Waitrose Jelly Mini Eggs

Mini Eggs come in a many different shapes, sizes and fillings, you have your standard sugar candy shell with chocolate centre, chocolate shelled with various fillings - Creme Egg style fondant or various flavoured creams and the slightly more luxurious truffle filled centres.

 I can't say I've seen a Jelly Mini Egg, sure there are plenty of Easter themed jelly beans but these aren't exactly jelly beans.. 

Soft jelly eggs in a crisp sugar shell. 

The Jelly Mini Eggs are one of a few non-traditional mini eggs Waitrose are selling, I'll be going back for the others (Marzipan/Ginger Truffle/Marc De Champagne & Amaretto/Cream Truffle) but at £3.50 for 100g/125g depending, they'll have to wait a while! 

The eggs look delightful, they're all egg shaped (a bug bear of mine after a certain other brand of Mini Egg but that's another review!) and all had the speckled egg markings. There aren't a huge variety of colours - only four, but the smaller variety meant I had a sufficient amount of each. There is no way they could get more than a minimum of three of each flavour in each packet if there were any more due to the sheer size of the eggs - they are humongous!!

I had a Candy King jelly bean left over from my Pick'n'Mix (I know, leftover Pick'n'Mix - I must be getting ill!!) and to be fair they were actually rather large for an ordinary jelly bean but just for comparison.. 

And that was a large standard bean and one of the smaller jelly eggs! 

Anyway..

The eggs are just plain weird. They have a hard shell, harder than the outside of a normal jelly bean and I had to give it a good solid bite to get in - and yes they're that big that I could eat each one in two bits. The inside of the egg was nothing like I expected, it's not like a jelly bean at all. It's not really firm but nowhere near as soft as a jelly bean and has a gritty kind of chew, but it's not chewy either. Am I confusing you yet? Because these sure confused me while I was eating them, I think you'd need to try them to truly understand how they feel, they're nothing like anything I've eaten before! That's definitely not a bad thing though.

On to the flavours, I'm going to guess the flavours are the actual flavourings used as they seemed to match up. 

The orange eggs were undoubtedly Orange flavoured, nothing new or exciting but very nice nonetheless. The white eggs threw me, I'm not going to lie, I'm so used to white jelly beans being marshmallow or coconut flavoured I initially convinced myself that white tasted a bit like marshmallow. Working through the other flavours and the ingredients list has left me to believe its actually Apricot flavoured though. Truth be told its not a flavour I'm very familiar with but either way marshmallow/apricot it was pretty damn tasty! 

Pink is usually some kind of berry in any sweet and here was no different. I tried one before I read the ingredients and I thought maybe strawberry, the ingredients say otherwise with Raspberry and once I'd read it, I could taste it. Very juicy and a definite fail safe. I'd kind of given up by the yellow, my brain and my tastebuds weren't connecting and I had to cheat and refer to the ingredients which inform me its probably Pineapple. I'm going to plead ignorance in that it's not a flavour used to often but I wish it was, it was very nice!  

Last but not least was green, usually the apple flavoured sweet but Waitrose have bucked the trend and gone for Pear. I think I've mentioned before I like the flavour of pear just not the texture and this sweet has just reinforced that. My god, sweet makers of Britain - forget about apple, its all about pear! Absolutely delicious and much to my surprise the best in the box. 

Rating:

I might be a bit vague on the flavours and unable to properly describe the texture, but trust me these are a must-try! They can't be compared to a jelly bean, they're a whole different kettle of fish. I'm very glad I chose these other the other more traditional style mini eggs. 

8/10 

Mike and Ike Tropical Typhoon

I do like Mike and Ike.  And I'm a poet and I didn't know it! 

I want to say I bought these because I really liked the original Mike and Ikes, and that did play a part but mainly because it has TWO banana flavoured jelly beans! 

As you'll see in my Taffy Mail reviews, Americans like blue sweets and Mike and Ike are no exception. The orange sweets are Mango flavoured, pink are Paradise Punch (which seems to be strawberry, kiwi and pineapple), red are Strawberry-Banana, blue are Carribean Punch (pineapple, mango and lime?) and green is Kiwi-Banana. 

Mango is lovely. Strong and sweet, overall a good mango flavour. 

Paradise Punch was delicious! Extremely fruity and tasted just like a cocktail. The pineapple is slightly stronger but not by much and all three blend together nicely. 

Carribean Punch was much of the same. Another that tasted just like a cocktail. I ate this straight after the mango, so I could pick that out but generally a good even mix. It tasted like I should have been sitting by a pool! 

Kiwi-Banana I expected to be my least favourite, but it was far from it. The banana was stronger in some, the kiwi in others but I could taste both in all. Both are delicious and I especially enjoyed the banana - very strong and not too artificial tasting. 

The Strawberry-Banana seemed like an afterthought. Considering strawberry is such an easy flavour and they got the banana right with the kiwi, this seemed very dull and plain in comparison. Dissapointing but the other flavours more than made up for it. 

An actual good tropical mix! Ignoring the strawberry-banana flavour, they were all strong and tasty and the two punch flavours were amazing. They make me want to go and lay on a beach somewhere hot with something cold and fruity! 

8/10 

Mike and Ike Original Fruits

My husband picked today's review and as it turns out I should just let him pick in future! I've not had much joy in the American stuff I've tried this week and so once again I went into the imported Mike and Ike Original Fruits with low expectations. 

I wasn't sure what they would be before opening them, on the packet they look like longer, rounder Tooty Fruitys but they're actually jelly beans. The packaging proudly States "Now with real fruit juice!" (Aswell as a quite a few scientifically named ingredients with a nice warning). The flavours in the Original Fruits were what intrigued me, Cherry, Lemon, Strawberry, Lime and Orange. Fruit flavours that I think (apart from strawberry) aren't used enough normally in English sweets - it's always a super sour version. 

They smelt fruity and you get quite a few in each bag with each flavour there pretty evenly - no hundreds of strawberries and one lemon for instance. Each bean is very juicy and chewy, the texture is spot on. 

Cherry - I wondered before trying these which was which out of strawberry and cherry as they are both a very similar shade of pinky red, one just a little darker. I needn't have though as there was no mistaking the cherry flavour. They are probably the strongest cherry flavoured sweets I've ever tried! It's quite an artificial cherry flavour though and this was the only flavour in the bag that had a weird almost chalky aftertaste to it. 

Strawberry - I actually tried strawberry first as it turns out. I was unsure for the first few as the flavour was quite mild and didn't immediately scream strawberry like the Cherry did. The strawberry jelly beans seemed a mixed bag in terms of the strength of flavour and I did get one that had huge amounts of flavour in it and it was very tasty. Just a shame they weren't all as strong. 

Lime - I fully expected this to be my least favourite in the bag and I couldn't have been more wrong. It was absolutely delicious, not sour at all just a very fruity, bright lime flavour. Some were more slightly more tart than others but all were equal in the lime flavour. By far my favourite flavour. 

Lemon - Another tasty flavour, it was strange having more of a sweet lemon sweet but still very enjoyable! They are quite citrusy and some were so tart they gave me a screwed up face and were verging on sour but the lemon flavour was delicious. 

Orange - One I expected to be near the top but actually ended up being my least favourite. To be honest it wasn't a very nice flavour, I just didn't like it and it was quite dull all round too especially compared with the vast majority of the rest of the bag. 

I really enjoyed the Mike and Ike sweets, and they're one I'll be buying again 100%, it was refreshing to have a mix of flavours we don't see that much over here.

Rating 8/10