McVitie's Milky Way: Cake bars

Product name: McVitie’s Milky Way: Cake bars
Purchase details: £0.99 for a pack of 10 bars (Home Bargains)
Calories: 120 per bar
Country of origin: UK 

I was attracted to this great value pack of McVitie’s Milky Way: Cake bars as, unlike most other cake bars, the sponge wasn’t chocolate flavoured.

Containing no artificial flavours or colours, and no preservatives, the bars were ‘baked under licence for Mars UK’, and came in packaging that featured the usual Milky Way branding.

The ‘individually wrapped light sponge cakes, with a creamy filling covered in milk chocolate’ were of a decent size and, outwardly, didn’t look dissimilar from standard Milky Ways. The smooth chocolate coating with a drizzle design made up a surprising but impressive 42% of the product and, inside, the pale yellow sponge looked very neat, topped with a deep, white creamy layer.

At the risk of sounding daft, the bars smelt like...well, cake and chocolate! That’s not to be confused with chocolate cake, though, as whilst both elements were present, the aroma wasn’t exactly special or enticing.

Despite its large quantity, the chocolate shell was quite thin and bendy, allowing me to pick some off to sample the different parts of the bar on their own. The chocolate itself was milky and sweet, whilst the soft sponge tasted very much like standard cake, with a slight vanilla element. It was the topping that stole the show, however, with its whipped cream feel and a taste that was quite like a standard Milky Way’s nougat.

All in all, there was no doubting that these light Cake bars were aimed at kids since they tasted very sweet and innocent. However, although I enjoyed the individual components, I did find that when eating the bars properly, they had a slightly strange aftertaste that I couldn’t put my finger on. Unfortunately, this did detract from their standalone enjoyability.

On the plus side, I really loved their soft and moist feel. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they had one of the best textures (if not the best!) I’ve ever had in a cake bar.

As far as the connection to the Milky Way brand goes, there was certainly an element of the familiar childhood taste there, but this definitely wasn’t as good as the real thing. Did I mention that I loved the texture, though?!

Appearance: 8.5/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 7.75/10

Nestlé Quality Street: Creamy chocolate & hazelnut flavoured dessert

Product name: Nestlé Quality Street: Creamy chocolate & hazelnut flavoured dessert
Purchase details: £0.50 for two pots (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 153 per pot 

Last week I received an e-mail from Nestlé which led to me finding what is, arguably, the bargain of the century! I was sent a voucher for £0.30 off their dessert range and, having wanted to try these Quality Street green triangle-inspired desserts for a while, I was tempted. When I discovered they’d been reduced to £0.50 in a Tesco, I was practically jumping for joy at the prospect of each pot costing me £0.10!

I mentioned when I did my Quality Street: My green bar review that the green triangle is my favourite Quality Street. The only reason why I hadn’t already tried these desserts is because I’ve been avoiding purchasing fresh treats since I’ve had so many other snacks that have needed eating, I haven’t want to throw short use by dates into the mix!

These two 70g pots came presented in a pretty purple cardboard sleeve, combined with twinkling stars, giving a Christmassy feeling which I don’t actually think was intentional. I thought it was a shame that the image was an illustration rather than a photograph but I did like the shower of green triangles.

Each dessert seemed to have been produced in the UK and came described as a ‘milk chocolate dairy dessert with hazelnut flavour’. The two main ingredients were skimmed milk and cream and the product also contained 16% milk chocolate. Appearance-wise, it was sloppy but thick whilst also being smooth and glossy.

The desserts did give off a praline scent but this wasn’t as strong as the My green bar one. The taste was incredibly creamy but very similar to other chilled desserts I’ve tried. There was a hint of praline there which was a nice touch but it wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped and I certainly wouldn’t have made a connection with green triangles, unfortunately. However, there is no denying how silky, rich and chocolatey this dessert was, and it did glide down the throat beautifully.

The Nestlé slogan is ‘good food, good life’...I have no arguments here. 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 9.5/10
Overall score: 8.25/10

Lindt Creamy Milk: Cookie crunch

Product name: Lindt Creamy Milk: Cookie crunch
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 100g bar (Poundworld)
Calories: 130 per five square serving (521 per bar)
Country of origin: France

I decided to pick up this bar of Lindt Creamy Milk: Cookie crunch in Poundworld recently since, whilst not uncommon, it’s a variety I’ve never actually tried (probably because other Lindt products have seemed more exciting!). Although the wrapper was detailed, it didn’t look or feel quite as luxurious as other chocolates offered by the brand, but I was hardly going to complain for £1.00!

Described as ‘milk chocolate with crunchy pieces of cookies’, this bar came in an inner foil wrapper that improved its presentation. The chocolate was a lovely shade of brown and the cookie pieces were flecked throughout and were particularly evident through the base of the bar where the surface was more bumpy. I was interested to see that, inside, there seemed to be two layers of chocolate. The base layer contained the majority of the cookie and looked aerated in places where the bar had been broken. The moulded and ‘Lindt’-imprinted part of the bar, then, seemed to be made from an upper layer of chocolate which was smoother and contained fewer and smaller biscuit pieces. The bar as a whole emitted a sweet and milky smell.

When biting into the chocolate, there was a slight resistance from the aforementioned upper layer and, despite only containing 7% cookie pieces, the lower layer was chock-a-block full of biscuit which made it very crunchy. I don’t actually always enjoy chocolates where the texture is dominated by a crunchy or crispy ingredient, but I found it worked very well with this product. The downside was that this bar was too bitty to let the chocolate melt comfortably and so this wasn’t really an option. However, I was pleased that the chocolate itself was still quite dense despite the quantity of cookie.

The cookie had a baked biscuit taste and, combined with the good quality, creamy chocolate (which contained 30% cocoa) it was like eating a reversed chocolate chip cookie since it was chocolate full of crumbs rather than a biscuit full of chocolate.

I found this bar to be incredibly moreish and, whilst not exactly healthy, I was surprised at just how much you got for the amount of calories. It also went really well with a cup of tea. Lovely!

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

Meiji Yan Yan (creamy vanilla)

Product name: Meiji Yan Yan (creamy vanilla)
Purchase details: £1.49 for a 57g tub (americansoda.co.uk)
Calories: 150 per 30g portion (300 per tub)
Country of origin: Singapore

When American Soda (see here) recently had a free delivery offer in honour of Independence Day, I just couldn’t say ‘no’, and today’s review goes to one of the items I picked up in this order: Meiji Yan Yan (creamy vanilla).

I had previously come across the Meiji brand in one of my local sweet shops and, as a result, have already tried and enjoyed the strawberry and vanilla versions of their Hello Panda biscuit snacks. Browsing the American Soda website, though, was the first time I’d come across this Yan Yan product which seemed to be an interesting alternative to the more familiar KP Choc Dip snack that’s widely available in the UK.

I’ve previously mentioned my love of vanilla so I had no problem opting for the creamy vanilla variety of this product. Being used to the short stature of Choc Dips, I was impressed, on receiving my delivery, at how big a tub these Yan Yan came in. However, on the flip-side, the packaging did suggest that it contained two servings which seemed a bit strange to me as I didn’t see how the ‘creamy vanilla dip’ could easily be preserved once the lid had been peeled off the tub. In addition, I didn’t regard it as a snack that could easily be shared, but maybe that’s just me!

On removing the lid, I thought the inner packaging was neatly presented and designed – despite the amount of miles they had travelled, not one of the biscuit sticks had broken! Whilst not emitting strong aromas, the vanilla dip did have a mild vanilla scent, and the biscuits smelt of a sweeter Rich Tea biscuit.

Each biscuit has a picture and name of an animal, along with a comment about said animal. Whilst I thought this was a bit odd, I admit it was a nice touch!

The snack itself was delicious. The biscuits glided easily through the sweet and silky vanilla cream. The biscuit sticks were obviously simple but this was all that was needed when combined with the dip. Alone, they didn’t taste of much and would have been a bit dry when eating them all, but the vanilla transformed their taste and added much-needed moisture.

Unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed the creamy dip and found that not much was needed on each biscuit to make a significant difference to the product experience. My only criticism of the dip is that I would have liked it to have had tasted a little more vanilla-like and a little less sugary.

Other than that, the only other issue I had with Meiji Yan Yan was that it was hard to judge how much dip to use on each biscuit. I quickly realised I needed to use a lot less than my photograph shows, but my early rookie mistake meant that I was running out of cream towards the end of the pack. Therefore, I don’t think it would hurt to provide a slightly larger quantity of the cream in each tub – there is certainly room for it!

I thoroughly enjoyed Meiji Yan Yan (creamy vanilla) and look forward to trying some more of Meiji’s products in the future.  

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.88/10