Hiya!
Today we have another episode of Eating in England, because why not!
Last week we had a look at a cheap and horrible Polish chocolate bar which was for some reason licensed by Rubiks.
This time I wanted to try something inherently English and with that, something I have never eaten but have always been curious about…..Kendal mint cake!
Despite the fact it is called a cake, it contains no flour, eggs or milk nor does it even taste or look like cake, it is not remotely cake as you would think of it at all so it’s a bit of a lie really.
Still, Kendal mint cake is an extremely old English recipe so maybe cake has just taken on a new meaning today or now has less meanings than it used to.
The first mint cake was made in Kendal, a town in England, and this particular brand I have for you today is one of the first, Romney’s, which have been going since the early 1900’s.
I have a feeling not much has changed recipe wise in all those years as there is a grand total of 4 ingredients in their standard bars.
Gotta respect that!
This brand of mint cake was also the first mint cake carried to the top of the first ever successful journey to the top of Mount Everest.
As you could tell by the ingredients, these cakes are for the most part sugar so they would keep energy high without being very heavy and they wouldn’t go bad if you’re expecting to be there a while.
So, now you know a little about it, let me show you what I found.
I didn’t know there was more than one type of Kendal mint cake so when I saw all these I had to get them, for experimentation purposes of course.
We have white, brown and chocolate covered.
You would think chocolate covered would be the brown one but nope, so I am intrigued.
The chocolate covered cake comes in a slightly bigger cardboard box while the others just come in a wrapper like a chocolate bar though they are square rather than in little rectangle bars.
Let’s have a look at the white, or I guess regular mint cake.
It’s so white and sparkly like a compacted slice of snow!
Each bar has 6 good sized pieces to it which are easily snapped off for snaffling.
Lets have a taste.
Wow, very sugary as you would expect, refreshingly minty, nice and smooth, even a little chewy in some places.
You couldn’t eat more than a couple of pieces even with quite a sweet tooth as it’s pretty much pure sugar but very nice indeed.
Now lets have a look at the brown, the ingredients are the same apart from that they have specified white sugar was used in the white one.
Maybe this one is made with brown sugar?
Well, it’s certainly brown.
It’s a really nice caramel color really.
Actually, lets compare the white and brown to really see the color difference.
I wonder if it is the same as white mint cake except cooked a bit longer so it goes brown..maybe specifying white sugar on the white version is a bit of a red herring!
Something I didn’t show you on the white bar was the very interesting underside.
Forgive my comparison but it kind of looks like a spread of mold though in actuality, the lighter parts are chewier and creamier than the rest of the bar, so it’s delicious mouldy looking stuff, great for practical jokes I reckon!
I would love to know how they do it and if the lighter parts are a different mix dropped in or if it’s just natural!
So what is the difference taste wise?
Hmmm, it tastes relatively the same as the white actually, some times though, there is a deliciously caramely, toffee type undertone, mmmmmmm, so good.
Last but not least we have the big daddy, chocolate covered mint cake!
Now this is one chunky beast!
Each piece is about the size of four rectangles of the small bars, in two stacks of two, in fact they are about the size of a small brownie each.
Each piece is like a box of after eight mints where one of the mints got really hungry and ate all of the other mints.
The mint that remained would look like a piece of this.
Inside it is white just like the regular stuff so lets eat and find out what it’s like.
The chocolate is that insanely dark type which would be way too bitter to bare by its self but then of course the giant hunk of sugar goodness kicks in to balance it all out.
It’s not really the kind of chocolate I can enjoy much but it works quite well in this instance.
The mint cake is double the thickness on this bar and the chocolate is a very thin layer so you don’t get overwhelmed by the coating.
All in all I liked them all, I love mint and I love chocolate so I thought the chocolate covered one might be my favorite but my favorite is actually the brown type.
I like how it has another layer to it with the caramel flavor which is subtle but delicious, strangely caramel and mint go really well.
This weeks Eating in England hasn’t been bad at all thankfully.
I would say it’s not a surprise since a company couldn’t be going THAT long with a horrible product but……….. I did eat that Tootsie Roll.
