Tesco Your Bakery: Blueberry muffins

Product name: Tesco Your Bakery: Blueberry muffins
Purchase details: £1.00 for a box of four muffins (Tesco)
Calories: 249 per 74.5g muffin
Country of origin: Ireland

I don’t normally buy supermarket bakery items since they don’t contain nutritional information but, when you get a voucher for a free packet of muffins from Tesco Clubcard, you don’t refuse! To my delight, when I went to pick up my box, I found that the all-important calories are now included on the packaging. They do make you work for the treat, though, since the information is only given per 100g and no product weight is provided!

I opted for the Blueberry muffins from Tesco Your Bakery and I felt the simple packaging reflected the freshness (although they weren’t actually baked in-store, as I had always assumed). Each muffin was a good size and had the expected appearance of a golden outer dough, with a paler bready inside. The top of each one was tinged blue (from the blueberries, not mould!), but when I cut one open, there were only two small berries on show. Knowing that 13% of the product was this fruit, I was confident there would be plenty more elsewhere, but I was still a little disappointed that there was no purple staining on the inside, like what I’m used to from coffee shop muffins.

Before I’d even opened the box, I was aware of the delicious smell coming from within, and this only got stronger when I did finally lift the lid. The cakes smelt deliciously of sweet vanilla and blueberry and they almost felt like they had a sticky glaze on their surfaces (they certainly left little greasy patches on the lid!).

The muffins’ dough was sweet, without being too sweet, and had quite a buttery flavour too. They had a delicate blueberry taste throughout but, unfortunately, the actual berries were very few and far between – even when I knew there was one in the piece I was eating, I could neither feel nor specifically taste it! Thankfully, though, the cakes were still delicious, and the moist and doughy texture was great too.

On the whole, I felt that these were as muffins should be...I just felt that the fruit should have been a bigger feature. After all, if I’d opted for chocolate-flavoured, I’m sure there would have been no shortage of generous chunks. Nevertheless, my family and I thoroughly enjoyed this treat, so thank you very much, Tesco!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.75/10

Fox's Party Rings: Blueberry muffin

Product name: Fox’s Party Rings: Blueberry muffin
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 125g packet or two for £1.00 (Poundworld)
Calories: 28 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK 

These Fox’s Party Rings: Blueberry muffin ‘iced shortcake rings’, like the Crunch Creams: Key lime pie, were part of the Vinnie’s Tastes of America range. As a result, the packaging again featured a background of the American flag, as well as the unappetising picture of Vinnie the panda! However, I did love the mid-blue colour that reflected the flavour.

I was really keen to try these biscuits as blueberry is a flavour I’ve never even heard of before in this kind of format. The biscuits were the same type of purple shade as some of the ordinary Party Rings, although the decorative ripple on this variety was white rather than yellow.

These Blueberry muffin Party Rings had an unusual aroma in that they maintained the sugary sweet scent I associate with the original product but this was combined with a deeper blueberry scent which was just as evident.

Texturally, these biscuits were the same as both standard Party Rings and the Party: Choc rings that I’ve previously reviewed. The crunchiness of the biscuit combined well with the crispy sugary shell and, for the first time, I tried sucking a biscuit too. I don’t know if this works as well with the other varieties but it was certainly a pleasant alternative here. Whilst the overall effect was a dissolving one, the icing itself felt and tasted lovely and juicy and helped release more of the blueberry flavour.

When chewing the biscuits, I did find they tasted quite similar to standard Party Rings as they remained pretty sugary, but there was a mellow hint of blueberry that did do a pretty good job of reflecting a blueberry muffin’s flavour. As the biscuit crumbled in the mouth, it also reminded me of a slightly down-market pie!

These were definitely a vast improvement on the Party: Choc rings and, whilst not hugely different from the original Party Rings, they were enough of a novelty to make me want to choose this variety in future!

Appearance: 8.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.63/10

Kellogg's Pop Tarts: Frosted blueberry

Product name: Kellogg’s Pop Tarts: Frosted blueberry
Purchase details: £1.20 for a pack of two tarts (United States Grocery)
Calories: 410 per pack
Country of origin: USA 

Having not had any Pop Tarts since July (JULY!), I recently put my Living Social voucher towards this pack from United States Grocery. I was particularly interested to try this Frosted blueberry variety since it’s the first American fruit flavour I’ve sampled, and blueberry is also not a flavour I eat very often.

This twin pack of toaster pastries was presented in the same style of blue packaging as the Frosted brown sugar cinnamon and Frosted s'mores varieties that I’ve reviewed previously. The image on the wrapper showed that the tarts had a jam-like filling and were topped with a white frosting and multicoloured sprinkles.

The front of the packet boasted that the pastries were ‘baked with real fruit!’ and this equated to 10% of the filling which contained dried blueberries, grapes and apples.

The Pop Tarts were so pretty! Despite the product image, I wasn’t expecting them to be quite so colourful in reality. The pastry itself looked the same as the other varieties I’ve tried and I liked that the dark red of the deep filling was visible through the air holes on the top.

In keeping with tradition, I tried half of one pastry cold, the other half toasted, and the final, complete tart microwaved for 10 seconds.

When cold, these pastries had a deep fruity smell that took me back to a specific Summer in my childhood when I ate quite a lot of Go Ahead! Fruit Bakes. Texturally, the pastry was soft but crumbly and had the usual, slightly salted taste, although it also seemed to have absorbed some of the surrounding fruitiness. This was a slightly strange but pleasant phenomenon since the flavour was similar to some kind of Swizzels Matlow sweet (I’m not quite sure which one, though!). The icing provided a nice crispiness whilst the squidgy filling ensured the tart was moist. Surprisingly, I thought the most noticeable fruit taste was apple. However, I didn’t consider this to be a negative thing and I actually thought that this was the most flavoursome type of cold Pop Tart I’ve tried so far.

Toasting half of a tart produced a slightly molten appearance which made me think of toasted marshmallows. It also resulted in a stronger aroma but this was more in terms of the pastry rather than the filling. I loved how crispy the dough went after being toasted since this provided a greater contrast in textures. It also had a more buttery flavour whilst the fruit filling seemed tangier.

After being microwaved, the product didn’t look any different to its cold counterpart, but the pastry did become softer and more flexible. I also found that the sweetness of the icing became more evident and, as a result, set off the fruit’s sharpness nicely.

I wasn’t expecting to rate a fruity Pop Tart quite so highly but these Frosted blueberry ones were pretty good! The best thing about them, for me, was that, for the first time, I didn’t have a preferred way of eating them – each method provided something different yet equally enjoyable. 

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