Times are changing fast. Gone are the days when an emergency Swiss roll was kept in the freezer or a tub of nuclear bright Neapolitan ice cream. Or how about those wafer-thin choc ices that melted before you were halfway through?
It seems nowadays, if people are feeling peckish, they pick up their phones rather than head to their kitchen. The food delivery market is booming during the global pandemic with businesses diversifying to send their produce to your door.
And that extends to puddings too, so it seems.
An avalanche of shares on Instagram earlier this week of oozing chocolatey goodness, cookie dough and all sorts of colourful treats suggested something new was in town.
So it proved. Dessert House opened its Attleborough Road premises on Monday (October 12) and received rave reviews with people flocking to Facebook to lavish praise.
It’s elbowing its way into a fairly congested market place for a small town such as Nuneaton with Kaspa’s Desserts and Crave Coffee and Desserts based in the town centre, Cream on the Green in Abbey Green while Sweet Treats is just over the border in Hinckley, but has a strong reputation for serving up exactly what it says on the tin.
The menu is massive and all available to view and order on its website. The category list alone is 15 items long, and within them contains another drop-down menu of mouth-watering offerings.
At the top of the page is cookie dough, milkshakes, waffles, donuts and muffins. A cookie dough pizza meal deal for £20 looks like it would provide enough calories for a family for a week!
Here’s what happened when our reviewer ordered a sweet treat takeaway.
‘Garfield milkshake’
Our order was Kinder chocolate deluxe cookie dough, Lotus Biscoff and white chocolate waffle, Garfield milkshake and strawberries and white chocolate chip deluxe cookie dough.
We placed our order for delivery at 7pm and it arrived within a few minutes of that time.
It was placed on our doorstep in a thermal bag for us to retrieve while the delivery man, wearing PPE, waited on from an appropriate distance.
The first thing that struck you was the packaging. The brown rustic bags and cardboard topped foil containers made this feel familiar, like a Chinese takeaway from yesteryear.
Cookie dough is all the rage and we had two helpings of it. The first thing to note with both is they are still warm from the journey and lifting the lid released a waft of alluring freshly baked goods. Yum.
The strawberry and white chocolate chip offering was thick and creamy with visible, half-melted chocolate pieces that balanced well with the sharp, fresh fruit that topped it. It was crunchy around the outside and chewy in the middle. We’d picked our favourite dish with the first fork full. A small pot of vanilla ice cream brought another level of indulgence.
Kinder is always a winner, especially when it is melted onto a giant, half-baked cookie. In the middle a gooey pool of chocolate awaited. The cookie isn’t too sweet so, combined with the chocolate, doesn’t become too sickly. And again, the ice cream is on hand to refresh the pallet.
Priced at £8.50 each, I’d say one of these is enough for a couple to share. It may on the face of it appear to be a large amount, but if you were dining out and wanted a dessert each, you wouldn’t be getting much change from £10 – and this is delivered to your door.
Lotus Biscoff waffle
Our waffle choice was Lotus Biscoff and white chocolate. This caramelised biscuit appears to be replacing the Oreo as the biscuit being most adapted into all sorts of puddings and treats.
The light, fluffy, toasty warm waffle had melted Biscoff spread filling many of its squares. The texture was similar to peanut butter but far more appealing.
The intensely rich flavour needed the ice cream to create some balance on the fork. The drizzled white chocolate also provides some sweet notes.
If you like your Biscoff, you’ll love this. Again, at £8, delivered to your door, it’s not bank breaking, however belts might not fare so well. This is a proper treat.
Finally we added a milkshake to our order. Classic milkshakes are £4 and the premiums are £5. We opted for the curiously named Garfield which was a combination of vanilla ice cream with salted caramel sauce and KitKat.
It’s still icy cold to the touch and a broad straw allows you to suck up creamy milkshake with chunks of chocolate and lashings of the sauce. Its a dessert in its own right. If you ordered one of these alone, you’d finish your evening a lot happier than when you started it!
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In summary, this is a fun experience, with an easy to navigate website with prices that, when you factor in delivery and quality of produce, are fair.
The concept of getting puddings and desserts delivered to your door still pinches a little, but having sampled it first hand, the social media fanfare that followed Dessert House’s opening week are well deserved.
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