HUGE Raisins and Nuts!! (Dorset Cereals Fruit, Nuts & Seeds)

Member Name: MrsLim

Product:	Dorset Cereals Fruit, Nuts & Seeds
Date:	11/06/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clean taste and good ratio of whole-grain and nuts and fruit

Disadvantages: Quite pricey

I'm not a huge cereal fan but then one day, whilst shopping at my local Co-Op, I spotted this rather posh looking cereal. The price was nearly £3. Wow, I thought, pricey, it must be good! Yes, I'm a sucker for "if it's expensive, it must be good" so I bought some. I haven't looked at an Alpen box since...

Packaging:

The fruit, nuts and seeds cereal is in an earthy brown box with a cut out window, shaped like a stalk with leaves where you can see into the box and see the cereal itself. Unconventional to other cereal boxes, the box measures 230mm x 115mm - another indication of the Dorset Cereal company attempting to carve a distinctive niche in the cereal market for itself. The box contains 750g of cereal.

Ingredients:

The cereal contains Chilean flame raisins, apricots, sultanas, banana, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, blanched flaked almonds, whole hazelnuts and multi-grain flakes. On the front of the packaging, the cereal boasts that it has 45% fruit, nuts and seeds, and that, unlike other muesli-type cereal, it contains no cereal "dust".

Taste Test:

On initial eyeing up, it does look a lot more appetising than some of the other branded cereals and mueslis. I can physically see the whole hazelnuts, huge raisins and large multi-grain flakes. I think this has a lot to do with it having no cereal "dust" and that in turn makes it appear very natural and very clean because you can see each individual ingredient.

I usually have my cereal with milk but unlike other cereals, I can leave this cereal in the milk for a good 3 minutes without any of it going soggy! That's amazing in my book!

Regarding the taste, I personally think the cereal tastes very clean and not at all artificial. I can taste each individual ingredient and I think the high fruit, nuts and seeds content in this cereal helps with this. The other branded cereals have a low fruit, nuts and seeds content and because of this, I can usually taste a lot of whole-grain flakes, which in turn dries my mouth and everything just tastes like cardboard. This cereal is different - the fruit gives that extra juiciness and tanginess to the cereal, the nuts and seeds the added crunch and texture, and you have just enough whole-grain flakes to help clean the palette for the next mouth full.

Endurance Test:

A small bowl of this keeps me in play for the whole morning and I'm never starving by the time I get to lunch. The box can usually last me for 2 weeks, so, although it's quite pricey, it does last for a decent amount of time. All of this and you can even boast that its healthy!

Overall:

Excellent tasting cereal, best I've ever tasted. I'm going to knock a star off this because of the price but regardless, it is worth every penny!

Summary: Great tasting cereal but a bit pricey!