Yummy Bazaar December 2015 Subscription Box Review – Full Experience Holiday Box

Instead of a destination this month, Yummy Bazaar is celebrating the holidays around the world!  Yummy Bazaar delivers gourmet food items to your door monthly.  The items for the Destination Food Club are carefully selected from a different single country every month.  With the Full Experience you’ll get 6-8 full sized gourmet items from your destination for $35.95.  There is also a Sampler subscription that sends 6-8 sample sizes for $9.95.  We received the Full Experience box.

As always, the box was packed with an attractive, but utilitarian, corrugated, brown paper, and tape combo.  A lovely car also graced the box, showing a scene form a festively-lit German square.
There was a nice holiday letter that described the holiday trip around the world!  It was a decidedly Old World Christmas collection, with traditional (and some nearly archaic) treats from Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

The Holiday collection had lots of great items — I was truly excited opening it, because, even when I’ve seen similar items in the store, they are not the authentic brands, and they tend to fall short of the originals.  Ingredient information is provided for each item.

The contents were lovingly packed to stand up to shipping — ours arrived in superb condition.

All the products in this month’s box.  I actually had a bit of a pause as I discovered the contents of the box.  Each time I grabbed something, I thought to myself how much I wanted to eat it — by the fourth item I was a little upset because I knew I would have to restrain myself to nibbles if I was going to taste everything.

Love the packaging for all the items!  The perforated paper is really effective as padding jars, but it also looks really cool when taped up like it is.

Schlünder Traditional Marzipan Stollen Pieces ($9.95):  These sweet pastries seem to be in the Kolachi family, a slightly flaky dough, studded with raisins.  Marzipan is in the middle, but it is so smooth that it feels more like a fruit creme.

Mitica ChocoHigos Hand-dipped Dark Chocolate Figs ($9.50):  Big, chewy figs dipped inward chocolate.  I’m a date man myself, but I have to admit that these were excellent!

Favols Les Créatives Confit Pétales de Roses – Rose Jam ($6.95):  Rose petals lend a sweet and floral nature to the jam, creating a fragrant and lovely condiment suitable for toast, cheese, or similar use.  Flowers make a superb jam, having all the flavor and nuance of fruit jam (and an even richer olfactory presence), needing only pectin and sugar.

Calissons du Roy René ($16.95):  Almond and fruit are ground to create a truly unique and lovely confection.  At once tender, chewy, nutty, and sweet.  Tasting these reminded me of my first taste of Drambuie or Chartreuse — you question why a delightful combination with this pedigree is not more often imitated, wondering why this is the first you’ve tasted of it.

Sperlari Zanzibar Classic Gianduja ($5.95) Gianduja is the generic name for what Nutella is – cocoa hazelnut butter. This is way better – gianduja with whole hazelnuts packed inside chocolate.  The hazelnuts are actually whole, and impressively so.

Weissella Oblaten Lebkuchen – German Gingerbread Cookies/Cakes ($5.55) These German gingerbread treats are one of our absolute family favorites. We got them in a box a few years ago and are totally addicted to them.  Part of the appeal is that they have a heartiness to them and are not outrageously soft or sweet.  We also love the communion wafer style base upon which the batter is poured (same as the Roy Rene Calissons, BTW).

Tre Marie Il Panettone Mignon ($7.95) This brand has its roots in medieval times – 1150! –  which is really quite unbelievable.  Literally the best panettone I’ve ever had — moist, sweet, super-flavorful (but not overpoweringly orange peel or pith flavored), and loaded with Sultanas.  This is so perfect:  if someone made French toast out of it, you would chastise them for ruining it!

This is perhaps one of the best holiday boxes that we’ve ever reviewed.  I loved the extreme heritage-focused angle of the selections, each one a real classic, some with centuries (or nearly a millennium!) of history.  The total value was about $63 and this is the exact box you’ll receive as a subscriber this month, shipping between the 15th and the 18th. All the items can be found individually at Yummy Bazaar.

Visit Yümmy Bazaar to subscribe or find out more!