Reese's Pieces

Product name: Reese’s Pieces
Purchase details: £0.60 for a 43g bag or three for £1.20 (tesco.com)
Calories: 214 per bag
Country of origin: USA

I love Reese’s Pieces but I’d not had them in ages – the last time was as a birthday cake topping over 18 months ago so it was about time I had them again!

The ‘peanut butter candy in a crunchy shell’ used to be quite hard to find in the UK but, thankfully, it’s now a lot more widely available and I quite often see the eye-catching orange bags on shop shelves.

Made by the Hershey Company, these Pieces were a bit like M&M’s but with peanut butter instead of chocolate, and the brown, orange and yellow colours used reflected the branding of the Peanut Butter Cups.

The pale candy centres made up 62% of the product and produced a fairly nutty scent, although this wasn’t pure. They had a lovely peanut butter flavour but, since it had been solidified, it lacked the squidgy texture of ordinary peanut butter.

The shells made up the remainder of the Pieces and these were really sugary – an aspect that was particularly noticeable when sucking. These casings worked really well with the centres, merging crisp and soft textures nicely, although the peanut butter candy didn’t stay in one piece when chewing in the way that chocolate would...it almost had a crumbly feel to it. In terms of taste, though, the Pieces certainly didn’t lack the chocolate, and the flavour was still nice and sweet. In fact, the sweet and salty aspects played off each other perfectly and seemed to create a mini party in my mouth, producing a kind of juiciness too.

I also loved how the bag seemed to last for ages, and that the sweets tasted great individually and in handfuls. They were so addictive that I think I could actually live off them! I definitely need to make them a more regular purchase...

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.5/10

Mrs. Freshley's Swiss Rolls: Peanut butter flavored

Product name: Mrs. Freshley’s Swiss Rolls: Peanut butter flavored
Purchase details: £1.99 for a 79g pack of two cakes (A Quarter of Sweets)
Calories: 360 per pack
Country of origin: USA

I somehow missed these Mrs. Freshley’s Swiss Rolls on a previous visit to A Quarter of Sweets. The clear plastic wrapper had clearly shown off the chocolate-coated cakes but I hadn’t recognised the pale brown drizzle as an indicator that the product was ‘Peanut butter flavored’! I soon rectified this mistake with a return visit to the store, though.

A look here not only provided the calorie information for these Swiss Rolls, but that the very dark and fairly thick inner swirl of peanut butter was actually Reese’s – yay! That said, I didn’t think it looked much like peanut butter against the chocolate cake – its dense and sticky appearance was a bit like a funny-coloured jam.

The scent of these Rolls was very similar to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups but it was less chocolatey and not as strong. The chocolate-flavoured sponge was very soft, if a little dry, but the moist peanut butter allowed each bite to stick to the roof of the mouth a little. The texture was very much like your standard mini roll offering, really, and I liked how the flexible chocolate layer added a bendy crunch that mixed with the innards of each Roll.

The main flavour was like the chocolate element of a Peanut Butter Cup and seemed to come from the chocolate cake. If I’m honest, it wasn’t wonderful, but I could pick up a slight hint of peanut butter, and this provided a salty kick here and there.

These Mrs. Freshley’s Swiss Rolls: Peanut butter flavored were nice enough but I did feel a bit underwhelmed by their taste. I wouldn’t have described them as ‘nutty’ and, bearing in mind the main attraction was the inclusion of peanut butter, this didn’t feel like a dominant feature, in practice. I did love the concept, though, and would love to see more of this kind of thing in the UK!

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.25/10

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups: Miniatures

Product name: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: Miniatures
Calories: 220 per five Cup serving (44 per Cup) 

Just a quick review tonight since the majority of what I said in my reviews of the standard Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and the Reese's Big Cup is also true of these Miniatures. I just wanted to give them a mention, having received a handful of them in one of my Christmas stockings, since I knew the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate coating would make a slight difference to their score.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: Miniatures hold a special place in my heart since it’s the first Reese’s product I ever tried. Since I didn’t have the main wrapper for these particular Cups, I obtained the nutritional information from Reese's website, and I’d also assume that these were made in the USA and then imported but I don’t have proof of this!

Size aside, the Cups were identical in appearance to the other ones I’ve reviewed, although they came individually wrapped in pretty gold wrappers featuring the orange Reese’s logo. They even still had their own paper cases – I initially thought this was a waste of packaging but then realised it was needed for the chocolatey coating’s ridged edges!

The Miniatures’ aroma wasn’t quite as appealing for the simple reason that the peanut butter wasn’t as strong, but there was still a deeper filling in each Cup than you’d probably expect. They provided the same great flavour and texture that I love about Reese’s but I particularly loved how their size meant you could get a decent mouthful of both the peanut butter and the chocolatey coating in one bite. 

I’m so glad products like this are becoming more and more readily available in the UK. 

Appearance: 7.5/10

Aroma: 7/10

Taste: 9/10
Texture: 9.5/10
Overall score: 8.25/10

Reese's Sticks

Product name: Reese’s Sticks
Purchase details: £0.69 for a 42g bar (United States Grocery)
Calories: 220 per bar
Country of origin: USA 

Another product I bought from United States Grocery with my Living Social voucher recently was this pack of Reese’s Sticks. I had tried them before, but only in miniature form, and that bag had to be brought back from Canada for me especially. Oh how glad I am that these foreign products are now so much easier to obtain!

The 42g bar was made by the Hershey Company and divided into two fingers made of chocolate (according to the front of the packaging), peanut butter and ‘crispy wafers’. As usual for Reese’s, the wrapper was a vibrant orange, and it also contained an illustration of the bar.

I was surprised to see that the back of the wrapper gave a slightly different product description with the chocolate now being ‘a milk chocolate flavoured coating’. However, I was delighted to see that a whopping 45% of the product was peanut butter crème whilst only 12% was wafer. On looking inside the bar, it was evident that the peanut butter layers were the thickest, and it did look quite moist next to the thinner wafers. The waxy-feeling chocolatey layer was also quite thin in appearance so I was looking forward to the peanut butter being the star of the show in this full-sized offering.

The bar smelt pretty much the same as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in that there was a strong peanut buttery aroma that was mixed with some chocolatey scents. The only downside was I found that the wafer added a slightly less pleasant element.

As soon as I took a bite, the peanut butter taste was evident straight away and it was absolutely fanflippingtastic – nutty, sugary, salty and creamy all at once! Whilst it was a crispy bar, it melted well too, with the wafers dissolving into the crème – they didn’t make it dry at all. I did find it slightly strange that the chocolate flavoured coating was barely noticeable since, although I could feel it melt, it didn’t seem to add much flavour, but this may have been a good thing!

I don’t know whether it’s because I’d only ever had Reese’s Sticks: Minis before, or whether my memory just isn’t as good as I thought it was, but I genuinely didn’t remember them being quite this good. I wasn’t expecting the peanut butter taste to be quite so strong so I just loved how much flavour it provided – my idea of Heaven! 

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 9/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 8.13/10

General Mills Reese's Puffs

Product name: General Mills Reese’s Puffs
Purchase details: £5.50 for a 368g box (United States Grocery)
Calories: 120 per 29g dry serving (160 per 29g serving with 112.5ml skimmed milk)
Country of origin: USA 

Now, before you go accusing me of anything, I haven’t cheated! This may be my first ever review of a breakfast cereal but I have only eaten it in the evenings as part of my ‘something to look forward to’ way of thinking. I can assure you that I am still starting my days with a trusty bowl of Sultana Bran!

Being a Reese’s product and, therefore, containing peanut butter, I’ve wanted to try this cereal for ages but I’ve always avoided it due to high import prices. I was delighted to effectively get this box for half price, though, with my Living Social voucher for United States Grocery which meant a £10 spend only cost me £5.

If you’re familiar with Reese’s, you won’t be surprised to see that this product came in an orange box, and I loved the way the image used a Peanut Butter Cup chocolatey shell as a bowl for the ‘sweet’ and ‘crunchy corn puffs’ that contained Hershey’s Cocoa in addition to Reese’s peanut butter.

The box contained around 12 servings, the details of which were recommended using the American cups system. Whilst the weight of the cereal was also provided in grams, I used this helpful website to translate the milk measurement into millilitres.

The packaging also stated that the ‘first ingredient’ was whole grain which, in this case, was corn. In fact, it contributed to 11g of each serving. On the downside, the second ingredient was sugar, although there were lots of vitamins included too.

Despite a whole list of colourings being provided, the box only contained two different shades of maizey-looking puffs. The dark brown ones were chocolatey whilst the lighter, yellowy coloured pieces were peanut butter. However, both varieties were coated in a thin peanut buttery layer. The balls were small and light in size which meant there were a lot in a 29g serving and I was surprised by just how much of a peanut butter scent they gave off. 

I did try a couple of dry pieces before I took the plunge with the milk and found them to be nutty, sweet and crispy. The peanut butter puffs were obviously nuttier but, due to the outer layer, both varieties had a nuttiness to them. The other variety was more sugary and, whilst not obviously chocolatey by itself, it did have an additional flavour going on.

With milk, this cereal was so good! It was sweet and chocolatey to the extent that it reminded me of chocolate-filled pillow cereals but there was an added saltiness form the peanut butter which took it to a new level. This saltiness seemed to mix really well with the milk so it kind of caught the edges of the back of the tongue, resulting in a whole-of-mouth experience. I also loved how, although the cereal tended to get ever-so-slightly chewy towards the end of the bowl, it remained crunchy throughout – just what I want from a cereal.

Despite containing quite a lot of sugar, I didn’t find this too sweet at all. I’ve known for a long time that chocolate and peanut butter work really well together but I was delighted to find adding milk also makes for a great flavour experience. There was a perfect balance between these three ingredients since none of the flavours dominated but each unique taste could be identified. Of course, that does mean that if you want a product that is either extremely chocolatey or extremely peanut buttery, this may not be the cereal for you but, if you appreciate a combination of the two with added milk, you’ll love this! 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.88/10