| Product: |
Sainsburys Taste The Difference Lemon Drizzle Cake |
| Date: |
12/09/08 (94 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: It's delicious!
Disadvantages: It's expensive!
Not too many years ago, the only way you could make a choice in quality in what you bought in the supermarkets was to choose between them. These days, all of the supermarkets have a range of quality and price within a single store. At the lower end is Tesco Value and Sainsburys Basics ranges. In the middle are the standard product ranges and at the higher end, things like Tesco Finest, Sainsburys Taste the Difference and, well, pretty much the whole of M&S.
In the case of Sainsburys, the premise behind their Taste the Difference range is that it uses ingredients which have been specially selected to give the best quality and taste. Admittedly, you have to spend a little more to get this kind of quality, but Sainsburys hope that the benefits of doing so will be in the name of the range and that you really will be able to taste the difference.
From the minute you see the box on the shelf, what you see is very much what you get. Its a box quite literally covered in pictures of lemons and lemon peel. A small cut out gives you a tantalising glimpse of a cake topped with the white drizzle, rendered slightly off white by the caramel colour of the cake beneath. The product description on the box makes a bit deal of the lemons being Sicilian. Why it requires lemons from Sicily, Im not entirely sure, but they certainly taste great.
Inside the box, the cake is cellophane wrapped for extra freshness and what you get for your money is a slightly disappointingly sized cake, with a rough diameter of about 5 inches and a height of about 1 inches at the middle point. This gives you a little over 400 grams of cake an amount that, according to the box, will serve six. Well, I dont know what planet the person who decided that came from, but this cake would not satisfy any six people I know. Personally, I would suggest this cake would serve four and its so delicious that any one of those four is likely to end up asking if youve got another one stashed away somewhere. If you have, I suggest you lie about it, or that will vanish as well.
Neither the initial sight of the cake, nor the smell gives any real indication as to what is to follow. Theres a slight hint of lemon in the smell, but mostly you get a lovely wheaty cake smell. But this is a cake thats designed for taste and once its in your mouth, you really begin to understand what Taste the Difference is all about.
The cake itself is wonderfully moist, with a hint of lemon flavouring to give it that slight citrus edge over regular cake and with the added bonus that it isnt at all stodgy, as its a very light cake. You can instantly taste the lemon mixed in with the cake, with the wheat coming out more in the aftertaste. The drizzle is where the bulk of the lemon taste resides in this cake, however, hitting you with the double whammy of sugar and citrus, with the sweetness of the icing catching the taste buds slightly before the sharper lemon taste, with the two combining together perfectly, almost like a solid version of lemonade, leaving a sweet aftertaste.
Whilst the drizzle is certainly my favourite part of the cake, with a huge amount of taste packed into a really quite thin layer, the middle section of the cake was the one that surprised me most. Between two layers of sponge is hidden a layer of butter cream, which is something Ive never liked a lot of in my cakes. This, however, is lemon butter cream, so whilst the overriding butter cream taste still exists, it is offset slightly by a slight lemony tang. I wont say this won me over entirely to the butter cream cause, as neither the taste nor the texture are completely enjoyable to me, but it did make the inclusion of the ingredient a lot more bearable. The main bonus to the butter cream for me was that it was the lesser of all the sections, so the taste of it at least was buried under the taste of the drizzle, although the somehow almost slimy texture still comes through, which I didnt particularly enjoy.
In every way but the taste, this cake is a bit of a nightmare. Thanks to the ingredients, its suitable for vegetarians, but not for vegans or anyone with an intolerance to eggs, wheat, milk or nuts. One slice, even assuming youve cut it six ways as suggested, contains 13% of your daily recommended fat and calorie allowance and nearly a third of the recommended daily amount of sugars, which would also mean diabetics should be very careful. And at 1.89 per cake, those who have their wallets on a diet in these uncertain financial times would also be best advised to steer clear.
Sometimes you have to splash out, however, and with a birthday nearby, this was the perfect excuse. Well, that combined with a love of all things lemony. On those very rare occasions when money and calories are both no object, anyone who enjoys lemon things and cake in particular will be very hard pushed to find a better cake than this. Unfortunately, these occasions are likely to be few and far between, especially as I really cant afford to have birthdays any more regularly than I already do. Sadly, this isnt an every day cake as its just a little rich and a bit expensive for that, which is the only real pity about it, as its the kind of taste I would like to experience every day.
Summary: You can Taste the Difference, but you have to pay for the privelege
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