Asda Extra Special Mini Chocolate Panetonne

Panettone is a traditional Italian all butter cake and I'm ashamed to say I've never tried one before! In all honesty this is the first year I've tried lots of Christmas treats, I was so fussy I normally stuck to chocolate, Danish cookies and shortbread. Last year was the year of the stollen but I thought I'd be brave and try some new things this year. 

I should probably preface this review with another admission. I'm not that keen on cake either with the exception of muffins, plain fairy cakes and stollen. This wasn't looking good! 

I chose the Asda Extra Special Mini Chocolate Panettone for one reason and one reason only. I wanted a small, one portion (in case I didn't like it) chocolate chip Panetonne and Sainsbury's had sold out. I hadn't read any of the guides on Panettone so I had no clue whether this was one of the better supermarket ones or not.

The box was beautiful, it felt a real shame to tear it open and the contents looked lovely too although the paper wrapping around the bottom half of the cake did mean I lost a good chunk when I removed it - still silver linings, that must mean the bottom is nice and moist, surely. 

It smelt buttery with a slight hint of chocolate and strangely raisins, there aren't any raisins in here at all so I wonder if my brain has just associated the sweet Christmas fruit cake smell with the buttery sweet scent of the Panettone. 

It was a strange one, the outside of the cake had like a thin, papery feeling layer which was dry and tasteless but the actual inside was much better. It was a lot moister than it looked but still was quite dense and doughy feeling. Somehow despite this doughy type texture it was surprisingly lighter and less stodgy than it should have been - a complete contradiction I know! 

I wasn't keen on the chocolate chips, they were OK - it doesn't say whether they're dark or milk chocolate but they seemed a little too strong and rich for milk. They worked against the airy, sweet, buttery cake but I wouldn't eat them alone. 

Mr.1T raved about this but Stollen still holds my heart! 

6/10 

Asda Whirly Bites

Blah blah blah.. Asda..blue signs.. You know by now! I've previously reviewed a few new bags of chocolates from Asda; Caramel Bites, Giant Pinwheel Buttons and Nutty Bites. There are also two bags of Milk and White Chocolate Buttons but I went for the more interesting choice - Whirly Bites.  Asda's version of the Milky Way.

Bite sized pieces of whipped nougat covered in thick milk chocolate. 

The nougat was what I (thought) could smell before I tucked in. A sweet vanilla scent that was very tempting. They were smaller than the Nutty Bites, roughly the same size as the Caramel Bites, big enough to take two bites if you want but small enough to eat them in one go. 

The nougat was thicker feeling than I expected considering it's a whipped nougat. It's lighter than a marshmallow but still has a slightly squidgy feel rather than a creamy whipped texture. I'm really enjoying these bags of chocolate from Asda, the emphasis is more on the flavour of the ingredients and these were no exception. In my opinion, although the official line is that Milky Way is small because it's marketed to kids, they are the size they are because any bigger would make them sickening sweet. Asda's Whirly Bites are a lot less sugary tasting than a Milky Way, there is a stronger chocolate flavour although I did notice a vanilla flavour coming through too. It was this vanilla I could smell initially and I thought the nougat would be vanilla flavoured but looking at the ingredients it actually seems to be the chocolate. Whichever one it is its a nice light flavour and was the same as the Nutty Bites - I ate the whole bag easily and was left reaching for more rather than tiring of the sweetness. 

Another solid 7/10 from Asda! 

Asda Nutty Bites

Today's review is an Asda own brand product, so this should be the part where I go on about the usually trustworthy blue 'New!' signs. Well they failed. Again. I nearly let two new bags of chocolates slip by me, thank God I could probably navigate most supermarket confectionary aisles with my eyes closed and spotted a couple of sneaky new additions. 

I previously reviewed Asda's bag of mini Mars bars - Caramel Bites and they got the thumbs up. I hoped this Snickers version - Nutty Bites would too. 

There weren't as many in this bag as I remembered before but I think they're slightly larger, I imagine it would be harder to fit all the different parts to a Snickers (or Nutty Bite) into a truly bitesized piece. As expected this is a filled milk chocolate with peanuts, nougat and caramel. 

The main thing I noticed was the nougat and the caramel. There was a slight peanut flavour, nothing too strong and thankfully just the taste - no claggy feeling at all! 

While I could taste the peanuts and 22% of the total ingredients are actual peanuts, I couldn't feel them too much in the bites. If I let the chocolate, nougat and caramel melt away in each mouthful, I was left with small peanut pieces on my toungue so they were definitely in there but to eat each bite properly, any crunchy texture was lost amongst the chewy nougat and thick sticky caramel. I actually think I prefer these bites to proper Snickers because of this. I like peanuts alone but I'm not too keen on them in chocolate weirdly - any other nut is fine! The peanut flavour is kind of diluted here, enough to set it apart from other chocolates but not overwhelm and make it exclusively peanutty, if that makes sense!   

I also liked that this wasn't very sweet at all unlike the caramel bites, of course there was a sweetness - it wasn't bitter or anything - but the empahasis was on the actual flavour of the nougat, chocolate, caramel and peanuts. 

Another 

7/10 

Keep your eyes peeled for my review on the Whirly Bites bag squeezed in between the coming Christmas posts! 

Asda Giant Pinwheel Buttons

Milk chocolate and white chocolate buttons with a sticky caramel suprise

Asda's blue 'New!' signs failed me this week. I know these Giant Pinwheel Buttons are new, I went out of my way to find them but there were no signs or displays pointing them out so I actually had to use my eyes for once! 

For the sake of the review I'll pretend I didn't know what the suprise was going to be.. 

The buttons smelt unexpectedly caramelly and quite sweet. 

I was impressed with the size and amount of buttons in the bag. They aren't as big in diameter as Cadbury Giant Buttons but they're twice the thickness, they're also about double the size of Cadbury Caramel Nibbles too. 

The sticky suprise hidden inside is a thick pool of runny, gooey caramel. It's very sweet but does have a nice caramel flavour to it too. 

Of the two chocolates, although there are exactly the same amounts of both, the white chocolate has the stronger flavour. Both chocolates take a backseat to the caramel but aren't overwhelmed by it, the buttons have a nice blend of all three. I was worried that these would go the same way as the Caramac Buttons - a few in and the sugar starts burning my throat - but it never happened. Although the milk chocolate is the least noticable flavour it plays an important part in adding a milkiness and kind of 'diluting' the overload of sugary sweetness found in both white chocolate and caramel. 

As it stands there are two kind of similar products about; Cadbury Caramel Nibbles and Caramac Giant Buttons. I would take a bag of these over either of those any day. The milk and white chocolate mix improve on the Cadbury format of buttons with a real caramel filling and are a mainly caramel flavoured button, like Caramac Buttons, but my thoughts were focused on the flavour rather than how sweet they were.

7/10 

Asda Tiffin Milk Chocolate

I don't know when the last time I had an actual big block of chocolate was. Recently I've been all about the sweets, nuts and slightly more random things. It's a very rare occasion that I buy Cadbury lately, Galaxy is too smooth for me and I've not seen a new big brand chocolate bar on the shelves for ages. Asda have a couple of new chocolate bars out but they're both white chocolate, I had a craving for some good old milk. 

The Tiffin bar only comes in a 200g format and is just how I like my chocolate, pretty thick and not scrimping on the ingredients. The raisins were visible through the chocolate on the topside of the bar but the underneath was all about the biscuit. I shared the bar with Mr.1T (there's a first time for everything!) and was pleased to find that all the raisins and biscuits were evenly distributed, there's nothing worse than one end being plain chocolate and everything lumped up the other. 

The fact I couldn't really smell outright chocolate was slightly worrying, it just smelt sweet rather than any identifiable scent. 

Even though the bar supposedly has double the amount of raisins to biscuit, the biscuit was by far the stronger taste and texture. The pieces are nice and crunchy and have quite a sweet biscuit flavour. The raisins don't slip by unnoticed though - they're very chewy and surprisingly sweet. This was always going to be a bar I enjoyed, half the time I swear texture is more important to me than taste! There was however, a rather large, noticable factor missing from the Tiffin bar. The chocolate flavour. 

The point of eating Tiffin, surely, is for the texture? It's not like a good chocolate you just let melt on your tongue because what would be the point of the contrast between crunchy biscuit and chewy raisin? It's a bar you chew. So I really couldn't understand why, when I chewed each square, I couldn't taste the chocolate at all. I could when I left them to melt, but then I was left with a mouthful of biscuit and raisins.. 

There was no happy medium so I chose texture over taste and chewed the bar. I was left with a sweet, milky chocolate taste in my mouth after but nothing while I was actually eating. There wasn't enough flavour to say whether this was a decent quality chocolate, it felt quite waxy to the touch but the texture and flavours of the raisins and biscuits were enough for me to enjoy this, especially for a middle of the road own brand. 

7/10 

Asda Extra Special Nuts

I reviewed KP Frosted Honey Roast nut selection last week and I wrote at the start of that review I always forget about nuts, however my next shopping trip was to Asda. They make it so easy for me to find new stuff as they literally have giant blue arrows pointing to the new stuff on the shelves. Those giant blue arrows cost me a fortune but they found me two new bags of chocolate covered nuts this week.

Extra Special Sea Salted Chocolate Almonds 

Sea salted almonds with a white chocolate and caramel coating and dark chocolate couverture marbling. 

They looked beautiful, it almost felt a shame to eat them. Almost! Each almond was fairly large and all were pretty evenly sized, I hate openening a packet of say, chocolate raisins and getting 5 or 6 large ones and the rest being pathetically tiny. 

White chocolate with caramel makes up 70% of the final product, almonds 27% and the dark chocolate couverture a measly 1.5% so I was expecting a much lighter covering but they looked milky rather than anything. They couldn't have tasted further from milk chocolate if they tried. The caramel was outright the main flavour and a delicious caramel at that. I had no clue on earth what couverture was so wiki explained for me again: 

Couverture chocolate is a very high-quality chocolate that contains extra cocoa butter (32–39%). The higher percentage of cocoa butter, combined with proper tempering gives the chocolate more sheen, firmer "snap" when broken, and a creamy mellow flavor.

That certainly explains the delicious creamy, rich flavour each bite had. I couldn't fully taste any dark chocolate but it plays a very important part here, probably the most important. As this is a white chocolate with caramel I expected sweetness and lots of it. Throat burning sweetness. It wasn't bitter at all but instead of tasting like sugar (Caramac giant buttons come to mind) the actual flavour was all I noticed. Mainly caramel with the white and dark chocolate playing off each other for a balanced creamy, addictive taste. 

The almonds were good, crunchy and with a flavour that's subtle against the coating but still noticable. They weren't overly salty as they easily could have been, but just enough to add to the addictiveness of the bag. 

Asda say they're Extra Special and wonderfully moreish and I agree 100%. I'm not buying any to put out at Christmas, I'm keeping them all for me!!  

8/10 

Maple Chocolate Pecans 

Maple flavoured pecans with a white chocolate coating and Belgian milk chocolate marbling 

This bag had more of an overall nutty scent to it but what chocolate I could smell, smelt milky rather than an outright white chocolate. 

Although I tried these after the Almond bag and should have known better, I expected that as they were white chocolate they'd be sugary sweet. They were sweet, but had more of a delicious creamy flavour. The pecans themselves were softer than the almonds had been, they were still crunchy but a lot easier on the teeth to chew! 

The chocolate coating is delicious, it's mainly a white chocolate but uses a good quality white chocolate - it even has 22% cocoa solids - and so it actually tastes of chocolate, not sugar. There is a very small amount of milk chocolate added to create the marbling effect, small enough that the amount in percent isn't listed but again it's good chocolate. Although 65% of the whole bag is white chocolate and the milk is anywhere under 10%, there were a few times I could taste the milk more than the white. 

I was waiting for the maple flavouring to appear, it's a minuscule amount - 1% of the bag and although I couldn't taste it at all in the smaller nuts where the emphasis was on the coating, in the larger nuts I could and they had a delicious maple flavour that is quite strong and really went well with the chocolates. 

These again were really good but not quite as addictive as the caramel almonds.

7/10 

Asda Caramel Bites

Cadbury have sharing pouches of mini versions of near enough all of their chocolate bars, there's a bag of mini Daim bars and once upon a time there was a sharing pouch of mini Mars bars. I, for one haven't seen them in any shops but Google is showing me photos so they must have existed. 

Asda have new packaging for a lot of their own brand sweets and chocolates so I'm not sure if this is a new product, it doesn't say new anywhere on the bag but it doesn't seem to exist on their website yet - it's new to me either way! 

Filled milk chocolate with nougat and caramel. 

I was impressed that although the bag only weighs 130g I had loads of nuggets and they were a fair size too, small enough that I could eat a piece in one go but just big enough to get two bites out of each. Even though there's more nougat than anything else in each, they have a lovely chocolatey caramel smell. 

They're just tiny Mars Bars basically. Soft, quite thick rich caramel with a slightly chewy, sweet nougat. The caramel and nougat have a lovely flavour and the chocolate is of a pretty good standard - what you'd expect from an own brand chocolate anyway. 

These were very addictive, they aren't quite as nice as a real Mars Bar, Mars have a better balance between the nougat, caramel and chocolate and this was the case to start with here but towards the end of the bag they were starting to get a little sweet. It's not that they were too sweet - they're perfectly tasty, especially as they are in mini bitesize pieces and as a chocolate in its own right but I couldn't help comparing them to a real Mars Bar. All that said though, I bet if I ate 130g of Mars Bar, that would end up on the sugary sweet side too.

Now to buy another bag and freeze them! 

7/10

Asda Extra Special Candy Floss Grapes

I missed these last year so I made sure to grab some this time round! 

When it comes to fruit I normally stick to apples and strawberries, I prefer my grapes strictly fermented but I had to try Candyfloss flavoured grapes! 

They don't look any different or smell like Candyfloss but I was very pleasantly surprised when I tasted one. There actually is a Candyfloss flavour! Sure it's not as strong as you'd find in actual Candyfloss or a flavoured sweet or chocolate but it's fruit! 

Some were a little watery and didn't have much flavour but I think that's my fault, I bought them Saturday and only tried them today - Monday so they're not as fresh as they could be. 

Still they taste good and I'll get some more if I see them! 

Rating 7/10