Nui Cobalt Designs: April Fools Collection Part 1 Review

The Nui Cobalt April Fools was inspired by a r/imam thread about scents from the Great British Bake Off, and the wonderful minds behind Nui Cobalt came up with this amazing list of scents. 

The whole collection contains 10 scents, but for convenience, I've broken them up into two articles. Part 2 is here, and round up session. Order information has now been moved below scent reviews now!

Scents: 

Horsefeathers 

A sumptuous scent to help you keep your cool when people try to pull the wool over your eyes. 

A traditional Arctic Roll: vanilla bean ice cream wrapped in a blanket of yellow sponge cake and a layer of vibrant red raspberry jam.

Wet: Have you ever just bitten into a fresh batch of raspberries, and it's all lovely, sweet, juicy with just a bit of tartness. This is perfect fresh raspberries at its finest basically. 

Dried down: The sweetness blooms on the skin, so the hidden blanket of sponge and vanilla cream peeks through the tartness of the berries. It's a handful of raspberries sprinkled on top of a slice of sponge cake with a lot of powdered sugar. Super realistic, it actually reminds me of chewing on raspberry seeds, and shoving a spoon of ice cream into your mouth immediately afterwards. 

This is very similar to the raspberry note in Raspberry Rosemallow (Hexennacht). It's so delicious, I want to rub my face in mushed up raspberry and get this in a full size ASAP. 

The wear for this is relatively linear, but the raspberry top note does fade before the rest of them. As they say, top notes are fleeting, base notes are forever... 

Perfect for: If you like raspberry and gourmands, this is genuinely the perfect unison of sweet dessert vanilla and raspberry. 

Poppycock

A bright fragrance to banish confusion and illuminate the whole truth. 

Lemon Meringue Pie: frothy citrus sweetness in a toasted almond crust, with white vanilla peaks gently browned under a blowtorch.

Wet: Lemon! Lemon curd - the same way it has a slightly metallic tinge when you eat it straight off the pan. This is basically lemon curd as you know it, have another bite of it. Mmmn.

Dried down: The butter tart of the lemon meringue tart is often the most important part, sometimes it's a little too soft, sometimes it's just smashed up graham crackers (big no.) This tart has a super buttery crust, and there's a huge dollop of sugary Italian meringue. 

If you've ever had a lemon meringue tart, this is pretty much what it smells like when you open the little special box - although it's a little heavier on the butter, and the lemon turns a little sharp when you inspect it a little closely, but it's the closest to perfection I've gotten. What's better than eating a real tart while wearing this? (The answer is nothing.) 

Perfect for: anyone looking for a lemon meringue scent. This is it. Gourmand/foodies, prepare your wallets for this, because this is a one stop trip to FullSizeville.

Balderdash

An ebullient scent to lift your mood when the bastards try to get you down. 

Cherries Jubilee: jewel-bright Montmorency cherries poached in brandy and drizzled while still warm over vanilla ice cream.

Wet: This is a slightly sharper cherry than I'm used to, it's not quite the sugary artificial cherry note you get in push pops (or whatever cherry candy), it's almost medicinal and masks a slightly bitter note. I assume that the sharpness might be in part because of the brandy accord, so the "cherries poached in brandy" description is pretty accurate.

Dried down: After drying down, the cherries turn a little candy-esque, they become much sweeter and brighter, and warm vanilla ice cream bursts forth from the background, resulting in a candied cherries and syrup rather than the more brandy forward mixture.

Personally, I don't mind this cherry but it's very simple and I don't usually find myself drawn towards cherries in general. It's nice, but I wouldn't go out of my way for a full size of this.

Perfect for: Anyone who loves a cherry note. This is lovely and bright, dessert syrup laden cherries, fruity gourmand heaven. 

Hogwash

An elegant fragrance to keep you poised and polished when people try to throw you off balance. 

Shrewsbury Cake: simple, delicate, soft-baked butter biscuits (cookies to you American folk) scented with rose water and a scant pinch of lemon zest.

Shrewsbury biscuit originates from Shropshire (also where comedian Greg Davies comes from, which amused me), and is usually made from sugar, flour, egg, butter and lemon zest. While I've never tried it, the biscuit from New Zealand is also called Shrewsbury biscuit and is more similar to Jammie Dodgers, which we also have in Australia, which is more of a shortbread.

Essentially: I have basically no idea what this should actually smell like.

Wet: Sharp lemon, sort of zesty if you simmered it in sweetened butter. Definitely has a bit of a soft cookie feel, sort of the type you'd get in a pre packed bag of snickerdoodles. It's overall a soft scent, rounded out at the edges, whipped butter with prominent lemon zest but no rose water.

Dried down: The butter accord is a very soft and sugary scent, if you've ever mixed softened butter with sugar in a bowl for baking, this is very similar to what it smells like. If you grated lemon zest on top of it, the same slightly green, tinge of bitter citrus is basically what you can expect.

To its credit, this does make me feel like I'm standing at my kitchen, mixing away furiously at non-room temperature butter with an electric mixer that likes to fling my mixtures everywhere, and now I've just got to add that little bit of lemon to my biscuit mix. 

Perfect for: Fans of lemon zest, and a butter note. It's not quite got the clean richness of melted butter with it's more luxurious thickness, but it's got the same slightly golden baked fragrance to it. 

Bollocks 

An indulgent scent to help you keep a sense of humour when dealing with liars. 

Banoffee Pie: golden toffee conjured from sweetened condensed milk, sauteed spiced bananas, and a crumbly crust of butter biscuits.

Wet: Banana! Not quite sliced banana like Blackburn's Parlour (Solstice Scents), this is a warm one. Baked banana, a whole, sliced banana with a side of thickened caramel and just a pinch of spice.

Dried down: As I said before, top notes are fleeting. While the banana note is still somewhat notable, the spiced banana, emphasis on spice, is the basis of this scent. The butter sits as a base, but the use of spices feels fragrant and warm - I like calling this the festive spice, it's not a specific note like cardamom or cinnamon, more like, allspice and a mix of everything for those cold seasons.

This is a baked banana with a festive spice rub, popped in the oven and drizzled with a little bit of vanilla ice cream. The rich creamy caramel sits like a forgotten sauce on the side, and the butter biscuits are more of a light crumble, but the spice is first and foremost the blazing heart of this scent.

Perfect for: anyone who likes a spice in their gourmands, if you liked Harlot (Siren Song Elixirs) or any spiced notes like you can smell in Madchenland (Poesie), Lebuchken (Sugar and Spite) or Apple Pie Moonshine (Vintner's Reserve), but with a hefty dose of banana,

My order: 

I bought these from Ashes Decants, who offers pre-order Google forms and decants a few brands such as Nui Cobalt and Astrid Perfumes. She is most active on Facebook and email, but you can check her IG and Reddit as well.

My order came with an order slip and a few stickers, which is a nice cute touch, and I had a slight issue with my tracking number not updating, so I reached out and Ash replied me very quickly with invoicing and responding to any questions I had.

As Nui Cobalt bottles are only usually sold on their site in one size: 5ml, and these retail for $19USD, I had a hard time choosing between decants or full sizes bottles, but are slightly pricier than Ajevie's decants.

For those on a tight budget: out of all of the price markups compared to the original prices, the 2.5mls are the cheapest in mark up (but not by much). This pricing is usually offered with all Nui decants, and I ordered a Winter leftover, Making Snow Angels, which was the same price.

Ashes offers 3 sizes and the original bottle as add ons to orders as well.

For reference, the full bottles from the site are $3.8USD for 1ml.

0.5 mL decant ($3.70)   -->   $1.9 (adding on $1.80)

1 mL decant ($5.60)   -->   $3.8 (adding on $1.80)

2.5 mL half bottle ($11.25)     -->    $9.5 (adding on $1.75)

Full bottle add-on ($21)     -->    $19 (adding on $2) 

My order:

Originally, I would have to pay $190 + shipping for the whole collection (50ml) on the official site. 

In the end, I chose to pay $112.5 + shipping for 25ml instead (as I bought the whole collection in 2.5ml decants.)   

Shipping: 

Ashes' shipping price was $14.75USD to Australia for my whole order, and everything came in bubble wrap in a little box, nothing broke either, and was standard USPS shipping with tracking included. 

For reference: the decant bottles I got were huge, they're on par with 5ml bottles, they're much wider than the typical dram 4ml vials, and much bigger than the 2ml bottles that Ashes uses for 1ml decants.

Conclusion:

The wear time for Nui Cobalt is a little on the lighter side, most of the scents have a wear time of 3-4 hours, even if I am quite heavy handed on the application. The projection is light to medium, depending on how much you apply as well. I would like to see a little more concentration with these mixtures, or else I'll have to find ways to reapply this.

Overall, I really do like these scents because they lean on the simpler side of blends, yet they manage to capture the exact sentiment of the desserts they're trying to emulate, and I feel like I'm almost savouring the tastes of the baked goods I've had before. As realism is extremely important to me, I am very happy because they manage to replicate the scents.

This is definitely a must have for any gourmand lover. My favorites from this list would be Poppycock and Horsefeathers, for being a clean cut and lovely scent that I just want to wear all the time - especially the beautiful crisp raspberry note in Horsefeathers.

I'll definitely be saving up to get a full size of both!

For anyone who is interested in Nui Cobalt's new collection, you can check them out here, or on Ajevie's pre order.

Prices are:

Full bottles: $19

Minis (5/8th of Dram/ 2.4ml): $10

Sample: $3.75

Disclaimer: This content was not sponsored and the products were not sent to me for review. I bought these with my own money, and did not receive any discount either. All views or opinions represented in this blog belong to me and are not affiliated with any brand.