More Hardy's adventures

I returned to Hardy's Original Sweetshop at Covent Garden.

Don't buy anything made by Taste of Nature. Ever. They couldn't have picked a worse name to brand their products.

This looks like balls of paint scraped from the floors of an art class. Okay, I'm being harsh. They are colourful, but the colours serve the same purpose as those on a poisonous reptile, rather than those on birthday cakes.

Look at the colour running away from the sprinkles.

The outer cover of these things is a matte, powdery coat – some sort of soft icing or fondant. It's a rather disgusting texture to have on your tongue. There is a little crunch in the candy that you would get when biting into icing, which was nice. After that, you get a flour-y, artificial taste, which does remind you a little bit of a cupcake – made from play-dough.

I would just like to give the company a huge no-thank-you to its unique but poor products. I did express my interest in trying out some of their other products previously, but now I give up.

Next up: This 'Lucky Charms Treats' bar would cause fans of General Mills' Lucky Charms cereal to gasp – and there is good reason in doing so.

This cereal bar is absolutely yummy. Those who have had Lucky Charms' cereal will know how the crunchy charms have a hearty and sweet taste, while the marshmallows provide moments of bliss with its soft but crusty texture. These bars are just like the cereal but joined together in a bar, with a little bit of sweet white-something underneath it – I really have no idea what it is.

Although expensive everywhere in London, this bar is great to have once in a while, when you find yourself having a kid-cereal craving.

Here is another Quaranta nougat. It was my main purpose of going back into that shop, after trying the mascarpone-flavoured soft nougat.

This one is topped with chocolate and chopped hazelnuts, and is further infused with hazelnuts and chocolate. One thing that annoyed me when I opened the packet were the loose hazelnut bits on the top which rolled around everywhere instead of sticking to the chocolate layer.

Otherwise, I would describe this bar as high-quality chocolate ice cream with hazelnuts – but drier, and at room temperature.

This soft nougat is good for chocolate lovers, and although I admit guilt, I still prefer the mascarpone-flavoured soft nougat bar.

Death by pancakes

I don't know what the worst pancakes ever are, but I might have ventured close to that field today.

Remember the time I tried making pancakes without a recipe at Adel's house? Those were made of milk and flour. I tried that again today by getting a big bowl, pouring in the remaining milk we have at home, spooning in an unknown amount of whole wheat flour, cracking in an egg, putting in some sugar, and two tablespoons of baking powder, in hope that they'd fluff up in the pan.

Oh, and I put in three crushed Oreos as well.

I swear, I buttered the frying pan, but the first pancake – I don't even know what that was, other  than something like a grey and squishy heap of scrambled eggs.

There are no pictures in this post. I couldn't bring myself to digitally record today's pancake "adventure".

I swapped to a non-stick pan, and the pancakes turned out as one flat piece...

... of grey rubber.

That was literally what it felt and looked like. The oreo biscuits 'dissolved' into the batter, turning it grey, plus the whole wheat flour made everything brown, so we have the two least vibrant colours in the world plus a bad texture, in a circular shape – that's nothing too far from a rubber disk.

To make myself feel better about the pancakes, I sprinkled chocolate chips on top of each pancake while it was in the pan, so that I can say, "these pancakes are bad but hey look there are chocolate chips in them," which I did, to my mum and brother.

They were edible, but I think I'm going to stick to recipe the next time I try to make pancakes.