Flaming Flamingo: Gingerbread Trifle and Hot Jam Donut Review

Due to USPS suspension of Australian shipping, I've decided to take the opportunity to branch out more to explore some local indie brands! Although I haven't found many gourmand perfume brands here, there are a lot of indie makers who predominantly make candles and wax melts - and there are fantastic gourmand candles. My favorite (and overpriced) brand for gourmands has to be Glasshouse, but at the price point, I'm very nervous about burning them, and what's better than trying out some new indie houses, especially to support smaller, local brands! 

I was kindly gifted the Gingerbread Trifle scent by a friend for Christmas, and listen - I loved it. I quickly placed an order shortly after to try out their other candles and room sprays as well. There will be more reviews to come! (Although admittedly, real life is getting in the way of more writing right now). 

About the brand and my order: 

Flaming Flamingo is a brand located in South Australia, created and run by Susanna. The brand sells an assortment of scented goods, such as novelty shaped candles, normal candles, diffusers, wax melts and room sprays. 

After having tried Gingerbread Trifle, I really wanted the scent as a room spray and reached out on Instagram about trying the scents in another format - they were extremely prompt with their response and also told me that it was possible to get all their candle scents in a room spray offering! I ran into another silly issue on my end trying to get free shipping (which is available for orders over $90!) and got a very quick response on Instagram again sorting everything out as well. I was very happy about the customer service end, they were polite and very quick with their responses. 

I made my order on the 26th of December, and got a shipping notification on the 1st of January (which is impressive for the holiday season!) but it did not come with tracked shipping. Thankfully, it arrived safely in a huge box, packaged with wrapping paper. The candles came in cardboard boxes, and the room sprays were wrapped in sandwich bags. I didn't have any leaking or breakage, so it was fine. 

The candles I got came in an amber glass jar, with a twist plastic top -  which is nice. I use something else to snuff out the candle usually as the plastic isn't very heat resistant, but I do like that it has a lid, to prevent the excessive dust and also just to preserve the scent a little more. 

Candles: 

Gingerbread Trifle - Sweet sugary top notes become the perfect companion to a spicy pumpkin gingerbread with heart notes of nutmeg, clove and cinnamon. bottom notes of hazelnut and caramel

This is a gorgeous, spice heavy scent. When burning, this smells almost identical to Iced Gingerbread (MoonaLisa) - which is absolutely perfect. Although the scent from the candle when I sniff from the jar wasn't initially my favorite because of the heavy clove and nutmeg dominating the scent, the spice is a nice added touch to an otherwise nutty, rich pumpkin gingerbread. I just adore this - all the spicy kicks of nutmeg, clove and warm cinnamon, on top of a sweet caramel creamy base with a touch of savoury pumpkin and spiced gingerbread. In addition to the scent being great, this also has great throw and projection, despite it being a one wick candle, the performance is comparable to a BBW three wick candle. 

Formula wise, the candles are made from very very soft wax, and will melt under your fingers, but these have great burn time - I've had some of these burning for hours and I'm still not even a third through (especially compared to other brands like Maks and Me). For even burn, I noticed that this takes a while to burn around the edges. Moreover, it does have little craters of crumbly wax on the surface after it cools down, but it's more of a superficial feature and hasn't impacted the performance of the candle.  

Hot Jam Donut - What could be better than a sweet fried donut oozing with strawberry jam and added notes of cinnamon sugar, raspberry & buttermilk.  Top Notes: Strawberry, Raspberry, Middle Notes: Buttermilk, Malt, Base Notes: cinnamon Sugar, Vanilla Bean

This is a best seller scent, but I wasn't particularly wow-ed by this one (especially in light of the Gingerbread Trifle scent just really smashing it out the park). This is reminiscent of Rabbit Cafe (Luvmilk)'s take on jam donuts - the berry jam is very light, thin and borders on artificial, on top of a fried dough base and sugar, a little more like pink marshmallows and musk sticks. When burnt, this scent is similarly light, with far less throw and projection that Gingerbread Trifle, but smells much more like berry pink marshmallows without any of the other aspects. It's not bad, just not my favorite. 

Candle wise, I had a few issues with the wick on this candle in particular being a little shorter, and so a lot of the time it would refuse to light properly, and the pool of wax would end up snuffing itself out. I had to fiddle a little with the wax on this one (scooping some out into a wax melt) so that this would burn properly. I also had the same crumbly craters in the wax, but no impact on performance was noted here. 

Disclaimer: I was not sponsored for this review or an affiliate with the brand, and all opinions are my own, and do not reflect any brand's opinions or interests. All products mentioned in this post were purchased.