Macaron Madness!

Hey readers who's a better blogger than me the wonderful Amy Willow, that's who. I've kidnapped her just for you just for today enjoy but don't get used to it.
Hey everyone! I must say I feel rather honoured to be a guest here at Vote Snax-on, and I have something which I think is pretty special to share with you all. Sweets aren’t exactly my forte like they are Roy’s, however, I am rather partial to one of these when I come by them:

My precious.....

Oh yes, the wondrous macaron! For those of you who don’t know, a macaron (not to be confused with macaroon, the sickly coconut, chocolate things with rice paper on the bottom that you find in most supermarkets over here) is a pair of light almond flavoured biscuits sandwiched together by some sort of cream or jam. However, they are not just plain almond flavour, oh no. They come in a variety of flavours, but all have that basic nutty taste underneath which is what makes them so yummy.

I’ve always found macarons hard to come by, probably on account of living out in the sticks. But I’ve always had a weird obsession with them, which I must admit could stem from how pretty they are. I mean, they’re freakin’ rainbow coloured, look at them! To my surprise and joy when I last went into my nearest city I discovered that a Patisserie Valerie, a chain of classy French cafes, had opened up and they sold macarons.This makes sense as macarons are from France, although they are also popular in Japan (but over there they are spelled with a ‘k’ as you cannot write a ‘c’ by itself in Japanese. Random fact right there!) So anyway, of course I had to buy some. They came all wrapped up in cellophane and a cute paper bag, so swish.

I felt very fancy carrying this bag!

I got six macarons in total, one of each flavour they do: raspberry, coffee, lemon, vanilla, chocolate and pistachio. I was surprised that the pink one was raspberry as usually pink macarons are rose flavoured, but this only made me more eager to try it. When I opened the bag I was hit by the soft, sweet scents of almond and sugar. Not overpowering, just subtle enough to be pleasant and enticing.

I felt like I should take some in depth photos for this review, so here you go:

If I didn't know better I'd say this was wasabi!

Dissection time...

It took me a few days to munch my way through them all, but I have to say that the lemon one was my favourite. It was refreshing in the way that only citrus is, and had a proper fruity taste which was not at all synthetic. All of the macarons were like this though; they all tasted like of exactly what they were supposed to with no hint of anything fake or dodgy. However, I found the chocolate and coffee ones very rich and the chocolate especially was quite sickly and heavy. Instead of a thin cream in the middle like the others it had a dark chocolate paste which was highly cocoa-y and so pretty bland. The raspberry one too was a bit of a let down. It was nicely fruity like the lemon, but the jam holding it together was sticky and more sugary than fruity. The vanilla and pistachio ones made up for it though! Despite the unappealing green colour of the pistachio it had a brilliant nutty flavour on account of the underlying almond, and the cream was soft and refreshing like in the lemon one. The vanilla too, although slightly more basic in flavour, was light and satisfying. Plus they all had that great crumbly, melt in the mouth texture. Crunchy, yet squidgy. Aerated sponge encased by brittle, almond-y sugar. Perfection.

All in all I was definitely impressed with Patisserie Valerie. At least they make their macarons properly, even if some of the flavours aren’t to my liking. I’m sure someone else might appreciate thick jam and seductive dark chocolate. I would buy macarons from here again for sure.

And a word of warning: if I ever go to Japan and encounter a shop full of these then you will hear the squeals as far away as Pluto.

My Neighbour Makaron!

Thank you to Roy for letting me post, it’s been really fun! And keep reading his blog and supporting him because y’know, he’s pretty damn awesome.

Take care, readers!

Score
8.5 out of 11

Found
Patisserie Valerie

Final Thoughts
I want to make pumpkin macarons. And put them in fancy paper bags.

Roy's Final Thoughts
You guys should check out Amy Willow's blog here
Also follow her twitterage @amywillowwrites 
(she's so much more professional, she has her own sign off danmit!!!)

Pirate Perils!!!

Ahoy, thar reader mateys. It be international talk like a pirate day. So hitch yerrr main sail and make port for peilious pirate puns and eeerrrrmm candy? I’m back from pillaging the local sweet merchant. Which means I have booty ripe for reviewing!

 What the hell am I talking about? Well today is indeed talk like a pirate day so I needed to start my blog with something nautically nonsensical. I’ll try and stop now partially because I can’t think of any other pirate puns right now but mostly because of how I feel about pirates. Apart from Captain Jack Sparrow I’m about as ninja as they come in the never ending argument of preference between peg legs and pyjamas. Anyway todays review comes at a good time, as recently I was challenged by Amy Willow from WillowsWords  to find some pirate related sweets due to her own misguided preferences (sorry).

It’s taken me a few weeks to find these three items; clearly this isn’t the right time for pirate sweets. It doesn’t help that my hometowns not near the sea and the only piracy is dodgy Dave’s DVDs.  What’s the chances though that sod and his damn law means I see nothing but appropriate sweets from now on. 

Almost as suave as Captain Jack Sparrow, bet he's winking under the patch

Anyway you salty seadogs I’ll sail towards our first product. It comes in the form of some cheap chocolate doubloons. I know these are pretty much just the chocolate coins you get at Christmas. But don’t chant cop out just yet for you see there is a pirate on the label and a skull and crossbones on the coins. So by technicality these count. Believe me if you could see these things you’d know I’m being punished enough by having to try them.

These things are cheap, really cheap and I don’t mean in the price I paid (although they were pretty cheap). As I unwrapped the gold foil I ventured a sniff and they smelt basic and unexciting as you can imagine. I never the less popped one in my mouth to melt on my tongue. Yep they taste cheap too. That typical advent calendar chocolate, dull and stale milk chocolate flavour.  I think that is a miracle of our times really how no matter what shape or form advent calendar chocolate takes it still tastes the same. At least I am now of an age when my distant relatives don’t feel the need to pop to pound land to purchase me a countdown to Christmas. No instead I have to use my hard earned cash so I get branded ones, who says we have to grow up completely right?

The next item continues the treasure trend as we look at Sainsbury’s new gold bars, woooo! These look similar to an American product I’ve seen advertised on AmericanSoda called Fort Knox bars. Except these are targeted towards children party bags from the look of them whereas Fort Knox bars look quite adult. Unfortunately I have these to try and I have a sinking feeling that they are the same kind of chocolate as the coins. They do have a cartoon pirate ship on the pack so they were suitable for my review. Anyone who says I’m scraping the barrel here is probably right but believe me it isn’t fun.

Wish I'd left these on the desert island I dug them from.

Perhaps I’m prejudging them after all I haven’t tried them yet. Maybe the cheap packaging was to save costs in order to use good quality chocolate. This hope is soon dashed by the same smell as the coins when I take off the gold paper. Worse still is that underneath the surface of the chocolate is plain; at least the coins had the good grace to print the Jolly Rodger on the faces. Thankfully they have less of a waxy texture than the coins had so are slightly better quality. They still manage to damn well taste the same however.

Well so far these chocolates have done nothing to make me leave the safety and cleanliness of my Dojo in pursuit of adventures on the high seas. The final product however is rather more interesting and not just because of the cheeky pirate clutching his cutlass. I found these in a local Polish food store amongst the kid’s sweets and thought they may be worth a try. Unfortunately as you can tell from the name (Korsarz) these don’t have any English translation so I’m tasting blind here folks. They are small black balls which could be meant to look like cannonballs and have a nice sweet smell to them.

He kinda looks more like a pizza chef at a Halloween party to me.

I give them a go and I am instantly surprised. In a good way, although after the other two products anything could be seen as an improvement. These aren’t just anything though; they are rather special the chocolate is very sweet although not sickly. With a flavour almost like condensed milk and chocolate it’s a new taste I’ve never come across. Sadly the chocolate is rather thin and inside is a small hard ball that when chewed I find tastes like sweetened coconut but without the texture.

They taste very nice and very moreish, I highly recommend them. The next one I try and chew straight away but it loses something. These are best left to melt in the mouth at first before chewing on the coconut. Otherwise you lose the unique flavour of the chocolate and you just get overly sweet coconut. It would have been nicer also if the nut wasn’t so processed and kept some of its gritty texture but that’s just a nit-pick.

Overall these are really nice. I’m thankful to Amywillow for challenging me to find pirate sweets even if I did have to try the other two piles of cheapness. Well they can sink to the bottom of the ocean and dwell in Davy Jone’s locker whilst I eat the rest of the cannon balls. I’ll probably get some more too. If anyone else has any challenges for me then check out my challenge page to find out more. Also please follow me on twitter here or I’ll make ye swabs walk the plank. ARRRRGGGHHH!!!

Score

Coins 2 out of 11

Gold bars 3 out of 11

Zorsarz 8 out of 11

Found

Thankfully can't remember where the coins came from (perhaps for the best), the bars are from Sainsbury's. Zorsarz from a local European food market.

Final Thoughts

I'm going to end up doing a poundland advent calendar review arn't I.... Bugger!!