Nui Cobalt Designs: April Fool's GBBO Round Up

So as most of you have probably seen, Nui Cobalt Designs is bringing back the Great British Bake Off (baking show? in america). They were originally released for the April Fool's collection last year, and I pretty much picked them all up because I love a gourmand, and I also love GBBO.
Moreover, on top of bringing back all of the old scents on this list, they're also introducing some new scents as well which I hope I'll be able to get. With this release, there's no pre-orders, so make sure you get on the releases ASAP. NCD also now is doing sample sizes, but if you'd like other sizes, you can always check out Ajevie's pre-order decants as well!

If you want extra comedy and fun when sniffing these - I totally recommend the Stand Up To Cancer bakes, because where else can you see your favorite comedians completely losing it over cakes and cookies? (My personal favorites include James Acaster,  Russell Howard, David Mitchell and Lee Mack in the tent.)  

With a revival of interest in my intial reviews, I'm now gonna do a handy ranked list in case you're having trouble making up your mind on which ones you'd like to see again! 

10. 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.

Sugar, Butter, Flourrrr. This ingredients for Jenna's special pie, but it certainly doesn't look out of place with this scent. So, one thing I love about NCD's blends, is that the overall feel of them tend to lie on the softer side. Overall there's something really gentle and soothing about the way their notes work, even when they have harsh notes like clove, lemon or all around spices, they never feel sharp at all, just like a soft, puffy scent cloud that gently shakes you awake - as opposed to, you know, blowing an airhorn in your face.

Why is this last on the list? Well it's that it just goes a little too soft. Essentially, wearing this scent is more or less a "my skin but better" scent for gourmand lovers, with that little touch of lemon zest and soft golden, baked butter. It just sits on the skin like a really scant pinch of powdered sugar, and more or less fades into obscurity with the strong gust of wind. Honestly, it's just so soft I really struggled to find enough of it to really solidly have an opinion on it.

Verdict: You can visually see a pie being made on stage. There's flour everywhere. But the complete lack of nice bake-y smells is just not enough to steal a place in my heart. 

9. Blarney - A bracing scent to steel your nerves and keep you calm in the face of mendacity. Irish Breakfast Tea: the warm, tannic comfort of proper Cuppa sweetened just enough with a touch of honey and smoothed with cream.

I love a tea note - but it's really much easier said than done to get that perfect blend. I really really wanted this to work for me, but this one falls a little to the wayside in terms of "tea"ness. While a little bit of age really brings out the opening notes of stepped, tannic aromas, but the more this one wears, the more masculine it becomes. You can't deny the "herbal aroma", or the slight touch of cream and honey that just peeks in and out of it, but after a while this swerves into Masc City for me, and starts going ham on the leather, and rolling on the cologne. It's just oddly, not quite what I expected from a cup of tea, and instead it's like, going into Starbucks for a English Breakfast Latte and a scone except the only thing you're really eating up is that really deliciously hot barista with nice teeth and expensive smelling hair.

Verdict: If your ideal cup of tea smells like conventionally attractive well groomed male scented with cologne holding a cup of tea, then this works like a dream. Personally, I'll just opt for a normal English Breakfast please, with milk and no sugar.

8. Bollocks - An indulgent scent to help you keep a sense of humor when dealing with liars. Banoffee Pie: golden toffee conjured from sweetened condensed milk, sauteed spiced bananas, and a crumbly crust of butter biscuits.

I also love a banana note! (Spoiler: This pattern will continue on for quite a while with this review.) When I read this description, I really thought this was going to be "My Scent" - you know what it's like when you're blind buying early doors, you're really excited to get that sent you think is gonna work for you. And then it doesn't.

The reason I put this above Hogwash and Blarney is because I think I have a bit of a tumultuous relationship with this scent. Like, don't get me wrong, I can work with this. Bubbling caramel, baked bananas, the freshly baked crunchy blind baked crush drizzled with condensed milk? What else could you want? But here it comes, like a possum in the night, scrabbling on the top of your roof. It's the culprit! "SPICED"- Lying undetected and then barrels into your face, screeching into your ears. The "festive spice" note I call it, and it sneaks around in all those warm winter scents just kicking up a ruckus on my skin. Everything else is perfect, except that one little feral issue of 'SPICED".

Verdict: Call pest control. No room for Old Spice in this house. This skin is a spice free zone. Re-do it with no spice, and you can sail up to the top of the list, but until then it's time out corner for you. 

7. Malarkey - A comforting scent to ease your mind and sooth your nerves after dealing with dishonest people. Bread and Butter Pudding: twice-baked slices of soft white bread, salted butter, rich vanilla custard with a modest sprinkle of nutmeg and cinnamon.

When I was still in school, I found this foolproof method of making Bread and Butter pudding - it was a bit like a one dish wonder, just mix eggs, milk, cream, chuck a few slices of bread in and pop it in the oven for about half an hour. It worked, like ridiculously well, except I could literally never get the vanilla sauce right so it always tasted good but not. excellent.

When I say this scent really nails a Bread and Butter pudding - I'm not kidding. It's like soft slices of bread rubbing in your face, lovely wheat notes, that warm sweetness, paired with this rich wedges of butter all melted and delicious, and just a nice hint of PROPER spice - which is nutmeg (good) and cinnamon (excellent). With a lovely base of vanilla custard to bounce off, this is pretty much like, the best scent that features a fantastic, lovely warm oat/wheat bread vibes. I love a realistic scent and this really nails it, but this isn't quite perfect yet.

Verdict: It's good. It's a little bland (pun fully intended), but why would you not want to be squished between two slices of bread? Nobody will call you an idiot sandwich either - promise.

6. 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.

So I really like cherries... but only as a flavor - there's this really funny bathroom in a mall near my house that for some reason, smells a lot like cherry candy, like chupa chups and whatever sweet hard candy cherry, like push top blue cherry. Weirdly enough, I don't really like real cherries at all. 

Anyway, Balderdash starts off with another kick of super medicinal cherry and a real harsh edge of brandy, but after dry down more or less it's really a slightly fruity vague sweet cherry but it's really more of a vanilla dominant scent. With how soft it is, after an hour it's really hard to detect any type of cherry at all, but at least the vanilla ice cream is still nice. Personally, I've been on the hunt for a nice cherry because this is the only cherry scent I own - it's nice but I only wish it lasted longer and maybe was a little more like, cherry sorbet or jam. 

Verdict: A nice little afternoon treat. I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb! Except I only last about an hour. 

5. Humbuggery - An uplifting scent to keep you impervious to deception and shielded from malice. Pineapple Upside Down Cake: a delicious juxtaposition of tang and sweetness, caramelized pineapple, coconut cream, toasted hazelnut crust and baked brown sugar.

I really genuinely love NCD's notes - whatever they found for these gourmands are spot on. This isn't a scent you have to sniff and sniff with a detective's nose - and really, what's the point of making blends when it isn't identifiable? I love the fun, accessible nature of gourmands, and NCD makes this so easy to pick out every single note that's listed here. 

 I've raved about their pineapple note before in Tiki Bar - and also it is a pretty rare note just in general, so it's both fantastic that it's here, and also, legitimately just very tasty. Paired with like a delicious coconut cream, and a drizzle of bubbling brown sugar, this is exactly what it says on the tin - it's just a really good pineapple, with coconut cream, a little bit of nutty vanilla and lovely brown sugar. For me, the only reason this isn't higher up on the list is because I personally love Tiki Bar more, and prefer that one to this richer, dense coconut blend. But, don't let the whole fifth position make you feel like this isn't good, this is still ridiculously good, it's just, how do you pick between everything else that also smells amazing? 

Verdict: Even if you can't get behind pineapples in pizza, I reckon this is a scent everyone can agree is pretty -chefs kiss- bon (pine)apple tea. 

4. 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.

So about 70% of the reason why this isn't higher up in my list is because, I low key wanted a non-vanilla option. I'm totally aware that desserts, especially in the UK are vanilla based, but this is like a really smashing raspberry puree that gets trapped between the kinda dense heaviness of the vanilla. On application, this really does skew a bit medicinal (so your milage may really vary depending on skin chemistry), but I found that during the early stages of this scent, my skin took to the berries really well and gave me this lovely handful of raspberries, but that fruit gets immediately overshadowed by the heavier vanilla cream. 

I'm really into raspberries, like I love a crisp berry note, but for me, I personally - also in terms of desserts - prefer a lighter dessert, like the Ispahan. In terms of the actual blends, I would prefer something like Paris Royale (Poesie) because it has that variation of scents without going Full Vanilla (this is a new thing, I'm coining it.) I also noticed that the raspberry note also fades pretty quickly, around 2 hours in, leaving the thick vanilla cake behind, and overall feels a lot like Balderdash, except instead of cherries its raspberries. That said, this was probably one of my first favorites out the collection, and really captured what I loved about raspberries, so this gets a 4th place. As a little treat.

Verdict: This scent is truly loved - I go at this scent like Dracula goes with the fake blood. But like, who can blame me? It's delicious. 

3. Flummery - A truly delicious scent to help you gain perspective when people try to twist the truth. Highland Flummery: toasted oats and warm heather honey folded gently into whipped cream and drizzled with a shot of Drambuie.

To be totally honest, in a lot of ways, Flummery feels like Malarkey, except it's just better in every way. The oats note is stronger, more wheat, more dense and sweet, the whipped cream/custard is still there. Everything that I liked in Malarkey, is just amplified and better here. In fact, if you compared the two after an hour of wear, Malarkey just smells like a fainter version of Flummery. This reminds me of bread and butter pudding, creamy oatmeal, jackflaps (like baked oat slices), it's just rich, warm and so thoroughly warm. Personally, unless you're a real collector, I don't really think you need both Malarkey and Flummery. 

Verdict: I bumped into my ex boyfriend Malarkey on a park bench, and he points at my ring.
"You never wanted to be anybody's girlfriend and now you're Flummery's wife."
I turn my smile to the ring on my hand, and look at him thoughtfully.
"I guess, I just woke up one day... And I knew."
Malarkey turns to me, pained and pleading. "Knew what?"
And in that moment, I look back at him with a mixture of sympathy and fondness, and a 499 days of memories and possibilities all suspended at a single moment, gentle and heartbreakingly fragile.
"What I was never sure of with you." 

2. Codswallop - A grounding and stabilizing scent to keep you rooted in reality when people attempt to gaslight you. Spotted Dick: a dense and delicious brown cake adorned with raisins, sultanas, and dried blackcurrants.

To be honest, I really struggled between picking this and Poppycock, for first place, but I ended up sliding this down to second after a bit of contemplative criticism. This is one of those scents that I actually wasn't even going to pick up at first, but I was definitely surprised by how nice it turned out to be.
Sometimes I fancy myself as a Mary Berry or a Prue Leith, and you know, this was a very difficult decision because they were really all so fantastic. Well, there are no soggy bottoms on this one - This is firmly, a really good scent. Dense, brown sugar, lovely simmering brown cane sugar, a little bit of cake, and that dense, dried natural sweetness of raisins. sultanas. I don't know what else to say besides, this is really everything it says on the package and it's still soft, yet so rich and warm. It's a lovely comfort scent for the colder months, and between the brown sugar notes of this and Humbuggery, this one is a winner for me. 

Verdict: The first time I had brown sugar cake, I think I ate so much I felt sick. Good news, you can literally bath in this scent and your stomach won't hurt. This is literally the best of all worlds! 

1. 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.

Ugh I love lemon meringue pie. I always always get it when I'm at any special event, and I've had so many different takes on lemon meringue pie, yet I never get sick of it. This scent? It's like Paul Hollywood himself came to bake me this award winning pie. 

This scent literally captures the scent of the Lemon Meringue Pie. It's still got that soft, fluffy feeling, but its got that richness to the lemon, a little tang, a touch of zest, pilled high with italian meringue and a burst of crunchy buttery crust. I could lie down and sleep forever in this scent. I would literally eat it and siphon it into my blood stream if I could. It's still a little sweeter - and boy would I love a little brighter dash of lemon with this. I also do wish it was just a smidge stronger, because you sort of have to apply quite a bit of it to get enough projection, but once you load up, it's great to wear and fades out (around 5-6 hours) to a whisper of a moist lemon cake. With fantastic wearability, it's jumped its way to first place, and I've never looked back on it. 

Verdict: Poppycock wins the Great British Bake Off for me. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, all you need is just lemon, sugar, eggs and butter to smash out something incredible. Like the first time I watched Ratatouille and it warmed the depths of my cold, dead heart, Poppycock reminds me of all the times desserts have cheered me up when things are wrong, celebrated with me when things are right. I'm very emotional about Poppycock, but I hope you'll love it too. 

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.