7 Days Mini Bake Rolls Garlic

 Back in 2015 the Reluctant Taste Testers and I tried 7 Days Bake Rolls garlic flavour. And they are pretty fabulous. And tasty.

But here we have a mini version. The mini bake rolls are far smaller than the usual size which is fine, but what is not fine is that the taste seems a lot less. Maybe it was just this packet, but they weren’t very flavourful. So I would buy the regular size. 

The Chef was disappointed. He hadn’t noticed he’d bought a mini size.

Dr Oetke Ancel Bretzels d’Alsace Mini

When I was about 5 or 6 we lived in Germany and used to drive to Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westfalia fairly often, and every time we saw the Dr Oetke factory. At the time I had no idea that Bielefeld was the headquarters of this giant baking, pudding and frozen pizza company. I also had no idea that there is a seriously strange conspiracy (dating from 1994, so long after we moved away) that claims Bielefeld does not exist. It seems the conspiracy stems from the fact that nobody ever goes to Bielefeld, or knows anyone who has been there. Well... I have been there and the 300,000 people who live there must be a bit baffled by the whole thing. It’s a bit odd.

The Chef and I found this little packet of French pretzels in Carrefour outside Reims. We weren’t at all sure about buying a Dr Oetke product but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. 

Twistez vous apéros avec ancel! says the packet. These mini pretzels have a good initial taste; well, you can’t go wrong with salt, and a good crunch, but an odd metallic aftertaste and indeed middle taste too. This product is made in Alsace, using French wheat, “cleverly sprinkled with salt” (although I don’t really know what’s so clever about that) and apparently has “an authentic taste”. These last two facts according to my-french-grocery.com. And “this irresistible crispness makes happiness of all” well you can’t say better than that can you?

But not as tasty as the pretzels we’ve tried from the Co-op recently.

McVitie's Mini Cheddars

I bought several multi packs of mini Cheddars for Halloween. It's hard to resist a BOGOF and to be honest, the bags of mixed chocolate bars were very expensive - and not very full.

So in rapid succession I have tried Original, Cheese and Onion, and BBQ flavours.

Regular size Cheddars come in a packet like digestive biscuits or rich tea and are often broken at the edges or crumbled into bits. Mini Cheddars seem to be the same thickness (or thinness - why is it always thickness?) but because they are smaller in diameter they seem less prone to breakages. Not that a broken Cheddar tastes any better or worse than a whole one, but this way you get fewer crumbs. Better for eating in bed then, and that's got to be a plus.

The Original flavour mini Cheddars, oven baked, no artificial colours or flavours, and made with real cheese have the same taste as the big ones. The bite sized snack with the big cheese taste it says on the back. Actually it says this on all three flavours. But they aren't really that cheesy. In fact, I'm finding that with lots of allegedly cheesy snacks; they don't actually taste that much of cheese. It's a mystery.

Cheese and Onion flavour are really oniony. There's a good lot of cheese in the flavour too but the onion is the star. I liked these a lot but then wondered if I was breathing onion over everyone in the office all afternoon.

I think the cheese and onion combination here works a lot better than in many cheese and onion crisps which is interesting.

The BBQ flavour I tried with extreme caution because the last BBQ flavour snack I tried was just disgusting. In fact downright horrible. So I carried this little bag to and fro to work for over a week before I dared open it!

And impressively there didn't seem to be too many breakages. I think the mini size works well.

But these crunchy biscuity snacks have a delicate BBQ taste along with a good lump of cheese flavour. So quite nice. And Ruth liked the taste too. To my surprise I think I like these the best.


Quite a good combination of flavours for a multi pack. Not bad. But perhaps a little old fashioned.