was probably because of the sharp, almost brittle toffee but it had a much crisper bite. The apple was still a little soft for my liking but nothing like the mushiness from before. 

Much better! 

7/10 

Chewy Lemonhead Redrific & Skor - Taffy Mail

Chewy Lemonhead Redrific 

How do they come up with these names? Next out of the Taffy Mail box were these Lemonhead Redrific sweets, chewy sweets with four flavours: Raspberry-Lemon, Watermelon, Wild Cherry and Strawberry. 

The sweets are chewy but not necessarily a good type of chew - the kind where you're picking bits out of your teeth for a while after. 

Wild Cherry was amazing. Very strong like eating 100 Sour Cherry Haribos at once without the sourness. I don't know if anyone else had the ridiculously cherry smelling cherry lipgloss when they were younger, but the flavour was how I imagined they would have tasted! The strongest (and probably nicest) cherry flavour sweet I've had. 

I didn't realise that I ate the strawberry until I'd had the other flavours. It had a nice, but quite dull flavour and was surprisingly weak for American standards. 

Watermelon was ridiculous. I actually "wow"ed out loud when I ate it - it tasted like I was eating actual watermelon. Delicious. 

Raspberry-lemon was the black sheep of the box. Initially all I could taste was the lemon, there was a slight raspberry aftertaste but I could have missed it had I not been waiting for it. A nice flavour but not really a 'red' one. 

8/10 

Skor 

Skor is a milk chocolate bar with crisp butter toffee. 

I liked the sound of this bar as I thought it sounded like Riesen and I have a slight addiction to those little chewy, chocolatey toffee cubes! 

The bar already earned bonus points in my eyes for actually smelling like chocolate. And not only that but it smelt good too! 

It's long and thin and I got a sharp knife to cut it in half expecting a hard job like with the 100 Grand Bar. 

I didn't need to though as this was another very brittle bar. I literally touched the knife to the surface and it snapped clean in half. I should have realised then but I took a big bite expecting soft chewy toffee and bit through to my tounge and ended up with a mouthful of blood! 

It's a very crisp, hard toffee and there are little almond pieces dotted about that I could both taste and feel, so that made it nice and crunchy too. It has almost a burnt toffee taste and was very nice actually - buttery and rich to compliment the crisp and crunchy texture. 

I once had a bag of mini Halloween chocolates that I just threw in the fridge and there were Crunchies in there, I don't know if you've ever tried a refrigerated Crunchie but that's the closest thing I can compare the texture to - albeit a thicker, buttery toffee version! 

I thought I'd like this as I like Riesen but you can't compare the two, they're completely different. I liked this quite a bit - it is on the sweet side but the chocolate is pretty good (looking at the ingredients they used non fat milk then added milk fat... Why!?) and the toffee has a delicious buttery rich flavour. The crunchy almonds are the icing on the cake! 

7/10

Butterkist Limited Edition Gingerbread Popcorn

I thought I didn't like gingerbread but I've changed my mind, my new love of gingerbread, cinnamon, spice and all things nice couldn't have come at a better time - just as every company are releasing their Halloween and Christmas products! 

Butterkist have a good track record as of late, I loved the Pulled Pork Popcorn and convinced Mr.1T to try it - he's five bags in and has another two in the cupboard! So a combination of Butterkist popcorn and gingerbread was one I couldn't turn down. 

This is popcorn coated with a cinnamon & ginger flavour toffee. 

This smelt like run of the mill sweet popcorn, I expected a stronger gingerbread or cinnamon scent as they're both quite powerful flavours but never mind. 

As you can see in the photo there wasn't really an even coating, the toffee is the sticky glaze on the popcorn and I had quite a few plain pieces. Unfortunately these were the kernels I tried first and they tasted how they smelt, just a plain sweet popcorn. I'd learnt from the Pulled Pork flavour that these aren't to be eaten in a dignified manner - the flavour is strongest with a good, full handful but my next again had pretty much no flavouring, there was a small trace of cinnamon that hinted at the good stuff to come but nothing too major. 

None of this sounds great but once I ate through the plain stragglers (these would have been at the bottom of the bag but I'd dumped it out into my popcorn holder) the rest of the bag was delicious. 

The unflavoured pieces might as well have been a completely different bag to the kernels with the glaze on, the gingerbread flavour is immense. Texture aside, I could well have been eating actual gingerbread. It's nice and strong, quite sweet, has a slight toffee flavour and a little warm kick from the cinnamon. Lovely!

The pieces that aren't gingerbread flavoured are still good - they're sweet with a slight toffee flavour and are perfectly tasty but the gingerbread kernels are amazing. 

I really want to give this a 9/10, it was so addictive and the whole bag didn't last me long at all, I'd just have liked all of the pieces to taste like that - if I wanted toffee or sweet popcorn I'd have bought a bag of that. I think I'll give Butterkist the benefit of the doubt on the plainer ones, the Gingerbread is good and I wish I hadn't eaten them all last night now! 

Werthers Original Sugar Free Chewy Toffee

These aren't new, I have no clue how long they've been in my cupboard for but I think it was from when we decided we still wanted to eat the same amount of sweets and chocolate but didn't want our teeth to fall out. Didn't last long. 

These are sugar free chewy toffees, the bag is quite small but contains a decent amount of individually wrapped toffees, I think I had around 15 in my bag. Considering Werthers advice for these is to eat only one or two at a time, they are supposed to last a while but more of that a bit later. 

One of my toffees seemed to have exploded and so I could smell a buttery sweetness before I'd unwrapped one, the exploded one was very hard to unwrap as these are pretty sticky! 

They have a lovely soft chew, I thought they might be a little firmer but they're more of a melt in the mouth type toffee. Despite this each one takes longer to chew than I'd imagined and even though they were very sticky to hold, I didn't end up with any stray pieces glueing my teeth together. 

The flavour was quite plain to start but soon developed into the familiar Werthers Original flavour, I know it has a reputation as an old persons sweet but I love the buttery, sweet taste of Werthers. There is an undeniable taste of toffee too and mixed together they are very tasty - certainly a lot better than I expected with a sugar free sweet - and although I've not tried the real sugar Chewy Toffees to compare, I'd be hard pressed to guess this was sugar free in a blind taste test. 

I did enjoy these and despite warnings to stick to a couple ate the whole bag. The warnings are due to the laxative effects excessive consumption has (if you're bored please go on Amazon and read the reviews for any sugar free sweet - especially Haribo, they're hilarious) but thankfully due to the obscene amounts of junk food I've eaten over the years, I have a stomach of steel and these didn't affect me in the slightest. I wouldn't recommend it though. 

7/10 

Soreen Toffee Apple Lunchbox Loaves

This review will be in two parts the first Toffee Apple mini loaf I tried last week and the one I had today. But there is a reason, I promise. 

'A spooktacular toffee apple loaf bursting with toffee pieces'

Soreen claims these are bursting with toffee pieces, bursting being 10% according to the ingredients. Considering the darker brown circles are the toffee pieces, I don't think my loaf managed to meet that 10% somehow. The mini loaf smelt like an ordinary Soreen loaf and apple, I couldn't smell any toffee at all. 

The filling is made with apple purée, it was very thick and didn't look very appealing once I'd cut it in half to be honest. My first bite was disgusting. All I could taste was apple, no toffee whatsoever then I was hit with the most awful aftertaste - the taste of nasty, rancid, gone off, mouldy apples. I took another couple of (very small) bites and while I could taste a hint of toffee there was always that lingering almost bitter aftertaste. I have to admit defeat and confess I didn't even finish this tiny loaf. 

I wanted to give Soreen the benefit of the doubt, I love their banana loaves and figured this might have been a bad one that found its way in. So after waiting a week (I had to forget that taste) I tried another. 

This one had a couple more toffee pieces but I'm still not sure it's 10%. The added few did make a slight difference as there was a very small hint of the toffee scent whereas before I could just smell Soreen and apple. 

Interestingly when I cut this one in half it looked completely different. The filling is a lot lighter and while the left side is similar to the first, the right could have been a different product. 

I tried the left first as it looked like last weeks, there was none of the nasty aftertaste but every bite seemed like it was bordering on it. You know how fruit tastes when it's just about to turn? It wasn't quite there but nearly. I then tried the right, completely different looking side. It had more toffee chips so straight away the flavour was improved as I could actually taste them! I think there's supposed to be toffee flavour in the loaf and filling too but the apple overwhelms it. In this side the apple was actually very pleasant! A nice, sweet fruity apple which went well with the normal Soreen loaf and the toffee. 

I'm seriously considering that the packaging must have been damaged in some way because I can't understand how the first and first half of the second loaf taste so nasty but the second half was pretty tasty?! They are in date until the 21st of October too..

I can't rate these but I need someone else to try them and let me know - for my sanity! 

Walker's Nonsuch Toffee

I was browsing through the chocolate and sweets on Amazon when I stumbled upon a selection pack of Walkers Nonsuch Toffee. I had two reasons for buying them:

1. I wanted that banana toffee and couldn't see it sold on its own 
2. I needed an excuse to use the tiny toffee hammer I got in another packet of Walker's toffee! 
   

 As I'd not tried a few of the varieties in the pack I thought I'd review them all.
I think my postman hates me, or at least he hated this parcel as half of my toffee had taken quite a beating! 

Yummy Banana Toffee 

The one I'd been after! Walker's obviously think highly of their banana toffee to name it Yummy Banana, I had high expectations. It certainly smelt a lot like banana and it was strong enough that I couldn't really smell any sweet toffee scent through it. Texturally it was just how I like my toffee - super chewy,sticky jaw ache toffee. The positives stop there sadly. The flavour was just like cheap, artificial nasty banana sweets. It just wasn't very nice at all, a shame really as I do like Walker's toffee and with a decent banana flavour this could have been amazing. 

6/10 

Nutty Brazil Toffee 

This was another I was really looking forward to - mainly for the texture than the flavour. Thanks to the postman it was completely flat but no matter as I got carried away with my hammer anyway and so it ended up in hundreds of pieces. 

It smelt like normal Walker's toffee and had the usual lovely creamy toffee flavour. Thanks to my hammering some pieces didn't have any Brazil nuts but the parts that had had the nuts in them previously still retained some of the nutty flavour. Again it was very sticky and chewy but the large crunchy nuts provided a brilliant contrast. 

Very nice.

8/10 

Tasty Treacle Toffee

Next in line was Tasty Treacle, made with 13% Black Treacle rather than a golden I wasn't sure what to expect. Unlike the Brazil Nut where the toffee was the main scent all I could smell unwrapping this little slab was treacle. Obviously I had to use my tiny hammer again and as Walker's put it "whacked, unwrapped and enjoyed". I need to find the perfect balance in my whacking skills though as this one ended up in only a few large pieces! 

It tasted much as it smelt, very much treacle! It was dark tasting, not quite bitter but not really sweet and almost a burnt like flavour. It was a little strange against the extreme creaminess of the toffee in the smallest pieces but they blended well together for the majority of the slab. 

To begin with I wasn't keen but it really grew on me, it has a lovely deep flavour mixed with the beautiful creamy toffee base that Walkers do really well. A less sweet twist on an already good product! 

7/10 

Lovely Liquorice Toffee

This was another I was very much looking forward to trying. How can liquorice and toffee go together? I tried so hard with my whacking but I'm just crap apparently.

Anyway it seemed even stickier than the toffees before and this was the only one inside a plastic case in the wrapper, I don't know why but maybe it's because of the extreme stickiness. My first few bites had a predominantly black liquorice, aniseed flavour. Although it was all I could taste it wasn't an overwhelming, too strong liquorice. Strangely it tasted quite creamy too, I couldn't taste the toffee at first but the underlying creaminess smoothed out the harsh liquorice taste. 

Moving onto the other blocks, the flavours were a bit incosistent. Some mouthfuls only tasted of toffe, some actually tasted like the treacle toffee I tried before (unsurprisingly as for some reason this is made from 5% black treacle, 0.7% liquorice extract and oil of aniseed) and others were just the creamier liquorice. Every block, no matter the main flavour had a liquorice aftertaste though. 

I liked this toffee it was very tasty especially in the largest chunks where there was a more consistent blend of the ingredients, but I'd stay away if you don't like black liquorice - there's no avoiding it here. 

7/10 

Dreamy Creamy Toffee 

Last but not least was Dreamy Creamy Toffee. The toffee had a slightly milkier scent to it than all the slabs before - probably because sweetened condensed whole milk is used rather than cream - I suppose Dreamy Milky Toffee doesn't have the same ring to it! 

Despite smelling milky and no cream just milk being used it did actually have a creamy flavour. Coming after all the crazy toffees, it seemed a little plain - I should have eaten this one first. Still it was very tasty; sweet, creamy, very chewy and a good all rounder. 

8/10 

Thorntons Toffee Apple Caramel

Finally I tried the last of the three new Thorntons flavours, Toffee Apple Caramel. 'Soft gooey caramel, flavoured with apple juice and wrapped in milk chocolate'

Once again there were seven quite large chocolates in the bag, and they contain a little more cocoa solids than usual with Thorntons milk chocolate at 30%. At first all I could smell was the chocolate - it smelt slightly richer than ordinary Thorntons chocolate but still had the sweet scent of milk chocolate - it didn't smell as rich as the Rausch chocolates (review to come) despite there only being a 5% cocoa difference. Slowly but surely though a sweet apple smell appeared, before I'd even broken open the chocolate shell.

That slight increase on the cocoa percentage really shows though and the chocolate has a slightly richer, darker taste to it. The chocolate coating is nice and thick - something I actually enjoyed with all three flavours - and gives a good bite against the runny centre. 

The gooey caramel is delicious, it has a strong apple flavour alongside the usual caramel and the two go together brilliantly. The caramel is quite thick, on a few of the chocolates I bit half away and ended up pulling all of the caramel out, thankfully the chocolate was tasty enough on its own. It is quite sweet though so I think it's a good choice paired with the slightly richer chocolate, anything too sweet and it could have ended up like the Candyfloss. It made a nice change from the filled chocolates and flavoured caramels I've had recently and plays into the fairground theme brilliantly, the taste really reminded me of being at fairgrounds on Bonfire night watching the fireworks! 

In my opinion this is by far the best of the three new chocolates and the one I'll be voting to keep on the Thorntons website. 

Rating 8/10