Kev's Snack Reviews

Quality Street have recently expanded their range by branching out into Lindor territory...with truffles! But they've given their own unique spin on them and these have crunchy coatings to fit with some of their classic Quality Street Chocolates. There's Orange which is a bit like the Crunchy Orange chocolate, Salted Caramel which is apparently based on the toffees, and Praline which is of course based on the Green Triangle. Sounds a bit gimmicky but they actually do fit with the Quality Street chocolates rather well. Consisting of a smooth, almost gooey truffle centre, coated in chocolate and with various crunchy coatings. The Orange was a favourite - a smooth orange flavour centre with some crunchy orange bits on top. It tastes like the orange chocolate from quality street but the truffle adds an extra dimension to it, replacing boring crunchy inner chocolate with a smooth ganache. I think I liked this better to be honest. The crunchy bits still give you the crun...

If you're into dairy free or vegan ice cream, good news, there's a new plant based alternative on the block: Coconuts Organic! Formerly called Coconuts Naturally they have rebranded and are now available in selected Tesco stores - do check out their website to see if they're available near you. You can find them in the Free From frozen food section for £5 a tub. This Choc Orange Swirl variety is described as "Organic, non-dairy chocolate orange ice cream, made with coconut cream, unrefined coconut sugar and laced with an indulgent chocolate sauce swirl". It contains no dairy, nuts or gluten and is free from major allergens. It's soil association certified organic and also approved by the vegan society. I couldn't wait to get this home to eat so cheekily ate some whilst in a Costa store right after buying it. There's a lovely orangey chocolate aroma on removing the lid. And the consistency is creamy, not too solid and was just beginning to get me...

Amongst the other new flavours in the Cadbury Dairy Milk flavour vote (Choca-Latte and Raspberry Shortcake) the last one is this: Simply The Zest. I was very excited to try this as there's no orange flavour Cadbury bar currently on the market and also because Cadbury used to do a delicious orange flavour Dairy Milk many years ago: This Simply The Zest bar was described as orange flavoured in the press releases so I thought it might be similar to the Dairy Milk Orange, but alas it wasn't. Instead it contains orange pieces and shortcake pieces plus crunchy almond caramel.  It's pretty tasty, of course! The orange pieces are like chewy candied orange, similar to what you get in the Cadbury Bournville Orange , and the caramel pieces are a bit like Daim. To be honest they get a bit lost with the other flavours and textures, the shortcake biscuits are nice and crunchy, and overall it's a mishmash of fruit and biscuit flavours. Like I said, pretty tasty, but ultimately it...

A big thankyou to McVitie's Cakes who sent me this Galaxy Cake Bar Selection Cracker to review recently. It just turned up one morning unexpectedly...always a nice surprise to receive snacks! The Cracker is especially designed for the festive season, containing 11 mini Galaxy cake bars and is available from B&M and Tesco stores. The selection consists of Galaxy Salted Caramel cakes, Galaxy Caramel cakes, Orange cakes and Chocolate cakes. The salted caramel variety contains chocolate sponge cake with a layer salted caramel sat above it - what a delicious combination! Definitely the best from this box, with a nice balance of buttery, salty caramel, moist cake and smooth chocolate. The Caramel cake bar contains smooth caramel and is just as delicious as the salted caramel variety, with sweeter caramel if you prefer that over salted. It's just as delicious and a classic treat. The Chocolate cake bars contains chocolate cake and chocolate cream, which is...

Today's review is a quick one as there's not a lot to say about this new Smarties Scaries Halloween Edition. It seems Nestle are doing a lot of limited edition Smarties now, following from the success of the Unicorn Edition and Orange Limited Edition ...I'm guessing a Christmas version will be next! I received these from @gbgifts , a new company selling snacks boxes with a variety of fantastic treats, from old classics to new limited editions. To a Skittles gift box please check out my Instagram page - we are doing a joint competition this week! These Smarties are simply described as "Milk chocolate in a crisp sugar shell" and are basically brown-coloured milk chocolate Smarties and orange-coloured orange flavour milk chocolate Smarties. Which is pretty good because Orange Smarties are always a bit more special than regular ones (if you like orangey chocolate of course!). There's not much to say about them other than they taste as sugary and swee...

Following my last Spotted In Shops post I've been itching to try this Cadbury Bournville Orange bar. It's described as New/Old because it was last available in 2009, nearly ten years ago! I vaguely remember it along with the Old Jamaica version, and am glad it's been brought back - you can't beat the combination of orange and dark chocolate when it's done right. These are available for £1 from various stores, including Iceland Foods (where I found it) and Poundland. The bars contain 100g and are described simply as "Chocolate with orange flavoured pieces". I was pleased to see a return of more traditional-looking chunks in this bar; yes they're smaller than they used to be, but at least they're not curved like they tried to make Dairy Milk. The orange pieces can be found nestled within the chunks and there seemed to be quite a decent amount of them (they make up 12% of the bar). Firstly, the chocolate itself tastes as you'd expect; se...

It's that time of year when all the new products are being launched - hurrah! Let's celebrate with another Spotted In Shops post... First up is the above bar of Bournville Orange Dark Chocolate which I spotted in Iceland Foods. It costs £1, is Dairy Free and has a "New Old!" label on...because this isn't the first time Cadbury have made this bar. It was around many years ago (2009!) along with an Old Jamaica Bournville , just before Cadbury were taken over by Kraft.  Other new developments from Cadbury are their Darkmilk range; a rich and creamy chocolate with a higher percentage of cocoa than Dairy Milk (but still containing milk, obviously). Currently available for £1 from Tesco in an Original variety... Plus Roasted Almond. Does this sound like your kind of thing? Let me know in the comments! A rather strange product Cadbury have launched is this Sweet Shop style bag of chocolates, that includes Dairy Milk, Caramel, Fudge and E...

It's been a while now since I first reviewed Real Handful snacks , and since then they have rebranded a little bit. They now produce "unruly" flavours, and are sick of snacks that are "good" or "bad", so instead their snacks are "better". This might sound confusing but I get what they're aiming for - the healthy snacks market can tend to be a bit black and white, but in reality people have so many differing dietary needs it's never that clear cut. They recently offered me some snacks from their new range to review and of course I couldn't say no to that! As well as bagged fruit and nut mixes they've diversified into snack bars, with flavours like Choc Orange and Sea Salt Caramello which I'm reviewing today. The bars are made with a mix of nuts, coconut sugar, rice syrup, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seed protein and more. They're a little similar to Nine Bars and are gluten free and vegan, although produced in a factory t...