A protein cheesecake other than Buff bakery? Mighty Slice review
The packaging for Mighty Slice's cheesecake.
They did it. Mighty Slice got a protein cheesecake into the supermarkets.
Whatever my thoughts are on the taste and quality in comparison with the original (and inimitable imo 😉) Buff Bakery protein cheesecake, it has to be remembered that Mighty Slice have managed to get their protein cheesecake into the national supermarket network AND retain some sort of margin to make it work. To date, that’s something I could not make financially viable, so huge congratulations on that front.
That alone is a huge success, and should be applauded due to the hurdles you have to overcome when making a fresh product like this. As soon as you start reducing the sugar and fat content in food to make it more healthy, the shorter the shelf life becomes, adding pressure on the cost of ingredients, production, supply chain and the number of sales needed to make it profitable and scaleable.
So…
I have a feeling that to get this cheesecake into Sainsbury's, Asda et al, a lot of compromises had to be made by the original creators, and reformulations of the recipe were needed to make it shelf stable, because unfortunately… it’s not very good at all, so it’s likely that it’s a shadow of its original self, prior to mass production.
Packaging:
The box is sturdy enough, and there's a nice rip tab to open it up that works really well.
So far, so good. At this point, it looks like the slice will slide out really easily.
What doesn't work so well is what happens after this. It's not clear if you can slide the cheesecake out or if you have to pull down the cardboard support to get at it.
How I had to get the cheesecake out, and just how much of the base got left behind.
It turns out that neither are the case, and I had to decimate the box to get into it. I went through so many iterations of the sliding mechanism with the Buff Bakery box because I knew that anything that made the consumer experience more difficult would make it less likely for repeat purchases, and so it is here. It’s a faff.
The base:
By removing the high levels of fat in both the biscuit base and cheesecake itself, you lose a lot of the binding between food particles. We suffered from this on occasion, but not to this extent. A novel solution with what the cheesecake sat on worked wonders for a Buff Bakery, and it’s needed in this. I had hoped to get the cheesecake out and take some really aesthetic photos of it on a plate.
Impossible. So much of the base was left behind as you can see. If the tray slid out like I mentioned, this wouldn't be so much of an issue, as you would be encouraged to just eat it from there. But, if you have to destroy the box to get the cheesecake out, you have no other option to plate it up and try and get it out the tray, which will lead to disappointment.
The macros:
Difficult. Carbohydrate is about the same as Buff Bakery's, but the protein is much lower at 16g, and the fat content is 12g per slice.
To put that into perspective, a recommended serving size of normal cheesecake will have around 20g fat. The Buff Bakery cheesecake has 4g fat.
This is where the biggest compromise must have been needed to get Mighty Slice into supermarkets. That fat content gives it more stability and a longer shelf life. A cream cheese with higher fat content will also be cheaper in bulk than the version with little to no fat. That's the only way you're going to have a product that can compete in this category.
Shelf life:
I bought this a full 7 days before the best before date, which is astonishingly good for this type of product. I was working with a 3 day shelf life (the main reason why it isn’t ready to be scaled) so if this cheesecake holds up for over a week, from production to delivery and storage, there's been some serious work with the food developers, signalling the need for that higher fat content. But it’s a fantastic result by everyone involved to give it this shelf life.
The actual taste:
I had the caramelised biscuit flavour, and it didn't taste anything like it. The most over-powering flavour was cinammon, but even that was a bland version of itself.
The base made the whole experience worse. It's not a cheesecake biscuit base. It's an oat-based base, which you can both smell and taste.
The technical term 'mouthfeel' refers to how food gets broken down as we chew, and whether a food like this, which mimics the real thing, manages to trick our receptors and brains into thinking it actually is. the real thing.
This does not do that. You know you're eating oats rather than a biscuit base, and it just wasn't crumbly or sweet enough to make it an enjoyable substitute.
The consistency of the cheese was lumpy and not smooth. Again, it didn't hit the expected sweet notes, or do the job of convincing you that it was a cheesecake. By the end of it, I was just eating it for the sake of it - not because there was anything that was bringing me back for more.
I found it so frustrating. I thought the barrier to entry was SO high and that Buff Bakery was so far from a national rollout. But this suggests otherwise. I'm amazed that it's made it this far, which is why it would be unfair to write it off without knowing just how many compromises the owners agreed on to get it here, because I know how to make this taste so much better.
But…
This is the first time a fresh protein cheesecake has been rolled out nationally. Think back to the first protein bars you ever tried and how far that industry has come. It is so commendable that Mighty Slice have done this, gone to market and are somehow making a margin when you consider all the fresh ingredients, the packaging, the quick turnaround in production, the staff, the research, the percentage the supermarkets will take… the list goes on.
Their vision will no doubt have been compromised to get to this point, but now that they're here, I wish them the best of luck in getting a foothold and being able to reinvest to make this the product it can be.
