NEW! Fresh Twix Cookies (Tesco)

Who doesn't love a Twix? I know they're one of the first to go in our Celebrations tubs (after the Teasers but strangely before the Galaxy). Anyway, Twix's classic combination of biscuit, chocolate and caramel is well loved - they're Millionaire's shortbread by another name really I guess! You guys know how much I appreciate a Twix variation too, having already reviewed the White Chocolate Twix, Peanut Butter Twix, Cappuccino Twix, Twix Egg, Twix Tops as well as the recent Twix Cheesecake! 

I love the times of year when Tesco's bakery changes stock, although the Red Velvet Muffins that came out of last season's selection were pretty pathetic. I kept checking the Tesco website after Christmas to see what would appear, until one day when I squealed after spotting these new Twix cookies! Last year Tesco brought out Mars Cookies (good but nothing special) and Maltesers ones (which I still haven't got round to trying), but I just couldn't wait to get my grubby paws on these spanking new cookies. 

Every day I tried both Tescos in Hereford (well, poor Bert got sent a fair few times) and then also the one in Worcester when I returned to uni. Alas, everyday I was met with bitter disappointment. That was until yesterday, when having just completed the presentation (that's been the cause of far too much stress) I detoured via the Hereford city centre supermarket on the off chance that my luck was in. After all, the presentation had gone well.

I spotted the fresh Oat & Raisin, Chocolate, White Chocolate, Maltesers, Bounty, Galaxy cookies.. followed by a row of TWIX COOKIES! Hurrah! Come to me oh Bakery delights! 

"Cookie with caramel filling and milk chocolate pieces."

The bag of four cookies cost £1.35 -which is currently more expensive than their finest range- but I didn't mind, they were mine at last!

Oh. They're awfully thin aren't they? Or is that me just being greedy? Some had more chocolate chips than others, but I could see the darker splodge in the centre of each where I imagined the caramel to be. 

The cookies had that delightfully soft and chewy quality that you can only get from the fresh varieties. Flavour wise the plain cookie was sweet but indifferent to a normal plain cookie. Ok, I know I'm chocolate obsessed, but there definitely wasn't enough chocolate in these bad boys to label them Twix. To be honest, I couldn't really taste the chocolate at all! Humf, Surely they should have been covered in chocolate?! The caramel in the middle wasn't as gooey as the packet suggested either, but luckily I had a brainwave.... Microwave to the rescue!

Once warmed for 10-20 seconds, the butteriness of the cookie shone through and the caramel transformed into something gooey and delicious. That's more like it! Even the chocolate became more noticeable having been melted. Much better. 

I'm not sure that these are really Twix cookies, after all there's barely any chocolate and the cookies lack the signature crunch of Twix's shortbread base. It seems to be a very clever marketing ploy to sell chocolate chip cookies with a bit of caramel -but it works! They're perhaps not as game changing as I'd like them to be, but they're still scrummy. In fact I'll be having one warmed up for dessert tonight with salted caramel ice cream -sounds good right?

7/10

NEW! Twix Cheesecake (Iceland)

Does the idea of a Twix cheesecake excite you as much as it did me? Seriously now, can you think of anything yummier? 

I just didn't expect it to originate from Iceland (the store not the country), and I felt myself wishing that M&S or Waitrose had thought of it first -not that they would pay for the branding I'm sure. Whilst I am certainly no food snob, I somehow baulked at the idea of spending £3 on a frozen cheesecake from the discount retailer when it first made its way into stores a few weeks ago. To make matters worse, I then read a-review-a-day's dispassionate review and decided to give it a miss for a while. Like a sign from the gods it came on offer last week, and I gave myself a good kick up the bum -£2 for 8 servings of cheesecake is surely a veritable bargain! 

"Creamy cheesecake & caramel, topped with chocolate sauce and chocolate covered biscuits"

I realised when I picked it up that in fact the cheesecake was made by frozen dessert specialists Coppenrath & Wiese, which reassured me as their treats are normally pretty good. I also came to the conclusion that one eighth of a 450g dessert would equate to a spoonful sized portion -I'm not sure why they even suggest such ridiculousness!

I cut into the cheesecake whilst still frozen so that the two of us could save the rest for another day. It  turned out to be a pretty hard and messy job, during which my other half received an earful for watching over me do it and telling me not to cut my fingers off -thanks for that dear.

The bumpy chocolate top was chock-full of biscuity balls, and I was happy to find that it was adequately thick and not just a paltry smattering on top. In the middle sat the cheesecake -complete with plenty of visible caramel sauce pockets- and right at the bottom was (of course) the biscuit base. Annoyingly, said bottom was on the loose side, which meant that was too crumbly to plate up neatly.

Yum yum yum. The chocolate was silky, and although certainly not up to Gu ganache standards, was deliciously comforting. There's nothing worse than a soggy biscuit (no giggling lads!), and fortunately Coppenrath & Wiese have managed to keep their balls intact (!) thereby offering a satisfying crunch and injection of Twix-ness. The cheesecake in the middle was exactly what I expected from the frozen variety -slightly stodgier than fresh but still creamy and rich. I welcomed the ample pockets of caramel sauce which were also tasty and added an extra element of both flavour and texture into the dessert. The only real problem came from that pesky base; which refused to stay together and meant I was left with what looked like a beach scene in my bowl -yes I ended up licking the crumbs, don't judge me! 

This frozen Twix cheesecake will never beat a fresh version -or of course homemade- but Coppenrath & Weise have nevertheless made a pretty decent attempt at translating one of my favourite chocolate bars into a dessert. I'm left wondering what the new Mars Dessert Bar and Maltesers Pavlova taste like... 
9/10

NEW! Twix Tops (Poundstretcher)

Do you remember Twix Tops? Chances are that if you don't, you either weren't born/were very young when they were around or you've forgotten them in their 11 year absence. According to the font of all knowledge -Wikipedia- they had a relatively short stay in the UK between 1999 and 2005 and have only been available on the continent since them. A photo on Instagram recently showed them in the UK, and I felt the nostalgic need to hunt them down.

I remember thinking that they were pretty great as a teenager, and so I was excited to try them again as an adult. I bought them from poundstretcher for £1 proudly displaying the 'new' badge, but as I can't read Arabic I'm unsure as to where they originated. 

The pack contained 10 individually wrapped biscuits. They were smaller than I remember, but isn't that always the case? I wasn't too bothered, because at 10p each they still represented seemingly good value for money. 

They looked the same as I remembered -apart from the size- but would they taste as good? 

The simple answer is no. The biscuit was plain and lacked the buttery, crumbly texture that is characteristic of a Twix (I should know, I had the white chocolate version only yesterday!). The chocolate barely covered the caramel topping, and was so thin that I could barely taste it. Caramel, surely you can save the day? Sadly not, again it was in such meagre amounts that it was just disappointing. 

The proportions are all wrong in the Twix Tops and now I can understand why they went AWOL in the first place. If you want a mostly biscuit bar with chocolate and caramel then stick with a rocky -these aren't worth the look in. 

4/10

Twix Egg (American Fizz)

Happy Easter! I hope you're having a super day, full of family and chocolate! My sister has come to stay so there's just the four of us (including the dog), but rest assured that we'll be eating more than our fair share of chocolate...

A quick little review today, and another Twix product to share with you. I bought this from American Fizz last month as I thought it looked quite sweet. It's just an Easter-Egg shaped Twix, but we don't have anything similar this side of the pond, only the caramel/truffle filled small 3D eggs. 

The caramel layer was thinner than you'd get in the normal finger format, but tasted indifferent to the UK version. I couldn't notice any change between our biscuit and their 'cookie' base either. The major difference came from the quality of the chocolate; it was noticeably waxier and sweeter than its British cousin. 

I liked the idea of the Twix egg, and again it's a shame that Mars haven't deemed us Brits worthy of its release in the UK. Wrap it in some better tasting chocolate and I think that they'd be popular here too!

6/10

Limited Edition Cappuccino Twix (Home Bargains)

I've finally completed my Twix Trinity! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may recall my New Year's Eve white chocolate Twix review, when I mentioned that I was desperate to try the fabled Cappuccino version. Well, the time has come my lovelies, because One Treat found the holy grail this week -in Home Bargains of all places! 

I'm not afraid to admit that the very next day I braved an hour of traffic (my city is infamous for it's ease to gridlock) just so that I could find one for myself. I searched the till-points -where One Treat found hers- but had no luck, so continued to trawl the aisles until I found a few tucked away amongst the Christmas (!) sweets. Priced at just 25p each, I thought I'd stock up and buy five... It wasn't until I got home that I realised that they were on offer -five for £1, bargain!  

I think these bars are German, although the packet also displays contact addresses for France, Belgium and the Netherlands, so who knows? For some reason, I stupidly expected them to be encased in white chocolate, but of course they've used the normal milk variety. I can't help but think it would have been nice if Mars had used white chocolate as it makes such a delicious pairing with coffee.

The fingers looked smaller than usual, although it's only 4g smaller than a UK bar, and might just be blamed on my consumption of multiple American chocolate bars recently. The biscuit snapped well, and the caramel was gloriously oozy and soft. 

The components all tasted the same as a standard British Twix, until -BAM!- I was hit with a pleasant coffee flavour. It's strength meant it lingered in the mouth and worked so well with each of the chocolate, biscuit and caramel layers. The bar was perfectly balanced with a taste reminiscent of Mocha. 

Yummy, yummy, yummy! I have no idea why this hasn't been released in the UK, after all recent reports show that we're tea drinkers in decline and spend more time in coffee shops than ever before. I'm so glad I bought so many, and I recommend that you hot-foot it over to your local Home Bargains store pronto and do the same before they disappear again!

Although the Cappuccino version doesn't beat the white chocolate or peanut butter editions it certainly sits as a worthy comrade in the Twix Trilogy!

Can you hear us Mars? Release it here too!

10/10

White Chocolate Twix (99p Stores)

Happy New Years Eve Ladies and Gents, I hope you all have a fabulous day and evening celebrating the end of 2015. It seems only right to finish the year with a chocolate-y review! 

So, our little City has its own Saturday market complete with a foodie 'Del Boy.' Each week he pitches up, and you never know what he's going to stock. Some weeks its Lindt chocolate, others its just broken biscuits and out-of-date Easter Eggs. About a year ago though, I hit the jackpot and bought from him some continental chocolate bars that we don't have in the UK -White Chocolate Twixs. I greedily ate my hoard, and went back for more but, alas, he hasn't stocked them since. I've searched online, and short of ordering a case from Amazon (yes I'm a chocoholic but I'm not that bad, and I get bored easily) I was out of luck. 

Until.. I found a single five-pack of the Holy Grail in the 99p store. I think I might've done a little jig right there in the shop, and I bought them quickly before anyone snatched them from my loving embrace. 

I wasn't sure if the rose-tinted spectacles had cast their bewitching spell on the bars, and given my recent affair with the American Peanut Butter Twix I didn't know if I'd still feel the same way about the white chocolate version after our lengthy time apart. 

I needn't have worried. The combination of crunchy biscuit, smooth caramel and creamy white chocolate was a winner. Each component was perfectly executed which led to an indulgent bar that left me wanting more. 

The different varieties of Twix that I've tried recently have been superb, and I'm quite perturbed that us Brits tend to luck-out when it comes to new flavours. I'm keeping an eager-eye out for the Cappuccino Twix that I've been dying to try since Kev from Kev's Snack Reviews spotted it earlier this year! If you see any whilst out-and-about please give me the heads up as to where I might purchase one (or more!).

10/10

Peanut Butter Twix (49p at B&M Bargains)

Can you imagine my excitement as a peanut-butter-mad-bargain-hunting-chocoholic when I found this American Peanut Butter Twix sat on the shelf in B&M bargains priced at a paltry 49p? It made my week (yes I'm that sad!) but I've wanted to try this bar for so long!

I was possibly even more excited when I read on the packet that it contains real peanut butter- nothing else compares to the real deal!

I opened the Twix and it looked near on identical to our British standard Twix. When I snapped it in half however, there was a solid peanut butter layer where the caramel normally sits. It was a similar firm consistency to the centre of a Reese's PB cup (or tree)

Flavour wise, the peanut butter was powerful, and at first I thought it overwhelmed the other components, but as I became accustomed to the nuttiness I could appreciate how well balanced it truly was. The chocolate was better quality than Reese's and the biscuit layer added a wonderful crunch which meant that altogether the three tiers worked in perfect harmony.

I adored the peanut butter Twix ,so i quick-stepped it back to B&M to stock up before they disappear....

10/10