Kev's Snack Reviews

Last Christmas Cadbury UK chose to release the very boring " Freddo Popping Candy " as a limited edition. Why they chose this flavour I will never know, especially when countries like Australia get lots of interesting Freddo varieties all year round - flavours like Strawberry, Mint, Hundreds & Thousands , Rice Crisps, Crunchie, Dream White Chocolate , Pineapple , Milky Top , etc! Luckily Strawberry and Mint Freddos are now available in the UK thanks to the fantastic Monster Sweets, for a very reasonable 70p. Hurrah! (plus they sell the awesome Aussie biscuits Tim Tams !) Below are my thoughts on each flavour... Freddo Peppermint: This Freddo looks like any other Freddo on the outside... until you cut him open to reveal his gooey green froggy innards! The peppermint filling oozed out and was very green indeed, with a strong minty aroma. Taste-wise it was pleasantly minty and of course very sweet. Combined with the milk chocolate it went really well, althou...

Many thanks to Monster Sweets for sending me this new bar from Ritter Sports Spring 2014 range to review. It's called "Baiser Nuss" ("Meringue Nuts" in English) and contains roasted hazelnuts and meringue pieces - a different but tasty take on hazelnut chocolate! Removing the wrapper revealed a deliciously rich aroma with some strong woody hazelnut notes. It smelled very inviting indeed! Taking a bite I was first met with the creamy Ritter Sport chocolate. As always it was very rich with a nice level of milkiness, and better quality than the average UK milk chocolate bar. It contains 30% cocoa solids which explains the high quality. The hazelnuts were fresh and crunchy, adding a lovely woody, savoury taste. The meringue pieces were very sweet but worked well with the hazelnuts. It was all very moreish and crunchy and made me think of Ferrero Rocher in bar form! Overall this is yet another delicious variety from Ritter Sport. It's an unusual o...

A big thankyou to Monster Sweets for sending me this Ritter Sport Kokos-makrone bar to review recently! Like the Ritter Sport Caramel-Orange bar I've reviewed previously it's part of the Ritter Sport Winter Kreations 2013 range, which also includes a Caramelized Almonds variety. Basically, if you're a fan of coconut chocolates then this is the chocolate for you! Ritter Sport's UK Website describe the bar as combining  "freshly baked coconut macaroons with the best Ritter Sport milk chocolate and crispy rice flakes". This sounded absolutely delicious and rather unique to me, especially as there's currently no other coconut macaroon filled bars on the market. As far as coconut chocolates go, this is right up there with the Ritter Sport Kokos on the deliciousness scale! The milk chocolate is Ritters usual standard - creamy and with a good cocoa flavour, and a lot nicer than the average UK mass-produced chocolate bar. The filling, as always, is whe...

Earlier in the year I reviewed a Polish version of Snickers Dark . I wasn't too impressed with that bar, so I was a little skeptical when I received this American version from Monster Sweets to review recently. Would it be an improvement on the Polish version? Well yes, luckily it was! The bar weighs in at 51.9g (such a weird amount...why couldn't they just make it 60g?) and comes in a funky dark purple wrapper. It really stands out compared to a regular Snickers wrapper although you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some kind of berry flavoured Snickers (now there's an idea!) It's described by Mars as "Just like Snickers Original, but with a higher percentage of cocoa". Unwrapping it revealed a pretty regular looking Snickers. It didn't look much different from a UK milk chocolate Snickers although it was perhaps a tad darker in colour. Luckily the dark chocolate was very noticeable in the taste and the bar tasted much richer than the ...

Many thanks to Monster Sweets for sending me some fantastic snacks to review recently; I've already reviewed the Ritter Sport Winter Caramel Orange Bar but this time it's the turn of the White Chocolate Twix, a bar that was available in the UK in the mid-2000's but unfortunately discontinued. It's still available over in Europe though, so many thanks to Monster Sweets for bringing them to the UK! This bar is a limited edition and weighs 50 grams in total. Opening the wrapper revealed two familiarly shaped Twix fingers coated in white chocolate: They smelled creamy and enticing. Cutting a finger in half revealed a layer of firm caramel above a shortbread biscuit base: Biting into a piece I was first met with a creamy, milky sweetness from the white chocolate, and then the chewy buttery caramel and crunchy shortbread base. It's the perfect combination of flavours and textures, and I thought it somehow tasted even nicer than a regular milk chocolate Tw...

Many thanks to the fantastic Monster Sweets for sending me this Ritter Sport bar to review recently! This is a new addition to Ritter Sport's 2013 Winter Kreations range, which comprises of Caramel Orange, Kokos-macrone (Coconut Macaroon) and Gebrannte Mandel (Caramelized Almonds) . Do take a moment to check out Monster Sweets newly revamped webstore - they stock a lot of hard-to-find European and American snacks at competitive prices, including an extensive variety of Ritter Sport and Milka bars. I highly recommend them for unique and tasty snacks that you won't find anywhere else in the UK! Onto the chocolate then, this Caramel Orange bar had no English writing on the packaging but it roughly translates as "Milk chocolate with caramel and orange flavour cream". I've tried the Ritter Sport Crema Catalana bar before and this Caramel Orange sounded like a very similar proposition, and indeed it was! Infact I would go so far as saying it's  better...

A big thankyou to the fantastic Monster Sweets for sending me these Milka Schoko Drops to review recently! Monster Sweets are always on top of the latest American and European snacks releases - do check out their great range of stuff. Being a fan of all things Milka I was really excited to try these. They reminded me of the Weihnachts Minis I reviewed last year but sounded a lot more promising. They're basically a milky cream filling surrounded with Milka alpine milk chocolate and then coated in a crunchy candy shell. They're similar to Smarties and M&M's but the cream layer means the texture is quite different. The shells come in only white and purple colours to fit with the Milka branding, which I think looks really cool and unique. The milk chocolate tasted rich and creamy, just like regular Milka chocolate. The milky layer added an extra level of creaminess and tastes kind of similar to the cream in Kinder milk chocolate bars. The crunchy shell fin...

A big thankyou to Monster Sweets who sent me this Mars Almond to review recently! Mars never seem to do any interesting variations of their bars here in the UK, and I think this is a massively untapped area - the potential for variety is definitely there. Mars Caramel and Mars Midnight have been the extent of their innovation so far, and both don't include anything new, infact the Mars Caramel takes away the most important element of a Mars bar - the nougat! So with that considered I was very excited to try this Mars Almond. It appears to be made by Mars France, but I believe it's available in Germany too. It's slightly smaller than a regular UK Mars bar and contains almonds embedded in the nougat. It was very tasty indeed. It had that familiar malty Mars chocolate taste, and the caramel had a nice sweet chewiness, contrasted by the soft chewy nougat. The almonds brought a lovely crunchy, nutty element to the bar, making it even more tasty. They seemed ...

I've never had a chance to try these Dark Mint M&M's before so I was very happy when Monster Sweets sent me a pack recently along with the Peanut Butter M&M's I reviewed here . Monster Sweets are a company specializing in American and European snacks for cheap prices and postage, I highly recommend them for hard-to find-snacks! http://www.monstersweets.co.uk/ These M&M's contain mint flavoured dark chocolate centres. The shells come in slightly varying shades of green, which I think look really cool! Taste-wise they made me think of Nestlé After Eights in crunchy form. The dark chocolate tasted rich and minty, whilst the crunchy shells provided a nice contrast in texture. They were rather addictive and I couldn't help but gobble most of the bag up pretty quickly! Overall, a great M&M's flavour which I would love to see more widely available. Until Mars UK decide to give us consumers what we want these M&M's are thankfully a...

A big thankyou to Monster Sweets who sent me these M&M's recently. You can get most of the M&M's range as well as many American and European snacks from their site here: http://www.monstersweets.co.uk/ I've tried Peanut Butter M&M's in the past, but haven't bought them much since because of the high prices. I wish they were widely available in the UK because I think they taste  amazing , the best M&M's I've ever eaten infact. Why these aren't widely available is a big mystery to me. I guess the UK still isn't ready to accept peanut butter as a mainstream flavour like they do in America. Sigh. These M&M's contain a peanut butter centre coated in milk chocolate and a crunchy coloured shell. Taste-wise they were chocolatey, salty, peanutty, crunchy...and very very moreish! The textures and flavours all work perfectly together and I was left wanting more once I had finished the packet. Overall, these are a great...

A big thankyou to  Monster Sweets  who kindly sent me this Ritter Sport Weiss + Crisp (White chocolate and Cornflakes) bar to review recently. Monster Sweets are a company specializing in European and American snacks, and have one of the largest Ritter Sport ranges available in the UK, plus cheap postage to boot! For more info check out their banner on the side of this blog or visit their website here: http://www.monstersweets.co.uk/ I'm a big fan of Ritter Sport's white chocolate - their White Whole Hazelnuts Bar  is perfection - so I had high hopes for this Weiss + Crisp. And it far surpassed them, it was even  better than the White Whole Hazelnuts! Opening the wrapper the chocolate looked and smelled great, with a lovely vanilla hinted aroma (apologies for my dark-looking picture but there was a serious lack of light at the time!). Biting into a piece I was first met with a vanilla hit from the white chocolate - it tasted superbly creamy and...

Thankyou to Monster Sweets who once again kindly sent me some Ritter Sport bars to review. Monster Sweets are currently stocking the new Ritter Spring Varieties Crema Catalana and Kakaosplitter that I've reviewed previously, plus  Milka with Tuc & LU . You can check out their website here: http://www.monstersweets.co.uk/ Ritter Sport Kokos Ritter Sport Kokos: Described as "mit tropischen Kokosraspeln in Kokos-Milch-Fullung, this roughly translates as "with tropical coconut rasps in coconut milk filling". I was very excited when I first heard about this Ritter Sport Kokos/Coconut. Ritter Sport are great at making bars with creamy fillings, as I found with the Crema Catalana , so a bar with a coconut cream filling sounded amazing! It's quite hard to find coconut cream filled bars; I believe Lindt do one in Europe and even Sainsbury's used to do one in their Taste the Difference range. Lindt also recently launched their Coconut Lindor whic...

A big thankyou to Monster Sweets who once again kindly sent me a few bars to try from their European import range. I've been itching to try these new "Frühlings Spezialtät" (Spring Speciality) Ritter Sport bars ever since I heard about them, and they're not very easy to find, so kudos to Monster Sweets for importing them! You can check out Monster Sweets' range of Ritter Sport flavours which includes "Cookies & Cream", "Kakaosplitter" and "à la Crema Catalana", as well as the Milka with TUC & LU that I reviewed previously, here: http://www.monstersweets.co.uk Crema Catalana: This Ritter Sport bar is quite simply an amazing bar of chocolate. I had high expectations to start with but it far exceeded them; it was very, very delicious! It's one of those bars you just have to try, especially if you like Ritter Sport. I must admit I initially didn't know what Crema Catalana is, but according to wikiped...