Slimey Limey Mini Cupcakes (The Fabulous Bakin' Boys)

There are quite a few Halloween cakes to choose from at the supermarkets from many of the big name brands. I was drawn to these Slimey Limey Cupcakes from The Fabulous Bakin' Boys purely because of the lime flavour. It seemed a bit different to the overload of orange flavouring usually associated with Halloween. The box also comes with DIY cake decorations so you can add some freaky faces to your cupcakes.

Inside the box you get 12 mini sized cupcakes. They are very small, even for a child they would be bitesized.

The cupcakes have a bright green icing top with a brown chocolate cake sponge. They looked like a nice little snack for Halloween week, and the perfect sized treat for lunchbags.

Unfortunately they do not taste as good as they look. The icing, which is described as "Slimey Limey Flavour Topping", was extremely disappointing because it had no lime flavour at all and was very bland. The cake beneath the icing was even more of a let down because it was extremely dry and tasteless. The whole thing tasted quite stale and was unpleasant to eat, no one in my house liked them. I know Halloween is supposed to be the time for frights but are these supposed to scare our tastebuds? I double checked the expiry date as I suspected they might be out of date, but they were still well within the best before date.

I usually quite like the Fabulous Bakin' Boys Cupcakes. It's not a brand I buy very often but I've enjoyed their seasonal varieties in the past. Maybe I just had a bad batch of these new cupcakes, as previously happened in the great Party Puffs debacle. If you've had a good batch of these cakes let me know!

I bought these for £1 at Asda. They are also available in another new Halloween flavour, Spooky Choccy Orange.

Lotus Caramelised Biscuit Spread (Speculoos)

Lotus Caramelised Biscuit Spread is finally available in the UK, exclusively at Waitrose, which is fantastic news for foodies and vegans alike. There are two varieties available, Smooth or Crunchy, and being an indecisive person I bought both!

Belgian Caramelised Biscuits, or Speculoos as they are more commonly known, are deliciously simple biscuits flavoured with caramelised sugar and cinnamon. In the past these were my biscuit of choice, especially as they are so delicious with coffee. They taste very sugary, with a warming spicy undertone from the cinnamon.

I was excited to finally get to try the Caramelised Biscuit Spread after so many years of wishing I could visit Belgium just to get my hands on some. I wasn't even sure how I should be eating it but since it's described on the jar as being fantastic on toast, I decided to keep it simple and stick to the advice. At first it tasted a bit odd to be eating a biscuit flavoured spread but I soon discovered that the combination was delicious. It has exactly the same taste as the Caramelised Biscuits but just in spreadable form. The caramelised sugar and cinnamon flavours tasted great with the hot toasted bread, and a decent cup of coffee on the side!

The Crunchy and Smooth varieties both have exactly the same taste so it's just down to whether you prefer the texture to be... crunchy or smooth. They are both yummy alternatiaves to peanut butter or chocolate spread. It's also suitable for vegans and I've already got my vegan brother completely hooked on it! If you have a creative side then it also works as an unusual ingredient to use in baking projects. I've already made a delicious banana bread by adding some of this spread to the mix and it turned out fantastically well. If you've tried and liked the original Lotus Caramelised Biscuits then you will love this spread. The only downside is that the jar's contents will disappear all too quickly!

Nutritious Delicious Truffles: Healthy Chocolates

When the lovely people at Nutritious Delicious asked me whether I would like to try out their healthy range of chocolate truffles, I jumped at the chance to try such an intriguing product. Although I often feature large mainstream brands on this blog one of my passions is finding those hidden gems that are not widely available. I especially love finding products that taste delicious but are also healthy; who doesn't?

Nutritious Delicious was founded with the aim of creating a chocolate, for adults and children, that is not only delicious, but also made using a range of "super food" and organic ingredients. Everyone knows that chocolate can be good for you, it's naturally full of antioxidants and minerals. Mass produced chocolates are often made with added ingredients such as vegetable oil and hydrogenated fats that diminish the health properties of the chocolate. Nutritious Delicious chocolates are made (by chocolate makers Montezuma's) with healthier ingredients such as maca powder, lacuma, carob, ginseng, agave nectar, sunflower seeds, coconut butter, almonds and of course cacao. Amongst other health benefits these ingredients are full of essential fats, zinc, iron, magnesium and Vitamin C.

I was very excited to find out that these chocolates are also vegan. Dairy free products are very important to me as my brother is a vegan (who still loves chocolate!). This means I've become well acquainted with the dairy-free chocolate market, which is fairly active these days. I invited my brother over for the all important taste test of the Nutritious Delicious truffles!

There are four varieties in the Nutritious Delicious Truffle range; Orange, Lime, Vanilla & Almond. Even though the box I received stated "Orange" on the packaging,  I actually received a selection of all four types. It's a good selection of flavours with something that will appeal to most people.

The chocolates all have the same rounded dome shape with a glossy dark brown colour. They are made up of a layer of thick dark chocolate covering a truffle centre.

They all look identical on the inside regardless of which flavour they are. The dark chocolate has a very pure and richly dark flavour. Even though it has an almost raw edge to it, the taste is still smooth and delicious, without a bitter aftertaste. The Vanilla truffles had the strongest chocolate taste, with a subtle vanilla flavour. Personally, I would have preferred a stronger vanilla flavour. The Almond truffles are very similar with a light nuttiness to the truffle. The main flavour in both of these is the deliciously strong chocolate.

The flavours really started to pop with the citrus varieties; Lime and Orange. These were the overwhelming favourites of everyone trying these chocolate. The citrus flavours work wonderfully with the dark chocolate, creating a natural fruity sweetness. The Orange truffles have a sweet but fresh orange flavour that doesn't have that awful artificial taste like most orange chocolates. The Lime Truffles also had a lovely fresh flavour and were hugely popular with us all, especially my children who loved them! I was quite surprised by how sweet all four varieties of these chocolates tasted, they are genuinely rich and decadent.

Overall, these were fantastic chocolates. They are tasty and packed full of healthy ingredients too. I liked the sleek black packaging too, this is definitely a box that would look great as a gift. If you are someone who is interested in nutrition, perhaps follow a vegan diet or are just a fan of dark chocolate in general, then I highly recommend them.

Nutritious Delicious Truffles are available on their website and cost £5.99 for a 130g bag.

You can also follow Nutritious Delicious on Twitter.

Maynards Sour Patch Kids Sweets

I have a real soft spot for US snacks and "candy". I blame all the US movies and TV that I have watched over the years that introduced me to such concepts as "Twinkies". Luckily, or unluckily depending on your view of these things, US products are now becoming more and more available in UK supermarkets. These Maynards Sour Patch Kids are part of the Kraft brand and have recently been launched in the UK. They are already popular in the US, indeed they are often quoted as being Justin Bieber's favourite "candy". There's a name I never imagined I would write in this blog!

The packaging of Maynards Sour Patch Kids is super bright and colourful, with slightly crazed looking "kids" on the front, probably indicating how your kids will behave if you let them eat these. On a slightly strange note I could feel, even before I opened the packet, that there was lots of sugar swooshing around inside, seperate from the actual sweets. It was almost like holding one of those sugar packets you get with tea or coffee in a cafe.

I bought quite a small 45g bag but they are also available as 160g sharing bags. Inside the packet, the sweets all had the same "Sour Patch Kid" shape in five different colours. The "sour" coating is very sugary and loose. By this I mean the coating is quite easy to shake or wipe off. This explains why there was so much loose sugar in the bottom of the packet. Almost a full teaspoon when I emptied the contents! I liked the fact that these weren't too sour, there is a slighty sour taste at first but it is quickly replaced by the sugary sweetness.

The flavours were (from left to right in the above photo); a berryish flavour (could be strawberry or raspberry), orange flavour, lemon flavour, blackcurrant flavour and finally a lime flavour. They are all quite generic fruity tasting rather than true to life fruit flavours. There don't seem to be any fruit juices or natural flavourings listed in these, simply "flavourings". They do however have natural colours listed as; black carrot, spinach, stinging nettle and tumeric! I'm sure this must be different to all the E numbers colourings in the US variety. As I've said before (especially regarding the UK Froot Loops) I prefer the all natural colours but fans of the original US sweets may be disappointed.

Have you tried Maynards Sour Patch Kids Sweets?

Rachel's Organic Apple & Cinnamon Yogurt (Limited Edition)

I love "limited edition" versions of favourite products because they tend to tie into the flavours for a new season or event. This Rachel's Organic Apple & Cinnamon bio-live yogurt is perfect for the colder months, even the rustic colours on the packaging evoke warming and comforting flavours. Apple & Cinnamon is already a classic combination in desserts and I was keen to try it in a yogurt format. Rachel's Organic only "use the finest organic ingredients" whilst making their yogurts "as simply as possible". That means there are no hidden nasties or laboratory sounding ingredients.

These yogurts come in quite large 450g tubs which provides about three servings. The base yogurt used here tasted extremely creamy and rich, just like the other yogurts from Rachel's. It does feel like I'm eating an indulgent dessert rather than a yogurt. The yogurt has been flavoured with organic cinnamon and adds a  gorgeously spiced flavour. I love the taste of cinnamon anyway but I had no idea it tasted so good with yogurt. The apple flavour comes through in the form of small pieces of apple within the yogurt. They are soft but still retain a sweet cooked apple taste. Combined with the cinnamon it tasted like a delicious apple pie of a yogurt.

As I dug deeper into the yogurt in my bowl I discovered a few raisins lying within. They tasted sweet and seemed to have taken on the apple and cinnamon flavour of the yogurt rather than tasting too raisin-y. I would have preferred this yogurt without any raisins. It's not that I don't like raisins by themselves but I don't really like them in food, I would always choose an apple pie or carrot cake that doesn't contain raisins. It's a small niggle though because there weren't that many raisins in my portion and I managed to avoid eating the rest of them!

Overall I liked the main flavours in this yogurt and I think it's fantastic that Rachel's Organic continue to bring out new seasonal varieties. Apple & Cinnamon is a great flavour combination and one that I wish we had more of in the UK (I'm looking at you Kellogg's Apple Jacks...).

I bought the Rachel's Organic Apple & Cinnamon yogurt in Waitrose for £1.59. It contains 119 calories per 100g serving. The ingredients are: organic yogurt, organic sugar, organic cream (5.4%), organic apple (5%), organic dark brown sugar, organic raisins, organic rice starch, natural flavouring, organic cinnamon.

You may also be interested in:
Rachel's Organic Strawberries & Cream
Rachel's Organic Heavenly Coconut