A Box Of Georgian Treats

 

It's not too often that I'm given treats that completely surprise and mystify me. I've been writing about snacks and treats for a very long time, and I've been lucky enough to travel to many places to try them, so finding something new is becoming more and more difficult for me. However, we were recently gifted a box of treats from Georgia (the country not the state for all of my American friends out there), and I was pleasantly delighted with everything, with one thing in particular really blowing me away.

The main contents of the box was a selection of dried fruit. There were dried apples, apricots, plums (I think) and what appeared to be some kind of rolled dried fruit mixture. All of these fruits were tasty and I'm still going through them now. I'm actually a big fruit eater, and dried fruit makes fruit even better because it's portable.

There were also a few chocolate disks in this box, nothing that surprising here, just nuts and dried fruit embedded in chocolate discs. This is a great delivery method for nuts and chocolate because you don't have any guess work when it comes to knowing what kind of nuts you might be eating. Chocolate bars for some reason are more popular, yet most of the time they hide the contents. I like a surprise now and then, but when it's all out on display you really know what you're getting into.

There were also several candied oranges, covered in chocolate with strawberries. These made me a little nervous as I've had candied oranges in the past that are a little too bitter for my liking. These on the other hand were pretty sweet, and the chocolate/orange combination was well balanced. The strawberry was kind of useless flavour wise, but at least it looked cool.

There were several of these round balls in the box. They seemed to be some kind of mashed fruit inside. Honestly they weren't my favorite thing in this box, but I still ate them all.

The true treasure in this collection was this strange, lumpy stick. My first instinct was that it might be either dried fruit covered in chocolate, or some kind of jelly treat covered in chocolate. I took a bite and was instantly surprised and very happy.

Each one of these lumps was in fact a hazelnut. A fresh and very crunchy hazelnut covered in tasty chocolate.

The really cool feature was that there was evidence left behind explaining how these were made. Each hazelnut had a hole drilled in it, and through that hole was a piece of string. The string obviously held it together while it was being dipped in chocolate. Sure I almost choked on the string after my first bite, but after I figured it out it was no problem pulling it out. I love that they left behind a clue about how these were made, and they tasted great.

CC