SnackSurprise - The January Box - Bulgaria

All good things come to an end and, with that being the case, welcome to the first and final snack box of 2021. For our last SnackSurprise post, we shall be experiencing the highs and lows of Bulgarian nibbles.

I Tetris'd the shit out of that!

Our final selection.

Would we end on a high or would the Bulgarian box prove to be a disappointment? A quiet Saturday afternoon would prove it one way or another.

They put lots in this bag, the bastards...

Savoury snacks first and we're off with Zayo Bayo, a corn-based snack with the flavours of cream and dill. In a promising start, the bag was full to the brim but that's where, for me, it turned sour. The smell released from the bag was like the foetid atmosphere of an ancient tomb. Past that, we sampled the rather soft, almost stale texture of the snack itself. The cream half did ok, but that dill really was off-putting and for me, it was a solid no. My good lady remains on the fence about these.

A new accompaniment to soup...???

We followed up with Kubeti Pizza, which turned out to be small toasted pizza flavoured bread cubes. Very crunchy and heavy on the tomato and oregano, my good lady remarked that these would be quite nice in tomato soup, resembling as they do, croutons. I can't help but agree, but not sure if we would ever be brave enough to try that particular recipe. 

Early enough for Beer Nuts, not early enough for beer.

The Beer Nuts were the last of the savoury snacks and, well, as you can see, they are peanuts covered in a crunchy, roasted shell. Ok, they're day-glo orange but actually tasted quite nice, with a lovely texture and a pleasant, not over-powering, flavour on top of the expected peanut. Sadly, these were not consumed with beer (it was half one in the afternoon and that's just too early for home drinking), but you can easily buy equivalents in the UK.

A bit squished, but tasty nonetheless.

Milkiss began what turned out to be one hell of a choccy fest. A triple-layered coca cake with a milk cream filling, this had suffered a little in transit but was still good enough to eat. And what a treat it was, a strong smell of chocolate was backed up with a similarly strong taste. The filling was just sweet enough without becoming cloying and the cocoa powder is a nice touch on the top. A lovely little snack.

Good stratification there.

A chocolate wafer next, with the very crumbly Nestle Mura. Not too hard, nor too dry, you get enough of the chocolate in the wafer and the milk filling kept it from desiccating your gob. A good choice to have alongside a coffee, it did the job.

The offending item is circled here.

The Balkan Cake Bar had more chocolate, wrapped around a soft cake bar that, frankly, had a very strange taste. It came across as sour cherry but had a perfume quality that sat badly with the overall idea of the bar. Not at all nice, so much so that I pre-emptively forgot to take a picture of it.

ORANGE!!!!!

Another wafer bar now, with the Borovets Wafer that's listed as having a hint of orange and peanut. That, gentle reader, is complete and utter horse shit. The orange in this chocolate wafer bar smacks you round the face and teabags you into submission. Having said that, there was still a subtle peanut essence there, but by God it's scared of the orange stomping around your gob. With maybe a bit less of the orange, this would have been a nice, if slightly boring, wafer bar, but alas...

It's a Milky Way.

Svoge Republika was another chocolate bar, and, simply put, it's a Milky Way, only slightly firmer. 'Nuff said.

Cake disc of honey/ginger goodness.

Medovinka was another snack of cake-y goodness, but by this point, both my good lady and I were suffering from the excess of chocolate. Even after having just a bite of each snack, things were getting a tad sickly. Still, this honey flavoured cake only had a thin choccy shell.  The cake itself was quite moist and had overtones of ginger as well. However, there was no way in Christendom or any other spiritual land that we could handle more than a bite each. Still, nice enough.

Cat poo? Resin block? Nope. Sugar HELL!!!

What the actual fuck is this? Chaika Dessert was a silver foil wrapped hard nugget of... Well, what? Apparently a classic dessert bar, this seemed to be a foil wrapped cat turd, or a small block of resin (allegedly... so I have been informed...). It was actually a thick chocolate shelled bar of sugar. The white fondant filling felt like 100 percent sucrose that definitely set teeth on edge. Extremely unpleasant and kind of made the heart pine for foiled cat poo.

Horrible little flowery bastards.

Temenuzhki Drops were the final snack, a small, hard sweet in the shape of flowers. They had a horrible floral taste of Violet and I couldn't finish mine. My good lady lasted another 20 seconds (she's made of sterner stuff) but in the end, she too disposed of the offending sweet. However, to avoid waste, these shall be kept as my brother in law likes this kind of stuff. Weirdo...

A bottle of fizzy honey piss... interesting...

Last, but not least, was Derby Etar, the drink of the box, and was advertised as having the "iconic" Bulgarian flavour of Etar, a combination of caramel and honey. What it certainly had was an unpleasant smell once you cracked the bottle top open, but when you had a drink, you knew why. It was foul. Very floral, the honey overpowers you and made this a horrible drink. As per usual, it felt like we're more unlucky than lucky when it came to the drinks side of SnackSurprise.

Overall, this was a mixed box, with an over-reliance on chocolate and some favours listed in the guide as "interesting" but coming over as just plain bad. Still, one or two highlights means this month's selection wasn't a complete bust.

So then, that's it for SnackSurprise. The subscription has been cancelled and we shall receive no more. It's been an interesting experiment and we've found some lovely little snacks, but there haven't half been some bad ones as well. It's certainly been an experience.