New Scratch Boxes - Fresh Dessert Kits

Hello there my followers...

Today I got the chance to try out a new dessert kit which is hitting the shelves across the UK. I was lucky enough to find both my kits reduced to the fabulous price of........75P! Yes that's right 75P per kit normally they are £3.00 so bargain! 

I would never have normally got these as its not something either of us would have bothered with, but we them being reduced and all that we thought why not! 

Supposedly in 3 simple steps we are meant to make a wonderfully stunning pudding! First up we tried the Cinnamon, Apple and Almond Crumble. 

Upon opening the box, we are greeted with some pre sliced apples, with a little knob of butter. The instructions are in the lid and say it should take around 10 minutes to do the whole thing. 

First up we warmed up the pan and melted the butter, my trusty assistant mag was helping me this evening. Seems simple so far.....

Then we added the apples and coated them with the butter again going well so far nice and easy. 

Once we have cooked the apples for 1-2 minutes we added the cinnamon sugar, when we opened the packet it smelt fantastic. Really strong cinnamon aroma coming through. I chucked it all in the pain and we cooked the apples again for another 3-4 minutes. What I failed to get a photo of is me adding the tiny amount of brandy which came in pack. 

Once the apples were nicely coated, mag plated them up in a professional way, then we added the remaining syrup. 

We then added the "crumble" and the mascarpone for the topping. The mascarpone does have vanilla running through it and tasted pretty good! 

We decided to give both the puddings scores out of 5 so for the crumble 

Ease - 5 - Although some parts of it did take a little longer than stated. 

Flavour - 2 - We couldn't taste the cinnamon, nor could we taste the brandy. All we could taste was the overpowering almond. 

Price - Normally this is £3.00 no way would I pay £3.00 for this, I think maybe £2.00 is better. But 75p is even better! 

Next up is the Chocolate Honeycomb and Pear Cheesecake.  

Again the 3 simple steps (which is really about 6 steps) is printed on the inside of the lid. 

I put Mag in charge of heating up the pears and ginger letting it thicken and become syrupy.....

Insert another 4 steps here .... unfortunately the photos were lost...and when I say lost I mean I forgot to take them.

Whilst Mag was in charge of the pears and ginger, I set about mixing the chocolate, honeycomb powder with the cream cheese. This took a lot longer than stated. It was a bit of a nightmare to mix in. I had to mash it all up and really mush it in, before the cheese warmed up enough to enable me to just mix everything in. 

The pudding was supposed to be stacked like a real cheesecake with a biscuit base, with the chocolate filling and then the pear and ginger. Well since it was just the pair of us I dumped it all out on the plate...

Ease - 4 - Mixing the cream cheese was a nightmare, really need to warm it up before you try and mix in the chocolate. 

Flavour - 2 - If you tired each part on its own, they were not great, the biscuits were like hob nobs, and the ginger and pear was so strong it was daft. Yet when you mixed them all together wow, it tasted fantastic! Out of the two this was my favourite. Everything seemed to go really well. The honeycomb gave a great change in texture as well. 

Price - Normally this is £3.00 no way would I pay £3.00 for this, I think maybe £2.00 is better. But 75p is even better!

Well over all, I would not buy these unless they were vastly reduced. You might be able to make a full size pudding for 2 for cheaper.

Cooler box of mystery Japanese Sweets - Kracie Choco-Neri (Neri Ame Chocolate) and Kracie Strawberry Choco-Neri (Neri Ame Chocolate)

Photo Heavy 

I have a cooler box, which is mostly full of random sweets and most of them are Japanese. I thought it was about time I had a go at one of the Kracie DIY kits which were lurking at the bottom of the box. Today I pulled out the Choco-Neri kits, in strawberry and chocolate. 

I have seen videos of these kits on the internet, the end result always intrigued me. 

Lets begin! Now I made both kits, but only took photos of the whole process with one, I didn't see the point in doing it twice when the end result is the same just a different flavour! 

First up 

Kracie Strawberry Choco-Neri (Neri Ame Chocolate)

 Above is the front, back and then the instructions. It seems pretty simple, the packets all come with a small water container which measures the amount of water you need to add.

Above are both the packets opened, as you can see, there is a plastic tray, with two sticks for stirring, you can only see one packet in the photo but there are three in total which you add at different stages. 

 Stage one - Open packet 1 and pour in to the plastic tray as below.

Stage two - Add 1 measurement of water

Step three - Mix until the powder has completely dissolved and turned into a bright pink runny liquid. 

Step four - Add packet 2 to the bright pink mix, these are small rice balls (rice krispies) 

Step five - Mix until all the balls are coated nicely with the pink mixture. 

 Step six - Add in the third and final packet, this seems to make everything extra sticky and gooey.

 Once everything is mixed in, its ready for you to taste

 As you can see from the above two photos, it gets very sticky.

Tasting it, you can really pick up on the fake strawberry, it smells fantastic really strong strawberry scent. 

The rice bits, went a little soggy and lost some of their crunch, and after a while the mixture sort of sets like cement. Think of melting marshmallows and then letting it puddle and then set again. That gooeyness and mess is just what this is like!! 

Below is the chocolate one, the process is just the same as above, but the outcome is chocolate falvour instead of strawberry! Thats a shocker right?!

Ok so the chocolate smells just like nesquick and tastes pretty good, again the rice bits have gone soggy not the best. I wonder what would've happened if you just put just packet 1 and 2 in! Maybe I should try sometime. Thinking about it a bit more the smell reminds me of the smell of hot chocolate. 

Now whilst I have been writing this, the food as sort of set. You have to try and pry it out the bottom of the tray! Still tastes OK though. 

I really enjoy these kits. I wish I could remember where I got them from. Its not something I would eat very often though as they are both quite sweet. 

Let me know if you want me to do more random cooler box mystery posts, I really do have more in there! I also have a few more of the Japanese DIY kits. 

Vikx eats random Dutch sweets!

My mum picked up some random sweets for me to blog about whilst she was on holiday rencelty. They by a company called Red Band. I got two packets Stophoest and Fruit Fun. Decided I would give these a try tonight as I have nothing better to do! 

So here we go. 

First up Stophoest (brown sweets)- Now I have NO idea about these sweets, I decided to taste them, then look them up on google. 

The brown sweets are disgusting, they are horrible. Reminds of me aniseed. The texture is like chalk but with a really bitter taste. To be honest I have never really eat chalk so Im not sure if that is bitter either. Each of the sweets has the name Red Band stamped on them. I really wish I could say something positive about this product. Lets see....ermmmm the package is nice. Its red with little photos of the sweets all over it. I spent a while trying to find more information about them via google, but alas nothing really came up. 

They are classed as being pastels which are a licorice and salmiak flavour. From what I have found out Salmiak is a salty licorice, its also the same thing they put in Fishermans Friend. 

Lets move on as the Fruit Funs were much nicer! 

Fruit Funs are well fruit flavoured pastels, they are all different fruit flavours. I am guessing that the flavours are 

Pink - Strawberry

Dark Pink - Berry

Yellow - Banana

White - Lemon 

I have had another look about google to try and find out what the flavours are, but sadly I couldn't find anything. 

From what I can see, the packet is mainly made of white and pink sweets, I only got 2 yellow and 2 dark pink!!! I guess they are the more expensive to make ;) 

These are lovely, they are chalk like just like the Stophoest but they aren't bitter, and do not leave a nasty taste in your mouth. They really do remind me of a sweet I have eaten over here before but I cannot put my finger on it. Which is annoying. 

I am happily munching away on these as I type, which I guess I shouldn't really as I want to try and do another blog post this evening! 

I have noticed while I have been typing that you do get a funny aftertaste, sort of tangy on the tongue. Hoping that fades after a while as not overly enjoying that. 

From what I have seen on the Red Band website it looks like the Fruit Fun rolls are new. I could be wrong, its all in Dutch and it wouldn't translate for me.

If I happened to see the Fruit Fun's again I think I would buy them, if I really had to. Where as when it comes to the Stophoest I would never buy these ever. They are gross.

I think I will be sending the rest of these to my mum who happens to love licorice!