Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream: Satisfy my bowl

Product name: Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream: Satisfy my bowl
Purchase details: £2.24 for a 500ml tub (tesco.com)
Calories: 255 per 100ml serving

I seriously don’t know how I survived for so many years without having tried the delights of Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. This Fairtrade Satisfy my bowl tub was a special edition to mark the 30^th anniversary of Bob Marley’s Legend album, and also supported the 1Love Foundation which funds a youth-empowerment programme in Jamaica.

I was really interested in this ice cream since it was banana flavoured (it contained 4% banana puree) but also had cookie (6%) and caramel (9%) swirls and ‘chocolatey peace signs’ (4%). To fit in with the Caribbean theme, the usual green field of the branding was replaced with a sandy beach and a cow playing a guitar. However, the pale blue sky meant the packaging was still recognisably Ben & Jerry’s.

For this variety, a 100ml serving equated to 91g, and 23% of the product was cream itself. The ice cream was pale in colour but did have some visible caramel swirls. The chocolate chunks were presented as thick discs with raised peace signs, although the visibility of this finer detail varied.

As usual for frozen products, this didn’t emit any kind of smell, but the flavour was immense and felt like a full-on dessert. I allowed my ice cream to soften a fair amount before trying it and it was ridiculously creamy! Adding to this, the banana flavour was really strong, but then there was also a lovely, sugary taste from the caramel. I can’t say I really noticed the cookie swirls as a feature but, in contrast, the size and abundance of the chocolate made a massive difference to the experience. It tasted just liked ice cream chocolate sauce but its format meant it provided a crunchy texture amid the juicy, thick, but not completely smooth ice cream.

Whilst this tub of Satisfy my bowl wasn’t quite up there with the amazing Peanut butter cup, it did feel really special and it’s a shame it was only a limited edition.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 5/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

Elvan Choc'n Roll

Product name: Elvan Choc’n Roll
Purchase details: £0.10 for an 18g bar (Home Bargains)
Calories: 93 per bar
Country of origin: Turkey

The best way to describe this Elvan Choc’n Roll is like Milky Way Crispy Rolls but with a different filling...and a cleverer but cheesy name!

The ‘compound chocolate coated roll wafer with hazelnut cream’ came divided into two fingers (which combined to make a portion) and were served in a wrapper that had nice melted chocolate imagery and an illustration of the product.

The bar had quite a basic appearance and I noticed that the wafer seemed to be thicker than the core which made sense since its scent was strong! There also seemed to be hint of sweet vanilla which was a welcome addition.

In many ways, I found this product to be like a cheaper Wafel Teatralny Classic which
I reviewed a few days ago. It had a soft crisp and the main flavour was one of sweet wafer although, in contrast, the cocoa element wasn’t really there – the compound chocolate added a different level of sweetness rather than a richer chocolatey flavour.

This Elvan Choc’n Roll was certainly inoffensive and a great little find for £0.10. It’s wasn’t the first time I’d tried one, and it won’t be the last, but I can’t say I can see it becoming a staple in my diet!

Appearance: 6.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

McVitie's Digestives: Strawberry cheesecake creams

Product name: McVitie’s Digestives: Strawberry cheesecake creams
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 168g packet (Asda)
Calories: 67 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK

I really wanted to try these McVitie’s Digestives: Strawberry cheesecake creams as soon as they were released as they seemed more exciting than the vanilla version. However, although I bought them straight away, it’s taken me until now to open them!

Made by United Biscuits, there were around 13 ‘wheatmeal biscuits with strawberry and cream cheese flavour filling’ in each packet. The wrapper and sandwich biscuits were designed in exactly the same way as the vanilla variety but featured baby pink colouring, instead, which I really liked. I did also think the firm filling looked a bit thinner and more widely spread out but that may have just been the unlucky biscuit I attempted to dissect. (As you can see from my photo, the McVitie’s Digestives remained soft and crumbly which made the finished product practically impossible to pull apart in one piece!)

There was no mention of strawberries of any kind on the ingredients (just ‘natural flavouring’) but the biscuits did have a subtle yet noticeable strawberry scent – very much like flavoured milk. The ‘cheesecake inspired strawberry flavour cream filling’ also had a good strawberry flavour but without the sugar hit that I noticed in the Hill Biscuits Snack Packs: Strawberry creams. I was also pleased to find that the cheesecake concept was better executed, here, since there was a cheesy tang from the ‘dried cream cheese’ (2.5%) mixed in with the strawberry.

The biscuit itself was the usual, slightly sweetened kind, with a soft crunch and, even on its own, it had picked up hints of the berry taste. The nature of the sandwich design did mean that the proportions still weren’t right for an authentic cheesecake feel but I did think these Strawberry cheesecake creams were much more enjoyable than the vanilla ones.

I’d definitely buy them again!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.63/10

Wafel Teatralny Classic

Product name: Wafel Teatralny Classic
Purchase details: £0.69 for a 46g bar (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 243 per bar
Country of origin: Poland

The gold, brown and red wrapper of this Wafel Teatralny Classic bar didn’t give much away about what was within but, on examining the blurb when I found it in-store, I found it was actually quite an exciting concept of ‘peanuts cream wafer in chocolate’.

The  wide and slim bar was made by Kopernik Torun and, according to their website, was a ‘theatrical wafer’ with ‘real nuts’ (can you get fake ones?!) and ‘natural chocolate’. Apparently, the thinness of their wafers was something they were particularly proud of.

As with a lot of wafer bars, the chocolate coating on this was relatively thin, despite being 30% of the overall product. It had the appearance and aroma of dark chocolate but it had been spread particularly thinly on the base and it had also suffered some blooming around the edges. The inside looked a lot more promising, though, with regimented layers of wafer and chocolate-coloured cream that emitted a slight peanut scent that blended with that of the outer cocoa.

The first thing I noticed on taking a bite was how fantastically crispy the wafers were – they were extremely satisfying. However, they were also nice if left to soften in the mouth, and they produced a surprisingly strong flavour, either way, that provided a lovely sweetness.

Based on the dark colour and rich aroma, I’d expected quite a bitter chocolate flavour from the coating but, in reality, it was pretty mild. The cocoa was much more evident than it had been in the Mrs. Freshley's Buddy Bars: Peanut butter wafers, and it did taste more of dark chocolate than milk, but it was a perfect balance with the sweet wafers rather than an overpowering taste.

Somewhat disappointingly, the peanuts (3.5%) were completely lost in this bar. I couldn’t taste them at all which resulted in an experience that was very tasty, but not unique. All in all, it wasn’t much different from eating a Nestlé Blue Riband, although the large size was a bonus!

Appearance: 6.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Metcalfe's Skinny: Topcorn (sweet cinnamon spice)

Product name: Metcalfe’s Skinny: Topcorn (sweet cinnamon spice)
Purchase details: £1.58 for a 75g bag (Asda)
Calories: 117 per 25g serving (351 per bag)
Country of origin: UK

Metcalfe’s Skinny is a brand of popcorn (or ‘Topcorn’) I’d never tried before but that I wanted to give a go. I much prefer sweet popcorn to savoury so it was this sweet cinnamon spice flavour from ‘the lovelier, lighter snack tribe’ that I decided to try.

This sharing bag (which I dutifully kept to myself!) featured a floral design and nice image of falling popcorn that promised to be light but filling. Confusingly, only 51% of the product was ‘popped butterfly popcorn’ so the ‘delicious natural flavourings’ obviously took up a lot of space! These consisted of sugar, cinnamon and full cream.

The Topcorn itself looked very much like the Tyrrell's Proper Popcorn: Sticky toffee pudding due to its pale colour, being coated in a powder rather than a glaze, and having a papery feel. There was also an element of cardboard to the scent but the hint of cinnamon still made the aroma a pleasant one.

In terms of the flavour, there was certainly no denying that it was sweet and tasted of cinnamon! The base popcorn flavour was like a creamier version of the type you get in the cinema, but this extra flavouring was very tasty indeed...I just would have liked it to be stronger. Generally, even the more thickly-coated pieces weren’t very powerful, although the ones nearer the bottom of the bag were far more delicious than the ones at the top.

 

As suggested by the Topcorn’s appearance, the texture was the same as the Sticky toffee pudding Proper Popcorn, but it wasn’t as powdery. The bag seemed to last for ages as well which was an added bonus.

I may have appreciated a stronger flavour from this sweet cinnamon spice Topcorn but it did have a nice level of sweetness. There was something really warming about it and I think it would be perfect for settling down to watch a Christmas film with.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10