Today's review is part two of the snacks I was sent to review by Real Handful, makers of deliciously nutritious snacks with "unruly flavours". I've already reviewed their Sea Salt Caremello and Choc Orange bars, but another addition to their range are these new varieties of Fruit & Nut mixes, in both Strawberry and Mint Choc Chip varieties.
I started with " Strawberry Stomp", which contains a mix of almonds, strawberry flavour raisins, juice infused strawberries and sunflower seeds. It's an interesting mix because you don't often find dried strawberries in bagged snacks. Opening the pack there was certainly a strong strawberry "jammy" aroma...it was very fruity!
At first I was a bit unsure as I've never had a bag of fruit and nuts like this, my tastebuds were a little confused because raisins shouldn't taste of strawberry! But after tucking in I really started to enjoy them, it's a different taste from the norm and actually nicer than plain raisins, which can be quite boring unless coated in chocolate or yoghurt. The plain dried strawberries are also very nice, definitely quite jammy tasting, whilst the almonds and seeds bring some savoury nutty elements to the mix. All in all, this is a very interesting mix of fruity and savoury and far from boring! 8 out of 10.
The " Mint Choc Chipper" mix is the one I was most looking forward to, because...chocolate! The bag contains a mix of peanuts, mint flavour raisins, dark chocolate and pumpkin seeds. Oddly the chocolate isn't mint flavoured, but I guess the theme here is unruly flavours so nothing is as you'd expect! Again, this is a nice mix and the mint flavour does elevate the raisins from tasting boring, whilst the dark chocolate brings a rich sweetness that goes well with the nuts and seeds. Definitely not a boring snack and still pretty healthy! 8 out of 10.
Overall, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with these new flavours from Real Handful. They're interesting whilst being healthy, giving you a nice mix of fruity and savoury flavours. There's also a Blood Orange Burst variety that I spotted in Sainsbury's recently, so keep your eyes out for that.
Available from Ocado.com, Holland and Barrett & Sainsbury's, plus Real Handful's website.
For more info see: http://www.realhandful.com.