Recipes from a Normal Mum

Review & giveaway #33 – Spoon cereals

Annie, of Spoon Cereals, came to the food industry in her second year of working in advertising. “I struggled to find a tasty, healthy, high quality bowl of cereal on my way to work each morning, which is why I decided to start up my own breakfast cereal company, Spoon Cereals, with mentor and business partner Jonny Shimmin.”

The compnay was only launched a year ago and already they’ve been on Dragons’ Den where they secured investment from Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden. They supply granola and muesli to Harvey Nichols, nationwide as well as local high-end delis in London. They sent me four of their cereals to try. Well cereal is the wrong word – they sent me muesli, granola and a museli-granola hybrid. Here’s what I thought:

Apple & peanut granola – this was my favourite. I loved it. Now I am not usually an apple person unless they’re crisp and fresh and raw. I don’t really go in for apple crumble, apple cake… you get the idea. But these dried pieces of apple (of which there were lots) really did it for me. They were ultra chewy and sweet; so to get the sugar you really had to work for it. This seemed right and fitting. The peanuts were as delicious as peanuts always are. A great combination that felt ever so slightly American for some reason. I admit to eating two bowls back to back upon first tasting. I sent the rest of the packet to work with my husband to stop me gobbling it all up as snack style trail mix.

Cinnamon granola – Gosh, I don’t want to sound like an old misery but again, I am not big on cinnamon baked goods. They always taste artificially sweet to me. I don’t know why. I really did like this granola though. The toasted hazelnuts were crunchy and abundant (none of that hunt the nut business here), the cinnamon coating was subtle and added a lovely crispness to the outside of the granola pieces AND it had coconut flakes. I am a coconut nut. I ate a small bowl with milk and then two tumblers-full as snacks. I have asked for this granola to be removed to husband’s work for fear of eating the whole lot in one sitting. (FYI: This variety has won a Great Taste Award).

Granola-muesli mix – I have issues with the naming of this. I reckon the makers of Spoon can be a bit more creative. One of them used to work in advertising for goodness sake (as a fellow ex ad girl I know it matters not which department she worked in; all ad folks are frustrated copywriters and art directors, even the copywriters and art directors). Anyway, onto the taste test; I ate a bowl with milk and I give it a tick. Enough dried fruit (ie/ a lot) to remain sweet , lots of brazil nuts, hazelnuts and almonds plus oats and rye flakes and spelt flakes galore. Yes it was very nice indeed but I couldn’t help think of the granola’s I’d sent into exhile (see above). Sorry, but my heart belongs to apple and peanut granola.

Fruit and nut museli – Come on guys, there’s a better name for this surely? Okay, so this is a breakfast for those folks who like to eat clean. There is no sugar, I repeat there is no sugar present in this muesli. And it tastes like it has no sugar. (Not even maple syrup which everyone knows isn’t really sugar, it’s healthy sweet syrup, right?) It was full of the good stuff; oat flakes, rye flakes, spelt flakes, hazelnuts that had been toasted to perfection, almonds, brazil nuts and loads of apricots, dates and sultanas. Even some pumpkin seeds. But honestly? This was too worthy for me. No thanks. I will leave it to the Eat Clean brigade and their perfect skin and jutting hip bones.

This is possibly the longest review in history but still I have more. I did have a small issue with the packaging. I LOVED their Harvey Nics (and surely Waitrose soon?) friendly outer white paper bags but the inside cellophane type bag was a bit too easy to rip in my opinion. The cereal doesn’t seem to be suffering from this as the white bags have a nifty fold over thingy that seals rather well. Still… this is a review so I’m going to mention it.

I have 1 x Spoon Cereal gift pack RRP £20 giveaway. There are lots of ways to enter – see the Rafflecopter form below. The first way is just to leave a comment on this post. Easy peasy. Closing date 20th February 2015. How to enter:

Rules and things:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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