Some delicious products for review have turned up in the features office recently.
Molly Woppy's new spotty cookies - chocolate with coloured chocolate-filled buttons - are flavoursome enough for adults but really find their place as a treat at children's parties.
Likewise the new peanut butter cookies with chocolate chunks were eagerly devoured at morning-tea time. And with Christmas coming up, the festive gingerbread shapes of stars and bells will surely find a place in family celebrations.
Molly Woppy was the childhood nickname of Hayley Molloy, who with chef Alistair Parker developed the range of biscuits and other baked goods which actually taste like good home-baked ones.
• Barkers, of Geraldine in South Canterbury, has some new flavours in its fruit cordial range: Lite lemon and barley and Lite squeezed New Zealand blackcurrants, which have half the sugar of the original cordials replaced with the plant sweetener stevia, although they are still quite sweet.
There's a lime cordial, useful for those who want a mixer for cocktails, but my favourite was Squeezed New Zealand Limes with Elderflower, a refreshing summer drink mixed with soda water with a light but definite elderflower flavour.
Perhaps not quite as intense as homemade cordial, but perfectly acceptable and a lot easier.
• Bell Tea has a new range of herbal and fruit teas out: lemon and ginger; chamomile; peppermint; mixed berry; lemon; and a red bush.
Readily available in packs of 24 for $3.19.
