#gin discount code

I’ve had messages asking me about the marshmallows featured on Day 30 – Quirky of my Gin A Day May images.  So breaking with tradition, but maintaining a firm ginny link, here’s a little bit more about the brand and a rather tasty discount code for you guys to use too!

Bonboosh is a family business, made up of husband and wife team Amanda and Steve and their 15 year-old daughter, who is affectionately known as Pipsqueak.

Back in 2017 Amanda was made redundant from a role in the corporate world so focused her attentions on experimenting in the kitchen as a very welcome time filler.  She had been working on and tinkering about with a marshmallow recipe and after tasting one of her new creations, Steve announced “Blimey, you could sell these!” Which was apparently rather fortunate, because Amanda had in fact already decided that she didn’t really fancy working for anyone else again.

With that settled, it was time to focus on the business name and branding.  I have it on good authority that this was all settled in the early hours of a Sunday morning, with the assistance of our old friend Gin.  Gosh she is a useful friend to have, isn’t she?

Operating out of their kitchen, in a slightly too small cottage, in a village in north Hampshire, Amanda began experimenting with different ingredients and flavours.  The strapline for Bonboosh is “braver with flavour” meaning it was very important that there wasn’t just a hint of this and a subtle shade of that, tastes had to be bold, striking and identifiable.  Apparently it is for this reason that they haven’t yet been able to release a strawberry flavoured marshmallow.

Marshmallow experimentation has not come without it’s trials and tribulations, mango and ginger can stop gelatine from setting, (who knew) and apparently alcohol can make the mix collapse.  This doesn’t surprise me so much, it has at times been known to have a similar effect on me.  When experimenting with gin, Amanda had to tweak and re tweak the process to get the gin flavours to work…or at least that was her excuse at the time for the depletion in their gin collection.

Some of their early creations included Candyfloss, Choccy Mint, Choc’n’Salted Caramel and London Gin & Elderflower, with Gin & Elderflower and Salted Caramel remaining two of their most popular marshmallows ever since.

It’s all well and good knowing the background, but are they actually any good.  Well, Hubby and I tucked into out fluffy treats and this is what we found.  For starters, he loved the mint chocolate chip ones which was fortunate, because I had already devoured the entire packet of candyfloss ones myself.  Based on the flavours, my hopes were high for the ginny flavoured ones.  First up were the Gin & Elderflower and I was genuinely surprised and impressed to taste some juniper in them, as it’s not often the case with quirky gin products which hit the market.  The Gin & Rhubarb ones were a little more rhubarb heavy but there was definitely still some juniper in there.  Overall I was impressed…and full, and fast descending into a sweet treat coma.

The Bonboosh ethos is that smiles are good.

“We have fun making marshmallows, it makes us smile, and we want our lovely customers to smile when they enjoy eating them. We are all about spreading the Happy, one marshmallow at a time.”

Well, they definitely made me smile, so mission accomplished.  

Times are pretty crazy at the moment and many small businesses such as this one heavily rely on food festivals, craft fairs and summer fetes, none of which are currently running.  So, if you have a sweet tooth, please do go and visit the Bonboosh shop.  They have such a great range of fluffy goodies and if you enter the code GINOBS10 when you are paying then you will receive a 10% discount off your first order.

Happy munching

I have the absolute pleasure of being friends with some wonderfully, fabulous ginny folks.  One of them being the lovely Emma Stokes, better known to many as Gin Monkey.  If you’re a fan of gin, but aren’t sure who she is, she’s the gal in charge of World Gin Day which is held every year on the second Saturday in June.  You’d have thought coordinating something so big and ploughing on with her day job as a Scientist would keep Emma busy enough, but oh no, not this little Monkey!  Amongst other things she has collaborated with a Science Jewellery company to create Gin and Tonic necklaces which show our favourite tipple in their molecular forms.  She wrote a book entitled “The Periodic Table of Cocktails” and had just released a Gin Rummy deck of playing cards dedicated to the drink of the moment and beautifully illustrated by a very talented chap called Jean Andre.

Just before Christmas Monkey contacted me to ask for my address, I had a rather giddy feeling as I thought I knew what she might be sending me in the post…the finished product of a project she’d been working on for a little while!  Sure enough, a few days later a cardboard tube popped through my letter box…eeeeeeep!  I carefully unravelled the contents to reveal my very own 99 bottles of gin on the wall scratch off poster!

My problem then became my line of attack, after much debate (with myself) I decided to scratch off the bottles of gin which I own or have owned.  I don’t throw out gin bottles, so have a permanent record of my gin history in the form of bottles…lots of bottles…in lots of rooms!  I also decided to go through alphabetically.  Apparently I suffer from a mild form of OCD.

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There are a real mix of gins on this poster which range from ones which are common and well known, Gordon’s, Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire.  To ones which many people will be far less familiar with, Brookies, Garden Swift and Willem Barentsz.  I asked Emma how on earth she set about whittling down her options to settle on these final 99.  She said, before making her short list she started off with a very long list.

“I made sure there were some people would have tried before, or could get hold of easily.   All of the gins had to be available in the UK and easy to pick up online if they weren’t available in physical stores.  There’s nothing more frustrating that getting it and not being able to scratch some off. “

Of the gins featured on the poster, I can proudly say that I own (or did once own but have consumed with only the bottle left as evidence) 59 of the gins and have tried 71 of them in total.  I maintain it is not a problem, it is an obsession!  I also now have a very useful list of gins which I need to try or more likely buy, so that I can complete the poster.  I’ve even reduced a monthly gin subscription and made it quarterly so I can fill the remaining months with gins which I can scratch off.

These posters can be purchased from the Gin Monkey website for £14.99 plus £1.99 p&p for UK purchases and £3.99 p&p for international shipping.  However, if you use the discount code GINOBSESSIONS when purchasing off her website, the generous little Monkey will give you 10% off until the end of March 2019.

So, that’s me done with my gushing.  Yes I know she’s my friend and some people will say I’m being biased, but I genuinely do really love the idea of the product, which would make a great gift for a gin lover.  The only problem is that I have become slightly obsessed about it and it would appear that the cats are jealous of the amount of attention the poster is getting.

99 bottles of gin on the wall poster was gifted.