Tesco Finest Chocolate Testing Experience

Tim and I spotted this Tesco Chocolate Tasting experience for £10 the other night when we were both in a chocolatey mood, and we snapped it up. Tim is a massive dark chocolate fan, and almost died of shock when he saw an 85% cocoa chocolate in this set...

When we got home we dug into it straight away and actually took our time to try and pick out the flavours of each of the chocolates, which was actually quite interesting.

It even came with this handy pairing wheel to show you what you should drink/eat with this chocolate. I know you are all dying to know what the different chocolates were right?

1. Sao Tome 71%: Rich with warm fruity notes.
2. Peruvian 70%: Fruity with subtle red berry notes.
3. Ecuadorian 32%: Sweet and malty  with rich toffee notes.
4. Dominican Republic 85%: Vibrant and Fruity with rounded chocolate notes.
5. Madagascan 71%: Rich and roasted with subtle notes of honey. (Our Favourite)
6. Ecuadorian 74%: Floral and spicy with subtle notes of green tea.
7. Peruvian 43%: Milky with rich caramel notes.

Most of the chocolate comes in small bars, however the Sao Tome 71% was a full bar, and the Ecuadorian 32% and the Madagascan 71% come as mini 'dinner' chocolates (like you get with coffee in a restaurant).

Honestly I was impressed with every single one of these chocolates, I honestly could taste a difference with each one. Though I wouldn't go so far as to say that I could pick out the flavours mentioned above, I'll leave that to the chocolate connoisseurs. If you are looking for something a little different rather than buying your bog standard bar of chocolate then this is certainly the ticket. Tim and I really enjoyed spending time over these and trying hard to work out the flavours.

We still have a tonne of chocolate left, and plan to play a guessing game with the rest, so I'll have to let you know how that goes! 

Let me know in the comments if you have tried any of these chocolates, and what you think!

OBC #12: This Week I've...

This week has been a fairly quiet one for me, but I did get a fair amount of time to spend on doing some of my favourite things, so this is what I've been up to this week.

I've been reading...

Having seen the trailer for the movie adaptation the last time I went to the cinema, and thinking that it looked interesting, I decided to pick up the book. I have managed to read the entire thing this week, and after a very shaky start, I enjoyed it. I will be writing more about this book once I have been to see the movie, so look out for that.

I've been watching...

Some of my favourite Youtuber Gamers have been playing Alien Isolation this week, and so I decided to go back and watch the entire Alien franchise with Tim. He hadn't ever seen any of the Alien films the whole way through so it was fun watching them again with someone who had no idea what was going to happen. The Aliens for me are some of the scariest creatures in film, and watching the films again has only made me remember how much I loved them the first time.

Last week American Horror Story returned for it's fourth season, and I couldn't have been more excited. This was the first show that Tim and I managed to sit and watch through together, mainly because I normally skip ahead. However I have promised that I won't do that with this show seeing as we love watching it together so much. The season premier certainly wasn't a disappointment, with the correct amount of murder and downright weird goings on to keep us hooked. I'm already anxious to see how next week's episode is going to turn out.

I've been eating...

Tim and I found these in Tesco and they were on offer at the time, and I think we both almost died of excitement. I don't know about you, but Quality streets are some of my favourite chocolates, and the orange and strawberry cremes are by far the best. Every Christmas when there is a big tin  of these for the family to share, we always fight over the orange and strawberry cremes, but now we don't have to. To make these even more interested they have introduced a lemon creme, which in my opinion is equally as good as the other two. I'm hoping that these are not limited edition, because I will be repurchasing them again and again.

I've been playing...

I went to visit my brother yesterday and we wanted to find a game that we could play together. He has a PS4, but only one controller, so we can't really play anything on that. Then I remembered that we had loads of two player games on our old PS2, which we still have. So we plugged it in and dusted off this bad boy of a game. We all took it in turns to play, and honestly it was the most fun I have had playing a console game in a really long time. Although afterwards we all had massive headaches which we thought might have been from the resolution of the game... 

This game is actually a Facebook game, but it's actually a good one. I played this a long, long time ago, and then completely forgot about it, until one of my friends sent me a request for it this week. I started playing it again, and now I am completely addicted... I've also managed to be Tim addicted to ti

October Blogging Challenge #2: Thankful Thursday

Welcome to my first (and possibly only) Thankful Thursday post. Here's what I am thankful for this week.

Chocolate Desserts: I've been feeling a little down lately, and as such have been eating a lot of things that I shouldn't. My favourite of which has become chocolate melt in the middle puddings... So far I've had plain chocolate, chocolate orange and even a salted caramel one, seriously yummy.

Naps: Recently I haven't been sleeping well, and as such when I get home I have been taking a nap, I honestly don't know how I would cope without that extra hours napping!

Youtubers: As mentioned above, I haven't been feeling at my best recently. One of the things that has been keeping me sane, is watching videos from my favourite Youtubers. Helon Melonlady, Niki and Sammy, Jacksepticeye, Pewdiepie and Bubzvlogz. You should check them out, they always make me smile!

My Boyfriend: Tim has seriously been my rock at the moment. He knows how to take care of me and asks for nothing in return. I never thought I could have such a wonderful relationship with someone, especially after past ones. Once I get through my rough patch, I'm going to make it up to him. He is my prince, and I love him so much.

Apologies for getting a bit soppy at the end there, sorry to anyone who had to reach for a sick bucket!

Owl of Dates #1: Ice Cream and Compliments

I can't remember if I ever wrote about what I got Tim for Christmas, it was such a long time ago... Anyway, I didn't have a great lot of money to spend on him, so I thought it would be cool to make him something. After scouring pinterest for hours on end finding NOTHING of interest, I found something call a Jar of Dates. Essentially what you do is fill a jar full of ideas for dates, you can include pre-paid dates, sweets, vouchers, tickets, whatever you like. Seeing as I didn't have a great deal of money, I just put some ideas for dates in his jar. On top of that, I didn't want to put these ideas into any old jar, and that's when I stumbled across a ceramic owl in Wilkinsons, and I knew it was perfect! That's how the Owl of dates was born!

Up until this week, we hadn't actually drawn an idea out of the owl, but we were feeling like doing something together today, so Tim picked one out and this is what we got.

'Make your own chocolate bowls! Serve your favourite ice cream in the bowls, and use your favourite sweets, and sauces to add to the experience. Whilst eating your ice cream and bowls, give each other two compliments, and then give yourself a compliment'

Tim always gets very excited at the mention of chocolate, so you can imagine his delight when he saw what we would be making. ALSO instead of buying ice cream, Tim really wanted to try out my Easy Peasy Ice Cream which I wrote about last year.

So first things first, the chocolate bowls. All you'll need is a couple of bars of your preferred chocolate, some balloons, and a baking tray.

Start off by melting the chocolate in the microwave, in a plastic bowl. Do this in 10 second bursts, stirring the chocolate each time. Stop microwaving when you can stir it and the lumps begin to melt simply from the heat of the rest of the chocolate.

Place your melted chocolate into a large bowl (if you need to) and dip your balloons into the chocolate, making sure to go as far up the sides as you need to.

Then place them on a baking tray and leave them to set! You may need to repeat the above step a second time to make sure that your chocolate bowls are thick enough.

Once you are happy with them and they are set, simply pop the balloon and peel it away from the chocolate, and you are done!

Now onto the Easy Peasy Ice cream, and you only need two main ingredients for this recipe...

500ml of Double cream, and 400ml of condensed milk! It really is that basic...

Put them in a mixing bowl together, and then whisk away until the mixture thickens like the below picture, it may take a while...

Once your mixture looks like this, you can add your flavourings, sweeties, or whatever you like, just fold it in gently so as not to reverse that whisking you just did!

Tim and I don't do things by halves... and we went for a whopping THREE flavours. All we did was divide the mixture into three separate bowls and then added our flavourings, these are what we went for.

The first flavour is just for me, and it's peanut butter with chocolate chips, I have become completely obsessed with peanut butter ice cream at the moment. The second flavour is caramel, very similar to what I made when I first tried this recipe, with this we mixed the caramel in, but then added little splodges on top so you get extra caramel. The final flavour is pretty plain, but with all the sauces and treats we are going to add later, we didn't want another crazy flavour, so we just went with vanilla. 

Then believe it or not, all you have to do, is let them set in the freezer!

Now Tim and I cannot simply be happy with chocolate bowls, so we had to go crazy with sauces and toppings!

So all that was left was to build our ice cream sundaes! We couldn't help ourselves and had a scoop of each ice cream, a couple of sauces, and of course all the toppings!

That wasn't the end of our date though, we also had to give each other 2 compliments and then give ourselves one compliment! I won't make you all feel sick with our compliments to each other, but I thought I'd let you guys know my compliment to myself, and that was: 'I feel like when I actually try hard, I can achieve whatever I want'. Tim did mention how this was a bit of a back-handed compliment, however I'm not very good at complimenting myself, so I'm going to stick with that!

#BEDM 10: #100HappyDays 55-60

I have been seriously slacking on my #100happydays photos, but I simply don't find anything interesting enough happening in my life for me to post every single day, but I post when I can, and I promise I will be better!

Day 55: Tim and I went a little bit crazy in the Hotel Chocolat sale... I even wrote about it here.

Day 56: My favourite sweets ever are these from Lidl... We actually ran out a few weeks ago and everytime I look at our empty sweet bowl it makes me sad...

Day 57: This cute little Easter bunny mum got me had a lovely bow on it, and it was blue! It was almost a shame to eat it...

Day 58: My favourite yogurts were on offer meaning they made their way back into my lunch box. They are always a nice little 'pick me up' at work.

Day 59: Tim allowed me to use some of our GAME credit to buy a couple of Xbox arcade games! Haven't had a chance to sit down and play them yet... but I will!

Day 60: We bought these beautiful flowers in Morrisons to cheer me up when I was feeling a bit run down, and they certainly look lovely in our kitchen!

So there you have it, I can't believe I'm over half way through this challenge! 60 down, 40 to go, it's totally unreal.. I hope you've been enjoying it as much as I have though!

What I Bought: Hotel Chocolat

Ever since I first stepped foot in Hotel Chocolat I knew I would fall in love with it. Although despite having a deep love of their chocolate, I haven't managed to get my hands on a lot of it.

I bought Tim three lots of chocolate from there for Easter, and I ended up just wishing that I had kept them for myself! He hasn't opened any of them yet, but when he does, I will be trying some of them, whether he likes it or not.

Today we were just having a mooch around town, and decided to pop into there, mainly because they tend to give you free samples when you walk in. As soon as we walked in the door I gravitated towards their Easter stock, and I was delighted to see that they had up to 70% off some of the stock!

Tim and I simply couldn't resist picking up a few bits, and all we spend was £10.50!!! Quick Disclaimer: Despite the obvious amount of product placement, this is not a sponsored post, I just really like chocolate, and bargains!

The first thing I noticed was these gorgeous colourful Goose eggs. This is how the website describes them: '4 outstandingly delicious hollow eggs in three luscious flavours. The brown is our stunning caramel milk chocolate, the pink is a creamy strawberry white chocolate, and the yellow and purple are a simple high-cocoa white chocolate without a fruity taste– dressed up in our all-natural pastel colours for the spring season!'

Originally priced up at £13, I picked up these little babies for £3.90! I almost died of shock, when I say how much they had been knocked down.

The second thing I noticed was this totally cute nest of egglets. I actually saw this when I went to buy Tim's Easter chocolate, and I almost bought one for myself then. Here's the websites description: 'A springtime find of freshly laid pastel egglets in white chocolate - a yellow egglet of runny caramel, a pink one of raspberry ganache, and a blue egglet filled with sumptuous praline, all hidden in a 50% milk chocolate nest with crispy rice pieces.'

Originally price up at £13, this one was also knocked down to £3.90! Such a bargain, especially seeing as the nest is SOLID chocolate. This one Tim and I intend to share... even though I can see myself eating it all by myself!

The final thing we picked up was these cute Eggs and soldiers. How could we resist something so fun and different! Tim actually chose these for himself, but I have been assured that I can try one of the White Chocolate soldiers. This is what the website says about this one: '4 Milk chocolate dippy eggs filled with white chocolate truffle, accompanied by a troop of 4 praline-filled white chocolate soldiers, already dipped with a dollop of creamy chocolate yolk.'

This one was originally £7.50 and it was reduced to £2.25! Such a bargain, and I cannot wait to steal some of this from Tim.

So if all this looks very tempting to you, then get your butt over to the Hotel Chocolat website and check it out! I am literally tying myself down right now so that I can't go buy more... OH SO TEMPTING! 

Here are a few of my other picks from this sale.

This is the Bunny in a muddle. Originally priced at £13, reduced to £3.90, this would be the perfect post Easter, Easter gift for anyone that you may or may not have forgotten to get an Easter gift for.

How could anyone resist these cute chocolate chics and bunnies? This one is call the Chirp Egg, originally priced at £7.00, this was reduced to a whopping £2.10! I'd snap this up before they all disappear.

This one is an interesting one, The Egg Sandwich it's a cross between an Easter egg, and their normal chocolate bars that they fill with all manner of tempting goodies. Originally priced at £8.50, you can pick this baby up for half price, £4.25!

I suggest that you all go snap these delectable delights before they are long gone! Especially if you have never tried Hotel Chocolat and you desperately want to!

Easy Peasy Ice Cream!

I have always wanted to make my own ice cream, but I always thought you needed a fancy ice cream maker, and therefore have always been put off. I actually stumbled upon this blog post, from 'A Life of Geekery', and knew that I had to try it out straight away!

It's so simple to make, all you need is:

500ml Double Cream
400ml Condensed Milk

Also your choice of ingredients to put in it. I chose to put caramel and pieces of my favourite chocolate bars, Snickers!

Now to make the ice cream, just combine the cream and condensed milk in a bowl, and whisk until the mixture thickens. Then carefully fold in your chosen ingredients/sweeties. Finally place the mixture into a container and place in the freezer for about twelve hours.

As you can see from the picture above, instead of putting my caramel in the mixture, I marbled it throughout, mainly because I thought it looked pretty. My ice cream was set in 8 hours, and here's what it looks like:

I put a healthy dollop of the left over caramel on top, and it was good to go! A couple of things I would like to mention. Firstly, it is very sweet. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that it's sweet, but it may be too sweet for others. This can be remedied by using less condensed milk. Secondly, it's very hard to dish up straight from the freezer. I recommend that you remove it 10/15 minutes before you want to serve it. Other than that I was seriously blown away at how amazing this recipe is!

If you give it a go, feel free to tweet me pictures of your creations. I'd love to see them!

Devilishly Delicious Desserts! Pot au Chocolat!

I am super excited to bring you this series of reviews, you have no idea how long I have been waiting to get these done! A few weeks ago I was contacted by Devilishly Delicious Desserts about the possibility of doing a product review for them. Devilishly Delicious Desserts offers a range of restaurant quality desserts that are quick and simple to make. As well as this all of their desserts are gluten free and suitable for vegetarians, and free of artificial colours and flavourings, which is brilliant news!

Anyway a few weeks later I received this beautiful box in the post:

I was surprised, and overjoyed to see that I had been sent their entire range of desserts, but not only that, they sent me some things I might need during my test run! Such as:

 Pots to actually put the desserts in!

AND a kitchen blowtorch to top the Creme Brulee!

I must admit I did have a little giggle to myself when I saw that I got a blow torch! I mean come on, me and a blow torch, is it a good idea? Probably not...

Anyway onto the range. Devilishly Delicious currently makes four desserts which are: Pot au Chocolat, Panna Cotta, Sicilian Lemon Pot, and Creme Brulee. As well as this they make four flavours of Coulis: Mango, Raspberry, Sour Cherry and Green Apple. As mentioned above I was sent all four of the desserts to review, and I also got two Coulis flavours, Raspberry and Sour Cherry, which I look forward to trying!

So instead of doing a massively lengthy post with all the desserts and the coulis, I thought I would review them one by one in a series! Also I'm going to be doing a mini recipe with each one! This week I am trying their 'Pot au Chocolat'.

 Look how pretty the packaging is!

The packaging states that each carton makes four pots, so I decided to make two plain chocolate pots and two with added extras! The directions given on the packaging are simply:

1. Pour into a saucepan.
2. Bring to the boil, stirring regularly.
3. Pour into heat resistant pots.
4. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours

 This is how the mixture looks straight out of the carton.

Simple enough right? I tackled these stages pretty well and so decided to attempt something a little more difficult to go with two of the pots. So two of my pots are Caramel Pecan Chocolate Pots. I made them by:

1. Chopping some pecans and adding to 1/2 carton of the heated chocolate mixture.
2. Making Caramel (See this Delia Smith recipe)
3. Pouring half the pecan and chocolate into pots, added a dollop of caramel, and then filling with the rest of the pecan and chocolate mixture.

Simple, simple, simple! Here is how they looked before going into the fridge:

 The top two are the plain ones, and the bottom two are the pecan and caramel pots!

I know you are all dying to know how they tasted!

 After an hour in the fridge!

This one looks glossy because of the caramel!

These chocolate pots are super yummy, but also super rich! I was really pleased that they weren't too sweet like you find a lot of chocolate deserts can be, but they retained some of the bitterness that chocolate should have. I can imagine that these chocolate pots would be perfect with some fresh raspberries and a splattering of the Raspberry Coulis. I am ashamed to say that my Pecan and Caramel pots didn't turn out the way I wanted them too, despite the recipe saying that the caramel would not set, it did. Meaning I had random discs of caramel on the bottom and a watery caramel syrup throughout. This however did not hinder the taste and they were really scrummy! The pecans added a nice crunchy texture to the smooth chocolate, and I would definitely make them again. 

All in all I was very pleased with the 'Pot au Chocolat', it's lovely on it's own, but also easy to incorporate/experiment with to make other desserts! They really were as easy to make as it said on the packaging, these desserts are literally fool proof! The only thing I had a problem with was getting the chocolate mixture out of the carton. I found that there was a fair bit of mixture left in the carton that I simply couldn't squeeze out, but I definitely wouldn't let that stop me buying them!

So there you have it, review number 1 of my Devilishly Delicious series! Please check out the Devilishly Delicious Desserts website and for a list of stockist please go here. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for my next review! I'd love to know what your thoughts are on this range, also let me know what dessert you would try from the range in the comments!