Lindor Strawberries & Cream

So today is my birthday, the day when I deserve to do whatever I want to! Want to know what I choose? Well being a now 21 year old student at university I think the answer is pretty much expected. I want to stay in doors eat chocolate and blog about it. Admittedly not the most exciting ways to celebrate but considering the weather today and my boring nature I think it's rather understandable.

Plus there is some excitement to be had indoors, actually quite a lot, in fact most excitement happens in doors. Anyway back on task, yes there is excitement to be had. As I have found the elusive Lindor Strawberries and Cream limited edition I mentioned in my last post. Admittedly it didn't take me long, although I bought them from somewhere selling them at practically double the price of Sainsbury's. I hope that they are worth it, if not I'll be doubly depressed in money and taste buds.

What a beautiful day!

To be on the safe side at the same time I also purchased a box of the coconut Lindor's too, again at a slightly inflated price. Then again I am a sucker for an impulse buy and still have access to a student loan, lets face it who needs good food when baked beans are 25 pence? So first up the coconut Lindor's in their baby blue foil. which after unwrapping allows me to take in a very sweet coconut aroma that signals good times ahead.

For once the coloring isn't dictating gender

Biting through the usual thick and creamy milk chocolate shell, easily melting like fudge on the tongue I gain access to the coconut core. A smooth and also creamy ganache which whilst appearing solid has a thick liquid like texture to it. The taste of coconut is intense and very sweet without becoming sickly. Together the flavours become very rich and suffer from Lindor's usual problem of feeling a bit heavy. I often can't and won't have more than a couple at a time because they can become sickly and filling.

This won't, however, stop me from popping the next one in my mouth. Contrasting the baby blue theme with a pale pink I unwrap the foil. The smell isn't quite as powerful with only a hint of strawberry. Throwing one in my mouth whole in excitement I'm met with an amazing taste of subtly sweet strawberry and milky white chocolate. Whilst not tasting exactly as it title suggests, more of strawberry milkshake than the summer dessert, it still tastes amazing. I hope this one isn't too much of a limited edition and carries on long after valentines day.

Though I didn't feel very manly nomming these, damn you society!

Overall both were nice if a little expensive. It's my own fault I could probably have got these on offer in in a week, but it is my special day so I pampered myself.
poundland

Score
coconut 7 out of 11
strawberries 8 out of 11

Found
Superdrugs

Final Thoughts
Celebrating birthdays always seem odd to me, yay I survived another day... Again!

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!!

I may need a lie down... In a dark room!

Right, so as anyone who may regularly read my blog (I hope these at least two, me being one) will begin to see a pattern possibly emerging. I like to try new things; I mean I don’t really care if I know the outcome will be bad I wanna try it. So when I find a product that contains several flavours in one package I get excited. I enjoy experiencing variety and then talking about it hence why I started this blog.

I thought that this blog would encourage me to seek out new chocolate to try, not that I needed much encouragement (I often squeal when I see new products!) It stops me becoming predictable at least and sales of Fredo bars are probably going to be on the decline! Since starting to seek new flavours I have discovered I like both nuts and mushrooms, two things that throughout my life I have had a hatred for. This discovery alone proves that we should try every opportunity we come across. Don’t get me wrong I’m still not going near a raw tomato and if you’re in the splash zone you’ll understand. I know in the grand scheme of things trying new foods isn’t exactly a momentous thing but it’s meant I’ve bought something that has travelled as far afield as Australia just for me to eat.

Bask in the image of possible perfection

This is a good link to today’s review. Firstly as it comes from Australia and secondly it is a bar made up of six whole different flavours. Practically variety in a tube, or a flimsy foil wrapper to be precise. I was very impressed when I found this as it meant I in theory would be trying six new things in one purchase, points for variety and value for money. Although the bar was like £3.50 but it had to pay extra for a kosher meal and leg room on the plane.

So todays review is of the Australian Cadburys snack bar (Different from the UK snack, which is essentially a chocolate biscuit and not so exciting.) These bars are made of six blocks of chocolate each with their own fillings. It’s like buying a very small quality street tin, if you have a good imagination.

I’ll be honest by the time I got round to trying this bar it was past its prime. At the time of buying it was beyond its best before and the week it spent in my cupboard was the hottest of the summer. I feel a bit bad basing my opinion solely on this one specimen, but then the packaging should prepare it for travelling. Enough chat however more stats, or whatever passes as a review around here.

It may have been squashed but I didn't care.

The first block in this bar is petty standard, a caramel filling. I expected it to be like your normal dairy milk caramel but was surprised at the difference.  The chocolate was much less sweeter than a dairy milk bar and tasted rather plain. This could be because the dairy milk in the UK is much sweeter than most other milk chocolate; I hoped so as if not it was because it may have gone bad. The other difference was the caramels taste as unfortunately it had absorbed much of the flavour from the Turkish delight block and lost the caramel taste. I had hardened a bit too and as a result was chewy rather than creamy. We were off to a bad start and I was worried.

The next piece was the Turkish delight, which ironically in its eagerness to spread its flavour was lacking. Compared to a Fry’s delight this was nothing it had a hint of that familiar taste but only a whisper in the night. This left the block tasting rather plain although it had maintained the jelly like texture so at least it had that.

Then came what I thought was Lemon but turns out it was meant to be pineapple. This alone will tell you a lot about the flavour on offer here.  It did have a slight bitter sweet taste but very sparing. Things were looking bleak and we are half way through. Disaster struck in the form of block four which tasted like a second Turkish delight. Had they miss manufactured this choccy with two of the same block? No surely not, for one it has a unique texture one I can’t quite put my finger on (not just for hygiene reasons.) I had to look it up, turns out it was coconut, well that explained the texture but not the taste. I was really disappointed now after all I’d had my RDA of Turkish Delight.

To cheer us up, heres a cat in a pop art hat

It ends on a slightly less sour note thankfully as the final two of strawberry and orange actually had a good quality flavour. However they were rather just like the normal crèmes you get in the variety boxes everyone throws around at Christmas. They tasted good though so I won’t complain about these.

Overall this bars failings are probably due to an overambitious idea. Even if it was in ship shape condition, having multiple flavours would always cause the weaker ones to be overpowered by the stronger flavours.  The chocolate probably would have had more flavour had it not been out of date and warmed, then cooled. As you can tell this bar rather disappointed I but I could always just buy a box of Roses. Then again where’s the fun in that? That’s too easy.

Score

Begrudgingly 3 out of 11

Found

Sweet heaven Bluewater

Final Thoughts

It may have to be retried later, although not for a while my heart can't take it.