Blood 'N' Bones Ice Scream

Happy Halloween! 

When I think of Halloween, I think of chocolate, sweets, pumpkins etc - Vanilla ice cream with a raspberry ripple, marshmallows and white chocolate curls don't scream that it's the spooky season but you know me, I'll never turn down ice cream. 

I thought this was a Co-Op own brand ice cream but that doesn't seem to be the case looking at the tub.

As I thought it was own brand I wasn't suprised to find the ice cream, to put it nicely, was a bit crap. I find there are two types of vanilla ice cream in the world; the first actual vanilla flavoured and the second more of a plain, neutral flavour that doesn't taste of much at all. The vanilla base here was annoyingly the latter. Texturally it wasn't too bad, nothing like your thick luxurious Haagen Dazs or Ben & Jerry's, a bit thicker and creamier than I expected but there was no real vanilla flavour. 

I came to the marshmallow pieces first, they were nice - soft and squidgy but again lacking any outright marshmallow flavour, though I did notice each mouthful got slightly sweeter if there were marshmallows included. 

They don't stand out too much in the photo and they didn't in person either, but the slightly yellower parts of the pint are the tiny white chocolate curls. They followed suit and added nothing in terms of taste. One small bonus of the ice cream being of a lower quality was that it melted quite quickly, the chocolate curls were still frozen so while I didn't notice the flavour, I could at least feel the crunch against the smoother ice cream. 

The saviour of the pint was the raspberry ripple. Strong and sweet, it had a lovely raspberry flavour. It wasn't very thick but still managed to be syrup-y and was the most enjoyable element of the pint. I can't help but think though that the reason I liked the ripple was because the rest of the tub was so plain tasting, in any other ice cream I have a feeling I'd be moaning it was too thin and sugary rather than pure raspberry. It didn't seem that way at the time but the rest was so boring. 

I'm not too annoyed about Blood'N'Bones. Sure it had no flavour whatsoever but the texture was pretty nice - quite creamy with soft squidgy marshmallows, crunchy chocolate and slightly thicker sauce - it just didn't taste of much. Still, I bought it for the novelty factor, although I am wondering what any of it has to do with Halloween... 

4/10 

Marks & Spencer Halloween Sweets

It's September and for some reason this year all the Christmas chocolates and products seem to be out before the Halloween. I did manage to find a couple of Halloween themed bags of sweets in Marks and Spencers, there were chocolates too but the prices were extortionate - it seems you can charge whatever you like for tiny one bite chocolates now as long as you put them in a fancy Halloween box..

Wicked Witches Stockings 

Slithery raspberry and lime flavoured jelly sweets. 

It would be hard to miss these sweets as the orange packaging really stands out amongst all the Percy Pigs! 

The sweets look great, they're a mixture of pinky red and green and all I could think about while I was eating them was the witches feet under the house in the Wizard of Oz! 

The smelt fantastic, very vibrant and strong lime and raspberry scents and they had quite a chewy almost rubbery texture. 

I tried a lime juice witch stocking first and I have to say I was pretty dissapointed. It's a nice lime flavour - not overly sweet or sour but it is so much milder than the smell. The raspberry is the stronger flavour of the two, and again it's a good raspberry just mild compared to what I expected. The raspberry did get stronger as I worked through the bag but the lime stayed mild throughout. 

They're just quite dull in taste to be truthful, I'm trying to work out using the packet, if natural ingredients are used - it doesn't explicitly say so but I can't see any funny numbers or chemicals listed, so that might explain why. 

A shame they don't taste as good as they smell 

6/10 

Happy Owlloween 

Cola flavour jelly sweets. 

I really love the attention to detail Marks & Spencer put into how their sweets look, I know it's really about how they taste but it's nice to have something pleasing to look at too! 

As with the Witches Stockings they smelt good, a quite strong typical cola sweet scent. They're reasonably large and felt like they would be an ordinary foam sweet. 

But sneaky M&S have made it so the Owls bellies are little pockets with a jelly like filling. 

The cola flavour was good, the foam parts of the sweet have quite a mellow taste but the jelly part is nice and strong. I really liked the play on textures though, each bite was initially the chewy foam then the burst (that doesn't sound very nice but they are creepy Halloween sweets!) of the jelly pocket inside. 

It's a bit of a weird sensation, it felt like the jelly part popped but it's not liquid at all it's actually quite solid but either way the mix of the two consistencies was lovely especially with the more concentrated cola flavour. 

I really liked these and I'll stock up before the Halloween run ends! 

7/10 

The start of my Christmas Chocolates (and a few I forgot about!)

Wow I was supposed to blog about these weeks ago, I've noticed a lot of blogs slowing down recently so I suppose the madness that's Christmas has taken over everyone!

First up was Maynards Sour Tricks.

Apologies for the slightly blurry stolen from Google images picture but I completely forgot I had said I would blog about these and by the time I remembered, they were gone. Oops.

This is a seasonal Halloween bag from Maynards so unless any shops have some leftover I don't think you'll be able to get this again until next year. I'll probably buy these again it was nice to have a fizzy sour version, normally I buy the plain jellies but these were good. There's no point going into too much detail as they're off the shelves now… Must try harder!

Rating 6/10

Rowntree's Randoms sweet n sour.

The packet says new, are they new? I don't know how new by my late standards but I do know I haven't tried them before.

The packet has some nice pastel coloured, sugar coated squishy sweets. I can work out a snowman, a rocket, an icecream, milk shakes, a lock and possibly a tortoise? So far so random.

It also contains some typical fizzy jelly sweets. I can't lie I didn't really try too hard to work out what these are, I think there are some crowns, roller skates, a car and chess pieces in there though.

There isn't too much to say on this bag, it's an enjoyable bag of Rowntrees who usually manage to do sweets well and this is no different. I had a feeling I wouldn't get round to blogging about these straight away and so I usually make notes on my phone about something I plan to review. All these say is good - yellow ones not sour but too tart for me. I do remember that being the only sweet I wasn't keen on but the rest of the bag gets a thumbs up from me.

Rating 6/10

 Lidl Deluxe Butter Fudge

I loooove fudge. Any kind of fudge - chocolate covered fudge, harder chewy fudge, soft smooth fudge and the crumbly grainy fudge.

I think you can tell from the photo this is a lovely crumbly, melt in the mouth, grainy fudge. It's very buttery without being too rich. The texture and flavour are spot on and being from Lidl is a bargain too. I will be buying this again.

Rating 8/10

Waitrose Christmas Cracker Selection

I'm a sucker for gimmicks and when I saw this miniature 100g box of chocolates I wouldn't normally bother, however give me the same miniature chocolates in a box that looks and opens like a cracker and I'll buy it in a heartbeat!

The box was supposed to contain 9 chocolates - I got lucky and had 10 and my extra was milk chocolate fudge, not that I got to eat it as someone else in this house is rather partial or fudge too!

Dark chocolate orange crème

Milk chocolate strawberry crème

Milk chocolate coffee truffle

Milk chocolate caramel barrel

Milk chocolate biscuit in caramel

Milk chocolate Hazlenut in caramel

I didn't bother with pictures of the plain chocolate, or the toffee or fudge, they look the same in all boxes (I did notice the toffee is the same as the big 200g bags of toffee they sell) but as you can see from the pictures they are all nicely packed out chocolates with a good ratio of filling to shell. The flavours are good and I did enjoy this little box, the caramel is deliciously gooey and unlike the next product the coffee chocolate was the one that really stood out. It has a lovely strong coffee taste and smell and is easily my favourite in this box, however once Id noticed that the toffee included is the same as the cheaper,larger bags they sell in store (and that I already have sitting in my cupboard!) I was a little disappointed. I thought they'd at least put some special christmas chocolates in. Anyway they still tasted good.

Rating  7/10

Rittersport Kaffee + Nuss

My bar came back with a friend from Germany so I don't have any English info available but I think the name is pretty easy to work out.

I love rittersport bars. The milk chocolate is always of a good quality, they're nice and thick and the fillings are normally tasty and substantial.

I enjoyed the chewiness the nuts bring to the bar, but the coffee flavour was just underwhelming for me. I do however drink my coffee black and always put an extra scoop in the machine when it's just for me so other people may well find the coffee perfectly strong enough. It was just more of an aftertaste to me and being that it's the first word in the name of the bar I thought it would have more of a presence. I'm really dissapointed as I was so looking forward to this. It is another nice bar from rittersport though, it just didn't meet my coffee expectations sadly.

Rating 6/10