I've added a poll over on the left side of the blog as I've been thinking about introducing a star score or rating at the end of each review.
Please take a moment to go and vote! The poll ends in two weeks and I look forward to seeing the results!
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Monday, 29 April 2013
Gossip: New Cadbury Packaging and Blocks Land, New TNCC Chews and More
First up: The new 220g Cadbury blocks, complete with new foil wrapper and new piece shape have landed in stores. I spotted these in Woolworths. The new rounded square seems to be consistent across all varieties (nut-filled, soft centre, etc), although the Mousse varieties were still in their cardboard wrappers.
The Old Gold range is also included in the new packaging, and the designers seem to have given that range's layout a bit of a shake-up in general.
Also in Joyville, Cadbury has released another new Marvellous Creations flavour alongside the Clinkers, Raspberry Chips and Marshmallow bar I reviewed a few days ago. The other new flavour is Clinkers, Gummi Bears and Choc Biscuit. Sounds good - keep an eye out for it!
Next up, I spotted the Aero blocks have changed the shape of their bars. Previously, the bars were wide and stubby, and marked in 'strips', and now they seem to have adopted a square piece with a domed bubble on top. (Sorry for the blurry picture.)
I also spotted the brand new 'Aero Bubbles' in Woolworths, which I will be reviewing shortly, so no picture yet. ;)
The Natural Confectionery Company have been busy and have added two new products to their range: Smoothie Chews and Sour Chews. These were also spotted in Woolworths and I'll be reviewing them when they go on special.
I spotted these Limited Edition Double D Sugar Free Gummy Bears on the shelf as well at Woolworths. I don't know how long they have been on the market so far. I may not get around to reviewing these, but they looked nice and squishy.
Finally, I saw these bags of Fino Premium Confections at Coles last week. They seem to be gourmet sugar-covered jellies (also known as jubes). They come in two flavours - citrus and berry. The price tag was also at a premium (around $5.50 for the 120g bag) so it's unlikely that I will be reviewing these. Perhaps one of our readers would like to review them and share a guest post with us!
The Old Gold range is also included in the new packaging, and the designers seem to have given that range's layout a bit of a shake-up in general.
Also in Joyville, Cadbury has released another new Marvellous Creations flavour alongside the Clinkers, Raspberry Chips and Marshmallow bar I reviewed a few days ago. The other new flavour is Clinkers, Gummi Bears and Choc Biscuit. Sounds good - keep an eye out for it!
Next up, I spotted the Aero blocks have changed the shape of their bars. Previously, the bars were wide and stubby, and marked in 'strips', and now they seem to have adopted a square piece with a domed bubble on top. (Sorry for the blurry picture.)
I also spotted the brand new 'Aero Bubbles' in Woolworths, which I will be reviewing shortly, so no picture yet. ;)
The Natural Confectionery Company have been busy and have added two new products to their range: Smoothie Chews and Sour Chews. These were also spotted in Woolworths and I'll be reviewing them when they go on special.
I spotted these Limited Edition Double D Sugar Free Gummy Bears on the shelf as well at Woolworths. I don't know how long they have been on the market so far. I may not get around to reviewing these, but they looked nice and squishy.
Finally, I saw these bags of Fino Premium Confections at Coles last week. They seem to be gourmet sugar-covered jellies (also known as jubes). They come in two flavours - citrus and berry. The price tag was also at a premium (around $5.50 for the 120g bag) so it's unlikely that I will be reviewing these. Perhaps one of our readers would like to review them and share a guest post with us!
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows
I was out on a mini road trip with a dear friend this morning when we stopped at the servo. Since I don't drive, a servo is not usually a place I visit (especially since there are no 7/11s here in WA!). I took the opportunity to go have a poke around as the petrol and convenience (P&C) market is often the first place where new products are launched. And luck was on my side today!
Opposite the frozen drinks we were look at was a stand of a brand new addition to the Cadbury Marvellous Creations range that Cadbury launched last year with great fanfare. Surprisingly I hadn't heard any whispers of a new flavour, so that just made the find all that more exciting.
Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows in the 50g block is the newest edition to the range. In keeping with the MC vibrant packaging, the matte foil wrapper has purple and cream stripes in the background, and is decorated with chunks of coloured confectionery. To help identify it as a new product, it also has a bright yellow 'New!' on the left side, and a lime green border around the centre panel. The green is different enough to the teal of the Peanut Toffee Cookie Marvellous Creations product that you would be able to pick it out instantly.
So let's talk about what we've got inside. Clinkers are a Pascall product, which is a brand owned by Cadbury, and they are normally large oval-shaped chalky pieces covered in thick milk chocolate. They come in three colours/flavours: yellow, green and pink, and are very sweet and rich. In the block, where there is far more chocolate than Clinker, they don't seem to have any flavour at all, but seem to be mostly included for texture purposes. They're light and crunchy and crumble well, and there are a lot of them in the bar as well (although according to the ingredients list, they only account for 2.6% of the bar). The pieces are disappointingly smaller than they appear on the wrapper though. I forgot to take a picture of the underside of the bar, but the textured bottom is most due to the Clinker pieces.
Then we have the raspberry chips. I would predict that these are the same as the chips used in the Cadbury Black Forest block. It's important to note that although they look similar to popping candy in the pictures, they are not. The pieces are small and varied in size, but are translucent, hard like a boiled lolly, bright red and have a strong raspberry-cordial flavour. Like the Clinkers, there are many of these spread evenly throughout the glossy Dairy Milk chocolate.
The final piece in this Marvellous Creations bar is the marshmallows. Pink or white, sticky and in chunks about the size of a pea, the marshmallows taste genuine, but the texture is slightly off; it feels like they have been compressed slightly (quite possible, to fit enough in the bar but still keep to the weight).
Together, the three ingredients and the Dairy Milk chocolate combine to give the bar a bit of a rocky road taste - albeit a rather modernised one. The raspberry and marshmallows combine to give a a taste that is reminiscent of making rocky road. The Clinkers stand in the background to provide a wonderful chalky crunch alongside the raspberry pieces, and the thick melt of the chocolate binds it all together very nicely. All the products are spread nicely throughout the bar too. The whole mouthful is rather cloying and sweet, so keep some water at hand for afterwards.
A word of advice: when snapping the bar into pieces, watch out for flying chocolate crumbs and raspberry chips. The marshmallow pieces holds everything together really well.
Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows contains 26% cocoa solids and 28% milk solids. It contains milk, wheat and soy, and may contain traces of egg, peanuts and tree nuts.
Edit 29/04/13: This new flavour will also be available in the larger 290g block as well, and it's not far away! See the empty shelf space I discovered at Woolworths.
Opposite the frozen drinks we were look at was a stand of a brand new addition to the Cadbury Marvellous Creations range that Cadbury launched last year with great fanfare. Surprisingly I hadn't heard any whispers of a new flavour, so that just made the find all that more exciting.
Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows in the 50g block is the newest edition to the range. In keeping with the MC vibrant packaging, the matte foil wrapper has purple and cream stripes in the background, and is decorated with chunks of coloured confectionery. To help identify it as a new product, it also has a bright yellow 'New!' on the left side, and a lime green border around the centre panel. The green is different enough to the teal of the Peanut Toffee Cookie Marvellous Creations product that you would be able to pick it out instantly.
So let's talk about what we've got inside. Clinkers are a Pascall product, which is a brand owned by Cadbury, and they are normally large oval-shaped chalky pieces covered in thick milk chocolate. They come in three colours/flavours: yellow, green and pink, and are very sweet and rich. In the block, where there is far more chocolate than Clinker, they don't seem to have any flavour at all, but seem to be mostly included for texture purposes. They're light and crunchy and crumble well, and there are a lot of them in the bar as well (although according to the ingredients list, they only account for 2.6% of the bar). The pieces are disappointingly smaller than they appear on the wrapper though. I forgot to take a picture of the underside of the bar, but the textured bottom is most due to the Clinker pieces.
Then we have the raspberry chips. I would predict that these are the same as the chips used in the Cadbury Black Forest block. It's important to note that although they look similar to popping candy in the pictures, they are not. The pieces are small and varied in size, but are translucent, hard like a boiled lolly, bright red and have a strong raspberry-cordial flavour. Like the Clinkers, there are many of these spread evenly throughout the glossy Dairy Milk chocolate.
The final piece in this Marvellous Creations bar is the marshmallows. Pink or white, sticky and in chunks about the size of a pea, the marshmallows taste genuine, but the texture is slightly off; it feels like they have been compressed slightly (quite possible, to fit enough in the bar but still keep to the weight).
Together, the three ingredients and the Dairy Milk chocolate combine to give the bar a bit of a rocky road taste - albeit a rather modernised one. The raspberry and marshmallows combine to give a a taste that is reminiscent of making rocky road. The Clinkers stand in the background to provide a wonderful chalky crunch alongside the raspberry pieces, and the thick melt of the chocolate binds it all together very nicely. All the products are spread nicely throughout the bar too. The whole mouthful is rather cloying and sweet, so keep some water at hand for afterwards.
A word of advice: when snapping the bar into pieces, watch out for flying chocolate crumbs and raspberry chips. The marshmallow pieces holds everything together really well.
Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows contains 26% cocoa solids and 28% milk solids. It contains milk, wheat and soy, and may contain traces of egg, peanuts and tree nuts.
Edit 29/04/13: This new flavour will also be available in the larger 290g block as well, and it's not far away! See the empty shelf space I discovered at Woolworths.
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Gossip: Cadbury 10% More Blocks
According to Cadbury's Facebook page, their large chocolate blocks are being upgraded 10% in size. The 200gm blocks will increase to 220gm (up from 200gm); other sizes will go up as well. Yet it was only four years ago that Cadbury made the change from 250gm blocks down to 200gm, so you can make the decision whether this is a nice change! There's no word if the sizing change is permanent or just a promotion.
In addition, the blocks will have new packaging (a plastic/foil wrapper instead of cardboard and foil), and the pieces in the block will also have a different shape (as shown below). It will take some sampling to see if the new shape is used consistently over the different varieties, or if Cadbury will continue to do as they have done in the past and use different shapes for different varieties.
For nut lovers, you will be pleased to note that along with these other changes, Cadbury will be using whole nuts instead of nut pieces in their blocks that contain nuts.
Sources:
http://www.adnews.com.au/adnews/cadbury-ups-chocolate-size-or-does-it
http://www.facebook.com/CadburyDairyMilkAustralia
http://www.woolworthsonline.com.au