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

Tesco Pork, Turkey & Stuffing Christmas Trees

Mr.1T is cursing my rediscovered loved of stuffing, he used to be able to have his fill but we'll happily fight over the last bits now (and what we call little storm cloud roast potatoes - crispy and almost burnt on the outside but beautifully fluffy on the inside). We found these pork, turkey and stuffing Christmas trees while we were trying to choose a savoury snack that we wouldn't have to cook. 

I thought the fact there were only 7 was going to be a bit of a rip off, but they're big old boys - they come in the same packaging as the mini sausage rolls but they're about three times the size. 

I had to eat my words about them being a rip off at this point - they're nice and deep too. When we saw there were 7 I begrudgingly agreed I'd have 3 and Mr.1T could have 4 but as this was only a snack I began to think 3 might have been too much! The trees can be eaten hot or cold and I decided I'd try one hot, one cold and whichever was nicest is how I'd have the third - for the sake of reviewing, of course! To warm them up, you pop them in the microwave and for an 800w (which mine is), zap them for 1 minute 40 seconds. 

While I was waiting for the first, I decided to snap a quick cross section photo. 

What. The. Hell. I knew it was too good to be true! And I knew I was right - it's all a big deception/smoke and mirrors/a big fat Christmas tree shaped lie - total rip off. 

On to the tasting, my microwave only lets me set the time in intervals of 10 seconds or 30 seconds, no combination of the two and the 10 seconds only go up to 90, so I'd set it for a minute and a half - 10 seconds less than recommended - figuring I could pop it back in if need be. 

I needn't have worried about being 'undercooked', it was about 30 seconds over being just right! The bottom of the pastry casing was rock hard and had an almost burnt flavour, which can't be right - microwaves just suck the moisture out rather than burn burn it. The pastry tasted so bad I couldn't taste anything else and not wanting to ruin anymore, left that one as my one warm Christmas tree. 

0/10 

They smell delicious cold, like a mix between sausage rolls and stuffing and that was what I hoped it would taste like too. They didn't. First off, all I could notice was that whereas in the warm tree the pastry is rock hard, when cold it's almost soggy. Mary Berry would not be happy, soggy bottoms all round! Still I like crispy stuffing and I like soft stuffing so I persevered. To compliment the soggy bottoms, the fillings are nice and wet too.. Seriously it was one extreme to another - burnt and hard to a moist mess. Whatever, it's all about the flavour anyway. 

That too was a disappointment. The vast majority tasted just like the filling of a sausage roll - pork with a bit of who knows what mixed in. Apparently there's as much turkey as there is pork (8%) but neither me or Mr.1T tasted turkey at all. I did get a stuffing flavour every now and then, a bit of sage and onion thrown in the mix, but it was very slight and not very often. 

5/10 

The pork, turkey & stuffing Christmas trees are no more than glorified sausage rolls sadly - they could have been so good! 

Head To Head - Crunchie V Violet Crumble

My local Tesco have broadened their horizons and added one Australlian chocolate to its World Food aisle. Sadly it's not one of the crazy Cadbury (although I should be boycotting them for tax evasion and crimes against flavour) bars but Nestles version of the Cadbury Crunchie - Violet Crumble. 

It was expensive but I suppose it has travelled halfway round the world and it does weigh 10g more than a Crunchie.

Top Violet Crumble, Bottom Crunchie 

The bars look very similar from the outside with the rippled effect in the chocolate but the Violet Crumble is quite a bit darker. Even though I'm not really a Cadbury fan anymore, I only really eat it through habit or nostalgia, I still usually prefer it to most Nestle chocolates. I was very suprised to find (though thinking about it, I shouldn't have been) the Violet Crumble smelt a lot more like real chocolate than the Crunchie which just had a sugary sweet scent. 

Crunchie 

While the bars looked similar from the outside, the insides looked nothing alike, the Violet Crumble being a lighter, more compacted honeycomb. There would be no chance of mixing these up at all. 

Violet Crumble 

I started the head to head with the Crunchie, I needed to refresh my memory! It soon came flooding back - super sweet, super crunchy with the distinct Cadbury chocolate aftertaste. Eating the Violet Crumble afterwards was a massive disappointment. The centre has a completely different feel, the texture was just wrong, it started off hard and crisp but kind of ended up softer, not soft soft it is still honeycomb after all, but it doesn't stay as consistently crunchy. Honestly, it felt like a stale version of the Crunchie. 

Shock horror, the chocolate was nicer in the Crunchie too! I could clearly taste the chocolate, OK it was after the honeycomb had almost melted away but it was definitely chocolate. I barely noticed it at all in the Violet Crumble. There was one thing to be said about the Violet Crumble which was an improvement on the Crunchie, and that was that it is nowhere near as sweet. Back in the day when Cadbury chocolate was actually chocolate not fatty chocolate flavoured sugar, the super sweet centre probably didn't impact too much on the overall bar but it seemed a total sugar overload against the quite plain tastes of the Violet Crumble. 

Even so, I couldn't help but compare the Violet Crumble to a supermarket own brand/cheap shop rip off of the Crunchie. The texture isn't quite how it supposed to be, there's not much in terms of actual flavour and even forgetting the Crunchie exists, it's just bland and boring. The one small silver lining is that less sweetness is an improvement, though I think I'd take the sugar just for some flavour.

Sorry Australia it's 

5/10  

A word of warning - don't try this at home! Wow my teeth ached afterwards and not because of the crunch! Although I couldn't taste the 33g of sugar in the Violet Crumble alone my teeth sure noticed it - they stung afterwards! 

KP Grazing Mix - Red Berry & Nut Crunch

A mix of roasted unsalted nuts, dried fruits & oat clusters

I wasn't going to review the KP grazing mix as they're not new but my last nut posts have gone down ever so well on Twitter.... I knew you all had filthy minds.

 I had a quick Google and didn't see this particular bag from the range reviewed before so why not! 

The mix is mostly unsalted roasted peanuts with a few unsalted roasted almonds chucked in for good measure, dried sweetened cranberry pieces, oat clusters and golden raisins.

Although there are double the amount of peanuts all I could smell was oats. If I shut my eyes I'd swear I'd opened my big bag of Tesco everyday value (they taste just the same and they're 75p for 1Kg!) oats.

As always I tried one of each first, the dried cranberry pieces were nice and big, not very dry and were quite chewy but still somewhat firm; they almost felt like raisins. The front of the bag says this is a red berry mix with dried fruits but the back says sweetened cranberry and there are only cranberry pieces inside. Even more confusingly the ingredients list the cranberry as red berry flavoured sweetened cranberry pieces!? These don't taste exclusively of cranberry, they have a mixed berry flavour and while they do taste lovely (although very sweet) I don't understand why KP didn't just put a variety of dried berries in Cranberries must be cheaper.. 

Both the peanuts and almonds tasted as expected, the almonds were very crunchy and the peanuts slightly softer. The same with the taste of the large oat clusters but they were surprisingly crunchy, more so than the almonds. Finally the golden raisins were pretty small and chewy, they had a nice flavour and were sweet but not as sweet as the cranberry. 

None were great alone, the raisins are probably the best of the bunch and all mixed together they aren't much better. The fruit and raisins add some much needed sweetness to the dry, plain oats and nuts but this mix is seriously missing the salt. It was so dry and plain to eat, I know it sounds stupid - salt would make it drier surely, but it was just so boring. Plain nuts and plain oats, it was just too much plain. The sweeter pieces broke it up a little but the dry boring-ness was overpowering. 

They'd be OK I suppose if you were on a health kick - full of protein and fibre and less salt than other similar bags but I won't be buying these again. 

5/10 

Jolly Rancher Chews

A while ago the lovely Lucy (@R4Rreviews & her blog) sent me the most amazing package, it was filled with a lot of my favourite things - fudge, chocolate, 4 of my long searched for Triple Chocolate Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, a couple of her favourite flapjacks and this box of Jolly Rancher Chews - she knows me so well! 

The box contained five flavours; Blue Raspberry (apparently a standard flavour in the US, it's been included in near enough every mixed flavoured bag of sweets I've had), Cherry, Green Apple and Watermelon. 

The box was all sealed up and I had to physically tear it to get it open so I was a bit suprised to find the chews all individually wrapped - surely if the box is sealed and airtight it shouldn't need it? The chews were quite sticky and so it was a pain in the backside getting the wrappers off, half still had a bit left on but eating a sweet wrapper has never killed anyone before.. 

The sweets have quite a hard chew, harder than a Chewit or Starburst but they do soften up. It's a strange type of chew actually, my mouth was seriously watering while I was eating them but they left me feeling like I needed a glass of water as well. 

Blue Raspberry had quite a strong raspberry flavour at times, it was pretty artificial tasting but weirdly at times tasted like Bubblegum too. I worked out the reason for that after I'd tried them all though.. 

Cherry was very subtle by American standards. At times it was quite plain tasting but had random bursts of a clear and quite strong cherry. 

Green Apple was the saviour of the box. Juicy, strong and delicious - it doesn't taste like you're eating an actual apple by any means but there's no mistaking it. 

I was looking forward to Watermelon after trying it in the Lemonheads Redrific last week - it was near enough a perfect watermelon flavoured sweet so I hoped this would be the same. It wasn't. It tasted like watermelon sure, but it was clearly made with a bunch of chemicals rather than real flavourings. I haven't looked at the ingredients, I didn't need to - I could taste it. Strong but not nice at all. 

Apart from Green Apple I wasn't keen on the flavours in the Jolly Ranchers Chews. All of them ended up tasting like bubblegum or chewing gum. I thought that was what I tasted initially in the Blue Raspberry, but I realised that they all taste like flavoured gum when the flavour has worn off. 

5/10 

And it's only a 5 because I liked the Green Apple

Sorry Bakey! 

Sour Patch Kids & Big Hunk - Taffy Mail

Sour Patch Kids 

My Taffy Mail box also included a box of Sour Patch Kids. 

As you probably well know we have Sour Patch Kids here in the UK but they're made and sold by Maynards. These are the original Mondelēz sweets made for the US and Canada by the looks of it. Maynards are a decent company and I usually enjoy their sweets so I thought they'd surely be on par with these. 

One way to tell if you're eating American sweets - there's always a bright neon blue one! I think that the colouring and flavouring (Blue 1 apparently) is banned in the UK. I can't think of many sweets over here that are this bright blue - or as bright as any of the colours for that matter! Not only were they super bright but they smelt super strong too. They felt softer than I remember our Sour Patch Kids being but still firm enough to have a little chew. 

Basically these are our Sour Patch Kids on steroids. Stronger smelling and tasting, more sour and then even sweeter. I don't know what the US version flavours are supposed to be and to be truthful I didn't give it a second thought while I was eating them (hence the lack of my usual long winded descriptions!) as they were that good. 

These have ruined our version for me. Britain might have the US beat on chocolate and biscuits (#teambourbon) but American sweets, sour ones especially are far superior. 

8/10 

Big Hunk 

I was winding Mr.1T up with this bar, telling him I couldn't wait to get home for my big hunk as I'd never had one before.. I love the name! 

In my hastiness to get my Taffy Mail box open the brown wrapper led me to believe this was chocolate but a commenter on that post informed me that this is a nougat with peanuts. 

It was HUGE! The packaging says " place bar firmly in one hand, then SMACK! your BIG HUNK on a hard surface, happily eat your bite-sized pieces!" Or " for a softer chew - place your BIG HUNK in the microwave, heat for approximately 5-10 seconds, carefully eat your SUPER SOFT CHEWY SNACK!" Well I like a harder chew and I wanted to use my tiny toffee hammer again so I SMACKED! it with that.. 

I shouldn't have done that. It's a lot more brittle than you'd think and so peanuts and nougat went flying everywhere. I found some in the blinds and behind the microwave. At least this gave me a chance to try the peanuts alone, they were fine; quite large and crunchy but they were unsalted which isn't how I like my peanuts but probably suits the nougat better. 

The bar smelt lovely and sweet, not sugary sweet but more like honey and is mega sticky. I wasn't about to microwave my nougat like some kind of wimp so I dove straight in! 

I have never had anything as chewy as the Big Hunk in my life before. I was, and still am undecided on the flavour, some parts had quite a sweet honey taste but a good three quarters of the bar tasted plain. If the honey was more consistent it would have been much better but as it was I have to say I prefer Barratt Nougat! 

Surprisingly, especially considering how many there were, I couldn't really feel or taste the peanuts. They just seemed to disappear behind the thick chewy nougat. 

If you have read my blog you'll know the chewier something is usually the higher I rate it, I love a good chew. So when I say this is ridiculous please don't underestimate how chewy it really is! 15 minutes of solid chewing later and I was debating giving in and chucking it in the microwave. I stuck it out though and I'm sure I burnt more calories chewing this than I got from eating it. 

Lacking in flavour, serious jaw ache and it became a bit of a chore eating it. 

5/10 

Wawel Chocolate Bars

Wawel are a Polish company and I've reviewed a few of their chocolates before.

Polish chocolate bars are sold near enough everywhere in the UK now and all the supermarkets and smaller shops near me are rammed full of either Wawel or E.Wedel chocolate bars. Asda had a huge display on the end of the world food aisle pushing four new Wawel chocolate bars, the two I've got to review today and two which didn't really appeal to me - though most people on my Twitter at least would disagree - ordinary dark chocolate and a filled peanut butter bar. 

Fresh & Fruity 

Milk chocolate with jelly. 

This was the first bar to catch my eye. It's a 100g bar with nice thick squares as seems to be standard for Wawel, no 89/90g mucking about like Cadbury! I was suprised opening the wrapper that I couldn't smell chocolate at all - not even a tiny whiff - the only thing to be smelt was a fruity jelly. 

I tried a square which had no jelly pieces first though there was a gap where some must have been before I'd snapped it off. Strangely it had no chocolate flavour at all (the packet has stated in bold that this bar contains vegetable fats as well as cocoa butter, I wonder if that contributed) instead, it just had a hint of jelly like taste to it. It really didn't taste like chocolate. 

I picked this bar as I thought it would combine two of my loves - chocolate and jelly bean/sweets. But no these aren't jelly sweets at all, they're actual lumps of jelly! Not only did they have a weird texture, as in where's the custard to go with this wobbly jelly texture, but most had absoloutly no flavour. In the photo above you should be able to see two different coloured jellies, the red had a nice fruity flavour but most of my pieces were the clear/white jelly which was plain. 

So add the wibbly wobbly jelly on a plate texture, the mostly plain flavour of the jelly and the complete absence of chocolate taste and it all adds up to an unimpressive bar. 

I had one square with no jelly and none that seemed to be touching it and the chocolate had a little flavour there, quite milky and creamy but nothing I'd go out of my way to buy. 

5/10

Cocoa Mousse Limited Edition 

Chocolate with cocoa filling (28%) and chocolate filling (20%)

Like when I opened the Fresh & Fruity bar the chocolate scent took a back seat, instead of awful jelly there was a delicious cocoa smell this time round. 

I broke a piece of just chocolate off to see if this one had any flavour and pleasingly it did. It's 55% so not very dark but not too sweet or milky and was perfectly tasty alone. 

The cocoa filling is the star of the show though, I know mousse is in the name, and it's described as filling but this was so thick it was almost like a paste - and for once I didn't refrigerate the bar so there's no chance of it thickening up because it was cold. It has a beautiful rich cocoa flavour, I wish I knew what they used I'd like to buy a tub of purely that! 

There's also a chocolate filling, if you look carefully in the photo you'll be able to see two different colours in the paste centre. To be honest it takes a back seat to the cocoa flavour and blends in with the actual chocolate but it does add some sweetness that I didn't notice when I tried the chocolate alone. 

Overall the bar is fairly sweet but the cocoa filling is what stands out the most. It's such an intense, creamy, rich flavour but manages to stop short of being too much which I think is due to the sweeter chocolate filling balancing it out. Polar opposite to the Fresh & Fruity bar! 

8/10 

Parrs Milk Chocolate Apple

If you had to choose between Halloween and Bonfire Night (or Fireworks/Guy Fawkes night whatever you call it) which would you pick? Halloween is fancy dress, scary films and eating your own body weight in sweets and chocolate, Bonfire Night is fireworks, sparklers, fairgrounds and comfort food.. I don't think I could decide! 

Away from the seasonal aisle and buried in with the fresh fruit and veg in Tesco, I found something sweet for each - (ready made for the lazy people like me) Toffee Apples and Milk Chocolate Apples. The milk chocolate have a pumpkin wrapper so they must be the Halloween alternative to the traditional Bonfire Night Toffee Apple. As Halloween comes first, I went for the chocolate. 

Mine had a happy face under the foil wrapper! Not very spooky...

I wasn't a fan of the apple, I'm not sure of the type of apple used but I like one with a nice crisp bite and this was very soft - almost mushy. It did have a nice fresh, juicy flavour but the texture just meant it felt like it was on the turn and about to go a bit rotten. 

The chocolate surprisingly wasn't bad, I expected advent calendar quality chocolate but it didn't taste it and looking at the ingredients it actually has 27% minimum cocoa solids and 20% minimum milk solids - not high quality luxurious chocolate by any means but not fatty, waxy candy chocolate. The chocolate had a sweet creamy flavour and was tasty enough. 

Both mine and Mr.1Ts issue with this was that it was virtually impossible to get a bite of chocolate and apple together. The chocolate coating is uneven, very thick in places and barely there in others and it had a tendency to snap off in chunks. So while we got a good taste of each part, I maybe got one mouthful of chocolate apple and it wasn't very good to be honest. I didn't like it and he's undecided but he did say he wouldn't buy it again. 

We'll stick to toffee apples in the future! 

5/10 

Fruit Shoot Sweets

I'm having another one of my phases, this time it's sweets! I really wanted some Monty Bojangles Bon Bons and their website is the only place I can seem to find them, a delivery charge seemed silly for 1 small box of Bon Bons so I treated myself to these three bags of Fruit Shoot sweets as well as the J20 Bon Bons and Robinsons Squash gums. 

Funky Fruits 

These are an assorted mix of fruit jellies and as with the Robinsons packet are vegetarian and made with natural colours and flavours. The little blurb says "We are so fixated with Fruitiness that for our new Fruit Shoot Funky Fruit jellies we are using the most lusciously mouth-watering soft and fruity recipe to create these fantastically fruity flavours".

Well they smelt lusciously fruity but I disagree with the description of soft jellies, they had more of a wine gum consistency; a pretty hard chew and were some of the stickiest sweets I've had in a long time - I was picking bits out of my teeth for ages! 

Summer fruits flavour is "all the sweet and sharp flavour of succulent strawberries & raspberries" and had a nice actual summery taste to it. The strawberry is slightly stronger but overall had a good mix of the two. Apple has "the sharp flavour of yummy apples" but really I found it to be quite mild to begin with. It had more of a sweet apple taste while chewing but to be fair there was a sharper aftertaste. Tropical is "bursting with the sun-soakingly delicious flavour of a pineapple and orange punch" and for some reason there were 2 different shapes with this flavour in my bag. It ended up being the plainest tasting of all but it did have a mild cocktail like flavour to it. I couldn't clearly taste the pineapple and after trying the orange in the bag realised I couldn't taste that either. Moving on to the actual Orange - "the zingy, zesty flavour of the fullest, juiciest oranges". I'm not a great lover of oranges and so the strong, natural flavour of these didn't do much for me. They were very sharp, very citrusy and almost bitter or tart at some points. A very clear orange flavour and while I wasn't too keen it was a good, long lasting one. Blackcurrant and apple "capture all the flavour of bucketloads of beautifully jammy blackcurrant a & apples" but really tasted just of blackcurrant. I couldn't taste the apple at all but I wasn't moaning - the blackcurrant is good! It's not too strong but has a natural, juicy flavour. 

Despite being made by Robinsons with, I'm guessing, the same natural flavours and colours these were a lot better. The flavours were stronger and tasted real, I was just annoyed at how sticky these were - it's a good job I have all my own teeth! 

7/10 

Fruit Shoot Mega Sour Mix 

The flavours in this bag are exactly the same as the Funky Fruits - just sour, apparently. 

They smelt better than Funky Fruits though, the same blend of fruity scents but a lot more vibrant and despite again only using natural colours or flavours. Nothing artificial again but these aren't suitable for vegetarians. The sweets have much more of a jelly texture than before and are very soft and fizzy feeling, nice and chewy and are so juicy I felt like they would burst if I gave them a squeeze. 

Summer fruits had a much better mix of the two flavours this time round, neither were stronger and it was very tasty. For a 'Mega Sour' mix, it was distinctly lacking in the sour front though. Tropical was as dissapointing as before. The plainest of all, neither flavour used is strong at all and it's generally quite mild. This flavour tasted like the worlds most watered down cocktail. Dull. 

Blackcurrant & Apple was another that was different from the Funky Fruits bag, the blackcurrant was nowhere near as overpowering as before and it's more of an even mix of the two. Sadly this meant it tasted a lot milder as the apple, which I could actually taste this time, just seemed to tone it all down a bit. There is a strong blackcurrant aftertaste but I preferred it previously, as the stronger, dominant flavour. The Apple alone seems completely different, it's quite strong and a nice apple flavour, just like with the Summer Fruits flavour and the apple in the Funky Fruits bag, is quite sweet rather than sour. It's very nice though. I left Orange till last again, and one again it's a sharp orange flavour. I much preferred it here though, the taste suits the fizzy, sugary texture much more and it ends with a slightly sour aftertaste. A lot better in this bag. 

I preferred this bag a lot and I think the texture and type of sweet is the reason why, it suits these flavour a lot more. All of them (except tropical) have a really nice flavour but none are mega sour as I was expecting. Tasty though. 

7/10 

Juicy Jellies 

Again the third and final Fruit Shoot bag, Juicy Jellies is (meant to have) the same five flavours in the bag however, while this bag is still made with natural flavours and ingredients, it doesn't say that no artificial flavours are used so I was interested to see how these would shape up against the purely natural ones. 

I noticed a difference before I'd even tried one, they had an overwhelming, very strong tropical scent to them - nothing like the previous bags and a bit ironic considering the tropical had no flavour in those! Although the name is Juicy Jellies, these are a mixture of completely harder gummy like sweets and half gummy half foam sweets. 

I ran into a problem with these sweets that I hadn't before, the other two had a good mix of all the flavours but with these I had 12 (yes I counted) Summer Fruits flavour, 2 and 4 Apple & Blackcurrent and Apple, 1 Tropical and no Orange! I know there's no guarantee of what sweets are inside each bag but at least one of each would be nice! The half foam sweets are quite soft like all sweets of this texture are with a nice chew and the others have a firmer, more solid chew. Again more like a slightly softer Wine Gum than a jelly. 

The half foam Summer Fruit tasted like a diluted version of the same flavour in the last two bags, all I could really taste was the foam bottom of the sweet - not that I can put into words the flavour but just plain. The same flavour in gummy form wasn't much better, there was a mixed berry aftertaste but to be truthful I only knew what flavour it was supposed to be because it was red and shaped like a strawberry. The half foam Apple was the complete opposite, the apple was very strong and was the nicest apple out of the three. It was very sweet and juicy - a very nice apple sweet. I ate the gummy version immediately after a foam and gave up trying to work these bags out. I'm assuming the same ingredients are used for the half foam but these tasted so plain, there was a slight lingering apple taste but nothing while I was actually chewing. The strength of the foam apple might not have helped but these just seemed dull. Blackcurrant & Apple in the half foam sweet was very plain again, like the summer fruits all I could taste was the marshmallow like foam on the bottom. Dissapointing. The same flavour in the gummy was slightly better, it was stronger tasting than the Summer Fruits was but still mild. It had an even mix of the two flavours but nothing impressive. I can't comment on Orange as I didn't have any but I did have one lonely Tropical half foam sweet - hallelujah! At last, this is how tropical was supposed to taste in the other bags. Fresh and fruity with a slight tart aftertaste - this one sweet had enough flavour to provide the tropical smell when I opened the bag! Lovely. 

I liked a couple in the Juicy Jellies bag but the rest were rubbish. It seems Apple and Tropical benefit from artificial flavours as these were the only vibrant, juicy sweets in the bag. 

5/10 

The Fruit Shoot sweets are pretty good - especially the first two if you're looking for natural sweets rather than lots of added nasties and they're only £1 for quite a big bag too. It was interesting to see that (with the exception of the Juicy Jellies) the same ingredients were used but the strength/tartness/juiciness varied so much between bags, it seems the type of sweet used really affects the flavour. 

The all round winner for me was the (not very sour) Mega Sours! 

Sweet Journey Chocolates Bittersweet Chocolate

Today's World Food review is Sweet Journey Chocolates Bittersweet Chocolate (Dark Chocolate Tablet). This was a gift from a friend of a friend, going by the packaging and from what I can remember being said when it was given to me, I'm fairly sure this came from Duty Free in the USA. However it's a product of Isreal (?!) and distributed from Irvine, California. The ingredients list is pretty small for an American chocolate; sugar (first ingredient in a dark bar?), chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy/rapeseed lecithin and emulsifiers, Vanillin (artificial flavour). 

The chocolate is foil wrapped under the paper packaging which kept it nice and fresh on its travels. 

I don't really know why but the bar was covered in pictures of cows. 

It smelt very sweet, even for milk chocolate let alone a dark, bittersweet bar, it didn't taste as sweet as it smelt though. It lacked the richness I like in dark chocolate and tasted more like a plain chocolate though I could really taste the Vanillin (which turns out is the primary component of the extract of the vanilla bean) in the bar - I googled it to double check what it was as it had a real vanilla taste to it. None of this is too bad in itself, to be honest I've come to expect sweetness in dark chocolate from the USA but what I didn't expect was the awful, bitter aftertaste in each mouthful. It's like whoever made this thought bittersweet, dark chocolate is just milk with a nasty bitter flavour chucked in at the end. 

The texture and consistency weren't quite right either. It had a thick, nice enough bite and quite a gritty mouthfeel but it had no melt to it whatsoever. Whereas in the Rausch chocolates I didn't mind that and it was just slightly odd, the poorer quality of chocolate used here just made it feel like plastic. Not only did it not melt in the mouth at all but usually when I eat a darker bar I end up with almost black chocolatey smears all over my hands, but nothing here - again it was like holding little blocks of plastic. 

It's edible, the vanilla flavoured, might as well be milk chocolate is addictive in a guilty, I know this is crap I'm eating way if you can ignore the horrible aftertaste and the feeling you're eating chocolate coloured and shaped Lego. 

5/10 

J20 Bon Bons

I am officially on a mission to find the best tasting Bon Bons and thankfully for me, this retro sweet seems to be making a bit of a comeback. I've reviewed a few Bon Bons before, and the Sunkist ones are top of my leader board at the moment. I tend to stick to the more traditional flavours when it comes to a Bon Bon - strawberry, lemon and toffee and I like one with a good, solid chew. 

So with that in mind I thought I'd push the boat out and go for some more unusual flavours with these two J20 bags. 

Neither bag contain any artificial colourings or flavours, just remember this when you see what they look like!

J20 Exotic Fruit Dual Flavours 

A mix of dual colour and flavour chewy Bon Bons in your favorite J20 drink flavours - Apple & Blueberry, Apple & Mango, Orange & Passion fruit and  Apple & Raspberry

Lots of apple in this bag and come to think of it, I haven't actually tried an apple Bon Bon before. 

No single scent is immediately noticable, there is just an overall fruity smell to the sweets. 

They aren't the most appealing Bon Bons to look at, I think its all that green but I've not let appearances put me off before and I wasn't about to start now. The texture was spot on, a good, long lasting chew that stopped just short of jaw ache. 

The Orange & Passion Fruit were mainly orange to be truthful, I couldn't really taste the passion fruit but it wasnt quite a full on orange flavour - not as orange tasting as just an orange Bon Bon if that makes sense! Theres a hint of a little something else at the end of each sweet but it doesn't scream passion fruit. They are nice though. 

The Apple & Mango are very tasty, neither flavour is stronger than the other and again being completely honest neither were 100% identifiable as the fruit they were supposed to be but the mix together was lovely. 

In Apple & Raspberry the flavours were better. The raspberry is stronger than the apple but doesn't overpower it completely. I could still taste both in each Bon Bon. The two blend together nicely and were another I enjoyed. 

Apple & Blueberry were my least favorite out of the bag. I wasn't even sure I'd had one until I tried an apple & raspberry and realised by default these must have been the blueberry. The plainest out of the bag and a bit confusing considering I could clearly taste the apple in the other flavours. I couldn't taste the blueberry at all either.

I did like these sweets but my main issue with them was the fact three out of the four flavours were apple & something, it would have been nice to have a more varied mix of fruit. Although they didnt taste it at the time, they must have been mega sugary as I ended up with a sugar burnt tongue. I am the Queen of Pick'n'Mix and that never happens! 

6/10

J20 Glitter Berry 

Limited Edition Grape, Cherry & Spice Bon Bons 

I'm not sure whether these are three differently flavoured Bon Bons or each sweet is a mix of all three flavours and the packet (and taste) wasnt much help so this bag is reviewed as more of a whole rather than the individual flavours. 

The smell of cherry was most obvious in the bag, but they didn't smell very strong once I'd poured them out. 

They really dont look very nice do they.. But remember natural colours and ingredients so J20 (or Monty Bojangles, both are all over the pack?) should be applauded there. 

The chew was slightly different in this bag, some were as hard and chewy as before but some were a lot softer and after one or two chews seemed to dissolve away. Although I could kind of make out three differently coloured Bon Bons i couldnt taste much difference at all. Each one had a berry flavour, even though they smelt like cherry I could probably have been convinced it was a mild strawberry or even raspberry, just that general 'berry' flavour some sweets have. It was quite a dull taste anyway and quite boring to be honest. I expected the darker ones to have more flavour but they didnt taste any different from the lighter ones. 

I think (!) I tasted grape in one of the Bon Bons but it came and went so fast I pretty much missed it. It was like someone had forgotten to put the grape and spice flavour in the machine at the factory. I'd get a berry flavour which would disappear, and Id wait for the grape or spice to appear - it never did and then the berry would be back again. I had one small Bon Bon in the whole bag that was 100% cherry, no mistaking it but that was it. One solitary, small Bon Bon that seemed to have all the flavour concentrated in its tiny chewy shell. Who knows where the spice was!!

 Disappointing.  

5/10