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 

Wawel Marcepan

Can you tell Tesco had a sale on Polish chocolate? 

For this weeks Wednesday world food review its another Wawel bar, a company I've had mixed experiences with previously, from Poland and this is Marcepan 'Marzipan coated chocolate product'. 

For a bar that weighs roughly the same size as a standard (for now anyway) chocolate at 35g, it was a little on the small side but for the size it felt pretty heavy. It was a little strange smelling, I couldn't work out what was the stronger scent; the darker chocolate coating with 43% minimum cocoa solids or the sweet marzipan centre. 

I couldn't get a clean cut as the marzipan is quite thick so I ended up snapping the chocolate before I got through. Although the filling is pretty solid it melts away in the mouth and turns into a pleasant sort of creamier, grittier texture. The filling thankfully didn't taste as sweet as it smelt but for a product that states quite a few times on the wrapper that it has 31% almonds, I expected the almond flavour to shine through a bit more. 

I didn't get much of a taste of the chocolate, the coating is very thin and the marzipan drowned out any darker flavours there might have been. I think a darker chocolate was the perfect choice though to balance against the sweet centre, milk would be too sweet. 

Rating 7/10 

El Almendro Turrón Crocanti con Chocolate

Today's Wednesday world food review comes to you from Spain via T.K.Maxx. 

I had no plans to buy any more snacks, if you follow me on Twitter (@OneTreat) you might have seen I have more than enough goodies to see me through a while, but as always I went into T.K.Maxx to buy a purse and ended up leaving with a purse, two wallets, two watches and this Almond Turrón. 

A little tip - if you do want to buy one, check T.K.Maxx first, I got this for £1.99 and they're anywhere from £4 for one this sized to £20 for the more full sized on Amazon, without delivery!

Turrón is also known as torró (Catalan), torrone (Italian, Brazilian Portuguese), turrone (Sardinian),  torrão (European Portuguese) or nougat and is typically made of honey, sugar, egg whites and toasted almonds or other nuts. The Spanish variety usually comes in two types, hard or soft. 

This pack, the Crocanti con Chocolate is made up of 53% almonds, honey and 7.5% of the bar is chocolate with a 35% cocoa minimum. 

It smelt delicious -  very nutty, chocolatey and sweet. Everything I look for! The Turrón itself was in a plastic wrapper inside the box and removing it was hard, it's extremely sticky to touch as there is a lovely honey coating all over the top. 

If you suffer in any way at all with your teeth and were planning on trying this I'd stop right here! Crunchy would be an understatement, the almonds are thick enough but the honey on top adds another level of chew to each mouthful, it was quite a jaw workout trying to chew threw the nuts and avoid the whole thing sticking to my teeth! The honey not only adds stickiness to the Turrón but seriously ups the sweetness. Touch wood I have no problems with my teeth, but before I'd even swallowed my first bite my teeth were stinging (hopefully you'll know what I mean with that!). 

The almonds were the first flavour I noticed, then the honey. The chocolate was quite uneven across the bottom so it was noticeably absent in taste for the first part of my bar, I was trying to taste it but the other two flavours were quite overpowering anyway. 

The more of this I ate, the more my teeth hurt -  it was a bit too addictive to stop because of a little pain though! 

I finally got to a section with a thicker layer of chocolate and it's a shame it's so thin across the bottom - they've used good stuff. The chocolate flavour actually ended up stronger than the honey and it was delicious, I'd happily eat a bar of the chocolate alone. 

Strangely this is advertised as a snack pack, it's 75g so about three quarters the size of a 'sharing' block of chocolate but there is no way I could have eaten a larger sized bar of this - my teeth would have fallen out!! 

Very moreish, I'd like to try one with a bit thicker chocolate though. 

Rating 7/10 

Milka Choco-Mix Jelly

Milka are Cadburys European cousins, once upon a time you might have been hard pressed to find two identical products from the Cadbury and Milka lines but since Mondelez took over its harder to find anything that's not the same! 

Milka don't seem to have the Marvellous range but they do have to Choco-Mix bags which look suspiciously familiar, one is with Mini Oreos, milk and white chocolate buttons and what look like Pebbles and the other is the Jelly. I didn't bother with the Oreo bag as we have literally the same over here. 

We also have the Maynard bag but the Choco-Mix Jelly seems to have more my kind of chocolates inside. 

Each bag has Milka Toffees, Peach gummies, a hazelnut chocolate and mini Daim bars inside and is quite a bit heavier and bigger than our pouches at 140g. 

Pleasingly I got a decent mix and a good amount for a 'sharing' pouch. 

Toffee 

Quite a thick chocolate coating with a runny, gooey centre. Very chewy with a good flavour that went well with the others. Lovely texture alongside the crunch of the rest of the bag. 

Peach 

For the first few seconds after I took a bite I couldn't taste any peach, the flavour soon develops though and wow it's strong! A beautifully juicy, fruity peach with a good chew to it. It's a shame Milka haven't listed who makes these gummies (Haribo or whoever) like Cadbury do with Maynards as I need to buy a bag of just these! 

 

Hazelnut 

These looked a little like a rolo from the outside but a nice big crunchy hazelnut was hiding in each. The hazelnuts didn't leave much room for the chocolate but I couldn't miss the sweet, milky taste. The nuts were nice and crunchy and these were extremely addictive, I'd like a bag of these too! 

Daim 

Finally each bag has a good amount of mini Daim bars in it too. The almonds add a different nutty flavour to the bag and a different kind of crunch. 

Overall I really enjoyed this, it's so much better than the Maynards bag we get. There were no fillers, just chucked in to get the bag to a decent enough weight to justify the prices - each separate chocolate or sweet was as good as the rest. The bag has quite a nutty, caramel flavour to it as a whole but the peach really refreshes things up. My one complaint is that I'm lazy and I was getting impatient unwrapping the Daim bars. I wonder why they're still wrapped? 

Rating 8/10 (would be a 9 if not for the wrappers!) 

Greek Kataifi

I've just returned from my honeymoon, a beautiful week in Crete where I didn't actually eat many sweet things at all - it must say something when me and my husband (aaaah!!) with the worlds sweetest teeth turn down the dessert buffet in favour of more of what must be the worlds freshest fruit, vegetables, salad, fish and meats. I made sure to bring home some Cretan goodies though to make up for missing out and I'm glad I did - the 'fresh' food I'm buying back home now tastes like cardboard in comparison! 

The first souvenir I opened was handmade nuts and chocolate Kataifi. The box describes Kataifi as 'a sweet made of Kataifi pastry and contains a filling of nuts, usually pistachios, walnuts or almonds; it is sweetened with honey'  So really a Greek version of baklava and I chose the nuts and chocolate variety. 

The box contained three decently sized rectangular blocks which were all individually wrapped.  I don't know anything really about the company which produced these - Greek Horizons - other than they're a Greek company based in Crete, I'm guessing their market is mainly tourists based on the types of shops I saw these boxes being sold but despite this they smelt and felt very fresh and luxurious once I'd removed them. 

They smelt extremely sweet, but not artificially sugary sweet more of a lovely honey scent. The pastry was very sticky and flaky and I made more than a mess plating them up!! 

The pastry itself is crisp yet still soft and chewy. It didn't leave me with a dry mouth at all unlike other types of pastry and this wouldn't actually need any filling to be perfectly delicious on its own. The traditional Kataifi is made with honey, this mass produced version uses a mixture of vegetable oils and sugars but a mixture of flavours, including cinnamon curiously, gave the flavour of honey though I did find it to taste extremely sweet - even for me! 

The assorted nuts take up 5% and the chocolate only 3% so the flavour was mild but noticeable with each mouthful. They were overpowered by the syrupy sweetness for the majority of each bite though. At first I was disappointed there was only three in a pack but by the time I'd eaten those I was quite glad for it, anymore would be too much and these are definitely an in moderation treat or they would get too sickly. 

Rating 6/10 

Tasty but I'm not even really a Baklava or pastry anything fan usually. 

World food aisle part one

Hershey's Symphony Bar (USA)

First up is the Hershey's symphony bar. I saw this bar in B&M, I enjoyed the cookie bar when I'd tried it before so thought why not… I then read another review about this bar which wasn't good so I was pretty nervous about trying this! It wasn't awful - I like the toffee and almond pieces but they were pretty overwhelmed by the fact this bar just tastes to me like cheap Easter egg chocolate - not even the cheap supermarket ones - but the ones you get from the pound shop with a random celebrity/TV show/any old crap on the front of it. 

That really is the best way I can describe this bar. So if you don't mind that type of chocolate (I know some people do really enjoy it!) then you'll probably like this bar but if you're like me and think that stuff should only be eaten well after easter when it's been forgotten at the back of the cupboard but you reeeeally fancy chocolate then I'd probably avoid it!

Rating 4/10

Cadbury Dairy Milk Golden Crisp (Ireland)

I've had my eye on this bar for a while, I got it from the world foods aisle in Tesco but I'm pretty sure it's quite common now. 

It's described as the usual Dairy Milk chocolate with honeycomb pieces and as you can see it's pretty packed out! I'm disappointed Cadbury or whoever it is who owns/produces/distributes these, why aren't they a standard bar over here! 

This is a really nice bar of chocolate which I think would sell really well, but were just getting random limited edition crossover bars. I'd gladly buy this bar again the honeycomb gives such a nice flavour and texture I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating 7.5/10