Cat & the Cream Cupcake- Chocolate, Mint & Raspberry

Forewarning: This cupcake is gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan.  I am not any of those things, so it was with some skepticism that I approached this treat from Whole Foods. Gluten free didn't scare me, I've had plenty of desserts that just-so-happened to be gluten free, and they were usually just as tasty--nice and dense, made of ground almonds and chocolate.  Vegan and dairy-free however, were a bit more hard to swallow when it comes to delicious cake. Get it? Swallow? Ah, you get it.

 

 

Not much of a smell to the cake, which is fine, I understand that a more 'natural' sort of item will 'naturally' be less pungent than an artificially flavored thing. The frosting looked a bit wilted and the cake was lopsided, but again, all of these things aren't dealbreakers for me, especially considering the cake had been out for a couple hours and withstood a couple train journeys.  The frosting to cake ratio was just about perfect, but I like it to be about 60/40 cake to frosting, so if you are more or less of a frosting fan take note.

The first bite was mostly frosting, as is often the case with cupcakes, and it was pretty good. Nice and strong raspberry flavor, but a bit grainy.  I take it this might be due to the lack of dairy products, as milk gives buttercream-style frosting such as this a nice smooth consistency. I wonder what they used instead? Outside of the initial grittiness, the frosting didn't leave any gross faux-butter film on the roof of your mouth, and seemed nicely whipped and fresh. My husband was a big fan, and thought it tasted like brown sugar and raspberries--he also loved the graininess.

The chocolate sponge was a bit dry, and it wasn't particularly chocolatey--it kind of tasted smokey.  I wondered if maybe it was carob instead of chocolate. It certainly wasn't bad, and I think I'm particularly hard to please when it comes to cake. I think it has to do with the 'sponge' distinction. In the USA, all cakes unless otherwise noted tend to be moist, dense, and flavorful. Whereas here in the UK there seems to be a lot more airy, 'spongey' textured cakes that have a delicate flavor. I tend to think of them as being more like angel food cakes, than a dense sheet cake like you'd get at a big fat American birthday.

So far, the cake is a bit dry and bland and the frosting is grainy. Not exactly mind blowing, but then again, I'm grading it based on my experiences with glutenous, egg-and-butter loaded confectionery--not based on what a vegan and dairy-free cake is like, so it is a bit unfair.

The mint fondant in the center however, was extremely good.  Really bumped the cake up in my esteem.  It didn't seem chocolatey at all, it just seemed like a solid chunk of fresh, herbal mint sweetness. Combined with the raspberry frosting it was delicious!

If I was a vegan, or a dairy-free...associate, I'd be really glad to have something as nice as this. I think if you were just gluten free, however, you could find better cakes and brownies. 

I think I would try another variety of these cakes, I really appreciate that they are taking risks with flavor combinations (see here), and the non-chocolatey sponge wouldn't be an issue at all in a vanilla cupcake!

In the end, kudos goes to the Cat & the Cream for making interesting cupcakes that are pretty good for egg-and-dairy freaks such as myself, and potentially amazing for vegans and such.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations: Jelly, Popping Candy, and Beanies

I for one am glad to see that post-Kraft Cadbury does interesting stuff.  Like, they didn't take away all the 'classics' so fuddy-duddies who are only interested in Fruit & Nut can still enjoy themselves, while those of us who like a change of pace and a bit of novelty can chow down on Golden Biscuit Crunches and Oreo bars to our heart's content...or until they are unceremoniously discontinued.

This particular bar is from Australia, part of a line of three different bars of varying marvellousity--this one, Jelly & Crunchie Bits, and apparently Peanut Toffee Cookie, which isn't stocked at my local Cybercandy so I refuse to believe it exists lest my heart break for want of trying.

Upon opening, the bar smells like your standard issue Dairy Milk, very sweet and milky.  Nice enough! I didn't expect it to smell like jelly or popping candy, so no surprises there. It is split between a few chunks, and it is on the thicker side due to all the embedded fixin's, making it a bit hard to crunch down and get a half-a-chunk bite. It's full chunk or nothing, folks!

The popping candy is definitely the most prevalent mix-in, every bite has some fizziness. The jelly is the second most common bit, and they're multi-coloured, which surprised me. Seems they went through a lot of effort doing that, unless it really is just the left over jellies from...babies,  or snakes, or teeth, or whatever jelly shapes they eat in Australia. They're not soft gummies, they're definitely chewy like a gummi bear--my husband insists they were just like jelly beans without the sugar shell, but I contend that jelly beans without the sugar shell would basically be soft goop, and these had a strong spring to them whilst chewing.

I couldn't really tell if the jellies were different flavours, it just tasted like a bit like pineapple throughout to me, but since they were different colours I'm going to guess maybe different flavours were attempted, too.

The beanies were stupid, and not just because I think "beanie" is a dumb name for a candy-coated chocolate...they're stupid because M&M type things are always unnecessary in candy bars.

"You like chocolate, of course, you're getting a bar of it! Well, what if we told you that you could have a bar that has tiny other chocolates in it! Pretty crazy, right? But wait, there's more! They have a very thin imperceptible sugar shell, that will probably go completely unnoticed by you or will cut the roof of your mouth on their jagged shards!"

Yeah, I'm bitter. The M-Azing bar really shook me back in the day. Thanks for nothing, M&Ms Minis...you could've been such a nice cake topping, but you went and ruined it.

So, the beanies contribute nothing.  I would say this bar is a very tasty novelty, and I'd be likely to get it again. I really like Muddy Bears, those chocolate-covered gummi bears that you can sometimes get at movie theatres in the USA, and I ate an off-brand version of these gummi dinosaur in chocolate egg treats all the time as a kid, so your results may vary.  I was very happy to eat jelly with chocolate, unconcerned with popping candy, and able to ignore my white-hot rage about beanies long enough to enjoy this bar. Nice one, Cadbury, keep doing interesting things--but enough with the caramel already, so boring!

Melt Sea Salt Caramel Bar

I know it is popular, or was popular, or something--but I love salted caramel, and I will never give it up, no matter how much it will date me in the future; I still love wild blue razzleberry flavors, anyway. I don't give up on my trendy foodstuffs.  I won't leave you in the caramel trenches, sea salt. This war ain't over.

So, whenever I see salted caramel anything my ears perk up and my lips smack. Gets a bit embarrassing, I mean, it is everywhere.

My husband picked up this bar from Melt's chocolate shop in Notting Hill as a li'l treat for me, and we both got to try some because I'm the nicest wife ever.

It was a sizable bar, about the length of my hand and a bit thicker than my thumb. The packaging was nice, but the eco-brown look isn't really my thing--but it is inoffensive and non-gender or age specific, making this bar a great gift idea for anyone who likes chocolate.

Upon opening, the dark chocolate smell is pretty strong and there is no telling of the caramel to come...

There is a good snap to the chocolate, as is often the case with high quality dark chocolate, and it has that nice half-sweet, half-smokey, citrus-fruity taste. The caramel, aw damn.  Damn, damn, damn. So nice, it reminds me a lot of Paul A. Young's salted caramel truffles, which are my absolute number one favorite chocolates ever. Thick, but still liquid--no chewing necessary.  I hate chewy caramels, and I don't like runny ones that much, either. This has just the right viscosity.

The only problem, and it is quite dinky, the ratio of chocolate to caramel isn't perfect for me. The dark chocolate is about 70 percent of each chunk, and the caramel is about 30 percent. With the Paul A. Young truffles, the ratios are basically reversed. This is just my preference though, because I have enormous sweet/salty tooth. I can see someone who likes dark chocolate more than caramel being way more into this bar.

I'd get this again if I happened to be more near a Melt than a Paul A. Young and I was craving good chocolate, but if given the choice, I'd gladly take a box of 4 truffles for £7.00 from Mr. Young.  I like them better, and I think they're slightly more value for money--this bar was £4.10 and had three big chunks, but left my husband feeling like he barely got to try any (whiner) and left me wishing I had another square or two--that might've had to do with my perceived lack of caramel.

Paul A. Young would leave us both quite satisfied at two truffles each.

Seriously though, a delicious bar.  Not as delicious as the other Melt item I tried, some kind of Mississipi Mud Pie, which I would love to review but got snarfed down way too quickly. Sorry for my gluttony, world.

Wasabi KitKat

Listen, listen.  I'm a huge fan of stupid, weird food and drink that make other people shake their heads and say, 'Why don't you just get a Coke and a Reese's cup instead of sputtering through an Icee Gel snack and Jolly Rancher fruit punch, for the love of crap?'

Replace the foods with other foods, and the cursing with assorted other curses, and that is a phrase I'm oft to hear.  Usually I just laugh it off, because hey, I sure do eat some horrible food. I just want to try everything that children on school buses might enjoy, what can I say?

Curiosity killed the cat, that is what I can say.

I've tried my fair share of 'strange' KitKats, sure.  The European Cheese KitKat is tasty, Blueberry Cheesecake is delicious, Sweet Potato was unmemorable, Green Tea is super nice, Dark Chocolate Strawberry was great, and Pumpkin was grrrr-ate!  They were all varying degrees of silly, and even more varying degrees of similar to their named food.  Therefore, my expectations for the (gulp) Wasabi KitKat was that it would be much like the others.  White chocolate base, with the teeniest hint of wasabi if you kept thinking "Wasabi, wasabi, wasabi" while you ate it.  Nah, it is horrible and disgusting and tasted just like it's namesake.  Don't get me wrong, I like wasabi.  I like white chocolate, and I like KitKats. I've even been known to eat a chili chocolate or two in my day, even though I wouldn't choose it over other foods, it doesn't make me want to vom.  This made me wanna vom vom, in the kitchen on the floor.  It was dreadful.  Let me try to explain, but after this I'm going to a regression therapist to take me back to that idyllic time in my life pre-Wasabi KitKat--heck, maybe all the way back to the womb.

I open the KitKat, it looked creamy beige with a green undertone--all good so far, I assumed this was going to happen, washed out colouring is a hallmark of the wacky KitKat.  I leaned in for a smell, expecting white chocolate because all of the white chocolate based KitKats have just a sweet, creamy smell.  This one started out much the same, but as it lingered in my nose, like a fine wine, I realized the hideous undertone--it was just like wasabi, but moreso to me, like mustard.  It smelled like somebody's first baking 'experiment', like some kind of white chocolate chip cookie with mustard powder and flaxseed.  Why couldn't you just make a white chocolate chip cookie?  Why'd you have to play around and experiment?  Just because salt and chilli works alright with sweet stuff, it doesn't mean everything will.  These smell dank, these smell like Keebler Elf B.O.!  WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

I experimented with baking once, as a teenage girl high off brownie successes and cookie non-failures.  I made chocolate chocolate chip cookies with a 'hint' of black pepper.  This was right at the crowning of the chilli chocolate trend, so I thought I was ahead of the curve. 'Next up, black pepper--catch up, nerds!'  I was really wrong and my dad was disappointed in me for the first time in my life.  His baleful "Why didn't you just make chocolate chip cookies?" haunts me to this day.

Anyway, I know a thing or two about making stuff that stinks that everyone hates.

This KitKat smells bad, the colour is off-putting when coupled with the smell, and the taste was abysmal.  It tasted like white chocolate for the first two seconds of suck-and-crunching, but quickly became sweet mustard powder.  Somehow, it tasted powdery, sour, sweet, and hot--all together.  If it didn't taste so ridiculously bad, it would've been interesting.

In conclusion, it was dreadful and not particularly funny to eat, it just made me gag.  Stick with cheese KitKats for oddness.

Oreo Bits Salty Hokkaido Milk Cream

These are wee, bitsy Oreos in a foil pack with a cream flavor of 'Salty Hokkaido Milk'.  My rudimentary knowledge of Japan recognized that Hokkaido is a region that is well known for their dairy produce.  From what I hear, milk has a stronger taste in Hokkaido, it is...milkier.  I love milk and dairy stuff, so that Hokkaido jazz got me interested. 

Once opened, the bag smelled just a bit of buttered popcorn, which is no doubt the combining of the smell of 'strong dairy' and salt.  They look just like regular miniature Oreo sandwiches, which is to say tiny Oreos about the size of a Ritz Bits, or a nickel--whichever comes first.

The cream to cookie ration was just about perfect, and visually they were super cute, well formed cookies that just so happened to be very small. 

The important thing is the eating though, and it didn't disappoint--but it didn't light the night on fire, either.

I don't know what I was expecting exactly from 'Salty Hokkaido Cream', but I definitely expected saltier, and maybe even creamier.  Interestingly, the cream was thick and smooth, almost like a dense fondant, versus the usual Oreo cookie cream which is gritty and sticks to the roof of your mouth--which is unpleasant once you've stopped eating said Oreos.  These tasted basically like higher quality Oreos, with a slightly softer cookie and a denser, more rich-feeling cream.  I wouldn't have described the taste as salty in the slightest, but maybe a bit more buttery and rich tasting.  The cookies by their lonesome, no creams allowed, were not nearly as cocoa-tasting as your usual Oreo cookie--they reminded me a lot more of Bourbon biscuits, sort of a soft chocolate taste without much crunch and snap.  My husband insists that the cream just tasted like Custard Cream, and I can kind of see that...but it was much nicer, texturally.  It reminded me just a little bit of the kind of frosting you get on a grocery store birthday cake, that 'buttercreme' stuff.  Decently rich feeling with a nice buttery taste, but ultimately you kind of shrug at what is just a halfway decent cake.

I wouldn't order this particular flavor of Oreo again, just because it wasn't all that strange, or even wildly different than an Oreo I could find here.  Or even better, I could Franken up something almost exactly like this by scraping the cream out of a Custard Cream and adding it to a Bourbon biscuit's biscuit.  You'd be pretty close at that point, really.

If I were in Japan, I'd pick them up if I wanted something cookie-like to go with a nice tall glass of say, honey flavored milk or something, but I'd probably find much more interesting cookies if I kept looking.  For instance, 'coffee and cheese' soft Oreos--which are next on my list to order.

Speaking of, I ordered these li'l bitty Oreos from Napajapan, which my favorite site for ordering Japanese sweets, drinks, and snacks--they stock a ton of stuff and offer SAL shipping which is important for cheapskates like me who really resent international shipping, but constantly order stuff from overseas anyway.  They don't mark parcels down for European customers, which is fair enough as it is technically illegal and they are an actual business rather than just one guy on Ebay, but they did declare the items as being their retail value in Japan, so my order was under the consignment anyway.  Customer service was totally fine, and my order arrived in a timely manner, average speed of SAL being considered, of course.

Meiji Gummy Chocolates, Three Flavor Drink Menu 2012

I love candies what are different, sweets of a different drum.  I recently made an order from NapaJapan, and these were one of the highlights in terms of different-ness.   NapaJapan describes them as such: "These round, chocolate covered gummies are a big hit in Japan.  Enjoy Grape Juice, Cola Float, and Strawberry Milk flavors.  Unique product!".

The box is very sweet, the illustrations and colors really put me in a good mood, and upon tasting the candy you'll see that the pastelly, gentle colors match perfectly with the actual taste. They're wee little beans, pinkie finger size, with about 20 in a box, maybe?

The weirdest thing about these is definitely the 'chocolate' coating.  It is only chocolate in the same sense that cake covering or white almond bark is, its got the same buttery and pleasant initial texture of chocolate, but with a vaguely waxy melt and mouthfeel. Also, when you chew, it just sort of flakes and melts in your mouth, there is no 'snap' to it--not that I really expected fine chocolate, it is after all soda flavored coating on a gummy.  The gummy in the center was very springy and soft, reminded me of most all sorts of Asian gummies, which I prefer to Haribo or gummy bear type sweets as these hardly seem to stick to your teeth at all, they're just juicy and springy.

Grape Juice was nice and tangy, not at all sour or over-sweet, definitely my favorite flavor--I love grape candy, and Japan and the USA have it on lockdown.   The Cola Float flavor could've just as easily been a root beer float, it is just creamy, vanilla-y with a spicy cola kick.  The Strawberry Milk is a bit of a let down, it was pretty waxy and more of a 'floral' strawberry than I tend to like. You can really taste the milkiness, however, which is awesome.  I hate when a candy is advertised as milky, and they really just mean white chocolate.  Don't get me wrong, I love white chocolate, but don't sell me a speedboat and then give me a Castaway style twig raft.

I'd definitely get these again, especially if another selection of flavors is released--melon cream soda, Dr. Pepper, and Cherry Coke?  Just throwing it out there, Meiji...

Crusha Milkshake Puds

I am a big fan of Crusha milks, although I refuse to call them milkshakes- they're flavoured milk, a wholly different thing in the Nesquik family. I also like USA style pudding, as made by Jell-o. I thought this Crusha stuff was going to just be a classic plastic pot of an Americana children's dessert. Little did I know at that time that it was super disgusting and that cat on the pot was in the throes of a vomitorious attack. In a word, this is gross.
I tried the vanilla one first, because vanilla is my favorite pudding flavour AND my favorite flavoured milk flavour. Nice regular packaging, foil lid, funny old cat on the front. When opened, there was no smell-not a dealbreaker, but sort of a bad sign. This was, by the way, like 50p at Sainsburys, so I wasn't expecting any kind of bouquet of vanilla orchid. It was a very thin consistency, not much like a "good" pudding, but a lot like the cheap, shelf stable puddings, which seemed to be what the Crusha Pud was modelled off of. So smell and texture was as I expected, and I was anticipating something that aped the very specific taste of crappy vanilla pudding in America. Instead of cheap vanilla pudding it was cheap imitation vanilla extract thickened with...oh, let's say, carrageen. Something tasteless and gross to think about. It also seemed nearly unsweetened, which made it taste more boozy than dessert-y. I bet the sugar was cut so parents could feel better about feeding this to kids, but Crusha Puds are only going to help children build an early tolerance to the burn of alcohol. Next up, Crusha Wobbly Blackcurrant Jello Shots. I'm blowing the lid off this whole operation! I also tried the chocolate, and the experience was much the same, although unsweetened cocoa powder is a lot more edible than imitation vanilla extract, so it won out tastewise...if there can be such a winner. I'm working myself up to the banana flavour--there is no way it is going to improve things. This stuff sucks, make your own pudding or spring for a Jell-o import mix.