Easter crisps

Bryan bought these for us to snack on while we were playing Blood Bowl this month. (Read my match report)

Easter is the really big chocolate holiday and, it turns out, crisps can be chocolatey too. The cocoa flavouring on these made them look like the much-missed Bovril flavour crisps of yore, but they tasted like chocolate before a mild spicy tang kicked in. There is a potato aftertaste as well. 

Although we both liked them, Bryan and I agreed that we didn't want to eat too many of them in one go. But these would be an ideal snack for chocoholic friends.

Snack of the Month: new wafers edition

I don't post a Snack of the Month every month any more, but here's a one off because I've tried a couple of new wafer biscuits in the last few weeks and decided to share my thoughts on them.

First up: Club Layers

It looks like a Club when it's unwrapped. I'm not sure whether it's real chocolate or not, after the recent news stories that actually it's not a lot of chocolate on your biscuit.

The filling is a tangy orange, like the orange fondant in a Club biscuit. I liked it and would recommend it if you like orange flavoured things.

The other wafer I've tried is Reese's Sticks.

As you'd expect, these are peanut butter flavoured, like all Reese's products. They come in a little cardboard protective tray inside the packaging. 

Again, I'm not convinced it's real chocolate in the coating. The peanut butter fondant is between the wafer pieces that are satisfyingly crisp.

Cathy reckoned they are too sweet. I'd concede they are sweet, but I like sweet things so I was quite happy with them.

Snack of the Month - M&Ms Crispy chocolate

First up, an announcement - I think this is going to be my last regular snack of the month post for a while. I've been blogging monthly snack posts for four years now so it feels like it's time for a break.

So, let's make it a fun, Christmassy one. This is another snack that Cathy found for me. There is a bit of M&M character confusion because Yellow M&M, who features on the wrapper in a Santa hat, is usually peanut. But there aren't any peanuts in this. Instead there are teeny tiny crispy M&Ms in a fondant centre.

The moulded character on the actual chocolate is well done, complete with giant Santa hat!

The chocolate shell is reasonably thick with a relatively decent shell-to-filling ratio.

The chocolate and filling are both quite sugary and sweet, as you'd expect from a Mars product. But as it's a small chocolate bar, it's not overwhelming. 

The Christmas snack market is over-saturated and I don't really think this will stand out much. However, as something quick to snaffle over the festive period it would be a welcome treat in my Christmas stocking!

Snacks of the Month - choccy goosegogs and chin chin

Two snacks this month. First, another random snack from Lidl: chocolate covered  gooseberries. 

Cathy spotted them while we were having a mooch round one of the stores. I expect they were part of one of the themed weeks that Lidl do - in this case Polish week.

Gooseberries aren't massively popular berries. I like them in desserts and as jam - mainly because my mum had a very productive gooseberry bush in her previous back garden and both gooseberry jam and goosegog crumble featured in her home cooking. 

There's also a story about how some bitey creepy-crawley that lived in the productive gooseberry bush bit Mum and a little while later the infected bite hospitalised her... in the USA. But that's another story.

These goosegogs are creepy-crawley free and are coated in a rich dark chocolate. They're about the size of Maltesers.

I was able to remove the chocolate coating and leave the gooseberry intact. It was brown and didn't look appetising. Instead here's a cross section with the chocolate still on.

Cathy reckons she wouldn't recognise the taste as gooseberry but to me they had all the tangy sharpness I'd expect. The dark chocolate works well to complement the sharpness of the fruit. 

They taste very rich, though. I wouldn't be able to scoff a pack in one sitting (and I know I shouldn't anyway). But for an occasional burst of tart sweetness these are pretty good.

My second snack this month is Africa's Finest chin chin, which I found in Asda. Despite claiming to be Africa's Finest it's actually made in the UK.

One reason I bought this was because of a funny thing I remember when I was a kid. A few years after my family came back to the UK from Africa we were invited to a wedding. The groom's family were from Nigeria and his relatives had brought some African food to the reception.

My brother and I ignored the normal British style buffet and went straight for the African food, much to the amusement of the groom's female relatives who were surprised to see little white boys so keen to try their cooking. One of the things they had was a massive sack of chin chin. 

Chin chin is a crunchy biscuit produced in small square chunks and fried rather than baked. Sometimes flavourings are added, sometimes not. There usually isn't much sugar in it, just a tiny amount to give it a slight sweetness.

In contrast to the home made stuff I remember with heavily nostalgic bias, this commercially produced and packed chin chin wasn't as good. It had a great crunch. It tasted fine. 

But, honestly it was never going to live up to the chin chin I had at that wedding. 

Snack of the month - Gold Billions Wafer

A mid-afternoon shortage of milk prompted a short walk to the local Post Office, where this unusual confectionary treat was sitting on the counter. One intrigued impulse purchase later... 

It's about the size of a KitKat Chunky. Maybe a fraction thinner.

Colour-wise, it's not as yellow as a McVities Gold wrapped biscuit, despite being a product evolved from that very successful item.

The discolouration on the side of the bar was unsightly.

But explained by a layer of milk chocolate on the underneath of the bar. This chocolate was a decent quality and offset the sweetness of the caramel flavour coating on the rest of the bar.

The wafer was crispy, but not too hard. 

The filling around the wafer meant it wasn't too dry. It wasn't over-filled either.

Overall, this was a very sweet wafer snack. It bordered on sickly. If the caramel coating had been used all over it that would have made it even sweeter so the milk chocolate was a good design  choice. 

And although I enjoyed it enough to not regret my impulse purchase I won't be rushing to buy another one. Worth trying once, though.

Snack of the month: European chocolate adventures

Last month we went to Disneyland Paris and while we were in France I took the opportunity to try some chocolate bars I hadn't seen before. I've decided to review them here but the delay between me eating them and me reviewing them means the reviews might be quite short!

The chocolate bars were:

Nougatti by Cote d'Or

Snax by Cote d'Or

Balisto

Joyfuel - chocolat au lait & cookie dough flavour

Nuts by Nestle

By far the best ones were the Cote d'Or bars as they has really nice chocolate on them. I'd eat the Nestle 'Nuts' bar again, but it wasn't as nice as the Cote d'Or bars. The Balisto was OK as something to try. The Joyfuel bar was one of those protein power bar things that are on trend over here and are basically the equivalent of energy drinks in the beverage aisle. A lot of promises and a weird inauthentic taste. I mainly bought it so I could send a picture to my niece, Joy.

And on to the more detailed reviews...

Composition-wise, the Nougatti bar was pretty much what you might expect - a soft nougat wrapped in chocolate. It had enough consistency to get slightly stuck on your teeth, as nougat is wont to do. 

The Snax came in two parts and from the wrapper I thought it might be peanut butter in a thick chocolate shell with peanuts embedded in it. 

Instead, the central core was a whipped nougat, like you'd find in a Mars Bar. There was crisped rice in the chocolate which gave an added crunch. It also came in two pieces, which makes it a good bar to share. I scoffed both pieces myself, though - and too quickly to take any pictures!

The Nuts bar was like a Mars Bar, complete with nougat and soft caramel, except for a line of hazelnuts down the middle of it. It was a good combo although the sweet flavour of the nuts couldn't compete with the sweetness of the nougat, caramel or chocolate. Generally I find Nestle chocolate overly sweet and this didn't dissuade me of my opinion. 

Balisto was two thin biscuits with an unmemorable fondant creme on top. Like I've already said they aren't a bar I'd bother eating again if there were other options. I ate my Balisto in the dark in DisneyLand and didn't attempt to take any photos. 

The Joyfuel bar had a weird composition. I couldn't taste the 'cookie dough' flavour and there didn't seem to be any bits in it that were meant to be cookie dough, although it was chewy. 

It probably goes well with a can of Monster or a bottle of Prime. I'd certainly class it in with the stuff that is more hype than flavour. 

But my niece Joy liked the photo I sent her, so it was worth it. 

Snack of the Month - Topic gets resurrected

Although Topic bars have been discontinued, the Mars company have decided not to let a good brand name disappear, and have re-imagined Topic as a high end chocolate bar.

Mars are also using this to appeal to the growing vegan market - although vegans need to heed the warning in the top left corner.

In keeping with the environmental theme, the packaging is plastic free. The card sleeve and sealed foil inner packet are both recyclable.

This is basically Mars's version of 'fruit and nut'. The chocolate bar is fairly thin. 

There are a good proportion of hazelnut chunks and raisins in it and the chocolate tastes nice too. Maybe it's the vegan recipe but it's a better quality than I'd expect from Mars. 

So, overall, this is a welcome return for Topic.

Snack of the Month - sweet cinnamon "chocolate"

Is "white chocolate" really chocolate? That's a question to prompt arguments. Ritter Sport just call this bar "white cinnamon crisp" and leave chocolate out of it. A wise move.

 

I am a big fan of cinnamon flavoured things. Hot Tamales candy, the Extra Fire gum that Wrigleys used to sell, cinnamon flavoured breakfast cereal, pretty much anything. 

And the cinnamon flavour of these bars is acceptable. However they are also incredibly sweet. And I say that as someone with a high tolerance for sweetness.

Based on the consistency and sweetness it feels like the "crisp" in the cinnamon crisp is cinnamon infused sugar. 

The overall verdict is this is too sweet to eat a whole bar in one sitting, at least on the first go. Maybe by building up tolerance over time I could, but I don't really want to desensitise my palette like that.

The melancholy magic of the FA Cup

I watched the FA Cup final on Saturday. The timing worked well for me to watch it as I have been confined to the house isolating after being infected by covid.

A generic picture (by me) of the Wembley Stadium arch...

I have actually made more of an effort to watch the FA Cup final in the last few years. I enjoyed last year's game when Leicester won the Cup for the first time in this history. This year's contest was less exciting on paper, with both Liverpool and Chelsea winning it multiple times in the past and also being two of the really big teams in the league. FA Cup finals are always better when the less successful clubs get a tilt at winning. 

Back in 2019, I blogged about how the first FA Cup final after my Dad died was an unexpected moment where I keenly felt his loss. That feeling has diminished somewhat over the last couple of years, but it's still something missing from the occasion. Dad would always watch the cup final and talk to me on the phone about it afterwards, even when for several years I wasn't particularly fussed about it and hadn't bothered watching. 

People talk about the "magic" of the FA Cup and really what they mean is nostalgia. As I watched Liverpool and Chelsea punch and counterpunch their way to a 0-0 draw, extra time and penalties, I remembered watching the various cup finals when I was a kid. It made me feel melancholic as the nostalgia washed over me. 

Cup final day was always a big day in our house. In the 1980s it was one of those very rare times that a football match was broadcast live on TV. It almost seems silly now - my time off isolating has been spent watching live football from almost every level in the top five tiers of English football - but back then there was the Cup final, and that was about it.

It was also on both main channels, BBC1 and ITV, so it felt like a real moment when the nation stopped to watch the football. (They did that again this year, but we have way more than 4 channels now so it dominates the schedules less.) We always used to watch it on the BBC, often starting with the build up before lunch time. Some years we would switch over to ITV for the bit presented by "Saint and Greavsie" (Ian St.John and Jimmy Greaves, who had a weekly football chat show on Saturdays). But normally we ignored the ITV output. 

Those were halcyon days for FA Cup finals. I don't remember the one from 1984, when we had just moved into our house in Shrewsbury. But I remember watching Manchester United v Everton in 1985 - notable for Kevin Moran becoming the first player sent off in an FA Cup final, and Manchester United winning in extra time through a goal from wonder-kid Norman Whiteside. I wanted Everton to win and was disappointed that they lost. 

I don't particularly remember anything from the 1986 final when Liverpool won the FA Cup and became the first team to win the League Title and the FA Cup in the same season (the "Double") in my short life-time. Everton were the losing finalists again.

I have vivid memories of the final in 1987 when Coventry City won the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history, beating Spurs. Firstly, there were lots of goals, including a great diving header by Keith Houchen, and a looping own goal that sliced in off Spurs defender Gary Mabbutt's knee. But it was also played in brilliant sunlight and the Wembley grass was bright, bright green. We had a video recorder and taped the game. My brother and I rewatched that match several times, which is probably why it burns so bright in my memory.

And then in 1988, there was the famous win by Wimbledon over Liverpool. Nobody gave Wimbledon much of a chance, but they nicked a 1-0 win. By then I was fed up with Liverpool winning everything and all the gloryhunters at school, so I was very happy that Wimbledon won. 

Those are the finals I really remember. I'm sure I watched others. I remember Gazza being stretchered off after injuring himself with a ridiculous tackle in 1991. But other memories are hazy. What I mainly feel when I think about the FA Cup final relates to the whole family sitting down to watch the game, my father's infectious excitement, the sheer novelty of football on the telly, and this marking the end of a football season and in its own way the beginning of summer.

The other thing I remember is the family sweepstake. Once the team line-ups were announced, my dad would write all the player's names on tiny bits of scrap paper and we would take it in turns to draw them. Whoever had the piece of paper with the name of the first player to score a goal won. The prize was picking a box of chocolates afterwards, when we would walk across the park opposite our house to the little paper shop near the school, where there would be a small range of boxed chocs behind a glass screen. 

It felt like my mum won every year, even when she picked unlikely players to score first. This might be a trick of memory as I have no record of who actually won each year. It just felt like it was always my mum who was lucky in the sweep. It didn't matter anyway because the chocolates got shared. 

That vignette in itself is wrapped in nostalgia, like all these memories. The paucity of television channels. The simplicity of a sweepstake with very little at stake. Just those little family traditions that made the day special. That's where the magic lay, if there was any magic at all. Not on the field at Wembley, but in our living room. We made those moments happen and then froze them in sunlit amber as happy-sad memories. 

Maybe Dad was trying to keep those moments alive, with those phone calls after the game all those years after I left home when we didn't watch the game together any more. I understand that now. Now that the phone calls have stopped. 

Christmas inflation crisis

I wasn't going to blog on Christmas Day, but this bag of chocolate currency that I received this morning is an illustration of how inflation is affecting everything in the economy!

There's a £20 note in there!!

(The chocolates are from Lidl and they're fair trade. They taste very sweet, more like how drinking chocolate tastes. The notes and coins taste the same!)

Happy Christmas!

Snack of the Month - Crispello

This is a bit of an odd one. A Cadbury's branded product, made in Egypt, imported into Europe by a Dutch company and sold in a discount shop (B&M Stores). Cathy found this while looking for something else and thought I might like to try it. She was right. 

The "crisp" in Crispello is apparently some kind of biscuit, although it had the crunchy consistency of puffed rice. There's a slight salty tang to it that offsets the sweetness of the chocolate really nicely.

The bar is composed of 4 decent-sized pieces which makes it easy to break into bits to share. If you want to share, that is. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't!

Made in Egypt...eatcn in Cardiff.

Snack of the Month - Choco Boy

We are almost at the end of March, so here is a late 'Snack of the Month' post. It's a sweet snack for a change this month. I bought these in the foreign food aisle in Sainsbury's. I think they are from Korea. I must admit I picked this partly because of the cartoon character on the front.

Inside the box is a small plastic packet with several of these tiny mushrooms in, which I presume are the Choco Boys. The biscuit stalks taste a lot like the biscuit sticks found in old school KP Chocolate Dips. The chocolate is sweet and milky.

There aren't many Choco Boys in the packet so they got polished off quite quickly. I liked them, but they weren't so amazing I would look them out again. I also felt it could have come with a sticker of the Choco Boy character, or something, because the actual biscuits were a bit dull compared to the happy little chap dancing on the front of the box. (Even though, thinking about it, he look like a Choco Boy and he looks like he's about to eat a tiny version of himself.)

Disconcerting things #1

When you have an unwrapped chocolate in a box of wrapped chocolates (e.g. a loose Fudge in a box of Cadbury's Heroes).

Eat it or bin it? Eat it or bin it? Hmmmm.

Some better, and unexpected, news

So, on a day where I had some of my saddest news ever, I also heard that Cadbury's are moving their Dairy Milk brand into fair trade certification by the end of the summer, instantly trebling the amount of cocoa traded fairly from Ghana in any given year.

Compared to my other news that was completely unexpected. In the past Cadbury's have been very defensive about their trading policy. In fact, I think we still have the letter they wrote to us saying they weren't considering it as an option.

There's power in persuasion, people.