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
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