Nonabox – November

Receiving my November Nonabox delivery definitely helped to get me in the mood for December. I was also very happy to see some lovely sweet relief in there, this is great because up until then it had most definitely been one of those days!

Nonabox

Inside this months Nonabox:

Gumigem – Jewellery. O is already showing signs of teething so I’m getting my army of products at the ready. This necklace is great as it looks like a normal item of jewellery and means that I can have something permanently to hand for him.  The necklace comes in a variety of colours and designs.

Lindor – Milk Chocolate Truffles. Always a favourite with me. It was only a small box so the chocolates were gone fast (oops!). But a very nice treat.

Mumkind – Nutritional Bar. This is a nutritionally balanced bar for pregnant woman and mums. It was very tasty, it reminded me of a cereal bar, and didn’t feel too naughty.

Sleepytot – Baby Comforter. This item has been an absolute godsend! O has just started to show an interest in his dummy but gets frustrated when it falls out of his mouth. With the Sleepytot rabbit comforter he now has more control. He loves snuggling against the rabbit and can now take the dummy in and out of his mouth as he pleases. It is now his favourite toy!

Yoomi – 5oz Bottle. This is a bottle and warmer in one. It is a great idea but such a shame that the warmer needs to be purchased separately so I was unable to give it a whizz!

Ella’s Kitchen – Spinach, Apple and Swedes. It was great to receive a different flavour of these to try out.

Sleeptot

Once again, there was a nice balance to this box and a good mix of old favourites and products that I’d never heard of. As mentioned above I was especially delighted with the Sleepytot rabbit and have already been recommending it! I worked out the approximate value of the box to be around £38. Nonabox is £24.95 a month, including delivery.

I was sent a selection of products for the purpose of review – all opinions are my own and honest.

A Cadbury Experiment -Making Home Made Ice Magic #cbias

Are you old enough to remember Ice Magic? We are, and wanted to try making some home made ice magic – read on…

Home made ice magic is something I’ve often wanted to try. It’s a runny chocolate topper you put on ice cream, and it solidifies once it makes contact with the cold, leaving a crunchy chocolate top – oh and you can’t buy it any more. I’ve been dying for SO long to attempt to make our own and found that all it requires is chocolate and coconut oil. Our tub of oil was nearly empty so we picked some up when we went shopping in Sutton, before heading to Asda to pick up some Cadbury chocolate to do the hard work. There’s a Google+ album here.

After that it was all down to the preparation – we needed to make home made ice cream with our home made Ice Magic, obviously!

Strawberry was the flavour we opted for – put into the ice cream maker with the simple ingedients of 300g fresh strawberries, 200g double cream, 200g skimmed milk, two egg yolks and 70g icing sugar. I’ve posted the base recipe on here before now. It took about twenty minutes to prepare and with the chilled bowl having been in the freezer for over 24 hours it was ready to be kept fluid and aerated while getting colder.

The experiment was next – our home made ice magic. I’ve been dying to try this for so long, so weighed out 200g of chocolate and broke it up. I used one plain Cadbury Dairy Milk and most of a Cadbury Dairy Milk with Oreo Cookies (this has bulked up the sauce and makes it hard to squeeze out of the bottle we’ve used, so I’d recommend a chocolate without extras).

breaking chocolate

They were broken up and then melted over a pan of boiled water, and once smooth (with oreo bits in my case) I added 100g of coconut oil. The oil will stop the mixture from going solid (which is what you need it to do when it comes into contact with the cold ice cream). I’m wondering if this would also work for a fondue, so may have to try that another weekend…

coconut oil

Once the mixture was smooth looking (with bits of oreo floating in the top, sigh) I decanted it into an old ketchup bottle which made pouring over the ice cream much easier.

home made ice magic

It was ready but still soft so we put it in the freezer for a bit longer – you need it to be cold for the chocolate to set.

The result? The home made ice magic works! Genius! I squirted a bit too much over the ice cream, and Shaun – ever the doubter – told me I’d put too much on. By the time we’d taken it from the kitchen to outside it had set complete with the spoons stuck to the chocolate – a success!

Home Made Ice Magic - it works!

So if you want to try home made ice magic as well, it’s two parts chocolate to one part coconut oil. It leaves a thinner mixture but the colder the ice cream the better it will set and I’d like to think with the inclusion of coconut oil there’s a level of healthy in there too…

Home Made Ice Cream and Home Made Ice Magic

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