Jacob's Iced Gems : Read reviews and compare prices at Ciao.co.uk

Author's product rating:

Value for Money	Excellent
Product Quality	Good
Product package	Poor
Taste	Delicious
How loyal are you to this brand?	Quite

Advantages:	a guilt - free treat, delicious
Disadvantages:	they tend to break easily, boring if you eat them too often

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

My future mother-in-law is a gem. Somehow she always manages to provide me exactly with what I am looking for. I tell her about my fear of flying, she comes up with Bach's Rescue Remedy. I am looking for Mr. Right, she provides me with my fiancé. I am looking for a low-calorie snack to satisfy my sweet tooth with - she comes up with … Iced Gems!

♥ The product ♥

When I first spotted these little gems in her kitchen, I was not attracted to them very much. The primarily blue and white packaging frankly looks cheap with its Tesco shopping bag-like plastic. It is decorated like something that looks like it came out a 4-year-old's colouring book - sporting a simple bear with sunglasses serving up an iced gem on his paw. The bag tells you that you can collect up to 12 different games and activities - these are imprinted on the outside of the six smaller individual bags contained within the main bag. These games are indeed aimed at 4-year-olds, as they involve such simple tasks as spotting four differences between pictures, copying a picture into a box and finding your way through a maze. Before writing this review, I have eaten about 25 individual bags of these iced gems - and I have yet to find 12 different games, they all rather look the same to me.

Each of the individual bags contains about 20-25 little gems. making up 30g in volume. The biscuits themselves are little jewels. With a base no bigger than the size of a pound coin in both diameter and thickness, they are crowned with divine pikes of sugar in white, yellow, pink and an orange-like colour. Just the kind of thing tat children and grown-ups love to nibble on.

I think what always baffled me a little is the fact that these biscuits are labelled as "fruit flavoured iced biscuits" - and then the individual bags depict the lemon, raspberry and blackcurrant flavoured biscuits. No mention is made of the little plain white iced gem (although it is pictured on the main bag) - which indeed seems to make it a little bit of an 'intruder' in this bag of gems.

The biscuit itself tastes rather plain, like a baby's teething biscuit or a plain salt-less cracker. It has a hint of sweetness to it, but this is so subtle that it is hardly noticeable. The way I like to eat my gems is by first separating the biscuit from the iced gem with my teeth. I then chew the biscuit until it is mushy and finally disappears. Afterwards I tend to simply let the sugary topping dissolve on my tongue.

The contrast of the sugary topping and the plain biscuit is quite nice - it gives you the opportunity to get a hit of sweetness which can then be neutralised by eating the biscuit base from the next gem.

The individual flavours are very diverse. The "outsider", as I have come to term the white-crowned gem, tastes no different from your ordinary meringue nest - simply like icing sugar that has been hardened by adding egg white. It is probably my least favourite gem out of them all.

The lemon-flavoured gem is of a light citron colour and has the reputation for being the most refreshing of all the flavours. For those of you who loathe lemon due to its sourness, there is nothing to worry about. The flavour is indeed very subtle, less apparent even than in a lemon wine gum.

The raspberry-flavoured gem is orange in colour and rather odd in nature, although I find it very tasty. Like the lemon-flavoured biscuit, it lacks the distinct sourness that you would experience when eating fresh raspberries. For those of you who tend to sprinkle sugar on their raspberries, it will be simple to relate to the flavour of this little gem. In essence it tastes like a concentrate of the sugary water that forms on the bottom of the bowl of raspberries when left to seep in for a little while.

The blackcurrant-flavoured gem is dark pink in colour and probably my favourite if all gems, even though it tastes nothing like a real blackcurrant. The taste is probably very familiar to most readers, as it distinctly reminds the nibbler of Ribena.

Each bag varies in terms of content and in terms of content and in terms of the number of each of the four different types of gems. I have generally found that the white intruder is the scarcest among them all. The lemon-flavoured gem also seems to be of limited presence - clearly outweighed by its blackcurrant and raspberry siblings.

These gems make for great snacks if you have a craving for something sweet, as they only contain 116 calories per bag and less than 1g of fat. Allergy sufferers should be warned, however, that the biscuits contain wheat and milk and have been produced in a factory handling soy, egg and hazelnut.

One thing, however, that really annoys me about these biscuits is the fact that they have a tendency to crumble very easily - and as such you will rarely get a bag of gems that are all intact. Instead you will get your share of biscuits without icing, icing without biscuits and random crumbs of icing and biscuits, which I enjoy much less that the intact specimens.

♥ Price and availability ♥

Iced gems are available from most major supermarkets and at a bargain price of either at 98p (e.g. Sainsbury's) or 99p (e.g. Iceland). They are only available in a package containing the six individual smaller bags - they cannot be bought individually.

♥ The verdict ♥

Iced gems have now found themselves a permanent place in my kitchen cupboard. I tend to take a bag of these to work with me as an afternoon treat along with my cup of tea or pack them as a guilt-free treat when I go to the cinema. Occasionally, I do get bored wit them and crave a bigger sugar and fat rush. This ultimately leads to me opting for unhealthier snacks - but generally these little gems have developed a friendship with my taste buds and stomach that I predict will last forever.

♥ Further information ♥

Jacob's Biscuits
P.O. Box 14
Liverpool L9 7JX
Freephone: 08081 449454