Tesco Peanut Butter Style Cupcakes

Product name: Tesco Peanut Butter Style Cupcakes
Purchase details: £1.50 for a pack of two cupcakes or three for two (Tesco)
Calories: 309 per cupcake
Country of origin: UK 

I couldn’t wait to try these peanut butter and jelly themed cupcakes when I spotted them on Tesco's website. They appeared to be part of a new American range and, having seen a review of some of these products over on The Review Addict!, I realised I’d have to leap into action as they’re a limited edition and are only around for 12 weeks – major sad face.

On picking up my pack of Peanut Butter Style Cupcakes in-store, I realised that the key word in the product name was ‘style’. You see, there was no peanut butter in these cupcakes. In fact, the allergy advice simply warned: ‘may contain nuts’ – there weren’t any actually listed on the ingredients list. Instead, the cakes contained ‘peanut butter style toasted soya frosting with jam’, but I remained intrigued.

I loved the simple plastic box that these cupcakes came in as they showed off the beauty of the product within and, most importantly, it kept both cakes firmly in place for transportation. The stars and stripes design on both the cardboard sleeve and paper cases was also a nice touch.

I thought the ‘sponge cakes filled with strawberry jam, topped with soya nut butter frosting and coloured chocolate beans’ looked great. I was delighted that the frosting, being my favourite part of a cupcake, accounted for 42% of the product, and this was a mid-brown colour with a ridged design. The pastel-coloured beans added a nice bit of decoration too. As for the sponge, this was very pale, and I was pleased to see a decent injection of a deep red jam that made up a further 10% of each cake.

I felt like I went on a bit of a journey when it came to consuming the cakes. The frosting, containing soya beans and soya oil, seemed to produce the kind of scent that I simultaneously associated with nut-based vegetarian meals and soy sauce. I guess this was understandable but this savoury aroma was a little unnerving and not really what I wanted from a sweet product!

I’d been a bit alarmed when I first handled a cake as a substantial amount of grease had seeped through the paper case. However, I was relieved that this wasn’t an issue in terms of taste. The cake was very spongy to the extent that it made a noise when cutting or tearing it, and whilst not overly moist, it wasn’t dry either. Its quite stiff texture contrasted well with the beautiful, smooth jam centre that provided a strong berry taste and delicious sweetness.

On its own, the frosting had an initially convincing peanut butter flavour but, unfortunately, the soya taste then became evident. It was pretty oily but also had a thick and slightly spongy texture. Despite not being as dense as peanut butter, it did still stick to the roof of the mouth, and I soon discovered that when eating all elements of the cake together, as intended, the frosting did become convincing as peanut butter again. There was still a slightly odd aftertaste, and the inclusion of icing sugar provided a lighter consistency, but I very quickly adjusted to the soya element. After this point, it stopped being noticeable and I found the cakes very enjoyable, with the jam and icing sugar preventing the flavours becoming too heavy.

If I could change one thing about these cupcakes, I’d get rid of the chocolate beans. Despite the very crispy, sugary shells, the overall chocolatey taste was quite bitter, and I didn’t really like this additional flavour. Whilst it didn’t interfere too much with the overall experience, I also didn’t feel that the added crunch was needed.

However, I did end up enjoying these Peanut Butter Style Cupcakes and I thought it was great that they came with relatively long use-by dates. From my point of view, the ability to store one in an airtight container after I’d consumed the other one was an added bonus!

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 5.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.25/10

Fox's Jam 'n Cream: Cherry cheesecake

Product name: Fox’s Jam ’n Cream: Cherry cheesecake
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 150g pack or two for £1.00 (Poundworld)
Calories: 77 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK 

Here’s another packet of biscuits from Vinnie the panda’s Tastes of America range! These ‘digestive biscuits sandwiched with a cheesecake flavour cream and red cherry jam’ came in a red wrapper that featured the American flag and pictures of the product. I was looking forward to trying these as I find jammy biscuits are so much nicer with a cream layer...and you can’t go wrong with cheesecake!

My biscuits somehow got a bit crushed but their design was still clearly visible. The digestives, whilst oatmeal in colour, had a shortcake-type design with a swirl border. Within the sandwich, a yellowy cream sat in a flower shape, with a centre of deep red cherry jam topped with sugar.

The biscuits had a rich buttery scent with a hint of custard from the cream layer. Alone, this cream was sweet and smooth, but I did find it got a little lost when combined with the other elements.

The jam accounted for 9% of the overall product and contained red cherry puree. I wouldn’t say it tasted like real cherries but it was certainly reminiscent of some cherry-flavoured sweets. The jam provided a sharp tang on its own but, again, this wasn’t as powerful when eating the biscuits as a whole. 

I didn’t find the digestive flavour very strong and I probably wouldn’t have recognised it if I hadn’t already known it was there. However, its soft and crumbly texture combined well with the stiff jam, providing a crunchy yet chewy sensation.

Whilst the main concepts of a cheesecake were included in these Fox’s Jam ‘n Cream: Cherry cheesecake biscuits, I didn’t think they did a particularly good job of tasting like their flavour inspiration. I enjoyed the presence of the cream layer but it was missing a cream cheese tang so I felt McVitie's Digestives: Vanilla cheesecake creams were more realistic in that sense. However, I much preferred this product to the more similarly-designed Jammie Dodgers Jam'n Custard, and the biscuits were particularly enjoyable when eating the jam and cream centres last!

Appearance: 7.5/20
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.25/10

Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee

Product name: Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee
Purchase details: £0.39 for a 140g packet (Home Bargains)
Calories: 75 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK 

Earlier this month, I reviewed Jammie Dodgers Jam'n Custard and, whilst they were fine, I was left feeling slightly disappointed. I’d actually bought this Banana & Toffee packet before I’d tried and reviewed the Jam'n Custard biscuits so, by the time I got around to opening it, my expectations weren’t very high.

These Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee were very much a continuation of the brand. Once again made by Burton’s Foods Limited, they came in a similarly-designed wrapper to the Jam'n Custard biscuits, albeit with dark yellow and orange colours being used to represent the different flavour, and a splat of toffee instead of jam. The product image was almost identical too – the filling colours had simply been reversed and the darker side was a bit lighter.

Intriguingly, this packet weighed in at 10g lighter than the Jam'n Custard, although the wrapper claimed the ‘bonkers banana and tasty toffee’ flavour was ‘twice the fun’. There were no claims of using no artificial colours or ingredients, this time, but there was still no hydrogenated fat, and no GM ingredients had been used either. The final change was that each biscuit had eight fewer calories – winner!

I didn’t bother reading the product description when I purchased this treat – I just assumed the custard would be banana flavoured and that there would be toffee sauce instead of jam. Oh how wrong I was! I was very interested to see that the sandwich biscuit filling actually consisted of ‘banana flavoured jam’. That’s right. Banana. Jam. How bizarre! This contributed to 13% of the product and contained 1.5% banana juice from concentrate and 1% banana purée. As for the toffee, this was in the 13% custard filling, instead, and I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the biscuits themselves were toffee flavoured.

As suggested by the wrapper’s image, the biscuits had the same attractive overall design as the Jam’n Custard ones although I thought the ridges around the decoration seemed deeper to me – maybe that was just my imagination? The banana jam was more yellow than the wrapper (and my own photographs) suggested to the extent that it made me think of lemon curd. Although I don’t dislike lemon, I’m not a huge fan of it, so I had to make a conscious effort to get this connection out of my head! 

I had more success in cutting one of these biscuits open (although it was still very sticky!) which revealed an inner designated section for the filling – something I’d not noticed previously. The custard had the same shiny, gooey appearance whilst the toffee biscuits were a slightly different colour and had a visibly bitty base – I’d noticed that 3% of the ingredients consisted of crisped rice so I figured that this was what the flecks were.

This product had the usual Jammie Dodger biscuity smell, as well as a very, very slight banoffee aroma. Although the biscuits did still have the slightly stale taste that I don’t particularly enjoy, the additional flavour did mean that they were sweeter so they had been improved (not that I’d have consciously have made a connection with toffee!). Unfortunately, the texture was still more crumbly than I would have liked, but I did enjoy the added crispiness from the rice pieces.

Whilst I found it hard to differentiate between the two sides of the filling, the overall familiar banoffee flavour came through. The toffee flavour alone wasn’t very powerful but I did find the banana element, whilst slightly artificial, to be pleasantly strong and certainly recognisable. Texturally, the filling was chewy, as expected.

Whilst these Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee have equalled the Jam'n Custard biscuits’ overall score, I do think that this variety made improvements by infusing the biscuits themselves with a toffee flavour, as well as adding a bit of extra texture. I also found the variety’s flavour to be more unique and memorable. As a result, in future, this is the version I would choose. 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10

Jammie Dodgers Jam'n Custard

Product name: Jammie Dodgers Jam’n Custard
Purchase details: £0.39 for a 150g packet (Home Bargains)
Calories: 83 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK 

I’ve always liked jam-filled biscuits but find that, to be properly enjoyable, they need some kind of cream layer mixed with the jam. These Jammie Dodgers Jam’n Custard seemed ideal, then, and they were such a bargain!

These biscuits were made by Burton’s Foods Limited and came in a red and yellow packet that reflected their flavour, along with a jam splat which was a nice touch. Carrying the slogan ‘Double Trouble!’, the wrapper depicted an attractive looking sandwich biscuit with a two-tone filling showing through the heart cut-out. Someone obviously needs a word with the designer, though, about the use of apostrophes (pet hate – grrr!).

The packet contained eight biscuits, served on a cardboard tray, each consisting of two shortcake biscuits with a custard and ‘raspberry flavour plum jam’ filling. The filling was actually quite substantial and equally portioned, with 13% of the product being jam and another 13% being custard.

The biscuits themselves were so cute! As the wrapper had promised, they were round in shape with a heart-shaped window through which the filling could be viewed. What surprised me, though, was that this really was neatly divided – I fully expected the reality to be some kind of mishmash of colours. They obviously weren’t identical to each other but they were near enough. I also liked how the top biscuit was decorated with the splat design, as well as the ‘JD’ logo.

The biscuits were a pale colour whilst the jam was a shade of deep pink. However, what I found most exciting was the appearance of the custard. It was cream in colour, rather than yellow, and whilst I thought it would be the texture of a custard cream filling, it was actually moist, gooey and shiny, so looked like real custard.

I had been able to smell the jam when I opened the packet but this did become less strong after the initial hit. There was also a faint aroma that I vaguely associated with the Jammie Dodgers brand and a biscuit scent was a part of this.

Each layer of these biscuits was relatively thick and, on breaking apart the biscuit, I found the filling to be stringy, with the custard being particularly gooey and sticky to touch. It was rather glue-like, in all honesty, which is why the cross-section photograph is so random – I had great difficulty separating the layers!

I usually eat the outer edges first with Jammie Dodgers since I don’t think the biscuit itself is actually that nice. Here, it was as normal – quite sugary and not the greatest flavour. It’s wasn’t very buttery either and, for some reason, it just tasted a bit stale despite only just having been opened.

Thankfully, the jam was the main flavour in this product, and it had quite a deep taste and was also sweet but not what I’d call ‘fruity’ – it was the expected offering from this style of biscuit, though. Sadly, I did find it difficult to detect the custard flavour since the jam did take over, but it did come through every now and then, offering a different kind of sweetness with a hint of vanilla, and a slightly creamy element. Combined, the filling created a pleasant distraction which made the biscuit taste nicer!

One thing that I did find a bit frustrating about these Jam’n Custard biscuits was just how crumbly they were – they seemed to be impossible to eat without making a mess! Convenience aside, I did think they would have been nicer if they were a bit crunchier, but I did like the chewiness of the filling, as well as the way the custard prevented the overall experience being too dry.

Ultimately, these Jammie Dodgers were designed for kids and, as a result, the flavours were not very sophisticated and they certainly didn’t taste as good as they looked. However, having eaten this style of biscuit in my childhood, I know it’s the kind of thing that children do enjoy and, as a result, the fact that these biscuit contained no artificial colours or flavours and no hydrogenated fats, is something that should be applauded. 

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