New Kripsy Kreme UK Halloween 2018 Range (Food Review)

Krispy Kreme UK have just launched their Halloween doughnuts for 2018 (woo hoo!). I have managed to get my hands on them and will be reviewing them all for you in this post. Let’s start by going through what the range has to offer. There are five doughnuts for this year’s spooky offerings: Jack-O-Lantern, Frankie Frankenstein, Spooky Sprinkles, Vimto Ring and Vimto Shimmer. I will provide more detail on flavours, fillings etc as we look at each one individually. I must admit, I am a tad confused as to why the Vimto ones are being included in the Halloween range. Vimto doesn’t really scream Halloween to me. Is it the colour that renders it Halloween appropriate? Colour me unsure.

I love Halloween, so I always look forward to seeing what products will introduced for the season. I have to say I’ve been a bit disappointed with Krispy’s Halloween doughnuts the past few years so was hoping that this year would see an improvement. Let’s get into the reviews to see if my wish was granted.

I’m going to talk about Spooky Sprinkles first because, frankly, I don’t have much to say about it. It is essentially exactly the same as their regular sprinkle doughnut which is part of the core range, but with more Halloween-y coloured sprinkles. Honestly, I always feel like these are a bit of a cop-out when it comes to seasonal items. Tim Hortons did a similar thing with their ‘Christmas’ doughnut last year. A bit poor in my opinion. Like the normal sprinkle doughnut, it’s an original glazed with chocolate icing and sprinkles on top. Tasty, but not too interesting in terms of Halloween aesthetic.    

When I saw the Jack-O-Lantern doughnut I was super excited. This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to see from Krispy Kreme – shaped seasonal doughnuts. I see all the awesome Halloween and Christmas shaped doughnuts they have in other countries posted on Instagram and get a bit jealous. We haven’t really had anything like that here for several years and I love novelty items like this. After my initial excitement about the look of the pumpkin, I then started pondering what it may be filled with. I was hoping against hope for a signature kreme filling as I am not a huge fan of their chocolate filling. I feel like there are very few doughnuts in the range that actually have the kreme filling, especially considering it’s in the name of their brand. It seems to me that a majority of new filled doughnuts that are released have chocolate (or caramel, more recently) centres. The past few years’ Halloween ones have certainly been chocolate based so I was praying they had opted for a change this time. I was disappointed. When the details of the doughnuts were released, I see it is indeed a chocolate filling. Again. Not only is it chocolate though, it’s chocolate orange. Hooray, orange – one of my least favourite flavours. Nevertheless, I had to try it anyway, perhaps it would surprise me. The one I had was very generously filled, so I was glad I was sharing this with other people. I would imagine if you were eating a whole one of these, it would be rather sickly. The filling has a very strong orange flavour. It tastes like some sort of orange oil or essence has been used to create the flavour and although you can taste the chocolate as well, the overriding flavour is definitely the orange. Much to my disappointment, this one was not for me. All of this is obviously down to my own personal preferences, and I’m sure if you’re a chocolate orange fan, you’ll love it. For me, the pumpkin gets an A+ for appearance but doesn’t do it for me on the taste. For me, this was a missed opportunity for a real winner. I just wish he had been filled with kreme!

 

Frankie Frankenstein is an original glazed ring doughnut, topped with apple flavour icing and cookie crumb decoration. I think this one also looks really cool and they’ve been quite clever in how they’ve achieved a successful portrayal of the character in a relatively subtle way. It’s not overdone but looks very distinctly Halloween-y. I’m also glad they’ve used a ring as part of the range as sometimes the filled ones can be a bit much. In terms of taste, I really liked this one. The original glazed base was, of course, delicious – can’t go wrong with one of those. The apple icing is a step in a new direction for Krispy Kreme and I really quite liked it. It tasted kind of like the classic ‘green apple’ flavour you get with certain fruit flavoured sweets. I always like the green apple flavour, so this was a success for me. If you’re not a fan of that flavour, this one probably won’t be for you. The cookie crumb decoration is comprised of little round pieces of an Oreo-esque biscuit (I’m guessing it’s not actually Oreo, or they probably would showcase this in the description). It added a bit of texture and worked well with the rest of the flavours. Overall, this one was a hit for me.  

Next, the Vimto ring. I feel like Vimto is one of those things that I’m never quite sure exactly what flavour it is. I know it’s some sort of mixed fruit/ berry type of deal, but I’m never positive of specifics. I looked it up for the purposes of this review and apparently it’s grape, raspberry and blackcurrant, so there you go. I can’t remember the last time I drank Vimto, but I do actually quite like the flavour. This doughnut is an original glazed dipped in Vimto flavoured icing. I enjoyed this one and it definitely does taste a lot like Vimto. The flavour is distinctly fruity and it gets a gold star for accuracy. If I had one criticism I would say there was an ever-so-slight synthetic aftertaste to it. This wasn’t overbearing or unpleasant, but it was just something that felt a tiny bit off for my taste buds. That may have just been me though, as the other people in my house who tried it didn’t get that. Overall, another success.

Finally, on to the Vimto Shimmer. This one obviously has the Vimto flavour as well but, instead of the icing, it has a glaze on top and Vimto flavour frosting inside. It looks quite pretty with the shiny purple glaze but be warned, this is very sticky! Whereas the Vimto ring was enjoyable, this one was not so much for me. The frosting inside was extremely thick and hard to get through. The slight synthetic taste I mentioned in regard to the ring was very much amplified in this one. Somehow the flavour seemed to have an almost bubble-gum-like hint to my taste which was not a good thing for me. There was just way too much of everything for me here; too much frosting inside, too much flavouring, too much stodge. Not my favourite.

Overall then, there were some hits and some misses with the Halloween range. I think my favourite was the Frankie Frankenstein and my least favourite was probably the Vimto Shimmer (I can’t bring myself to put Jack-O-Lantern in last place because he looks so cool). I’m glad I tried them, but I probably won’t be returning to repurchase any of them before their time in the shops is up. We’ll see what Krispy Kreme have in store for their autumn/ Christmas ranges. I’m hoping for more kreme, less chocolate. Is that too much to ask? I’m also hoping for a return of the Maple Glaze as this is one of my all-time favourites.  

Have you tried any of the Halloween Krispy Kremes yet? Let me know what you thought in the comments. What are you hoping to see from their future ranges?