Milka Santa Bar (Sainsbury’s)

This year, more than last, I noticed something about quite a few of the Seasonal products that we have available. An awful lot seem to be the standard items just with a Christmassy change in packaging, and no real change to the product underneath.
In fact I took a walk down the Christmas section at my local supermarket and spotted numerous items that fitted into this category, from sweets through to biscuits.
This Milka bar caught my eye in that section, and yes I have to admit it is just regular Milka chocolate underneath the foil too, but regular readers will know that my love of Milka chocolate meant I couldn’t resist.
It is beautiful sweet and creamy chocolate, nicely presented and would make a lovely stocking filler. Despite the lack of novelty Christmas flavour, I do have to say it is nice to find yet another Milka bar in the shops over here and may the varieties available continue to increase!

Ovaltine Cookies/Biscuits/Galletas { via Nli10} (Asda)

You have to love the 'international aisle' at the modern British supermarket. It's region dependant and reflects the make-up of an area, and I'm lucky that my supermarkets have Asian, Polish, Caribbean and a few others crammed into that precious space. For someone who likes to try new things and add a bit of variety to their diet it's great.

From that section at my local Asda comes the above biscuits in their very international packaging. They are the produce of Jamaica and based around the popular night time drink from the 80s (at least in my house) Ovaltine. The contents themselves are separately wrapped in bundles of 5 and there are 4 of these included which means that you will always get nice crisp biscuits. They are very much a thin shortbread but with none of the sweetness and a really strong malt flavour. The first few bites I found that I was craving far more sugar than is in these biscuits, but after you get used to it the strong maltyness of the Ovaltine powder it is actually rather pleasant.

The closest I can compare it to in UK snack foods is like when you've eaten all the chocolate off the outside of a Malteser and then just eat the centre, but I understand that malt is a very important flavour in many parts of the world - in fact I have Guinness Malt & Guinness Import ready downstairs for a future review...

While I like these I can't see that they fulfil the main role of a British biscuit as part of the nice cup of tea and a sit down as they would overpower the tea. I can however imagine that they would be good as a side to a mug of coffee on a dark cold winter evening, which is where I plan to finish off the packet that I have.

Christmas Pudding Cup Cakes (Starbucks)

Having recently tried the Black Forest Cup Cakes at Starbucks, on my return visit I felt obliged to try their other new flavour of cup cake, Christmas Pudding. I am officially now getting into the Christmas Spirit, and seasonal items are getting more and more appealing.
This cupcake has a lovely vanilla sponge, with raisins set inside it, which add flavour and texture. There weren’t too many raisins, but just enough to give the fruit flavour part of the overall Christmas Pudding taste.
The icing is where this cup cake really comes to life. It is soft and sweet and has a wonderful combination of warming cinnamon and other spices that just work so well. The cupcake practically says Christmas is here, and tastes divine. Even if you’re not feeling it yet, try this cup cake and it will put you in the mood for the festivities.

Show us your Advent Calendar

Today I wanted to tell you about something a bit different, today is all about Advent Calendars.
Above is a picture of my rather long thin Advent Calender, I did my best with the photography!

One of my regular readers DavidH came up with this fabulous idea to have an Advent Calendar project. The idea being that people send in photographs of the contents each day, and each day I publish the pictures (or as many as I can). It should get us all into the Christmas mood, and will be a good way to see what all different Advent Calendars have to offer behind their window. All you need to join in is an Advent Calendar, a camera and a Christmas spirit! Just email me the photos to the address at the top of the page. If you wish to join in, there is no need to send a picture every single day, just as often or as infrequently as you see wish. I hope lots of you want to join in, have Advent Calendars ready and may the Christmas countdown begin!

PS Don’t worry there will still be a daily update throughout December for my Foodstuff Finds, the Advent Calendar project will be an additional daily post.

Bear: Cocoa Cherry Pie - Baked Granola Nibbles (Boots)

I decided to try this bad of ‘nibbles’ out as breakfast in the office with a cup of coffee. After all, the bag contains all natural ingredients and is only 99 calories, so it seemed like a good start to the day.
Inside the pack is a mix of grains, dried cherry and cocoa nibs, stuck together in chunks of no universal size. I was a little bit surprised by just how hard and crunchy these clusters of grains and goodies were. I found them tremendously crunchier than I had expected, and thought my jaw even ached a little after finishing the pack. They are not a quiet snack to eat either, and the office probably wasn’t the best place to tuck in!
Flavour wise, I really like them. I could taste all the different grains, the hint of cocoa from the cocoa nibs, and the zingy cherry really topped it all off. They were surprisingly sweet and tasty given that there is no added sugar. I also do like the idea of the contents being all natural, but the hardness of them could put me off a re-purchase.

Wonka Tinglerz (House of Fraser)

This is an import chocolate product, manufactured by Nestle, which has made its way into my local branch of House of Fraser. I have to say department stores seem to be getting better and better at stocking more interesting goodies from around the world.
The product consists of bits of chocolate, which crackle heavily when eaten. On top of the popping-candy contents, there are also bits of rice crispy in there too, which add to the texture and the crunch. The milk chocolate isn’t of the highest quality, but it does the job and delivers a nice cocoa taste, and the product if fun and enjoyable. One thing though, do not try a handful at once... let’s just say I’ve learnt from my experience, and I thought my mouth was going to do more than ‘tingle’! ;-)

Vitamin Water [Lemonade]

This drink was actually being given out as promotional free sample to passersby at a train station. Although I have seen this drink in various shops, I’ve never actually tried it before.
The concept is that it is a lemonade drink which also gives you a burst of select vitamins too, mostly at 25% of the recommended daily dose. I sort of expected it to have no added sugar as well, in order to keeps its calories down, but it did not. As the bottle contained 95 calories in total I guess it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
The flavour was pleasant, but wasn’t as zingy as I would have liked, but it did taste natural which was nice. It was refreshing just without the sharp oomph that lemons have the potential to provide.
I don’t take vitamin tablets as such, but there are days when I am quite sure that I don’t have all of my ‘five-a-day’, so this drink would provide a reassuring top up. A pleasant thirst-quenching drink, with added health benefits too!

Anthon Berg - Chocolate Coffee Drinks (House of Fraser)

These caught my eye in House of Fraser, and as someone who loves coffee and chocolate, I really couldn’t resist! The box contains fifteen chocolate in four different themed coffee flavoured varieties. I know the box clearly states that there are fifteen chocolates, but when I opened the pack I couldn’t help but think the contents looked sparse.


Each chocolate is designed to look like a drink, and in order to achieve this they are tightly packed into a foiled wrapper, one that I found a little fiddly to open. Each chocolate has a very runny liquid centre, so I discovered they needed to be eaten carefully, ideally not bitten in half!

• Toffee Macchiato – a very sweet toffee flavour liquid and sadly not much coffee
• Espresso – I was expecting an intense coffee hit, but the overwhelming taste was sweetness and a little coffee
• Cappuccino – I thought this was overly sweet with a vague hint of coffee
• Vanilla Frappe – Very sweet and very similar to the Cappuccino variety

I felt the chocolate were a little sweet for my taste buds, and didn’t have the defined strong coffee flavour I would have liked. Having said that the quality of the exterior chocolate was good with its 55% cocoa and perhaps those with a (very) sweet tooth would enjoy them. If you’ve tried them before, please let me know what you thought.

Oreo Strawberry Bar {via @nli10} Cybercandy Birmingham

After looking for the kind of thing I fancied in Cybercandy I ended up heading to the till with just a few odds and ends and saw these on the counter. It's a quite unassuming thing and looks like one of those power-bars that people who think they should have more muscles buy from Holland & Barrett. As such I expected it to be chewy and only to faintly taste of any of the included ingredients. I was wrong.
On opening you get the scent of the freeze dried strawberries, and then that familiar strong cocoa smell of the Oreo biscuits. Biting in it's a very crumbly bar (think Twix base) and has a fantastic texture, with the zing of the strawberries counterbalanced by the melting of the chocolate. There are rice crispies buried in there too, but they are outnumbered by the main bourbon-biscuity filling which the other ingredients are in. In short it's really nice but not all that filling - I could happily eat two.
So to recap - it's like a much more indulgent cereal bar, all of the biscuit and strawberry and chocolate - very little of the cereal. I will be buying this again - and looking for other flavours.

Marmite Cereal Bars (Waitrose)

Many thanks to the people that emailed/twittered me to let me know about these bars being released, I do really appreciate it. It helps so much with the quest to try something new every day!

It is perfectly reasonable to have Marmite for breakfast, i.e. spread on toast. It is also perfectly reasonable to have a cereal bar for breakfast, particularly if you are in a hurry. What doesn’t seem quite right to me though is a Marmite cereal bar. Don’t get me wrong I don’t sit in the Marmite hate camp by any means, it is just that cereal bars are always sweet and ideally chocolaty!
The smell of the bar is distinctly of Marmite, salty and almost meaty. In taste it was also quite salty with an aftertaste of Marmite which gave a flavoursome kick. The texture was good, not too solid, and it comes apart easily. It is filled with different cereals and oats, that do give a similar texture to a Tracker bar, but without the chocolate chips (obviously).
To be honest the bar does what it says on the pack, it is well presented and has the expected flavour and nice texture.
I personally would rather have a sweet cereal bar, and a bag of Marmite nuts for a snack in the afternoon.