El Almendro Turrón Crocanti con Chocolate

Today's Wednesday world food review comes to you from Spain via T.K.Maxx. 

I had no plans to buy any more snacks, if you follow me on Twitter (@OneTreat) you might have seen I have more than enough goodies to see me through a while, but as always I went into T.K.Maxx to buy a purse and ended up leaving with a purse, two wallets, two watches and this Almond Turrón. 

A little tip - if you do want to buy one, check T.K.Maxx first, I got this for £1.99 and they're anywhere from £4 for one this sized to £20 for the more full sized on Amazon, without delivery!

Turrón is also known as torró (Catalan), torrone (Italian, Brazilian Portuguese), turrone (Sardinian),  torrão (European Portuguese) or nougat and is typically made of honey, sugar, egg whites and toasted almonds or other nuts. The Spanish variety usually comes in two types, hard or soft. 

This pack, the Crocanti con Chocolate is made up of 53% almonds, honey and 7.5% of the bar is chocolate with a 35% cocoa minimum. 

It smelt delicious -  very nutty, chocolatey and sweet. Everything I look for! The Turrón itself was in a plastic wrapper inside the box and removing it was hard, it's extremely sticky to touch as there is a lovely honey coating all over the top. 

If you suffer in any way at all with your teeth and were planning on trying this I'd stop right here! Crunchy would be an understatement, the almonds are thick enough but the honey on top adds another level of chew to each mouthful, it was quite a jaw workout trying to chew threw the nuts and avoid the whole thing sticking to my teeth! The honey not only adds stickiness to the Turrón but seriously ups the sweetness. Touch wood I have no problems with my teeth, but before I'd even swallowed my first bite my teeth were stinging (hopefully you'll know what I mean with that!). 

The almonds were the first flavour I noticed, then the honey. The chocolate was quite uneven across the bottom so it was noticeably absent in taste for the first part of my bar, I was trying to taste it but the other two flavours were quite overpowering anyway. 

The more of this I ate, the more my teeth hurt -  it was a bit too addictive to stop because of a little pain though! 

I finally got to a section with a thicker layer of chocolate and it's a shame it's so thin across the bottom - they've used good stuff. The chocolate flavour actually ended up stronger than the honey and it was delicious, I'd happily eat a bar of the chocolate alone. 

Strangely this is advertised as a snack pack, it's 75g so about three quarters the size of a 'sharing' block of chocolate but there is no way I could have eaten a larger sized bar of this - my teeth would have fallen out!! 

Very moreish, I'd like to try one with a bit thicker chocolate though. 

Rating 7/10 

Valor chocolates - Crocan chocolate con leche + American Brownie

This has to be the most reviews I've done in a week! I sent my husband shopping and he came home with 5 new chocolate bars, 3 new bags of chocolate, some white chocolate raisins, 7 Galaxy ripples, 2 pints of lemon sorbet, some Müller corners and a couple of sad looking ready meals. I think I'll send him food shopping more often!

Because he chose (and paid for) all this weeks treats I couldn't stop him from eating his fair share before I had a chance to review any, which is why half of this gigantic 200g bar of Valor Crocan chocolate con leche + American Brownie is missing in the picture above. 

We spent some time in Spain a few years ago and I can only remember a few phrases here and there, one (the most important when you're spending all day every day in Spanish waiting rooms) being "té/café con leche"- tea/coffee with milk. Being the genius I am I gather chocolate con leche is milk chocolate. 

This is supposed to contain 10% brownie pieces and 3% cereal but I think that's another underestimation, this is the back of my bar and not only did it seem there were more cereal bits than brownie but there seemed to be more than the chocolate too!

He bought this from B&M who are more well known for their bargains than good quality chocolate, the one near me tends to stock novelty chocolate and a few imports so I didn't have high hopes for this, expecting a combination of the two. As I said before this is a huge bar, double the size of most sharing bars and I was pleased to find that it was nice and thick, I hate it when companies make a bar look big by stretching it out and the chocolate ends up matchstick thin. The chocolate itself was surprisingly tasty, it has a minimum of 30% cocoa solids and although sugar comes before the cocoa butter, milk and cream powder in the ingredients it wasn't overly sugary but a nice mixture of creamy, milky and sweet. It went down nicely and for the price I'd buy another block of this size of just the plain chocolate quite happily. It's not high quality great stuff but it does the job. 

The texture is the winning factor for me here. The cereal pieces are very crispy and crunchy, they didn't have a flavour I could pick out but they're certainly noticable in the overall bar. The brownie pieces are huge. The photo I have doesn't do them justice, they are soft and chewy and have an actual brownie texture. Not only do they feel and chew like a real brownie but they were big enough to get whole chunks to eat alone and they tasted authentic too, the flavour was strong enough that it overpowered the chocolate for most of the bar. 

All in all I liked this, it does what it says on the packet - a milky, creamy chocolate bar with a lovely crunchy, chewy texture that actually tasted like I was eating a brownie. 

Rating 7/10 

Haribo Favoritos - (Europe)

I've come to the last of stuff I squeezed into my suitcase on my travels and it's not an exotic sweet, just a mixed bag of Haribo I haven't seen on sale in the UK - Favoritos. 

There were five different sweets in my bag, slightly brighter than the picture shows but nowhere near as neon coloured as are usual in the sweets I've been eating! 

On the official Haribo site there are a few Favoritos bags available, original which seem to be these but not with the fizzy sugar coating, and bags of each sweet individually. I've got the 'con zumo de frutas' bag, literal translation from the site "delicious combination of the best cover sugar references. With fruit juice" - I'm guessing the best ones covered with sugar, made with fruit juice! 

Banana - I had the most of these which I was very happy about! Why can't we have these in England, I could gladly eat bags and bags of this marshmallow - very soft and squishy and they taste beautiful. A very natural tasting banana flavour with no artificial tang at all. One of the best banana sweets I've tried - ever! 

Melocotón (Peaches) - These are the red and yellow discs, they are more of a jelly sweet and to be fair without looking the bag up it didn't scream out peaches to me - although now I know what they are I can kind of make the connection. They were nice and chewy and despite being unsure on the flavour they were enjoyable and not too sweet or sour. 

Strawberries - I was a bit suprised at these as unlike the fizzy strawberries and cherries we get they weren't a pure jelly they had a solid bottom - kind of like a hard marshmallow. There was no hint of sourness anywhere in the bag so that can't be as big in Europe as it is over here and these had a lovely sweet flavour that I prefer to the version we get. 

Cream Kiss - I've never known the pink and white marshmallow at the top as a cream kiss, I've always called it a fizzy mushroom so it's nice to have a name! I found it quite plain but I can actually see how they're cream now I know (again!). Even though they had a milder flavour they were nice and sweet with a good texture so another good addition to the bag. 

Gummy Bear - Finally one we have over here! Tastes just the same as ours and is actually the most boring of the bunch so I'll spare the details. 

I'd like to see this bag in the UK please Haribo! A nice, sweet change to the bags we get. 

Rating 7/10  

Lidl Ensaimadas - sweet pastry swirls

I can never go in Lidl and leave without buying something. This week it was 2 moisturisers, 4 packets of toffee Poppetts for 99p and this bag of interesting looking Ensaimadas. Apparently they're a Spanish sweet pastry swirl made from sourdough. I've never tried them before but the picture on the front and from what I can see through the clear parts of the wrapper they looked delicious. My reasoning as well is that if you can base Spanish pastry or dough on Churros then these should taste good!! 

There are 6 individually wrapped Ensaimadas in the pack, a big plus for me as there's only 2 of us here and when I buy pastries/cakes in larger packs we never eat all of them before they go stale and horrible. 

I was impressed when I took one out - that's a side plate which only comfortably fits a slice of the smaller loaves of bread, these are a decent size and even though Spanish week at Lidl was last week and this was a lonely leftover it was still nice and soft. There was more than enough sugar topping it to make a complete mess of my hands, clothes and table too, I'm always pleased with Lidl that despite the low prices they never seem to scrimp on the amount or quality of the ingredients. 

Having never tried an Ensaimada before I was suprised that its not a flaky pastry on the inside but texture wise was more along the lines of a very light cake - Obviously it didn't actually taste or quite feel like cake but not quite pastry either. 

My first mouthful was extremely sweet and confusingly the sweetness went quite quickly to be replaced by the familiar sourdough flavour. I realised that's the reasoning for the huge amounts of sugar on top, the pastry itself isn't very moist - it's not dry at all but the contrast between the super sweet powdered sugar and sourdough pastry is what makes this delicious. It's like a slightly less sweet, much less stodgy doughnut and my only regret is that I found this the week after Spanish week, I better not have to wait until next time round to find these again!!! 

Rating 9/10