McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes Muffin

This review is on special request, as a certain someone keeps bugging me about reviewing some muffins and whatnot, so whilst I do have a long list of things to review already, I am willing to chuck requests in whenever they’re made, as long as I have the money to buy the thing you request!

I’ve never been much of a muffin fan, too much sponge cake for my liking. But I am a fan of Jaffa Cakes, so I was hoping this would be full of Jaffa goodness…

The thing is huge as well, I was gonna take a picture of me trying to eat it but I couldn’t physically take a decent bite out of it without almost dislocating my jaw, so I went for the pic you can see. How does the muffin work though?

Well, the bottom half of it is all sponge, the top half is then a mixture of sponge and the orange jaffa goodness that us Brits are oh so familiar with, and then it’s topped with dark chocolate. The sponge is…well, like sponge cake, it’s ordinary stuff, quite light and soft, I have no problems with it.

The jaffa though, there is not nearly enough of it, it struggles to overpower the taste of the cake, and that’s a problem considering how plain sponge cake tastes. It says there’s 16% jaffa filling, well it seems more like 6%, there’s just not enough. And the dark chocolate? Well again it’s just standard fare, doesn’t add much taste, but isn’t horrid or anything like that.

Overall? This reminded me why I don’t buy muffins. Jaffa Cakes are best in Jaffa Cake form, not muffin form. I guess if you really like muffins then you’ll get a kick out of this, but personally I feel it just hasn’t been done right. There’s not enough jaffa and chocolate, and there’s too much empty space with the sponge cake, a disappointment really.

The muffin has 355 calories, 3.8g Protein, 48.9g Carbohydrates (28g of which sugars) and 16.1g Fat (2.9g of which saturates). Stick to the cakes, they’re much better.

Hot Tamales

Hot Tamales are an artificially flavoured, cinammon jelly bean candy from America. Similar in terms of physical bean appearance to Mike & Ike’s, these only have the one flavour, and that’s hot cinnamon.

And they’re not joking, these things can get very hot indeed. I was expecting to be able to chew a whole load at once and let them sit on my tongue with only a little heat, but boy was I wrong. These are crazy hot, and I found myself having to really pass the beans around my mouth because of the spicy cinnamon.

The flavour is pretty standard cinnamon fare, unfortunately for my personal tastes these were just too hot. It made them hard to eat and started to hurt my tongue after awhile, and I could only eat half the pack before I was thoroughly sick of them. Still if you want a chewy version of the Atomic Fireballs, then this is it.

Each pack has 220 calories, 0g of Protein, 54g of Carbs (39g of which sugars) and 0g of Fat.

Choco-Lina Grapes & Poppy Chocolate Bar

This is ‘posh chocolate’ from Austria, and made by a company known as Choco-Lina. It’s a grape and poppy flavoured milk chocolate bar, that also uses 100% sheep whole milk. It also uses pure raw cane sugar, cocoa beans, Bourbon Vanilla, and according to the back of the bar, nothing else.

Grape & Poppy though, that’s an odd combo, which is why I went for this really. The pack is pretty retro looking, a purple affair here to signify the grapes, and a picture of a sheep of course, for the sheep’s milk used. The bar itself is foil wrapped, and looks really good. Same colour as ordinary milk chocolate, but it also has very small black dots in the chocolate, which is probably both the grapes and the poppies.

The bar is a 100g slab, though it’s split up a little. There are 12 small squares, as well as two thin rectangles, and one larger rectangle in the middle of the bar. This is one of those moments I wish I had a camera, because it looks good, but is so hard to describe. The feeling of the bar is so strange though.

I guess it feels greasy, but in a different way to normal. I have to wipe my fingers everytime I break off a piece, and whilst it does feel greasy, it’s in a slightly odd way that’s hard to describe, it’s slightly thicker than normal, and makes you actually want to lick it off your fingers. But now we get to where it matters, the taste.

And like a few bars I’ve reviewed in the past, it’s so anticlimatic. I was expecting rich, creamy milk chocolate, with a fruity taste and poppy seeds in my mouth. What I got was ordinary milk chocolate, with a slightly off taste, just a little strange due to the flavours used. I couldn’t taste any vanilla, or grape, or poppy. They all mixed with the chocolate to make a pretty poor tasting bar, that I certainly wouldn’t buy again.

I don’t really recommend you buy this either, sure it’s different and it uses ‘good’ ingredients, but the actual taste is a real let down and you’ll end up being as disappointed as I was, perhaps moreso in fact when you remember reading this review and that I told you not to buy it.

The entire 100g bar has 522 calories, 6.1g of Protein, 46.4g of Carbs (38.1g of which sugars) and 34.7g of Fat (19.4g of which saturates).

Hershey’s Milk Duds

These are billed as ‘Chocolatey Covered Caramels, pretty plain sounding, no? Well, that’s not the only thing plain about these.

Annoyingly I can’t compare these to anything else around, because there is nothing else around like these. I suppose the Morinaga Milk Caramel was the closest thing, but it was just caramel, without the chocolate coating. So, Hershey’s have a niche market here.

From what I hear, these are commonly eaten as a cinema snack, and can be hard to find outside of cinemas/theatres. I thought these were really plain tasting. The caramel is alright I guess, pretty standard, sticky fare. The chocolate though is poor, it just sort of flakes off, and doesn’t taste nice AT ALL. Or maybe it’s the caramel that has the poor aftertaste, either way it’s no good.

The ingredients make for disturbing reading too: Corn Syrup; Sugar; Palm Oil, etc. Nearly halfway down the list is chocolate, I guess that’s why these are ‘ChocolateY’ covered caramels, as opposed to just chocolate covered caramels.

Each serving size is 13 Milk Duds, with there being about 3.5 servings per box. Each serving has 180 calories, 1g of Protein, 28g of Carbs (19g of which sugars) and 7g of Fat (3.5g of which saturates).

Interesting to note also, that they mention that these have 33% less fat ‘Than the Average of the leading Chocolate Candy Brands’, anyone got any specific information on this? Who are they comparing these to? Anyway these taste cheap and bad and I don’t recommend them. Get some popcorn instead.

Glico Almond Chocolate Crush Pocky

Identical in terms of looks to the Cookie Crush Pocky, this is the Almond Crush. Again these come in a huge box, with 7 packs containing 4 sticks.

It seems to me that these sticks are actually a little thicker than the Cookie Crush, with the almond pieces being a little bigger than the cookie pieces. The almonds do get stuck inbetween your teeth a little, but they taste good so I didn’t mind it too much.

The almonds overpower the chocolate despite there being so much chocolate on the sticks. Other than that there’s not much I can say, standard almond-chocolate combo really, and everything else in terms of box design is the same as yesterday’s.

Nutritional information is the same, as mentioned I prefer these over the Cookie Crush, but both were awesome and a ton better than the regular thin Pocky.

Glico Chocolate Cookie Crush Pocky

This is a huge hexagonal box of Pocky. What you get in the box are 7 packs, each containing 4 thick Pocky sticks. The sticks here are covered by a very thick chocolate, with pieces of cookie in there as well, making the Pocky very thick and bumpy.

This stuff is pretty awesome, some of the best Pocky I’ve ever had. The chocolate is of a good quality, much better than the regular Pocky. The Pocky is at least twice as thick as it would normall be, due to just how thick the chocolate coating on it is.

If you’re a Pocky fan then you’ve really got to try these, they’re a ton better than the regular Pocky, very thick and very tasty, and with 28 sticks per box, these should last…for a whole night I guess.

Each pack has 77 calories, 1.3g of Protein, 9.3g of Carbs and 3.8g of Fat.

Gimme Your Stuff!

Hey everyone,

I came across this site whilst browsing other blogs, and thought it could be interesting. Basically you send stuff over from your country, and vice-versa from me to you. What I can offer are:

- Various types of chocolate, sweets, candy, whatever you call them.
- Other food stuffs
- Perhaps some sort of souvenirs/postcards from here in England.
- Magazines, newspapers and things like that.

What I’m after would be…well, pretty much the same stuff. What I’d be most interested in is various types of chocolate from your country, as long as I haven’t reviewed it in the past then send it on over! I don’t mind other little trinkets, but being honest, this is The Chocolate Review, and that’s what I’m here to do.

Anyway if you’re interested, then get in touch and we can work something out. I look forward to hearing from you!

Hershey’s Mounds vs Dark Chocolate Bounty

Mounds is the American version of what we in Britain call a Bounty. Whilst the Mounds only comes in dark chocolate, the Bounty comes in both milk and dark chocolate, but considering the Mounds is dark chocolate, I thought it would be fair to compare it to the Dark Chocolate Bounty. Is there a big difference between the two brands? Let’s find out.

The packs are fairly similar, in a pure contrast between the Bounty Dark and the Mounds, they both use a dark red/white colour scheme, with coconuts of course being pictured on the front of the pack. Both packs also contain two small chocolates, both filled with coconut, but there is a difference in the coconut.

The coconut in the Mounds is almost…wet, it’s a little hard to describe, but it’s not as compact as as the Bounty, and it has a little more juice to it. I wouldn’t say it’s either better nor worse, it’s just different. The design of the chocolates are exactly the same, same size and even the same chocolate pattern on the top of each chocolate.

The tastes are fairly identical as well, the Mounds is a little sweeter I think, but again that makes it neither better nor worse, just different. The two products are nearly identical, in taste, appearance, and also their nutritional values.

The Mounds bar has 240 calories, 2g of Protein, 29g of Carbs (23g of which sugars), and 13g of Fat (10g of which sugars). The Bounty has about the same, it turns out I forgot to write down what the values are and have since thrown away the wrapper, but I’m sure it was similar. I’ll confirm it soon though if anyone wants.

Mike and Ike Tropical Typhoon Jelly Beans

Mike and Ike are, as far as I know, the principle jelly bean makers in America. Jelly beans aren’t something that have really caught on in England, though I have seen the Mike and Ike ordinary jelly beans in a few selected stores (CostCo and Woolworth’s), so perhaps depending on the popularity on these they’ll start to hit off here.

The five flavours in this pack are Orange Pineapple, Caribbean Punch, Kiwi Lime, Strawberry Banana and Pineapple Banana.

Orange Pineapple – A little more orange than pineapple, which is good because I don’t like pineapple that much. It does come through, but only in small amounts, making this very tasty.

Caribbean Punch – This tastes a little like marzipan to me, which is…odd, to say the least. It’s pretty good though, but I didn’t know Carribean people put marzipan in their Punch.

Kiwi Lime – Very good flavour, not too kiwilike or limelike, but very fruity and pleasant tasting.

Strawberry Banana – Initially a very strong banana flavour, the strawberry does eventually come through, but only just…and it’s not that good.

Pineapple Banana – This is more pineapple than banana, but it actually tastes pretty good.

Overall these are pretty nice, unfortunately quite unbalanced, I only had two Kiwi Lime flavoured beans in the pack, yet had 11 Carribean Punch beans and 10 Strawberry Banana beans.

Eating one flavour of each all at once was very pleasant, the flavours all mixed well, each flavour coming and going and nothing overpowering, really good there.

So as I said, overall these are very good. All the flavours are nice, both individually and together. I’d really like to see these brought over here if they’re not already. The pack has 200 calories, 0g of Protein, 50g of Carbs and 0g of Fat.

Reese’s Nutrageous

There’s quite a lot to this bar, billed as ‘Crunchy Peanuts, Peanut Butter, Creamy Caramel and Chocolate Flavored Coating’. It’s a long bar, but instead of just being a normal straight bar, it’s wavy and a little unconventional.

The peanuts are sticking out all over the place, not through the chocolate, but they make the bar look strange. There’s then a caramel coating, and then a big dollop of peanut butter in the middle. The dominating flavour here is of the peanuts, and it’s hard to taste the peanut butter. The caramel flavour doesn’t come through, but the stickyness of it does, and it makes the bar rather chewy.

So as you see, there’s quite a lot to it, but it’s so delicious. Of course you have to really like peanuts in your chocolate to like this, but this is better than a Snickers bar, and better than the Peanut Butter Cups. My only complaint here is that it’s a little too sweet, the caramel hurt my teeth a little bit. But because it’s so good I can forgive them for that.