Asda Chosen By You: Loaded (peanut butter crunch)

Product name: Asda Chosen By You: Loaded (peanut butter crunch)
Purchase details: £2.00 for a 480ml tub (Asda)
Calories: 177 per 96ml serving
Country of origin: UK 

I meant to try this new Asda Chosen By You: Loaded (peanut butter crunch) ice cream a couple of months ago, so when I recently made a trip to purchase some cheap Frijj milkshakes, I decided to pick a tub of this up too.

I’ve had three very different takes on peanut butter ice cream before, in the form of Ben & Jerry’s Core: Peanut butter me up, Tesco Cones: Peanut butter, and a fantastic homemade one from a takeaway called Kitchen Wizard in Dalton-in-Furness. Since this product contained a ‘salted caramel ripple and chocolate peanut clusters’, this was going to be a totally different experience again! My only concern was that the peanuts would be hard and cold to chew (a feature I don’t enjoy in ice creams) but I hoped that the word ‘crunch’ in the title meant that that would be what I’d get!

The tub was an orangey colour to reflect the flavour of the ‘fabulously rich peanut ice cream’ and the product image looked like it had quite a fluffy texture with large, chocolate-covered peanuts. There were also random Space-related doodles which made a couple of the peanut clusters in the ‘tasty’ and ‘packed’ ice cream look like meteorites.

The tub contained five servings, which I estimated to be just under two scoops each, and each portion contained 14.2g of sugar. The ice cream was a speckled cream colour with a butterscotch-coloured ‘sea salted caramel sauce’ which accounted for 12% of the product. I thought it was a shame that, in comparison, there was only 9% peanut butter, but I was interested to see that the clusters were a little more interesting than they first appeared since they were described as ‘milk chocolate and caramel coated peanut and rice crisp clusters’. I hadn’t realised that these, too, would contain caramel, let alone rice for added crisp, and I noticed on the ingredients that were was even some white chocolate thrown in for good measure. 

Since it was a frozen product, the ice cream didn’t have a scent (good or otherwise), but I found the taste to be really creamy and quite sugary, with a hint of peanut. It actually reminded me of the breadcrumb ice cream my Mum used to make when I was a kid – it sounds weird but it was amazing so don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!

The caramel was rich and sweet and, whilst it did add a saltiness to the flavour, I was pleased that this wasn’t overpowering. The clusters then added a crispiness to the otherwise smooth experience but I found that they weren’t so big that they interfered with the enjoyment of the ice cream itself (although this was partly down to the scoop cutting through them!). I was also pleased that, despite my fears, they hadn’t stored the cold, and so I had no trouble biting into them. I can’t say I noticed the white chocolate or caramel in their flavour but they did provide a pleasant woody nuttiness to the overall experience.

As much as I enjoyed this ice cream, I do feel that it could have done with a stronger peanut butter flavour, but it was very tasty nonetheless and the caramel sauce worked well with the peanuts as a flavour combination. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

Asda Chosen By You: Rainbow buttons

Product name: Asda Chosen By You: Rainbow buttons
Calories: 7 per 1.5g serving (298 per 60g bag)
Country of origin: Scotland

So it turns out that Santa shops in Asda since another item in one of my Christmas stockings was this bag of Chosen By You: Rainbow buttons (that’s ‘jazzles’ to you and me!).

Since I’ve always loved white chocolate, this was a favourite pick ’n’ mix sweet of mine when I was a kid. However, when I’ve tried them as an adult, they’ve definitely not been white chocolate and just tasted like sugar. To be honest, I’ve been a bit unsure whether this was always the case, or if my tastebuds have changed! As it happened, these only came described as ‘white chocolate flavour candy buttons with a candy topping’ so they weren’t the real deal either, and the main ingredient was sugar.

Despite being aimed at children, I did love the presentation of these sweets. They came in a cute pink bag which depicted cartoons of the buttons on a rainbow that reflected the colours of the sprinkles on the top of each sweet. The bag also contained a window through which the fairly large, flat buttons could be viewed.

There were supposed to be 39 seven-calorie servings in the bag which, I assumed, meant a serving was a single button. However, since I’d planned to eat them all at once anyway, I wasn’t going to count them all just to make sure! There certainly didn’t seem to be any shortage as I was eating them, though.

The Rainbow buttons smelt a bit like a slightly sweetened milk, although it wasn’t a strong aroma. The fake chocolate had quite a grainy texture, whilst the topping (that contributed to a whopping 25% of the product), provided knobbly interest. Despite being thin, they were quite chunky to chew, and this went well with the crunchy sprinkles.

The buttons had a very sweet taste with a very slight creamy element. To my pleasant surprise, the sprinkles almost added a fruitiness to the flavours on offer, and I felt that these sweets were of a better quality than other jazzles I’ve tried. That said, I still maintain that they weren’t as good as if a real white chocolate had been used, since they were too sugary for this.

I can’t deny these were a little bit sickly, but they were stupidly moreish, and I’m sure many parents would have no problem ‘helping’ their children eat them! 

Appearance: 8.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.5/10