October product reviews

Here’s a round-up of some of the best products i’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to this month that you might want to consider sticking in your basket…

Tesco Finest

The posh range at Tesco has been on the go for 15 years now, so the supermarket bigwigs have decided to buff it up and give the 1500 strong line a bit of a going over. I went along to the press re-launch for a nosy and came away feeling quite inspired. They’ve gone back to the roots of where they source their produce and come back with fabulous stories about the people behind them.

After watching a film about three generations of a family who run a fish smokery in Grimsby, I couldn’t wait to try their haddock. Served up on crushed potato and spinach, the flakes of delicately smoked fish were just pristine – delicious. finest* Smoked Haddock, £13 per kg

Other highlights to watch out for in the new improved range are:

• Runny scotch eggs (free range eggs and pork in a crispy crumb. The eating experience is un be liev able) £3.50
• Wild mushrooms (wonderful sauteed with a little butter and garlic and tossed through pasta) 100g £2.00
• Sweet Emerald green tomatoes (don’t let the colour put you off, these beauties are sweeeeeeet) 250g £2.00
  
• Vintage English Cheddar (intensely nutty flavour, almost like aged parmesan with those divine crystallised crunchy bits in) 250g £2.80

If you’re inclined to turn your nose up at Tesco, this range might just change your mind… Find out more here

Unearthed

These passionate foodies have a new range of goodies out for the Autumn.  I’ve tried:

They all made wonderful toppings for my home made pizzas. A small amount of fantastic ingredient can transform a meal, whether it be a bowl of pasta, a lunchtime salad or sharing platter for friends. The Jamon is fabulous wrapped around breadsticks for an easy canape.

Find these goodies along with the rest of the range at Waitrose. Some are on a 2 for £5 deal in selected branches, so it’s worth sniffing out! Check out their website for more

OXO Good Grips Cookie Press

As regular readers will know, I’m quite a big fan of this kitchen utensil range and their brand new cookie press is pretty cool. If you’re wanting to churn out batches of home made biscuits to bag up for gifts or to sell on a stall, then this is definitely one to consider.

The key here is that you’ll get evenly shaped and sized cookies which results in a more professional finish. There’s also less faff as all the cookie dough goes into the dispenser so there’s no rolling out, cutting, re-rolling etc.

You get 12 stainless steel disks with the following shapes:

• Snowflake
• Heart
• Buttercup
• Shell
• Wreath
• Tree
• Sunflower
• Daisy
• Fleur De Lis
• Bear
• Leaf
• Butterfly

It’s not out for a few months yet, it’ll be exclusively available in Lakeland from January 2014, price to be announced. I’ll be sharing the results of my baking projects with the cookie press soon!

Dunelm Cooking with Kids range

They sent me a whole pile of goodies including this Tala kids baking set which sells for £7.99. I’m a total sucker for mini baking kits, not just because the kids can use them, but also because I love things in dinky form. The diddy springform tin will be great for creating small top  tiers for celebration cakes and the teeny spatula is perfect for getting the last scraping of nutella out of the jar!

It’s also a reasonably priced gift for a child’s birthday if you need inspiration for the never ending party invitations that get stuck to the fridge.

Check out the full range of kids bakeware here>>

Thanks to everyone for sending samples for me to review. I have not been paid to write this blog post and these are my honest views on the products