Monty Bojangles Bon Bonanza

Am I the only person who seems to get addicted, for want of a better word, to certain things? I'm on a bit of a Bon Bon binge at the moment - next week it will probably be all chocolate!

After the two J20 Bon Bons (which are advertised and sold by Monty Bojangles) I didn't have high hopes for the Bon Bonanza box, this coupled with the fact I had some truffles from Monty Bojangles last year that I never got try try as they melted into a lovely messy puddle meant I wasnt very excited. 

An assortment of Salted Caramel, Clotted Cream and Strawberry flavoured traditional toffee centred Bon Bons. 

Well they look much nicer than the J20 ones! 

There was an uneven mix of the three in my bag, about 15 Strawberry, half that of the Clotted Cream and one lonely Salted Caramel. They smelt mainly of strawberry but despite the smaller numbers, I could still smell the other two flavours too and all three smelt delicious. 

Minus one or two baby Bon Bons, these were very large - much bigger than I'm used to and they had a brilliant texture. There is an 'outer shell' of a thick powdered sugar that crumbles away and leaves a hard, chewy toffee center. I loved this, I know I've said before that I want Bon Bons to just be hard and chewy but that's all changed after trying these. 

The Strawberry is beautiful. A lovely, natural, fruity strawberry that tastes real. It's obviously still a sweet flavouring so there is still that sugary taste but nothing like the crazy, artificial, sickly sweet or sour strawberry Bon Bons I've had previously. High praise here - probably the nicest strawberry Bon Bon I've ever had. 

The Clotted Cream were new to me and more a flavour I associate with fudge or proper toffee than a Bon Bon. After tasting these, that shouldn't be the case! They have a lovely sweet, creamy flavour that at times was almost milky. Again the taste was real and to my untrained tongue could probably pass for homemade rather than mass produced. They're quite mild while I was waiting for the sugary coating to melt away and have a strong clotted cream aftertaste. This isn't a bad thing at all, the lack of overpowering, fake flavours made this feel like a more grown up sweet and a bit of a luxury. Very, very nice and if the strawberry wasn't included, would have jumped straight to the top of my all time leader board. 

Last but not least I tried my one lonely Salted Caramel. I thought that only having one to try would mean I wouldn't get much to go on for the review but I couldn't have been more wrong. The flavour is spot on. It was a little strange having such a concentrated salted caramel flavour in a hard chewy sweet - it tasted like it should have been a liquid center in the middle of a chocolate bar. Rich, slightly salty but still sweet, beautiful caramel. I was absolutely gutted I only had one.   

I didnt expect much from these three and it just shows I should never listen to myself as they now occupy first, second and third place in my Bon Bon rankings. 

I ate these 10 hours ago and I've already ordered another bag. 

9/10 

Sorry Monty, you'd be 10/10 if I didn't only get one Salted Caramel... If the next bag has more you'll get a revised rating!

Edit - the next bag had plenty of salted caramel so up you go Monty!

Otis Spunkmeyer & Triple Chocolate Muffins

Once upon a time there was a girl who was the pickiest eater of all time. There was no breakfast in all the land she liked and so everyday around 11am she became ravenous. So for all of her secondary school years (11-15 years old), everyday, she would have a packet of Nik Naks, a Dr Pepper and an Otis Spunkmeyer triple chocolate muffin from the vending machine. The pickiest eater alive didn't realise and took for granted that when she left school at 15 she wouldn't eat or even see another Otis Spunkmeyer muffin for 10 years. 

Well fast forward 10 years and that fussy eater has grown up into me - I'll eat anything once and have tried some of the tastiest and not so tastiest food the world has to offer but I'm still searching for those triple chocolate muffins. I stumbled across a press release probably about a year ago now, saying that Otis Spunkmeyer (an American company) had teamed up with a company over here in the UK to release their products on general sale - I think they were more catering/schools before. I tried to find them myself to much frustration but I couldn't find them anywhere so I had the bright idea of tweeting Otis Spunkmeyer to find out where I could buy them. There's a reason I'm waffling on - I promise! 

After a few emails and tweets we've come to the conclusion there isn't anywhere near me, but - and this is the reason for the essay - Otis's customer service is absolutely outstanding. You're probably reading this thinking "oh you have a blog it's because you'll write about them" but I was emailing the company under my personal details, my name, address etc. I received an email asking me if anyone would be at home on a certain date and I was completely gobsmacked when a huge refrigerated lorry pulled across my drive on the day and a man appeared with TWENTY FIVE muffins (frozen so they'd last!), ten of which are triple chocolate (as noted "because they're my favourite") "as compensation and to apologise in the delay in getting back to me". Seriously. The 'delay' was around a week and when you've been waiting ten years for something I didn't mind too much at waiting that week. 

Honestly, if this is the American way for customer service they need to bring that over to the UK everywhere. And before there's any confusion, I wasn't sent anything in exchange for a review - there was no mention of the word anywhere, it was purely to make up for me waiting a week for a reply to an email! Amazing. 

Now enough of the praise, on to the long awaited muffin! 

I'll only be reviewing one at a time, I expected after ten years and after the example of other companies (coughCadburycough) that these would be smaller than in my memories, but they might even be bigger! My mum worked somewhere that sold these too and (after stealing a Blueberry muffin for herself) also said "good to see they haven't shrunk them". 

It's a beast! This is a muffin for chocoholics for sure, not only is the muffin itself chocolate but it has milk, dark and white chocolate chunks. There are no chips here - the chunks are huge too. 

They smelt delicious and exactly as I remembered, chocolate heaven. I struggled removing it from the plastic wrapping as it was so moist and soft - they're very squidgy and I ended up with chocolate fingers before I'd even taken a bite. I'm not going to lie, I was scared - I'd built them up so much in my head that I was worried they'd changed the recipe or my tastebuds had changed or I was just remembering wrong, but I needn't have. 

It was perfect. Light, fluffy, airy, moist - you give me a positive adjective and I'll add it to the list! It wasn't dry or stodgy at all and unlike some other cake products I've had recently I didn't reach for a drink at all let alone half way through. The chocolate muffin itself was just rich enough to taste luxurious without being too much for the large size (I'm not going to only eat half!) the huge chunks stay firm, crunchy and really stand out against the soft muffin, the chocolate is a decent enough quality that you can really tell the difference between each one without looking - especially the white chocolate chunks. 

Really this was everything I remembered and more. I'm going to have to try and limit myself so my stash doesn't run out too soon. 

Rating 10/10 

Blueberry, Chocolate Chip and Lemon and White Chocolate reviews to come soon!