I Askey's for Chocolate not Strawberry! (Askeys Treat! Milk Chocolate Sauce)

Member Name: stephbond89

Product:	Askeys Treat! Milk Chocolate Sauce
Date:	13/10/09 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Yummy, allows you to be creative!

Disadvantages: The packaging could be better!

Askeys "Treat" Chocolate Flavour dessert Sauce

About Askeys:
Most of you will have heard of Askeys at some point, even if you haven't realised it.
Their most famous products are their sauces, which come in a range of flavours:
Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, Strawberry, Raspberry & Toffee, as well as the great product "Crackin' It" which comes in Chocolate and Toffee flavours, this is a wonderful product, which sets hard when put onto a cold substance like ice cream, and crunches when you bite into it...yum!!
As well as their sauces, Askey's also make a range of brandy snap baskets, biscuit baskets, luxury fans & Cafe curls all great for making wonderful deserts and sprucing just a plain old ice cream up!
Not only do Askey's make all of the above fabulous products, but they also produce a "Family Range", which consists of ice cream cones and sprinkles, which you can use at home to make your ice creams that little bit more exciting, or even let the kids use to decorate their own desserts!

Askey's is by no means a new company, and in fact was founded in 1910 almost 100 years ago, in London by Lauren Tedeschi, bringing the ice cream cone to the UK. Since 1910, the company has expanded immensely, from that small shop on Kensal Road, London!

How do I use it?

Askey's Treat Chocolate Flavour dessert sauce is very simple to use, and really makes the difference to any dessert!
It comes in a squeezy bottle, which makes using the sauce very easy. Just simply hold the bottle over your dessert, and squeeze as much or as little over it as you like!

And it doesn't stop at ice cream!

How about making a fondue type dessert, putting the chocolate sauce in a bowl on the table and cutting up Strawberry's, marsh mellows, banana, or any other fruit or treat you love, popping them onto a small stick and then helping yourself dipping each one in the chocolate sauce! Kids will love it...and so will you adults too!

Or, banana split is delicious made with this sauce, all you do is cut your banana in half, surround with cream (or ice cream if you wish), and squeeze chocolate sauce all over it, and top with Askey's sprinkles!

Askey's chocolate sauce is also gorgeous on pancakes instead of sugar or lemon, not particularly healthy, but delicious none the less!

You can even put it with chicken, this is not something I have tried, but I know of people who have tried this and find it absolutely delightful (I am slightly dubious myself!) but here is the recipe for all you budding Heston Blumenthal's out there...

Heat oil, and cook garlic. Add chicken to this and brown off. Remove the chicken and place to one side. In the fat which is left over, cook onion, green pepper and tomato over a low heat for around 10 minutes. To this add chilli powder, mixing well.
Add seasonings to this, simmer covered for 30 minutes.
Add a good squirt of chocolate sauce, and stir. Pop the chicken back into the mixture, covering in the sauce, and then bake in an oven proof dish on high heat for an hour, or until the chicken is tender.

So many ideas of how to use the sauce!!!!


Nutrition:

Ingredients: Invert Sugar Syrup, Milk Chocolate Crumb (Milk, Sugar, Cocoa Mass), Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Dried Glucose Syrup, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder.

Dietary Info:
Free From Artificial Colours
Free From Artificial Flavours
Free From Artificial Preservatives

Nutritional Data (per 100g)
Calories- 375.1kcal
Protein: 1.1g
Carbohydrates: 66.8g
Fat: 11.5g

Taste:

Well of course the taste of the product is the most important thing when choosing a product to buy, if something tastes disgusting, then there is no point in buying it, even if it is cheap, or even if it is healthy. So, here goes my taste test!

The sauce on its own is extremely sweet, and is very much like melted sugar with chocolate flavouring, it tastes very artificial and is sticky and unpleasant, but that's when it's eaten on its own, and that is from an adult's point of view, my 13 year old brother sit's with a packet of it, squeezing it directly into his mouth!

When the sauce is put onto ice cream or when it is put onto something else, whatever that may be, the taste is transformed. Although still very sticky (and if you get it all over your hands or face you'll never get the stuff off!!), it tastes great and really makes a huge difference to a dessert, no matter what that dessert may be!

The chocolate sauce is very chocolaty, and the nicest chocolate sauce I have ever tasted, although I must say I prefer the toffee flavour sauce, this one is delicious!

The texture as I said is very thick and very sticky, so don't let the kids get hold of the bottle or it'll be everywhere!

I love the taste of this sauce, but I think anybody who doesn't have a particularly sweet tooth, and isn't a big sugary fan, should steer clear of this sauce, it's very sweet, and adds a lot of sweetness to whatever you put it on, wonderful if you like that kind of thing, sickly if you don't!

Definitely made for those of us with a sweet tooth!

Smell:

The smell of the sauce is pleasant, it doesn't really smell how the sauce tastes, and from the smell you wouldn't think it would be as sweet as it is. The sauce just smells like chocolate in a squeezy tube. As I said the smell is pleasant, and unlike some sauces doesn't put you off the sauce through its sickly smell.

Packaging:

The packaging for Askey's chocolate sauce is perfect for the product. It comes in a curvy plastic bottle, with a flip lid at the top, the bottle is squeezy as I have already mentioned, and you simply turn the bottle upside down, and squeeze the sauce onto your dessert.

I do have one criticism of the bottle which the sauce comes in though, with the lid been at the top of the bottle, when the sauce starts to run out, you have to turn it upside down and smack it into something to get the sauce out, or leave it upside down for an hour so the sauce slides to the bottom, I think that it would be much better if the bottle was turned the other way, with a large lid which the bottle can be stood on, like Heinz have recently done with their tomato ketchup, and how Marmite have done. This would be much better, as with the sauce been so thick, when the bottle is running low it can take ages to get some sauce out as you have to wait for it all to come back to the lid.

Other than that the packaging is great, it's appealing to look at which is something important when trying to sell a product. It certainly grabs your eye from the shelves of the supermarket, with its blue packaging. The bottle comes on its own (not in a box), and it usually up with the cake decorating items in the supermarket, so very easy to find.

The sauce doesn't have to be refrigerated when opened, which is good as it means you can just pop it into the cupboard until you need it again!

The bottles come in one size of 325g, which lasts me around about 4 months, as we don't have many desserts and is mainly used when my brother is staying over. But in 325g you get plenty of sauce, which will last around 10 desserts!

Product Quality:

The quality of Askey's Chocolate Sauce is excellent, and the sauce is certainly one of the best on the market, and is definitely the best for its price. I have had nicer sauces, but they have cost me triple the price of this sauce, and is not something I would give my kids to mess with as you can with Askey's sauce!

The product is well known and made by a reputable company, who as I said earlier have been around for almost 100 years, so we know it is a brand we can trust.

The quality of the sauce is wonderful, it's thick and milky, and doesn't give you the sense that it has been cheaply made, it isn't watery like some sauces are, and sticks to your desserts rather than just sliding to the bottom of the plate/bowl.

Value for Money:

The sauce costs around £1 and can be found in most Supermarkets:

Tesco: 91p
Asda: 91p
Sainsbury's: 98p
Waitrose: 91p

I think this is an excellent price for this sauce, you can really make a difference to your desserts with this sauce and you can make a boring old ice cream exciting and even more tasty!!! For the amount you get (around 10 servings), this works out at just under 10p per serving, depending of course on how much you use on each serving!

This is an excellent product for the small price you pay for it, and there tend to be special offers in most Supermarkets at some point of 2 for £1.20 or something like that! Especially when a new sauce comes out!

Overall Opinion:

Askey's Chocolate Sauce is the best around, whether you get the milk or dark chocolate variety. It's delicious and really does make all the difference. Kids will love to mess with it, whilst adults will love the taste of it!

If the packaging was better, (i.e. upside down), I would have given this 10/10, as it stands I will give it 9/10, but still deserving of 5 stars!!!

Everybody should try this amazing dessert sauce, and try it on a range of desserts, be experimental with the sauce, it can be used for anything!!

Summary: Yummy yummy yummy!!!