Tyrrells Popcorn: a review

First product review! Despite the blog moniker, I looove savoury snacks, and have a new obsession. Tyrrells, the beloved maker of crisps - the potato and vegetable kind, are now making proper popcorn! There IS a god, I hear youme say?! 

Instead of the daily bag of crisps, I branched out to popcorn last week along with a sandwich from Philpotts (mmm). It was not a decision I would live to regret.

There are 3 varieties of these 20g bags (that's actually a lot of the light stuff):

Lightly Sea Salted

Sour Cream & Jalapeno Chilli

Sweet & Salty

My local Philpotts only have the salted and sweet & salty so you're only getting an opinion of the two! I'd love to try the Sour Cream & Jalapeno Chilli though, if you're reading Tyrrells, hook your girl up ; )

1) Lightly Sea Salted

Salted is my favourite flavour of popcorn and the quality of this popcorn is absolutely superb; no annoying un-popped kernels at the bottom of the bag, perfectly puffed, perfectly seasoned and no nasties in there at all. In fact there are 4 ingredients: popped kernels, rapeseed oil, salt, soya lecithin. That is it. It's a bloomin' good choice too at 109kcal, 12.5g fibre and 3.3g of fat (you can have 30g per day). I'll take that with the pinch of salt. Yes it's salted and "wah wah salt causes high blood pressure", not eating enough is even worse for you, the 0.9g in this bag is definitely an acceptable level. These are delicious! GET SOME! End of discussion. 

2) Sweet & Salty

Much to the disappointment of my friends, I am not a sweet popcorn fan. It's just...no. 

Alas, I wasn't going to turn my nose up on this flavour after I had sweet/salty peanuts at the local Chinese restaurant and they were pretty darn good. Well, this popcorn is a million times tastier than the peanuts. You would be surprised at how good these are, I guess they're zinging up two sets of tastebuds with two sensations!  The popcorn in this batch was just as perfect as you'll find in the supreme salted bags (I hear they make them in small batches to make sure they puff out properly). I just daydreamed about swimming through popcorn...anyway... they're nutritionally more virtuous than their salty brother! A snip at 90kcal per bag!! Please join me in the trash can clash of ditching other <100kcal marketed snacks. For the sake of continuity: 2.8g fat, 12.0g fibre, 0.6g sodium. I know it sounds obscure but you have to giv' 'em a go. They're perfect for the person who doesn't know whether they want something sweet or something savoury; or the one who likes to slightly mix it up, think jam on buttered toast, chocolate spread on bread, ketchup on anything... See, it doesn't seem so strange now?

If that isn't reason enough, Tyrrells popcorn is 'Made in England' and they're proud of it!! It's also suitable for vegans, no artificial anything and they're gluten free! Check out their website for more details: http://www.tyrrellscrisps.co.uk/popcorn

I urge you to put down that packet of crisps and get yourself some popcorn. Besides you can be a trendsetter, crisps are so 2011. Now back to my daydream..

BANANAS!!!

 I went on an Aga cooking course with my momma last year where they made 4 meals (full english, salmon lunch, afternoon tea and roast dinner) in about 2 hours. It was incredible. Anyway I can vaguely remember a basic sponge recipe with banana and coffee. She presented 2 black bananas and a shot of espresso - two of my most hated things - and a handful of walnuts,  wasn't impressed. The cake came out and I tasted it, not to be rude, and it's possibly one of the nicest cakes I've ever eaten. Very moist, not too strong flavours but the melding of everything was soooo good. 

 So I'm one of those really fussy people when it comes to bananas, they have to only just have ripened. I like them to be firm (ooh er, Matron) and with no spots or bruises - if you can't check all the boxes Mr Banana, you need not apply to be eaten. Anybody else hate that heady banana aroma, it's just sickly and grim. Usually Mr ToothFairy will eat them until they're about black but I was bored, felt like baking and had eyed up 2 very speckled bananas by the fruit bowl. It was cake time.

Here's my thrown together recipe of things from the cupboard!

2 old bananas! - the more you add the moister the cake is.

1 egg

1 1/2 cup of plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla essence

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup butter (melted if you want it easy)

1 shot of espresso OR 2 heaped tsp instant coffee in a little bit of hot water to make a thick pourable liquid - not too syrupy though. 

Preheat the oven to 175C 

Mash the bananas in a large mixing bowl.

Add the butter, this is where melting it comes is handy as it will mix easier, and mix well. 

Chuck in the sugar and vanilla essence and mix again. 

Beat in the egg.

Now for the coffee, be careful at this stage not too pour a hot liquid in all at once as you could scramble the egg - not tasty! Add it 2 or 3 tsp at a time. Mix between additions. 

Add the flour and baking soda and mix well. At this point you could add chopped nuts to the mix for extra deliciousness.

You can pour this into a loaf tin, muffin moulds, cupcake cases or a pyrex dish like I did! 

Bang it into your oven for 25-30mins. It should be lovely and brown and shiny on top. The skewer test is okay on this but since it's a super moist cake you'll get a bit of residue on the skewer/chopstick/knife. 

I cut mine into small squares and got 12 pieces from it. 

You can put icing, glaze or frosting on them - go crazy. A buttercream frosting would work really well. So would a smear of Nutella. They're also great plain and naked with a brew! 

nom nom nom!!!

Yay! I have a food blog. Albeit one with a weird name - though not too cryptic as you get to know me through these ramblings!

As you will have guessed I like to talk about food! Many food blogs are dedicated to either reviewing restaurants or giving out recipes; but I'm hoping to do both. Plus! I'll be posting reviews of yummy products; hopefully you will give something a go too.

This has been about 3 years in the mind-making, but now I'm supposed to be studying and this is quite possibly the best kind of procrastination.