Reece's Peanut butter cups minis and miniatures.

               Is big really better? Surely quantity is preferable to size too? Okay before you readers get the wrong impression I should perhaps explain. After all you might get the wrong end of the stick.

           

I am of course talking about sweets as usual, what else could I possibly be talking about? Honestly get your minds out the gutter people. No, I'm talking about two miniature versions of full size favorites of mine. These items are mini Reece’s pieces cups in both milk and white chocolate varieties.

          

  I can't tell you how excited I was when I found these, other than saying I may have let out a little squeal. However it was a very manly man squeal I can assure you. This was immediately followed by me practically throwing them in the basket and skipping to the checkout. See how manly that is. Before we look at the source of most of my excitement (the white chocolate cups) I will first look at the milk chocolate. I'm attempting some kind of buildup.

            

Sometimes, for some reason when companies change the size of their products they somehow change the taste. Usually it has detrimental effect. Perhaps the use of usually is a bit of a spoiler about my feelings towards these products. Indeed these are great, perhaps better than the usual Reece’s peanut cups.

           

Maybe because it’s more compact thus making the flavor seems more intense. For they are. When I popped one into my mouth I find these to be much stronger in flavour. It still maintains the usual sweet milky and fudge-like chocolate that tastes amazing especially when combined with the peanut paste. They definitely taste better to me than the usual cups; clearly a difference in displacement makes a real difference. Perhaps because you’re taking in the full experience at once that makes it better.

           

Now on to the White chocolate caps, these have two added bonuses before we even get to the taste test. (Not that there is any competition here, they are after all brothers... or sisters, siblings basically) The first benefit is that they are slightly bigger than the others, yes I'm a hypocrite and secondly they come in friggin foil and paper cups!

            

Right at this point I'm going to draw your attention to my post where I talk about expectations. That’s what I thought when I took my first bite into these babies. It has the same almost sickly sweet white chocolate as usual cups and the regular bitty peanut paste. Yet somehow it didn't taste as good as my favorite big cup variety. Then I took a bigger bite, and boy was I wrong. The shift in size has allowed for a slightly larger block of nutty goodness and creates a more intense flavor hit.

          

  Overall bigger is definitely not better as both of these products show. So yeah, don't judge on size people. 

Score

Milk cup - 7 out of 11

white cup - 9 out of 11

Found

Milk cup found in Tesco and White cups found in ASDA.

Final Thoughts

I think I've been rather contradictory in today's post sorry, blame excitement.

Mending Fences

So I often will say that I love all things chocolate and to a point this is true. There is however a large portion of the chocolate industry I don’t like, a company to whose chocolate I’m rather indifferent. That is Mars products, now don’t get me wrong I love Galaxy (See I’m not a complete monster.) I’ll also often choose M&M’s over Smarties, but both are cool with me. But the rest of their products (including their namesake Mars bar) I could quite easily live without.

The problem is most of Mar’s products incorporate real turn offs for me. Firstly I don’t like chewy or sticky caramels in my chocolate. No, the caramel needs to be gooey and runny like you’ll find in Dairy Milk caramel bars. Next I don’t really like a bar that skimps on choccy for a solid block of biscuit running throughout. It’s like the product is a bit confused and shuns the sweet aisle and is eyeing up the biscuit barrel like it holds greener pastures. Both these things can hinder the chocolates ability to melt on your tongue which is what I tend to look for. I like to savour my chocolate, not bite it away at once.

Now if I were to put these two qualities into the much loved and possibly overused vend diagram, I think you’ll agree that you’d find a Twix bar. This bar to me is the worst of the worst, partly because of said fall in the diagram. Also it’s probably partly to a mistaken belief I held onto during childhood that Twix bars contained nuts. Up until very recently I have avoided nuts and nut products due to hatred towards them. This hatred however has gone replaced with much apology and regret at the missed nutty opportunities. Whilst I was wrong for both my hatred of nuts and my belief that they lurked within Twix I stayed clear in case.

See the lengths I go to for you guys!

It’s ironic the that today’s review is seeking to form a bond betwixt (HeeHee) me and Twix in the form of peanut butter Twix. Like the rest of the United Kingdom I am experiencing an obsession with all things peanut butter so saw an opportunity to indulge in the latest craving. Upon first bite I was hooked in by the taste of salty peanut butter and a flirt of chocolate. Even better was that the biscuit seemed to have

minimal impact and wasn’t very detectable. The only downside was that the peanut butter seemed a bit too sticky but I wasn’t complaining. It was pretty damn good and it looked like grovelling to the Twix gods was needed.

I think the state of the wrapper shows how eager I was to repair relations.

Then the second bite and subsequent bites occurred and I was in for disappointment. Suddenly the chocolate was undetectable the peanut butter lost its flavour and worse the biscuit was very much present. The biscuit is terrible too, despite bragging itself as chocolate cookie it has no flavour at all and is way too crunchy. I realised with horror that my initial bite at the beginning was the end of the bar where the chocolate ratio is high. Now however i was in the middle of the biscuit ocean with the chocolate shore in the far horizon. I was eating a chocolate bar devoid of a chocolate flavour. The cookie too lacked any of its own and the peanut butter sticky and had lost the partnership with the chocolate.

Twix peanut butter is definitely not high on taste instead it offers crunch and stickiness. Put simply it is a bar for those who enjoy texture over taste, I am not one of those people as you can clearly see. So I’m afraid that this purchase wasn’t the catalyst that rebuilt any burnt bridges. Instead like an unhappy marriage the only thing that grew was resentment.

Score

4 out of 11

Found

Sweet Haven store in Thurrock shopping centre

Final thoughts

I'm probably now going to be able to think of loads of Mars products I like... Malteasers