sweet

Sweet Treats: Kit Kat Chunky 3 — Caramel and Chocolate varieties

Sweet Treats: Kit Kat Chunky 3 — Caramel and Chocolate varieties 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , ,

I have always been curi­ous about the unusual flavours of Kit Kat avail­able in Japan, but as they aren’t avail­able in Aus­tralia, I have had to be sat­is­fied try­ing the more ordi­nary versions.

Kit Kat Chunky 3 is a ver­sion of the chunky Kit Kat bar that con­tains three dif­fer­ent fill­ings at the top of the bar. I found the idea of hav­ing three dif­fer­ent fill­ings in one bar inter­est­ing, but when I first tried the Choco­late ver­sion, I was a lit­tle con­fused as I seemed to have only two dif­fer­ent flavours — two smooth fill­ings and one gooey. I took pho­tos of the bar with each sec­tion sliced to show the fill­ing, and you can see that the mid­dle fill­ing, which is sup­posed to be the crunchy one, even looks the same as the smooth fill­ing. It def­i­nitely was not crunchy, so I felt a lit­tle cheated out of one of my dif­fer­ent tex­tures. The smooth tex­ture also didn’t really taste all that dif­fer­ent from a nor­mal Kit Kat — maybe it was a lit­tle denser and sweeter, but I found the sweet­ness a lit­tle sickly. I enjoyed the gooey tex­ture more, par­tic­u­larly the caramel, but over­all I think I would have been just as happy with a nor­mal Kit Kat chunky bar.

Now I’m left won­der­ing not only what those weird Japan­ese Kit Kat’s taste like, but where my crunchy fill­ing went! Have you tried this Kit Kat? Did your crunchy fill­ing actu­ally crunch? Leave a com­ment below and let me know.

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New Product: Sunrice Apple and Cinnamon Flavoured Rice Cakes

New Product: Sunrice Apple and Cinnamon Flavoured Rice Cakes 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , ,

After try­ing the Sun­rice Caramel Rice Cakes I was keen to try the other Sun­rice sweet flavoured rice cakes. I was aware of two more flavours — Honey, and Apple and Cin­na­mon. Although I haven’t been able to find the Honey flavour in any super­mar­kets, the Apple and Cin­na­mon vari­ety seemed to be avail­able in more places.

These rice cakes were very sim­i­lar to the caramel rice cakes — they were thicker than the usual savory rice cakes, and cov­ered with a very thin layer of sweet flavour­ing. They weren’t over­sweet and didn’t even have the very slight unnat­ural flavour that the caramel rice cakes had when I first tasted them. They tasted like a very, very crunchy apple cin­na­mon muf­fin. I was espe­cially glad that the cin­na­mon flavour was very notice­able, as some­times in apple and cin­na­mon prod­ucts you can barely tell that there is any cin­na­mon there. Over­all these were very pleas­ant, and mor­eish — and although they are nice by them­selves I couldn’t help but won­der what they might be like stuck on top of a nice scoop of vanilla ice-cream!

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New Product: Table of Plenty Mini Chocolate Rice Cakes

New Product: Table of Plenty Mini Chocolate Rice Cakes 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , ,

After my sur­prise at the Sun­rice caramel rice cakes I decided to try another sweet rice cake vari­ety. Table of Plenty’s Mini Rice Cakes cer­tainly looked appeal­ing, with the rice cakes coat­ing in either choco­late or yoghurt. I decided to try the choco­late ver­sion as I was crav­ing choco­late and won­dered if this would be a slightly health­ier way to sat­isfy that craving.

The choco­late used on the bis­cuits is dark choco­late, and of a pretty good qual­ity. The room was filled with choco­latey smells the moment I opened the bag (so this treat could def­i­nitely lead to some lunch­box envy!) As the bags are only 60 grams, they don’t con­tain a huge amount. At $3.99 a packet, that makes them a bit expen­sive for a lunch­box treat. It would be bet­ter value if you could eat only a few of these bis­cuits but unfor­tu­nately they are a lit­tle too deli­cious! The crunchy rice cake and qual­ity choco­late make eat­ing these bis­cuits as enjoy­able as other reg­u­lar choco­late bis­cuits. In fact, I’d prob­a­bly pre­fer these over Tim Tams due to the qual­ity of the dark choco­late. How­ever, that also means that it’s hard not to eat the entire small packet in one go. As choco­late is involved, these also still con­tain a high amount of sat­u­rated fats at 14.4 grams per 100 grams. That made me won­der whether I’d be bet­ter off eat­ing the caramel rice cakes (2.9 grams per 100 grams) to try to sat­isfy my sweet crav­ings. They might not have choco­late, but they are still tasty and have much less fat con­tent and are less than half the price. Maybe smear­ing them with a very thin layer of choco­late spread (if you can con­strain your­self) might make them equal to sat­is­fy­ing the choco­late crav­ings, although that would also bump up the fat content.

Over­all, these are a very tasty snack, I’m just not sure if these are quite as healthy as they could be, and whether they are really cheap enough to pro­vide a lunch­box alter­na­tive. They are def­i­nitely bet­ter than head­ing for a choco­late bar while still hav­ing the flavour, and are very con­ve­nient, but the fat con­tent and price mean I would prob­a­bly look for even health­ier and cheaper alternatives.

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Sweet treats: Delish Lemon Cupcakes from the Coles bakery section

Sweet treats: Delish Lemon Cupcakes from the Coles bakery section 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , ,

As I don’t eat a lot of bread, I don’t find myself look­ing in the Coles bak­ery sec­tion all that often. How­ever I do have a soft spot for the occa­sional sweet treat at a good price, and I’m a sucker for lemon flavours, so when I saw these cup­cakes I just had to give them a try.

There were a few pack­ets on a the shelf, but I noticed that due to the flex­i­ble top of the pack­ag­ing and the sloped shelves the cup­cakes were dis­played on, a few of them had lost a lot of icing onto the top of the lid. I chose the packet with the most intact icing, but it was still hard to pre­vent the bend­able top hit­ting the icing as I car­ried them home . The cup­cakes look very pretty, so it’s a pity the top of the pack­ag­ing was not a lit­tle more solid to pre­vent the plas­tic dip­ping down onto the icing when you hold the cup­cakes. Luck­ily, as the icing is fairly soft the marks in the icing were not as notice­able when they were taken out of the packaging.

The cup­cakes have a very light lemon smell, how­ever the lemon flavour is only in the icing. I’m used to super­charged, super tangy lemon flavours, so the lemon flavour in the icing was a lit­tle too mild for me, but still enjoy­able. The icing was very sweet, but it is a thin layer so it’s not too over­whelm­ing. The cake itself is vanilla, and fairly light and moist although still sub­stan­tial enough to be fill­ing. Over­all the cup­cakes have a great tex­ture and appear­ance, espe­cially at a price of $3.00 for a packet of four. These are a very handy if you’re work­ing to a bud­get, such as for an office after­noon tea, and are great value for money while still being good quality.

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New Product: Sunrice Caramel Flavoured Rice Cakes

New Product: Sunrice Caramel Flavoured Rice Cakes 2

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , ,

I had spot­ted these Sun­rice sweet rice cakes on the shelves some times ago, and my first thought was ‘hmmm, how could that pos­si­bly work?’. I am used to rice and corn cakes being rel­a­tively bland wafers designed to hold up more tasty savoury ingre­di­ents. So how does a sweet rice cake work? What do you put on it? Or do you eat it by itself? Even­tu­ally I decided I just had to try them for myself.

The moment I opened the packet, most of my ques­tions were answered. The rice cakes smelt just like caramel pop­corn! It was almost a face palm moment. Of course com­bin­ing popped grains with caramel is a good idea. Why had I even won­dered ‘how it would work’?

So with that answered, I moved on to actu­ally eat­ing the rice cakes. They are thicker than other rice cakes from Sun­rice I have tried, with a very thin layer of caramel — so thin I could not work out if it’s just on the out­side or all through the rice cake. Of course they are very crispy, and only slightly sweet, but enough to make them very more-ish and I found I had to hide the packet to stop myself eat­ing too many at once. The rice cake does have a very faint arti­fi­cial taste at first (a friend also com­mented on this so it is not just me) but after the first bite this is unno­tice­able. Over­all these seem like a good way to sat­isfy a crav­ing for sweet or crispy things with­out head­ing towards the chips or choco­late. Just make sure you don’t acci­den­tally eat the whole lot in one go! Rice cakes are very light so that is pos­si­ble with rice cakes this tasty.

I sup­pose you could put top­pings on these rice cakes, but it seems unnec­es­sary. I did pair them with some sliced straw­ber­ries, which was nice as the tart­ness of the straw­ber­ries bal­anced the caramel flavour and made them a bit more sub­stan­tial. If you can think of any­thing else you would try with these rice cakes, please leave me a comment.

It’s def­i­nitely worth try­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent and giv­ing these rice cakes a go — they could be just what peo­ple are look­ing for to replace sugary/fatty bis­cuits with their cup of tea or coffee.

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Baking: Green’s Classic Carrot Cake Mix

Baking: Green’s Classic Carrot Cake Mix 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , ,

I’m back after a few weeks break with some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.  This prod­uct takes a lit­tle work to review!

I don’t mind cook­ing for myself, but some­times it’s nice to be able to cut out a few steps and cheat a lit­tle. Cake mixes and other bak­ing mixes can be very help­ful when you are in a hurry or just feel­ing lazy. I thought I would try out a few mixes then later try my hand a mak­ing the same type of cake from scratch and com­pare the results and effort required.

I’ve never made a car­rot cake from scratch so I thought I would try a car­rot cake mix first.  Green’s car­rot cake mix smelt car­roty from the first moment I opened the packet of dry ingre­di­ents. Although there are quite a few other ingre­di­ents to be mixed in — oil, egg and water for the cake mix, and but­ter and milk for the icing — it was sim­ple to throw them all into a bowl and mix it all together, before pour­ing the cake mix into the bak­ing pan. I couldn’t resist ‘clean­ing up’ the cake mix bowl, and found the mix tasted strangely like muesli bars.  The cake took a lit­tle less time than rec­om­mended in my fan forced oven, so it is a good idea to keep an eye on it. The results looked good, although the cake was a lit­tle flat­ter than the one in the image on the box, even though my pan was only a tiny bit larger than the one recommended.

The icing was a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult for me, as I do not have an elec­tric mixer. This meant I had to take a lit­tle more time and effort, beat­ing the icing by hand while sit­ting on the couch watch­ing TV and wait­ing for the cake to cool. I knew from past expe­ri­ence that it’s best to wait until the cake is really and truly cooled before putting on the icing, or it will just slide right off and look messy.  My patience paid off and resulted in nice fluffy, smooth icing sit­ting neatly on top of the cake.

Finally, it was time for the taste test! The cake was nicely crunchy on the out­side with a moist cen­tre. The flavour was very enjoy­able, despite the inclu­sion of wal­nuts, which I don’t really like. There also seemed to be gin­ger and per­haps some other spices, so it def­i­nitely wasn’t bland. The icing wasn’t as nice as fresh cream cheese icing, but for the effort required and the con­ve­nience it was still pretty good, and it pre­sented very nicely despite my lack of a hand mixer.

This was an easy mix to use, and had a great out­come. I’m look­ing for­ward to try­ing a car­rot cake from scratch and find­ing out which is bet­ter and how much harder it is to make it from scratch.

If you have a favourite car­rot cake recipe for me to try, please let me know in the comments.

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Indulgence: Sara Lee’s Rocky Road Overload

Indulgence: Sara Lee’s Rocky Road Overload 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , ,

I’ve been mean­ing to try Sara Lee’s Rocky Road Over­load ice-cream for a while now, but I don’t buy ice-cream all that often so it has taken me a while to get around to it. I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer.

This is a very more-ish, indul­gent ice cream. The ice­cream is fab­u­lously choco­latey, and dot­ted with marsh­mel­lows and nuts. There is also sup­posed to be rasp­berry sauce, but I didn’t really notice it.  Not that it mat­tered — the sec­ond time I took this out of the freezer I almost for­got I was sup­posed to take pho­tos, and the tub was get­ting alarm­ingly low when I finally remembered!

This is a ‘eat it by itself’ kind of ice-cream, as it doesn’t really match with other desserts.  The marsh­mel­lows and nuts can be a lit­tle sparse in some places, but the ice-cream is nice enough by itself so that wasn’t a has­sle.  How­ever, as enjoy­able as this ice-cream is, I prob­a­bly won’t be buy­ing it very often, as the rate that it dis­ap­pears from the freezer is not good for my waist­line! It’s hard to savour this ice-cream in tiny nib­bles, espe­cially when you are hunt­ing down one last marshmellow.

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Limited Edition: Arnott’s Tim Tam Sweet Wishes

Limited Edition: Arnott’s Tim Tam Sweet Wishes 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , , , ,

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with lim­ited edi­tion flavours.  On the one hand, it’s nice to see com­pa­nies try­ing some­thing new, and giv­ing us the oppor­tu­nity to share the expe­ri­ence.  On the other hand, often the flavours are crazy bad, or even worse, they are excel­lent but then dis­ap­pear from the shelves all too soon, never to appear again and mak­ing the reg­u­lar flavours seem dull by com­par­i­son (yes, I’m look­ing at you, Candy Warhol Mag­num).  But I guess we just have to take that risk — it’s a tough job review­ing choco­late bis­cuits, but some­body has to do it!

The Arnott’s Tim Tam Sweet Wishes range is a bit of a mixed bag — Dou­ble Choc Caramel, Hon­ey­comb, and Turk­ish Delight don’t seem to have much in com­mon, apart from being inter­est­ing ingre­di­ents to throw into a Tim Tam.  I was inter­ested to see how those com­bi­na­tions would pan out:

Dou­ble Choc Caramel

The Dou­ble Choc Caramel flavour smells like caramel as soon as you open the packet. I’m not sure where the ‘dou­ble choc’ part comes in — per­haps the coat­ing is a lit­tle thicker than other Tim Tams but there isn’t any notice­able ‘choco­latey’ flavour or change in tex­ture com­pared to the other bis­cuits. The caramel flavour, how­ever, is def­i­nitely notice­able.  The caramel is pleas­ant, if a lit­tle too sickly sweet, espe­cially if you eat more than one. I enjoyed this flavour, although I did wish the caramel was a lit­tle run­nier — it would have be inter­est­ing to have a crispy Tim Tam with a burst of liq­uid caramel in the mid­dle and may have made the flavour a bit more intense. As it is, it’s rea­son­ably good but not amazing.

Hon­ey­comb

The Hon­ey­comb I found a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing.  The flavour was sweeter than a nor­mal Tim Tam but the flavour didn’t really seem to be the same as honey or hon­ey­comb. There was no hon­ey­comb tex­ture (which in my opin­ion is half the fun of hon­ey­comb) and the bis­cuit was crispy but only as much as a nor­mal Tim Tam.

Turk­ish Delight

I already like turk­ish delight, so it’s not sur­pris­ing that this one was my favourite.  The Turk­ish Delight flavour is very strong — in fact you can actu­ally smell it before you even open the packet.  This means, how­ever, that peo­ple who don’t like turk­ish delight aren’t going to share my enthu­si­asm. The jel­ly­ish cen­tre also had the best tex­ture of the three flavours — def­i­nitely dif­fer­ent to the usual Tim Tam.  It would be inter­est­ing to see if they could add other flavours using the same jelly cen­tre — maybe orange for a jaffa Tim Tam, or straw­berry with a white creamy cen­tre for a straw­ber­ries and cream Tim Tam.  It def­i­nitely has fur­ther possibilities!

Over­all, these are inter­est­ing addi­tions to the Tim Tam range.  I’d def­i­nitely sug­gest turk­ish delight lovers try that flavour — but if that’s not your cup of tea, then skip to the caramel.

Have you tried the Sweet Wishes range or have another favourite Tim Tam flavour? Let me know in the com­ments below.

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Fruit: The Exotic Pomegranate

Fruit: The Exotic Pomegranate 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , ,

The pome­gran­ate is an ancient fruit and has been cul­ti­vated for thou­sands of years. Pome­gran­ate juice has recently appeared in stores, but the fruit itself is still rarely seen. Per­haps the rea­son is that the pome­gran­ate is ranked as one of the most dif­fi­cult fruits to han­dle and eat, mean­ing it’s just not as con­ve­nient as an apple or banana.

Per­son­ally, I love pome­gran­ates, even if I don’t get them very often. It’s dif­fi­cult to peel off the thick, leath­ery skin, and prize the juicy lit­tle pieces (the ‘aril’) out of the white pith, but the arils are burst­ing with tart, berry-like flavour. Even though it can take a long time to fin­ish eat­ing a pome­gran­ate, they do not spoil after the fruit is opened because each aril is a self-contained pack­age of juice. This makes it the ideal fruit for brows­ing slowly through­out the after­noon, although the juice can stain so you may have to be care­ful when eat­ing it near the com­puter or fabrics.

Pome­gran­ates can be expen­sive, but they are also often over­looked by shop­pers, so I was able to pick up two from Fruity Capers recently which were down to $2.00 each due to a lit­tle bruis­ing on the skin.  That didn’t mat­ter, how­ever, as they were still per­fect inside.  It’s easy to be put off when con­sid­er­ing $2 or more for a piece of fruit, but com­pare it to a choco­late bar and the price isn’t that bad — and a pome­gran­ate is a guilt-free, yet still deca­dent treat. So take a hint from the ‘slow food’ move­ment and get your­self some ‘slow fruit’ — after all, you’ll be join­ing the com­pany of Cae­sars and Emper­ors with each burst of flavour.

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Cereal: Be Natural’s Cashew, Almond, Hazelnut and Coconut

Cereal: Be Natural’s Cashew, Almond, Hazelnut and Coconut 0

by QuestionFox • Food, Review • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

After the pre­vi­ous post, you may be won­der­ing what I have for break­fast when I’m not in a hurry? I am fond of a cooked break­fast or a nice piece of Veg­emite toast, but there are times when cereal is the only thing that seems to hit the spot. And not just for break­fast! I’ll head for the cereal at any time of day that I feel like some­thing crunchy, nutty and sweet (and it’s much bet­ter than head­ing for a choco­late bar or other junk food).

I’ve tried prod­ucts in Be Nat­ural nut bars before and found them pretty sat­is­fy­ing, so on my last shop­ping trip I decided to grab a box from their cereal range.  The cereal I tried was the ‘Cashew, Almond, Hazel­nut and Coconut’, and over­all I was very impressed.  The com­bi­na­tion of flavours is very appeal­ing, and no indi­vid­ual flavour over­whelm the oth­ers.  The clus­ters of lin­seed, pepita and ama­ranth are almost as fre­quent as the flakes, and stayed very crunchy even though they were sit­ting in the milk for longer than they nor­mally would while I took the pho­tos.  I like my pho­tos to look good, but I don’t manip­u­late the prod­uct very much — so there was no pok­ing or prod­ding, there really were that many crunchy bits straight out of the packet.

Nutri­tion­ally it’s about aver­age for today’s cere­als (the health­ier ones at least) with 3.5g sat­u­rated fat and 13.5g of sugar — I’m sure there are plenty of cere­als out there that are lower in those sta­tis­tics, but I’m not sure they’d be as sat­is­fy­ing as this cereal.  With its sweet­ness and crunch, it feels far more deca­dent than you would think look­ing at the nutri­tional panel.   I also appre­ci­ated the nice pack­ag­ing design, so at least there is some­thing inter­est­ing to stare at if you get the ‘break­fast stares’ like many peo­ple I know.  The pack­ag­ing not only looks good, but it’s made from recy­cled mate­ri­als — and they’ve also part­nered with Land­care Aus­tralia to sup­port their projects in Australia.

I would def­i­nitely sug­gest giv­ing this a go — it’s com­pa­ra­ble to prod­ucts like Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Clus­ters, but lower in sugar, sodium and higher in fibre (it is a lit­tle higher in sat­u­rated fats, but that’s prob­a­bly due to a higher nut and seed con­tent — the Kellogg’s prod­uct is 6% peanuts but the  con­tent of this cereal is 11% nuts and 4% seeds).

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