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Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie 'Wich

I bet you thought that was it for new ice cream from Ben & Jerry's? I know I did, but stuffed behind the Magnums in Tesco I found a whole shelf full of individual Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream sandwiches! I did notice a chocolate 'Wich on the press release Ben & Jerry's sent out but I hadn't seen or heard anything other than that darker looking 'Wich in the background of a photo. It makes sense though, in the UK especially, I know if you asked most of my friends and family to name 2 Ben & Jerry's flavours, they'd say Cookie Dough and Chocolate Fudge Brownie - they're the classics. 

The wrapper is a bit busted, the Chocolate Fudge Brownie 'Wich is sold individually rather than in the boxes of 3 or 8 like the Cookie Dough, this is probably so it's put in the smaller ice cream cases but my local Tesco saw fit to dump as many as they could in the big freezers, hence why it isn't as pretty looking as its Cookie Dough bro. 

Chocolate Ice Cream with Brownies Sandwiched Between Chewy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Its the same size as the larger Cookie Dough 'Wich and just as sturdy, if a little melted with a chocolate brownie scent rather than outright chocolate. 

I stored it in the same freezer at home as the Cookie Dough 'Wich but the Chocolate Fudge Brownie was a lot softer to begin with and had a much faster melt, this could be due to the ice cream itself but it's much more likely my Tesco were up to their old tricks of leaving the frozen products sitting in the aisles for a few hours before actually shelving them. 

Taking a bite the consistency was again the first thing I noticed, due to the fact it had already half melted it was a lot softer to eat - the Cookie Dough was soft too but still had a firmness to it whereas this felt a lot more like melted ice cream. Still I think I'm blaming Tesco for that. 

Despite my first mouthful including the cookie and the ice cream the first thing I both felt and tasted were the large brownie chunks inside the ice cream. Full of flavour with a soft, chewy texture just like in the tubs and despite Tesco's best efforts no freezer burn whatsoever. But we all know Ben & Jerry's have good quality control! 

The ice cream is very much the same story, typical Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream. Thick and creamy with a lovely chocolate taste although it isn't quite as strong as in the pints. Interestingly according to Ben & Jerry's website it does have a different recipe to the tubs but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it is it's chocolate on chocolate on chocolate so an ice cream with the same strength of flavour as the tubs might well end up overdoing it. 

The cookies were very different, for starters as you can see they're chocolate based. Initially I was a little disappointed (I never thought I'd say that in a B&J review!) as based on the colour I expected a strong cocoa flavour like a bourbon biscuit (or an Oreo if you must). Once I thought about it though, they aren't biscuits like a Bourbon or Oreo - they're a double chocolate chip cookie - the flavour was fine. Hopefully you understand what I mean when I say they're chocolate flavoured not cocoa, as strange as that sounds. It's a very nice chocolate flavour with chocolate chips scattered about, not too many but enough to provide smaller and stronger bursts of chocolate flavour - as if you didn't already have enough! 

As I mentioned previously in this review and in the Cookie Dough, despite efforts otherwise, they had no sogginess or freezer burn but they are completely different in texture, softer than in the Cookie Dough 'Wich and most shop bought Cookies. If this was because of the way Tesco had stored them, then I can't thank Tesco enough and recommend you leave yours out for a while before freezing - they ended up with a consistency a lot more like a brownie than a cookie and as it fits in with the theme of the 'Wich, it was much more appropriate than a harder cookie. 

Rating:

Another very tasty 'Wich from Ben & Jerrys, of the two I think the Cookie Dough has the edge just slightly as there is a greater contrast between ice cream, cookie dough chunks and actual cookies where in the Chocolate Fudge Brownie it's a little more blurred. That's by no means a criticism on the Chocolate Fudge - a big chocolatey, chewy gooey mess but that's just how I like it! 

8/10    

Leonidas Dark Chocolate Assortment Part 4

Oh no!! Very sadly (for me) it's the final four chocolates from the Leonidas Dark Chocolate Assortment Box. Part One, Two and Three have to be some of the tastiest chocolates I've eaten and this is certainly the best box of chocolates I've had in a very long time.

I know my normal modus operandi is to eat worst to best but I couldn't help myself with the chocolates in part three so I was left with four that while I knew they'd be good, if I had to share some, would probably have been the four I'd give up. 

I Love You

Awww, I love you too Leonidas! I'm not sure what lemon, a normally quite sharp and bitter taste has to do with love but what do I know? If you're up to date with my Leonidas posts you'll know citrus flavours aren't usually my cup of tea but Leonidas aren't playing by my rules so far.

It seems I might not have left the worst, in fact this could be one of the best! I did not expect to taste a delicious sweet lemon, I'd assumed a sharp tart flavour but it wasn't at all. The sweet fruity flavour was the perfect accompaniment to the rich dark chocolate.  

Tosca

As well as citrus flavours, I usually eat around the alcoholic ones too. Way back in part one there was a rum filled chocolate which I loved although there have been a few since then with the familiar harsh alcohol flavour I'm not too keen on. 

The chocolate casing seemed thicker than of late and was just as good as ever, a nice strong flavour until the Brandy kicked in. Wow, it's strong although maybe a little too authentic for me. It's very tasty and it's not that I disliked it, its just so... 'real' tasting that I think it'd need a proper Brandy fan to truly appreciate it. 

Mosaique

Cranberry is a fruit I shy away from, not because of a dislike but because it makes me think of things that do not need to be written about on a food blog thank you very much! 

The crispy praline is wonderful, a soft thick filling with crisp crunchy pieces dotted throughout. The flavours were good too, it tasted a lot sweeter overall than the vast majority of the other chocolates. One negative (or positive depending on where you stand) is that the flavour all came from the sweetened praline, not due to any cranberry. To tell you the truth I couldn't see, let alone taste any cranberry pieces but regardless it was good. 

Cerise Emballee

The very last chocolate in my whole box is the only wrapped one. 

I usually prefer my cherry to be of the sour variety, covered in sugar and in gummy form but I'll eat it in chocolate, if I have to... The attention to detail in the whole box has been lovely, from chocolates shaped like coffee beans to Greek characters embossed on top, they've thought of it all and the very last is the cherry on top...

..Literally! I can't go any further without saying, just look at that! If you read the description on the menu you might be thinking "that doesn't look like cherry liqueur cream?" And you'd be right, because I ate it. It was nice but nothing compared to what you can see above. 

The runny, sweet juices came from the whole Morello Cherry sitting nicely inside. Its large, juicy, a little chewy and sweet with the most vibrant cherry flavour. The liqueur cream left a very boozey aftertaste behind, but the good kind and I'll admit - I literally licked the plate clean afterwards. Incredible. 

Rating:

What a box of chocolates! There were lots of flavours I assumed I'd hate and some I thought I'd love. Some I was on the money and others surprised me but what I can say about every single chocolate is that what really shines through is the quality of the ingredients. Even if it was a flavour I normally hate, there was no denying the stuff's good.

 It's my birthday in a few months Mr.1T - I'll try the milk next time please!!

9/10

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!) 

Aero Mousse - Caramel

Last year Nestle released the Aero Mousse, I think I was alone in my enjoyment of it but I did say at the time a flavoured mousse would be nice - maybe mint, orange or hazelnut. Nestle have taken the safe route with caramel but I'm not complaining! 

Smooth milk chocolate filled with bubbly milk chocolate and a layer of aerated caramel flavour chocolate mousse. 

There is no visible difference between the plain Aero Mousse and the Caramel but the latter had a delicious caramel scent from the off. Both bars contain the same amount of mousse filling but unlike in the plain it's clear as day in the Caramel. 

For someone like me, who enjoys eating my chocolate slowly, the bar is separated into easily snappable squares.  

The fact I'd snapped it all apart affected the taste a little. I noticed the 2 squares on either end had less mousse inside, for some reason I ate these first (blame the OCD) and the unmistakable taste of Aero chocolate was nearly all I could taste. I could certainly feel the creamy mousse - the textures at play are lovely in this bar regardless of the flavours: the thick snap of the chocolate casing, the light and almost melting aerated chocolate inside and a thick creamier mousse, lovely! 

The middle four squares had more mousse and the change in flavour was immediate. The Aero chocolate was more of an after taste and the caramel was stronger. It's very nice, quite sweet but it has a strong caramel flavour. It was actually a bit strange eating it without feeling the gooey stickiness of usual caramel! 

I do think one litte change could make an improvement though, the whole time I was waiting for a saltiness that never came. I know, I normally moan everything is salted caramel flavour and I'm asking for it here! Maybe I've just got too used to it - Mr.1T looked at me like I was mad when I said it to him so that's a disagreement from him - I also just realised I wanted salt in yesterdays review too, maybe I'm deficient! 

Rating:

Very nice, improvement on the original. 

7/10 

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 

Nestle Pick & Mix

There is nothing particularly innovative or exciting about the new bag of chocolate from Nestle, but sometimes the simplest ideas are some of the best. 

If you follow my Instagram or Twitter you might have noticed I'm a bit of a Pick'n'Mix fiend, personally I'm still mourning the loss of Woolworths but Candy King do the job quite nicely. Nestle have saved me a trip to Wilkos by taking a few favourites, Smarties, Rolos, Aero Bubbles and Toffee Crisp Bite Size and put them in a sharing sized bag named Pick & Mix. Whenever I choose my own Pick'n'Mix, Smarties and Chocolate Fudge Crunch (basically the 'cheap' version of a Toffee Crisp) are the first in my tub so I'm happy!

I don't really know why my chocolates all look like that but they all tasted fine!

There's not much point going into detail about each individual chocolate, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't tried them but they all tasted fine.

Each bag is really varied, I had a pretty even mix of all four chocolates but Mr.1T had mainly Toffee Crisps and just 1 or 2 Smarties and Aero Bubbles in his so it's luck of the draw I'm afraid!

One major takeaway from the Nestle bag is that I realised I actually prefer the Candy King Smarties to the proper ones!! Controversial I know, but the Candy Kings have much more of a chocolate flavour than their branded counterparts. Otherwise everything else tastes just the same as usual but I am left wondering why Aero chocolate tastes different to other Nestle chocolate? Not just because of the aerated texture but the flavour is completely different, normally I wouldn't notice but it really stands out against the chocolate used on the Toffee Crisps and Rolos. 

Rating:

It's all well and good, perfectly tasty but Nestle have missed a trick. They own Rowntree's. Now I like chocolate but Pick & Mix is just that - a mix. Where are the sweets? 

What're the bets that in a few months a bigger, more expensive bag is released with the Rowntree's Pick & Mix (Tooty Fruitys, Fruit Pastilles and Fruit Gums) mixed in? Actually.. I might buy a bag and do that myself - it'll be a lot cheaper than Candy King anyway! 

7/10