Starburst Choozers

‘The chews that ooze’ are the latest Starburst product. They only came out a couple of weeks ago and so I figured with the ad campaign and everything, I should try and put up a review posthaste.

To be honest, as you’ll see below the advert doesn’t tempt me that much, the ‘ooze’ looks really thick and…just not that good. But eh, only one way to find out how these are. In fact, watching the advert again, it sounds like the guys at Starburst recorded someone making a mess of their toilet in the way we’re all familiar with, it’s quite disgusting really.

There are three flavours that I will review individually: Orange & Mango, Raspberry & Orange and Pineapple & Orange, so evidently orange is the flavour of the day.

Orange & Mango – Really nice flavour. The sweet itself is orange, with the liquid centre being mango flavoured, so orange is the main flavour with the mango coming through and then going. Very sweet, but really pleasant.

Raspberry & Orange – A much tamer flavour than the previous one. Raspberry is the base flavour here, and it’s not as strong as the orange flavour. Still very good though.

Pineapple & Orange – I’m not a fan of pineapple, and here it’s the base flavour. It’s a strong pineapple and tastes very true to normal pineapple. The orange doesn’t come through at all though which is a shame. Pineapple fans will like this.

I haven’t actually put up my other Starburst articles (a redux of the original Starburst, as well as the Strawberry Chews), but suffice it to say this is by far the best of the lot. The flavours are all good, real fruity flavours without relying too much on artificial sweeteners and flavours.

I thought these would be a bit gimmicky, but congratulations to Starburst, they’ve done a good job here. The pack has 162 calories, 0g Protein, 34.3g Carbohydrates and 2.5g Fat.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Double Choc

Photos courtesy of Chocablog (the flash on my camera messed up all my photos)

I just want to begin this post by apologising for not posting yesterday. I just…forgot, sorry, strange how it slipped my mind but there you go. From now on I’ll probably be running this on a 6 day week anyway as on Sundays I will be writing a piece for my friends over at the Chocablog. Yes it seems Dom has recognised my awesome writing talents and has recruited me. So look forward to seeing my posts there as well, though of course the main bulk of my time is going towards this site. But now, back to this!

Double chocolate is an odd flavour when it comes to dessert. The basic idea of it is milk chocolate on top of milk chocolate, and so whilst it can work well in some situations, what are the chances of Cadbury getting it right for their Dairy Milk?

Well first off, what do we have? Like all Dairy Milk varieties, this is a standard Dairy Milk bar that has the filling inside it. So we have an ordinary Dairy Milk, that has some sort of slightly richer milk chocolate inside. The chocolate inside is darker in colour, though according to the back of the pack it’s a ‘chocolate flavoured centre’, so that’s hardly whetting my appetite.

To be frank, I’m not impressed with this bar. It doesn’t taste that differently to the Dairy Milk with Caramel, it has the same consistency and there’s no real problem with the bar, it’s just a little tasteless, very ordinary milk chocolate with…milk chocolate inside.

The chocolate inside is quite tasteless, and personally I feel there are better things that Cadbury could put into their Dairy Milk bars, like peanut butter, or a milk chocolate truffle or something, this is just lazy.

The bar has 220 calories, 2.6g Protein, 28.2g Carbohydrates (23.9g of which sugars) and 10.9g Fat (6.5g of which saturates). I don’t really recommend this though, not only are there much better chocolate bars, there are much better Dairy Milk chocolate bars.

Nestlé After Eight

I was originally intending to review the Hershey’s ‘Take 5’ today, but my digital camera ran out of battery just as I was about to take a picture of the bar! Absolutely terrible luck, and as I still haven’t found the charger for it, I had to put up an old review, so here we have Nestlé’s After Eight thin milk chocolate mints. These at least used to be marketed as a sort of upmarket chocolate, they were supposed to be a little bit posh, but I don’t think they’re really seen like that anymore, especially as I never see them advertised anymore at all.

I’m not sure how many varieties and styles of boxes they do, but I have here the 300g box, which has around 35 After Eight mints in it. Each square chocolate mint is about 1.5cm in length each side, and is wafer thin. It’s basically a spearmint fondant creme, covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

I’ve gotta say I do quite like these. It’s good to just pop one in after a meal to freshen up. I don’t think you could really eat these en masse, I haven’t tried it and I think it’d probably make me a little sick to do so. I guess when these first came out they were marketed as a posh, after dinner chocolate, but in these modern days we’re a little more enlightened, and our palettes have changed. So while these are still around, I don’t think they sell as well as they used to, and people don’t think they’re particularly posh either.

After Eight mints have recently become very popular in Japan though, with a lot of new flavours coming out there. They’re a little expensive so I doubt I’ll bother importing any, but we’ll have to wait and see. Each mint has 36 calories, 0.2g of Protein, 6.3g of Carbohydrates (5.3g of which sugars) and 1.1g of Fat (0.6g of which saturates).

One of the adverts from the 1980s can be seen below.

Cadbury Heavenly Praline Dairy Milk Melts

The last in the Dairy Milk Melts series. This particular edition is milk chocolate, with a milk chocolate truffle that also contains small caramelised hazelnut pieces in there as well.

It’s hardly a surprise that this particular edition came out. Hazelnut-chocolate hybrids are very popular here in England and in Europe as a whole, and Cadbury are playing to their strengths, considering that they already have a hazelnut Dairy Milk bar on the market.

These are pretty good, quite similar in taste to the ordinary milk chocolate ones I had yesterday, just with little nuts in these, for a nice added flavour. I don’t think I’d buy these again because there are nicer hazelnut chocolates on the market (Kinder Buenos) that are cheaper as well, but it’s nice enough I guess.

Strangely enough these have 5 less calories per bar than the other two varieties, so instead of 75 calories per bar (8 bars per box, remember), these have 70, which is pretty awesome.

Cadbury Velvety Milk Dairy Milk Melts

I’ve previously reviewed the Dark Chocolate variety of the Dairy Milk Melts, so won’t go into great detail here about box design or whatever.

Basically, the box is the same, except this time it’s all about Milk Chocolate, rather than Dark Chocolate. The Dark Chocolate variety was Milk Chocolate with a Dark Chocolate Truffle, this is Milk Chocolate with a Milk Chocolate truffle. Did I use the word ‘chocolate’ enough there?

These are similar to the Lindt truffles in this aspect, though they’re not quite as good as they are. The truffle centre is very nice, quite velvety as they describe it, but it’s not too dissimilar in taste to the milk chocolate that coats it. And the chocolate isn’t much better than ordinary Dairy Milk chocolate, so while it’s nice, it’s not as great as it could be.

In terms of nutrional information, this is the same as the previous Dairy Milk Melt variety.

Cadbury Dairy Milk with Turkish Delight

I really like Turkish Delight for some reason. I don’t quite know why I do, but there’s something about it that’s just damn tasty. So I was quite looking forward to this bar. I had to get the rather large 250g block because I couldn’t find any regular sized bars, assuming they even do them at all.

What you get here is the regular Dairy Milk Chocolate, like with all their bars, and filled with Turkish Delight. The bar here is a thick slab of chocolate, sectioned with many individual squares. The squares are quite thick, and that’s where the Turkish Delight is contained.

The pack makes me in fact feel a little ill, it shows a picture of one of the chocolate squares, and there’s a hole in it where the Turkish Delight is oozing out, and they show it to be oozing out all over the bottom half of the pack, to fit in with their colour scheme. Turkish Delight is meant to be a jelly-like substance, not runny and watery like that, it doesn’t look too nice at all.

Fortunately the bar contains normal Turkish Delight though, it tastes similar to the stuff you’d find in a Fry’s Turkish Delight bar, who I’m sure are a subsidiary of Cadbury, only there’s much less Turkish Delight, and the chocolate tastes better. The two mix well together, neither overpowers the other and it’s really quite satisfying.

The problem is the nutritional information. There are 155 calories, 1.9g of Protein, 21g of Carbohydrates (20.8g of which sugars) and 7.1g of Fat (4.4g of which saturates) per 4 squares here (they call them chunks, same thing). And there are 32 squares (note: I may actually be wrong with this, I have forgotten how many there were) in the 250g bar, so be careful with this, as it can be very easy to overeat. Still, it’s a nice bar, not too sickly if eaten in the right amounts, I just wish they would do a normal sized bar.

Edit: It turns out they do do a normal single serving bar, but none of the shops near me sold it.

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.

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.

Kinder Bueno

‘Milk chocolate covered wafer with smooth milky and hazelnut filling’, that does a good job of summarising this bar, but doesn’t really tell you just how absolutely delicious this thing is. I guess that’s my job then.

The Kinder range is one of my favourites in the confectionary world. From the Happy Hippos to this, everything I’ve ever had from them has been simply wonderful. Chocolatey, milky, and in this case hazelnutty, they’ve never let me down and considering how inexepensive they are, these are one of the nicest store bought chocolates you can buy.

These are so light as well! Even though they weigh 43g, which is about average for a single serving chocolate, they certainly don’t feel like it. The light chocolate coating, light wafer, and light hazelnut cream are all so…well, light, and go down so darn easily. There are two wafer bars in the pack as you can see in the picture above. Each has 4 pieces that break off, and are filled with the hazelnut and milky cream. It’s not runny or anything like that, but it’s not solid either. It’s sort of thick, but at the same time very light.

Basically, it’s absolutely delicious and if you like hazelnuts then this could very well already be one of your favourite chocolates, or about to be if you try it anytime soon. It is a necessity that you try this. Each stick has 121 calories, 2.1g Protein, 10g Carbohydrates and 8.1g Fat.

Guylian Praline

Now this is where it’s at, I completely forgot about these until someone on here mentioned them a while back, I saw this bar yesterday and had to pick it up. Billed as ‘Milk chocolate with praline filling’, that’s essentially what it is, and it’s so good.

Guylian are a Belgian company, and it shows with their work. This isn’t like the Toblerone, using knock-off Swiss chocolate that tastes nothing like it, this is high quality Belgian chocolate, with an awesome hazelnut praline filling in the middle. There are 4 pieces in each bar, each breaking off easily. Each piece has a chocolate seashell on top, and that is where the praline lies. Just under the seashell, and it goes about halfway down into the bar.

And the taste is just wonderful, the chocolate is good, it’s not greasy and it goes down well, but it is overpowered by the awesome praline filling, which is so creamy and nutty, and for a bar that’s no more expensive than any other ordinary chocolate, you’re really spoiled here. This bar really does rank high on my favourites, it’s a typical continental European bar, with the good chocolate and use of hazelnuts, and it’s hard to fault it. It’s a little small, and very more-ish, but other than that it does what it does perfectly. You have to try these at least once.

Also, if you’ve ‘come of age’, then you might want to look at this Guylian Praline Cream Liqueur, with a seahorse bottle and everything, it looks absolutely delicious!

Edit: Thanks to babycakes for the following information. Per bar this has 211 calories, 13.2g fat and 20.2g carbohydrates.