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

Recipe: Chocolate peanut butter truffles

Recipe: Chocolate peanut butter truffles
Source: The more than occasional baker 

I didn’t have much time to bake this Christmas and, since my sister was providing two desserts for our family get-together, I decided to finally try these basic chocolate peanut butter truffles from The more than occasional baker's blog. Whilst I made ‘normal’ truffles (with cream!) as a kid and, more recently, Oreo truffles, this variety was brand new and exciting territory for me.

This is probably the simplest recipe I’ve ever made in my life – it was actually dangerously easy when it comes to the waistline! (I did cheat by melting my chocolate in the microwave but I never think of that being a problem as long as you’re careful.)

I’d bought the three basic ingredients I needed for this recipe prior to Christmas but, when Santa brought me a jar of Sun-Pat Smooth, I decided to try this instead despite it being a peanut spread (made with 95% peanuts) rather than a peanut butter. It contained no butter at all but I hoped this wouldn’t be a problem for the texture.

I also cheated slightly by using what was technically a cheap ‘soft cheese’ rather than a cream cheese but, again, I hoped to get away with it!

The basic mixture smelt amazing and, since I made it on a diet day, I gave the spoons to a couple of relatives to lick. These were promptly treated as lollipops and I was asked what I was making with the ‘heavenly mixture’ – must have tasted good, then! Improvising slightly, due to our well-stocked fridge, I left the bowl in the garage overnight to chill.

Forming the truffle balls was the hardest part of the process since, having rolled the first one, my hands became slippery which made it slightly difficult to continue spooning the mixture, but it still wasn’t difficult. To be honest, I found it harder not to sneak any of the mixture into my mouth during the process!

Although they weren’t all the same size, I managed to make 37 truffles from my mixture, and this didn’t seem bad at all. I hadn’t bothered buying any sprinkles just for this recipe, so I used up the tiny bit of cocoa powder I had left (it actually went a long way!), and coated the rest of my truffles in icing sugar. The former provided a more grown-up and bitter taste whilst the latter gave a slightly sweeter experience. The only downside from the icing sugar-coated sweets was that, after an hour or so, they looked moist and shiny in appearance. However, this didn’t affect their taste.

Away from the coatings, I thought the truffles tasted great. They were rich and chocolatey and, whilst it wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped, the peanut butter taste was there. In fact, my Dad, who doesn’t like peanut butter (I know, shocking!), found this flavour was too prominent for his liking. I, however, thought the tanginess from the cheese was slightly more noticeable in the taste test. This was surprisingly pleasant and, when people were guessing the ingredients, it was commonly mistaken for orange juice. Nobody outright disliked this element but my brother did comment that it reminded him of Kraft Philadelphia: Cadbury which is a product he found a bit strange (he doesn’t like sweet and savoury together at the best of times!). I have to confess that I haven’t even tried chocolate Philadelphia because I can’t quite get my head around it but, if it is similar to these truffles, I’m going to have to give it a go!

Texturally, the truffles were fantastically soft, and I was pleased that my easy option choices in terms of ingredients hadn’t had a negative impact on the finished product.

On the whole, these chocolate peanut butter truffles were a big hit and they all got eaten. Now I just need to pretend that they’re really difficult to make so I don’t end up with a batch every week! 

Ease of recipe: 10/10
Finished product: 8/10
Overall score: 9/10
Make again? Yes

McVitie's Digestives: Vanilla cheesecake creams

Product name: McVitie’s Digestives: Vanilla cheesecake creams
Purchase details: £0.59 for a 168g packet (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 67 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK 

Cheesecake used to be my favourite dessert until I did the typical ‘me’ thing of eating too much of it! I do still enjoy it but I’m not as obsessed with it as I was. When I found these McVitie’s Digestives: Vanilla cheesecake creams, though, I was intrigued, particularly as the digestive base was part of the reason why I loved cheesecakes so much.

I really liked the colour scheme of these biscuits’ wrapper since it reflected the appearance of vanilla cheesecake and also featured cute baby blue stars which were just a nice touch. Each biscuit combined two smaller-than-normal McVitie’s Digestives with a ‘cheesecake inspired vanilla flavour cream filling’ inbetween. The Digestives were the usual mid-brown colour and, whilst relatively plain, managed to look appealing. However, the downsizing did mean that the imprinted image and wording on their surface didn’t look quite as neat as normal. The cream layer looked lovely and thick but was actually white rather than cream-coloured.

The biscuits emitted a mild smell but I could only detect the digestive aspect rather than the filling. The wheatmeal biscuits tasted as expected – slightly sweet but pretty plain. They were their normal, crunchy selves with miniature wheat flakes adding a bit of additional texture.

I thought the filling would be soft and, therefore, reflect a cheesecake’s texture to an extent. However, it was actually quite hard, and so the discs of cream could be removed from the biscuits without breakage. That said, they were soft to chew – they just didn’t have the creamy or fluffy texture I’d imagined. I didn’t find the filling to be very flavourful but, since 4.5% of these biscuits consisted of dried cream cheese, there was a cheesecakey tang which I found quite surprising. On the whole, the filling was sweet, but just not what I’d imagined it to taste like.

When eating the components together, as intended, I thought the filling would provide more moisture than it did. In reality, though, it wasn’t that noticeable. I just found it added a slight tang towards the end of each mouthful. Whilst this flavour wasn’t dissimilar to cheesecake, it did seem to be an afterthought, and the overall experience was certainly digestive-heavy. Of course, this was probably down to the sandwich biscuit design, resulting in the Digestives being twice as thick as normal.

I did still find this product enjoyable in the addictive way that Digestives tend to be, but it just wasn’t quite what I’d expected and I didn’t feel that the biscuits tasted that different. I did decide to try them dipped in tea too and, in doing so, found that more flavour was released from the filling since the biscuits softened but the cream didn’t, making it more noticeable in the mouth. The downside of this was that I don’t like soggy digestives!

I think the main reason that theses Vanilla cheesecake creams weren’t as realistic as I thought they might be was because it wasn’t really possible to get the proportions right – to have the cream, you need a sandwich design, and to have more cream than biscuit would mean a ridiculously deep filling. Maybe, then, I’m being a bit too critical but, as I say, these biscuits were still tasty.

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 6.75/10

Lindt Hello My Name Is: Strawberry cheesecake

Product name: Lindt Hello My Name Is: Strawberry cheesecake
Purchase details: £0.60 for a 39g bar (Sainsbury’s Local)
Calories: 215 per bar
Country of origin: Germany 

Next up in my reviews of the Lindt Hello My Name Is range is this Strawberry cheesecake variety which is the one I was most intrigued by. Having recently tried a couple of yoghurt-based fruity chocolates (see Ritter Sport Himbeer-Cranberry Joghurt and Ritter Sport Erdbeer Vanille-Waffel), I wondered if this would be a similar experience or if it genuinely would taste like cheesecake.

The sophisticated presentation continued with this bar, with the Strawberry cheesecake flavour being indicated by the red tips on the black wrapper. I only had to open this a tiny bit to be greeted by a beautiful fruity smell. Whilst I wouldn’t say this smelt of real strawberries, I immediately associated the scent with the strawberries and cream Campino sweets I loved as a kid, and thought this boded well for a creamy taste.

 

Once again, when cutting into the soft chocolate to reveal its pale pink centre flecked with a darker shade of pink, the knife met with resistance – this time, from biscuit pieces which were obviously intended to replicate a cheesecake base.

Like the Cookies & cream and Crunchy nougat varieties, the milk chocolate was smooth and creamy and melted well on the tongue. The ‘strawberry cream cheese’ filling made up 45% of the bar (although only 1% was ‘cream cheese powder’, and real strawberries, respectively!) and was very sweet, making the cocoa taste almost bitter in comparison. It was a really nice combination and gave the chocolate shell more prominence compared to the role it played in the other flavours I’ve tried in the range. 

As for the 3% biscuit content, whilst the crunch was nice, I felt it didn’t provide the digestive base element I’d hoped for. Furthermore, I found there were a few too many pieces of biscuit in each square since, when letting a piece melt in my mouth, I nearly choked on the bits of biscuit that were left behind! However, this wasn’t a problem when chewing on the bar.

I really enjoyed this bar, on the whole, and thought the ratio of chocolate to strawberry was spot on. If I’m honest, the filling seemed more yoghurt- than cheesecake-like, but I also acknowledge that the presence of chocolate may have distracted from any cheesecake similarities.

I think that if the flavours of this bar were combined with the texture of the Cookies & cream bar (with the slightly larger biscuit pieces), this Strawberry cheesecake bar would be close to perfection!

 
Appearance: 8.5/10
Aroma: 8.5/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 8.25/10