Barker's Tropical Mango Sauce product reviews

Having tried a similar strawberry sauce we were looking forward to this one. Hubby loved it so much. It was delicious on ice cream which was the obvious choice as it made the vanilla ice-cream we had much tastier. It worked well on Banana splits too and the kids had lots of fun dribbling it over whipped cream. We found lots of other things it worked well with too, On pancakes with banana's and bacon. In smoothies to give a lovely flavour making us believe we might be on a tropical island rather then in the middle of winter! Miss 9 and Miss 11 enjoyed it as a fondue dip too.

We chopped up bananas, apples, pear, pineapple and marshmallows and they dipped the fruit into the sauce. It is delicious! The only really issue we had is that a bottle didn't last too long, but that is a positive negative! Another big thing for us is that we have a member of the house who is coeliac so it is gluten free, so we didn't have to worry about excluding someone in our house due to allergies. Another great Barkers product that tastes like real fruit and is a versatile thing to have in the pantry. Would be delicious on pavlova at Christmas too.

Mango just happens to be my favourite fruit and when I saw this I was expecting a more tart kind of sauce but instead, I got a sweeter more jam-like substance and if you're not into overly sweet things then this won't be your cup of tea. I topped my unsweetened greek yoghurt with the sauce and found it had a nice tropical taste to it and the tartness of the yoghurt toned down the sweetness which made it a lot more enjoyable. Colour-wise it is quite pleasing as it has a lovely warm tropical yellow with a slight hue of orange.

Although the bottle says sauce it has a very jam-like texture and you have to tip and shake the bottle to get some out but never the less it still ends up coming out after some reluctance. I am especially happy how the bottle is glass instead of plastic so that it is better for the environment as well as it being gluten-free and vegan so that everyone with different diets can enjoy. The label was very aesthetically pleasing from font right down to the little food prints showing what to drizzle it on. The cap was also beautifully designed with the logo and the intricate vine pattern running along the outer edge.

I could see this being very good drizzled on a whole different range of desserts and other meals because of its versatility like cheesecakes, muffins, cupcakes, loaves, bagels, certain meats, salads, in tarts and maybe even used in a fruit juice to give it that exotic tropical flavour. Overall everyone in the household really enjoyed it as a sugary treat and I would definitely recommend this versatile product to people who are looking for a sweet tropical sauce to add to dessert foods to give it that extra fruity punch of flavour it may need.

Let's be honest, who doesn't enjoy a sweet treat every now and then? Even if it's not good for us!! I certainly do, but recently going dairy free for health reasons it has been hard to find nice products that do the trick when I have sweet craving that also meet the dairy free requirement. Most other sweet sauce products strangely have dairy in them, not something you would think about having dairy (unless chocolate or caramel based), in fact, there are many things that hide dairy that you wouldn't think about! So when this particular Barker's sauce came up for review I was excited to see it had no dairy and crossed my fingers I'd be lucky enough to try it! When my parcel arrived I knew exactly what to do with it.

I had been craving pikelets for some time and with a carton of soy milk in the fridge to try (I hadn't yet tried soy as had only experimented with coconut milk) my partner kindly agreed to make a batch of soy based pikelets, which meant they were also dairy free. When the pikelets were done we served them on a plate and put on some of the tropical mango sauce. My partners pikelets are pictured, as we added a dollop of cream to each of his.

Opening the bottle of sauce I was met with the most amazing tropical smell, with a hint of mango to it. It reminded me a bit of a particular brand of tropical juice I enjoyed occasionally as a child and it made me excited to try it. As I began to pour it over the pancakes I discovered that it was a thick sauce, with some lumpy bits in it that I will assume are mango. The smell was just devine and when I finally got to taste it, the taste certainly matched to the smell. You can taste real mango, not fake mango flavour, but definitely real mango. It was absolutely delicious, and went well with the plain pikelets as a base. It was great to read the ingredients and see that the first ingredient on the list that makes up 40% of the sauce is in fact mango, which is impressive as surely it means there is less other stuff in there, making it a more healthy choice than other products on the market. I enjoyed it so much I may have gone back for a second helping of pikelets, oops! We will definitely continue to use this product in our house as my partner also really enjoyed it.

Tropical fruit always reminds me of summer and sunshine and I do love a good tropical fruit dessert. My son especially is a huge fan of mango, enjoying fresh mango, dried mango, and mango flavoured products. I knew this sauce would excite him as soon as I saw it and I wasn't wrong as soon as the bottle arrived and he discovered it he was requesting to taste the sauce. Though I suggested he wait until I got some icecream for him to have it with he was happy enough to just try it on it's own.

Straight away when you taste the sauce you can notice it is mango, tasting just like eating a fresh mango. You get the sweet tropical taste with that summer feel! We served some of the sauce with vanilla icecream which was a real treat and the mango worked beautifully with a plain icecream to add flavour and sweetness. One of my favourite things to have with mango is passionfruit I think the too pair beautifully so decided to use the sauce to make a home made simple biscuit base cheesecake. Adding passionfruit pulp to the mango syrup was delightful alhtough the sauce would of worked equally as well on it's own.

With my son's love for mango this bottle of sauce hasn't lasted long in our house being used with yoghurt and icecream, and even with his porridge at breakfast so we will certainly be buying it again. I may have to monitor his pouring when we buy more as with a wide neck opening a 7 year old can certainly pour overly generous servings as it requires careful tilting of the bottle so as to not pour too much at once.

Mango - one of my favourite fruit, so imagine how happy I was to be able to try this new sauce. Before using it, I sampled a teaspoonful and was impressed to find that it tasted exactly like the fresh fruit - there was no doubt that this was the real thing. Because I was tempted to have a second (and third) spoonful to taste it again, I thought I had better organise myself to try it in a recipe before the whole bottle disappeared. The unopened product has a long shelf life, but I can't see any future purchases having an extended life on MY shelves!

I could think of lots of ways to prepare it, but needed to choose just one so I settled for serving it as a topping for our breakfast Bircher muesli. I was brought up on the original Bircher-Benner mix which comprised four essential ingredients - grated apple, rolled oats, lemon juice, and sweetened condensed milk, all soaked for several hours prior to serving. Since that time, Bircher muesli has changed a lot: it has lost the hyphenated Benner, lost some ingredients, and added others. This adaptability has ensured its survival today with the only constant ingredient being rolled oats. But the one thing I had never thought of adding was mango. That was about to change.

Today's brew consisted of fresh fruit from our garden (persimmons, mandarins, limes and feijoas) mixed with rolled oats, natural coconut yoghurt, and blackcurrant powder. After it had stood overnight, I served it with a generous dash of mango sauce on top. It made the dish taste quite different; the mango taste was really strong so I was glad that the yoghurt was a plain unsweetened version as otherwise the combination might have been overwhelming. I had made a larger amount of muesli than usual because (as usual) I did not measure anything and had over catered. This was great as it was so nice that we both went back for seconds.

I tried some in a lassi later that day. Remembering how strong it had been on the muesli, I was careful not to include too much. I used three level tablespoons to a 500ml container of coconut yoghurt and two cardamom pods. After mixing it in the blander I fished out the cardamom pods (as much as I could) - I know I could have used ground cardamom, but I prefer the whole pod as you don't end up with a gritty aftertaste. The proportion of mango sauce to yoghurt was perfect. It made a very thick lassi, but that is the way we like it. And the taste was comparable to any commercially made lassis I have tasted.

There is still some left in the bottle so I am going to try it with the cold roast beef I have planned to serve for dinner instead of the cranberry jelly I would normally use. I think it will go fairly well - and at some stage in the future I would be interested in trying it with other cold meats like pork or venison. My one reservation would be the amount of sugar included, but after all, this is a sauce - so it is not going to be consumed in large quantities at a sitting. And I would far rather have sugar used to preserve it than to see unwelcome chemicals included in the mix - this way, you know you are getting a natural product.

I'm not usually a big mango fan, unless it is a mango lassi or in a fruit juice but a fruit sauce was worth the try and something a bit different to what we usually have in the house. The jar enables you to see the beautiful colour this sauce has and along with the smart looking label, was a sauce I was happy to try. I first brought this to the table when we were having pancakes for dinner, my kids weren't interested in trying it then but my mother poured some on her pancakes and enjoyed it so much that she used it on more than half of her pancakes, so a big win there.

I felt like having some ice-cream, I craved the sweetness but didn't really want to have it because the day was so cold, so I decided to make a smoothie and on a spur of the moment went away from my usual milo and poured in about a tablespoon of this sauce. I found that I rather enjoyed the final product and my girls were keen to try, it was something that I then had to repeat and make them their own drink, they enjoyed it so much. My youngest decided to pour some sauce into a bowl and dip her mandarins in it which she decided made the fruit even better.

I'm not 100% sold on the sauce but it has a good range of uses and was a big hit with at least one of my kids, so I might buy it in the future.