New: Kit Kat Snap & Share

KitKat has launched a new variant: the Snap & Share. It is a 170g sharing block, and will be available in two flavours; Milk Chocolate and Cookies & Cream. It looks like this new format will increase the bar's popularity for a number of reasons. Firstly, the bars are designed so consumers can “Snap & Share” them with friends and family, thus tapping into the major consumer trend for sharing confectionery. Secondly, chocolate blocks are known to have a younger audience compared to chocolate in general and are therefore expected to introduce KitKat to an even wider audience. Finally, KitKat products are typically eaten as a snack during the day, whilst total chocolate blocks consumption is skewed towards the evening, therefore opening up more evening consumption occasions for the brand.

Chocolate Cheese Board

Some people choose to follow their main course with a cheese board. Others (myself included) prefer something rather sweeter. But now you can have both, thanks to Choc On Choc's latest creation. 
Handmade from the finest milk, dark and white Belgian chocolate, this cheese board truly is a show-stopper that will get all your guests talking at your next dinner party! Each set contains an engraved chocolate board, dark-and-white chocolate Stilton, white chocolate Brie, Camembert, and Emmental, and even chocolate grapes. It's presented in a cream hamper box on a bed of shredded paper. I'm just glad that a cheese board has been made out of chocolate, rather than a block of chocolate made out of cheese. Surely it won't be long though....

£30

Meridian Peanut Bars

Nut brand Meridian Foods has extended its range of snack bars with the launch of three new variants. The peanut and banana, peanut and berry and peanut and cocoa bars are made using the British brand’s peanut butter and are now being sold in Holland & Barrat at £1.19. The range was originally launched in spring 2014 to great success with peanut and almond variants, with a cashew bar added earlier this year. These new bars tap in to two major trends; the demand for high-protein products and the craze for peanut butter. 

Arctic Rolls With A Twist

At the moment, the weather is not exactly conducive to ice-creams or frozen deserts. But should you feel the need to cool off, then be inspired by Asda's twist on the classic Arctic Roll. 

Blueberry Ice Cream Roll
Soft blueberry flavoured sponge wrapped around purple and white blueberry and sponge flavour ice creams with a layer of zingy blueberry sauce.

Cookies & Cream Ice Cream Roll
Rich chocolate flavour sponge wrapped around cream flavoured ice cream with chocolate flavour cookie crumble and chocolate sauce. What's not to like?

Both £1 from Asda

Asda's response to Graze?

My local Sainsbury's has just started stocking the new Graze snack boxes which seems to have generated quite a buzz among the media, but on my latest trip to Asda, I spotted these.... Are they Asda's response to the perfectly-packaged and ingeniously inventive Graze products? Well, yes, they are snack-sized pots of healthy stuff. The packaging is quite clear and bold, but not especially attractive, and the products in the range are not nearly so inventive and to be honest, are quite boring and repetitive. There are 10 in the line-up; Brazils, Cashews, Cranberry & Macadamias, Walnuts, Cranberry, Almonds & Seeds, Pistachios, Mixed Nuts, Fruit & Nut, Cashews & Cranberry,



£1.00 each in Asda

Prestat Organic Chocolate Truffles

Prestat’s new box of Fabulous Organic Chocolate Truffles is the first ever organic collection created by the fancy chocolatier. The selection of truffles has a caramel theme and include sweet juicy orange, summer strawberry, heather blessed honey and sea salt caramels – all enrobed in milk or dark chocolate. And if that's not enough...
The box – ‘Sunrise at Glastonbury’ – designed by Kitty Arden, captures a bucolic arcadia filled with a host of mythical creatures. Above them is a huge sun and the stars which make up Orion’s Belt and The Great Bear. And if that's not enough....

Prestat are adding to the truffles’ ‘feel-good factor’ by donating a percentage of the sales they generate to the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST), which supports excellence in craftsmanship by awarding Scholarships and Apprenticeships to some of the country’s most promising and talented craftspeople.
£16.50

Portlebay Popcorn

Portlebay Popcorn has released its latest creative flavour of gourmet popcorn, Cappuccino which features “notes of silky caramel and a bitter hint of coffee”. This is, I believe, the first coffee flavoured popcorn to grace our shelves. 
Spotted in Budgens

New in Waitrose

Gazpacho Shots

Gazpacho is the quintessential summer soup, but you’d never have thought of taking it on a picnic —until now. These new ‘shots’ of the chilled Spanish soup are full of chopped tomatoes, fresh garlic, red pepper and cucumber, and are cool, light and refreshing.

£2.49 for 6 x 50g

This new Yorkshire Wensleydale with Salted Caramel cheese is an intriguing option for cheese fans with a sweet tooth: the caramel contrasts with the saltiness of the cheese.
£2.75 

Limited Edition British Red Gooseberries - A naturally sweet tasting and satisfyingly plump berry which apparently is delicious fresh in fools and fruit salads, in pies and crumbles or as a complement to oily fish. 

Ginsters Limited Edition Slice

Combining two of the West Country’s proudest traditions of pastry and cider, this new limited edition snack will have even the purist of Cornish pasty connoisseurs praising the Gods to high heaven. It combines British chicken, leek, Cornish cider, onions and wholegrain mustard in a Westcountry double cream sauce, wrapped in light puff pastry. 

£1.69 in Waitrose

Ben & Jerry's Special Edition

Ben & Jerry's are celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Bob Marley's Legend album with this new tasty tribute: 'Satisfy My Bowl'. It's a groovy mix of banana ice cream with caramel and cookie swirls and chocolatey peace signs. In partnership with the 1Love Foundation, this flavour will help to fund a youth empowerment programme in Jamaica, supporting Bob's vision for a fairer world. Music to your ears and your taste buds. I love the name, I love the flavours, and I love the inspiration behind it. 

Currently £2.24 in Tesco

Limited Edition Bubbles of Joy

For those of you who like your chocolate creamy and white, this one is for you. Cadbury have launched a new limited edition 'Bubbles of Joy' in white chocolate. I'm not sure whether this will replace their limited edition chocolate orange variant of the same range. The Cadbury mousses are less bubbly that the Aero mousses, but they're creamier and feel more indulgent. 

Kallo Milk Chocolate Corn Cake

This summer, Kallø is offering a new edition to its Corn Cake range with the launch of new Belgian Milk Chocolate Corn Cakes. At only 78 calories per corn cake these treats will most likely appeal to those who like a healthy snack. They also offer a great entrance to the world of corn cakes for those who believe that they are rabbit food!
Kallø Belgian Milk Chocolate Corn Cakes are available in Waitrose now.

Fresh Quorn Pasta

Meat alternative brand Quorn has expanded its Everyday range with the launch of its first two lines of fresh filled pasta. New Quorn meat-free ravioli and chorizo and mozzarella girasoli are both available in 250g packs. Both new varieties feature Quorn’s meat-free mince – made from mycoprotein – combined with a Bolognese sauce in the ravioli variant and a spicy chorizo seasoning with tomato and mozzarella cheese in the girasoli. Girasoli is a circular and flat filled pasta named after the Italian word for “sunflower”, due to the pasta’s appearance.

£2. 49 each in Asda

Reese's Sticks

Reese's Sticks are wafers filled with peanut butter and covered in milk chocolate. In the US, they are sold in pairs, similar to  our Twix and two finger Kit Kat bars. I spotted this packet of mini unwrapped sticks in Asda and just had to buy them because I love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate.






£2.30 in Asda

Limited Edition: M&Ms Mega

Each individual M&M's Mega is 3x bigger (by weight) than a standard M&M's Chocolate. That means 3x the pleasure. Just don't expect so many sweets in the bag!



£1.00 in Asda

Drumstick Bon Bons

These are a round, hard, chewy type of bonbon, flavoured in the traditional drumstick raspberry and milk combination. The raspberry is quite overpowering, whilst the creamy milk is rather plain so the overall sweet leaves quite a strong raspberry aftertaste. However, their chewiness is very satisfying. The Drumstick Bonbons come in a sharing sized bag, which I spotted in a local convenience store.

M&S Gooseberry Eton Mess Fool.

A collision of two British classics. Zingy British gooseberry compote topped with a custard fool and crispy meringues. Modern fool recipes often skip the traditional custard and use whipped cream but M&S has created a rich Madagascan vanilla mousse to make this extra special. £1.50

Galaxy Duet

As if deciding which chocolate bar to buy was difficult enough... we're now given choices about how we eat it. The new and exciting Duet bar is so named because consists of two flavour combinations, both wrapped in Galaxy chocolate, giving consumers the freedom to experiment and create their own taste sensation. The two flavours can be eaten separately or combined, allowing the consumer to choose exactly how to indulge. What are those flavours? Caramel & Shortcake, and Cookies & Cream, which are trusty and fail-safe. I see potential for slightly more adventurous variants of this bar... how about coconut & strawberry, almond & cherry.....?

Spotted in the Co-op, 60p

Pip & Almond Squeezey Packs

Pip & Nut's perfectly portioned pouches of nutty butters are great for squeezing on-the-go or squirreling away for later. You can pop them into your picnic basket for freshly-made sandwiches, or stash them in your backpack for an instant snack in the great outdoors. Squeeze before a run, after the gym, or even get a peanut-butter-fix at your desk. 

They're rich and smooth and very moreish, so thank goodness they're in portion-controlled packs! They're made from roasted nuts with a sprinkling of salt so you can indulge knowing that they're really pure. Available in Peanut Butter, Coconut Almond Butter, and Almond Butter. £4.50 for a pack of 5 from Ocado.

Limited Edition: M&S Raspberry & Vanilla Rose Dessert

M&S has created the British Raspberry and Vanilla Rose Dessert, which is apparently made using a revolutionary cooking technique that's never been used outside of a Michelin-starred restaurant... until now

Marks & Spencer certainly knows how to do desserts. Its Belgian Chocolate Jaffa Sphere was sublime. And now, the high street giant is hoping to outdo itself with its latest sweet sensation - the British Raspberry and Vanilla Rose Dessert.

Don't be fooled by its somewhat simple name because M&S's latest offering is something rather special. In fact, the vanilla mousse, which comes on an all-butter sponge with a British raspberry centre, is finished with a raspberry sphere that magically spills sauce over the rest of the dessert. Thanks to the British raspberries, which are much more fruity than your average berry, the dessert is bold, punchy and super smooth. The mousse, when enjoyed with a good helping of the fruity sauce, is smooth and creamy. Thanks to the lovely vanilla perfume and afternote, it is also subtle and balances out the raspberry. If you prefer richer, chocolate desserts, this may not be to your tastes but for anyone looking for something a little lighter, it's ideal.

Cadbury Rocky Mallow Bar

Cadbury Dairy Milk’s Marvellous range has just launched a new concoction; the Rocky Mallow Bar. This new bar is a rather confused version of Rocky Road. It features an  amalgamation of fluffy pink marshmallows, strawberry jellies and shortcake biscuit pieces. Sounds like a perfect balance between crunchy and chewy.

£2.49 for 180g tablet in Ocado

Boost Bites

In need of that extra little boost? Cadbury is bringing one of its most popular brands to the chocolate bags category with the launch of Cadbury Boost Bites. The Cadbury Boost brand will now follow the likes of Cadbury Wispa and Cadbury Twirl, which have been successfully extended into the bitesize category in recent years. Boost bars consist of milk chocolate with a caramel and biscuit filling, "charged with glucose". This are little shots of energy... and deliciousness. 
£2.00, Ocado

Graze in Sainsbury's

If you follow this blog regularly, you must be a foodie. And no self-confessed foodie can be in existence without having heard of (and quite possibly sampled) the online healthy snack brand 'Graze'. Graze has been well established for quite a while now. Just in case you don't know, you subscribe to a snack selection box, which gets delivered by post every now and then, full of scrumptious and (largely) guilt free snacks. Well now the postman has been made redundant in our quest for delicious Graze snacks; a range called 'Graze Good To Go' is newly available in Sainsbury's. This is a 10-strong line up which includes flapjacks, nuts, dried fruit, crackers....
£1.20 for a beautiful box of healthy flavour.

Corned Beef is back!

Love it or hate it, corned beef is the ultimate retro food — and if you don't think you're a fan, M&S has a new product which might just change your mind.  There's now a resurgence of interest in this traditionally cured meat, which is suddenly popping up on the menu at fashionable restaurants and now in your sarnies! This one from M&S is with good quality corned beef with ploughman's pickle on soft white bread and is certain to bring waves of nostalgia...

Rose & Violet Dark Chocolate

I love flowers..... in a garden, or in a vase. Basically, I love looking at them. But put them in food and that's when I go off them. However, I love chocolate and so I thought that the fact that M&S have added rose and violet to a bar of 69% dark chocolate might make these flowery tastes a bit more bearable. No such luck; they ended up ruining my chocolate fix. Nevertheless the chocolate is good quality and the combination of flavours are well balanced. If you're a fan of rose and violet flavourings, then you will probably enjoy this bar.

Strawberries & Cream Coconut Ice

Strawberries & Cream Coconut Ice

Sweet pink and white strawberry and cream flavour coconut ice - I used to love coconut ice when I was younger but I haven't had any for years, as a result I was super excited to see this in M&S and couldn't wait to try it. It didn't disappoint at all and the added taste of strawberries and cream made this even nicer than I remembered. 
£2.00

Also in the M&S new confectionery range is this Broken Liquorice Toffee...


and these British Pudding Sweets in Lemon Meringue, Cherry Bakewell and Eton Mess flavours.

Spongebob Chews

Nickelodeon has partnered with the creators of those chewing Wham and Fruit Salad sweets to create limited edition Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and SpongeBob SquarePants chews.

Four flavours of Wham have been matched to each of the much-loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The flavours are original, strawberry, brew and sour blue raspberry. The explosive Wham recipe mirrors the power and strength of the subterranean heroes.

The SpongeBob Chews feature the original Fruit Salad flavour, with new creations including kiwi & melon, strawberry & rhubarb, and apple & blackcurrant. These flavours don't appear to be matched to SpongeBob characters like the Wham chews. 

They will be available in 180g sharing bags, priced at £1.49.

English Afternoon Tea Dessert

The other day my mother was telling me how thrilled she was that she found these new English Afternoon Tea Desserts on special offer in M&S.  The packaging describes them as almond and earl grey flavour sponge topped with a sparkling wine flavour mousse, strawberry compote, decorated with a strawberry sauce and white chocolate piece. They certainly sound intriguing, especially the sparkling wine flavour mousse.
She was looking forward to trying one that evening and I asked her to let me know what it was like.
On appearance, they look very cute and quite similar to cherry bakewells. However, I can inform you that, according to my mother (whose taste buds are pretty trustworthy), they were a disappointment. The base was soggy and the 'mousse' was more like blancmange. Taste wise, it was awful (and my mother likes earl grey). She couldn't taste any almond or earl grey and the sparkling wine flavour was cheap. The strawberry compote centre didn't make up for this lack of flavour. She did, however, like the small little piece of white chocolate on the top!
Now we understand why they were on offer!

9Bar Chia Berry

Chia seeds are popping up left, right and centre these days, and despite not being a health-freak, I find that I am positively rattling with them! I'm sure that's no bad thing; they're meant to do a world of good.....

The latest chia product that I've spotted is this new release from 9Bar. It's part of their super-seed mix range, so it contains a generous dose of sunflower, pumpkin, sesame and hemp seeds. Add in chia seed, with its high content of Omega 3s and you're looking at seriously healthy snacking! Along with all that comes the tang of juicy raspberry, plus a touch of indulgence in the shape of a luxurious carob (think chocolate) coating. 

Spotted in an independent health food store. I'll let you know if I spot it in a supermarket. 

Damson Lemonade Jelly Cubes

This is so modern it took me a while to get my head around it. Inside the pot are cubes of ready-made pink lemonade jelly, with a mixture of damson puree and cloudy lemonade poured over the top. A fun, light lunch- time pud.
£1.35 for 175g, M&S

Rude Health Granola: Coconut and Chia

Coconuts. Big, tropical, so packed with nutrients you could live off them. Chia. Tiny, Central American seeds bursting with energy. They’re an oddball couple that work together beautifully. The flesh of the coconut satisfies your taste buds and body with creaminess and good fats, whilst the chia seeds add extra bite to the crisp, nutty spelt flakes. Together they make a great granola.

£3.00 in Sainsbury's

Petite Pastry Rolls

Arden’s has revealed its new ‘Petites’ range of continental sweet biscuits that are now on sale in Waitrose. The range features bite-size waffles, florentines and pastry hearts, but these pastry rolls looked particularly interesting and unusual. I like the look of the Figgy Pastry Rolls, which seem like a fig roll wearing the wrong outfit! The chocolate pastry rolls feature a chocolate hazelnut filling, which is basically like a Nutella pain au chocolat. It's a dangerous thing that they're bite-sized though.... easy to consume one (or two) too many without noticing!
£1.49 in Waitrose

Jelly Belly Cupcakes

I haven't had a jelly bean in quite a while, but that's all about to change with the launch of these two decadent cupcake varieties from Jelly Belly. The Strawberry Jam cupcakes feature vanilla sponge cakes filled with strawberry jam and they're topped with strawberry ham flavoured frosting, strawberry jam jelly beans and yet more strawberry jam. Kind of like a cupcake version of a doughnut, I suppose. The Tutti Fruitti cupcakes again feature vanilla sponge filled with strawberry jam. Couldn't they have chosen something different to add a little more variety? These are topped with tutti fruitti flavoured frosting, tutti fruitti jelly beans and tutti fruitti sauce. They're £1.50 for a pack of 2 in Tesco.
Jelly Belly have 50 official flavours so there's huge potential for some great future products. I hope they get really imaginative!

Japple Pie

This is Yo! Sushi's second YOLO (you only live once) dish to be launched in the new 'snooze you lose' series, and it will only be available for a few weeks. Their first YOLO dish was the J-Dog (fancy Japanese version of the hot dog) which went down a storm. The Japple Pie is the Japanese take on the humble apple pie. This version, however, is far from humble. It is pretty unrecognizable as an apple pie.... and nearly unrecognizable as a desert for that matter!  The pud consists of hot apple and vanilla gyozas (crispy fried dumplings) with black sesame ice cream in a crisp waffle cone. It's topped off with raspberry crumble and is served with salted miso caramel sauce and a chocolate pocky or two (a Japanese chocolate-coated biscuit stick, similar to Mikado) But wait for it.... the salted miso caramel sauces is served in a syringe, just in case this desert is not fun enough! The miso in the caramel sauce is what makes it salty and perfectly balances what could be a sickly-sweet desert. Grab it before it melts..

Alpen Granola

Muesli brand Alpen has recently released a new line-up, branching away from muesli (but not too far away) into the realms of granola.  Their new products feature wholegrain wheat flakes, oats and crunchy baked clusters. There are three varieties: Multifruit which includes zesty blueberries, cranberries and raspberries, Multiseed which features a mixture of toasted seeds, and Raisin, Almond & Hazelnut  which needs no explanation! 
£2.99 from Ocado

Choc on Choc Biscuit Box

The quintessential British snack - but with the signature Choc on Choc twist! These are beautifully detailed solid chocolates in disguise as all your old tea-break favourites: the buttery Custard Cream, the decadent Bourbon, the fun Party Ring, the gooey Jammie Dodger, the timeless chocolate Digestive, and - just for that nostalgia hit - two of the good old Pink Wafers. Handmade from the finest Belgian milk and white chocolate, these best-selling 'biscuits' are perfect for practically any occasion, be it a special coffee morning, a glamorous dinner party, or simply as a gift that everyone will love. Just make sure people understand that they're chocolates before they dunk them in their tea! Or don't tell them and watch with wicked delight...!

£12 a box, available from some John Lewis stores.