Treats Box April 2016 Review & Coupon – Brazil!

April’s Treats Box explored the fabulous snacking culture of Brazil!  Treats is a monthly snack subscription full of snacks from around the world. You can expect to receive eclectic and interesting snacks that you’ve never sampled before! The Standard Pack offers 4-5 snacks, while the Premium box offers 8-10. You’ll get your first box within a few days when you subscribe.

The packaging is simple and elegant.  Tissue paper keeps the contents a surprise, and nice introductory postcard welcomes you to your Treats destination — this month welcomed us to Brazil with a snapshot of the idyllic Iguazu Falls.

The curator’s note pointed out some of the items with distinctly local and traditional character.  The big showpiece item this month was a giant Easter egg!

The handy card give gives the name and maker of each treat, with a translation from the Portuguese.  A short description of each snack is also given.  Take the link to the Treats site to learn more about each item.

As always, the box has a few large items on top and several smaller items in the lower layer.

Everything in the box.  The composition of each Treats collection depends on the local snacking culture, but there is usually a good mix of cookies or baked goods, small candies, and chocolate/caramel/marzipan or nougat, etc.  I love the sizing on the items — there are always several multi-serving items, and often you receive several family-size packages.  We’ve had what seemed like big-box-store sized items before, but this batch was less comically large.  Well, except for the one flamboyant item.

Fabitos Pipoca Doce Vovozinha:  This is just what you need to power you through an intense afternoon of soccer, err… football!  These giant kernels of corn have a sugary glaze, making them really sweet.  Instead of popped corn, they are absolutely huge puffed, but intact, kernels.

Yokitos Presunto Conchinhas:  These corn hemispheres are flavored like baked ham!  They are thin, and the texture is puffed, somewhat akin to a firmer version of a puffed Cheeto.  I was surprised to find them to be dry and not overly salty — I expected them to be heavily coated and salty.  The flavor actually taste a lot like sliced baked ham cold cuts.

Renata Agua e Sal:  These crackers have a very nice taste, being slightly unctuous, like a baked pita chip.  The flavor is a bit in that direction, too.  They as much like a Townhouse cracker as they are a water cracker or a Saltine — I guess that makes them a very versatile cracker!

Nestle Passatempo with Chocolate Filling:  These little sandwich cookies are filled with a milk chocolate flavored creme.  Each one has a picture of the monkey, in either brown or red, making silly expressions.  The cookies are thick with a slightly dry texture, a bit like a cross between a shortbread cookie and an animal cracker.

Nestle Prestigio:  A chocolate coated log of sweetened coconut.  The interior has more natural coconut texture than a more sugared Mounds, a bit like a condensed milk macaroon.  A very tasty and straight forward coconut and milk chocolate combo.

Nestle Chokito:  A chewy caramel fudge center is coated crisped rice speckled chocolate.  It has nice 100 Grand feel to it, but the chocolate is a tad darker, and the center is firm and chewy, not creamy.  Delicious!

Garoto Baton Branco:  I adore white chocolate, so I was eager to eat this candy, a stick of pure white chocolate.  I didn’t care for this one too much — it was hard and not too creamy.

BDK Bananinha Paraibuna:  This chewy log is made of sweetened and dried banana.  It is dried in a manner that produces a relatively dense and intensely flavorful hunk of candied fruit.  Unlike fried banana chips, this treat browns and remains slightly moist, much in the way a prune is dried, yet gooey.

Lacta Sonho De Valsa Bonbons:  Milk chocolate and a crisp shell encase a cashew butter center.  The chocolate is sweet, but the center has a rich and creamy cashew flavor that dials it back and tempers the sweetness.

Garoto Serenata De Amor Easter Egg:  This was one big chocolate egg!  Aside from a small plastic pedestal (which extended at its rim to the bottom edge of the red label), the entire package was taken up by the egg.

The back edge of our egg was broken and pushed in a bit.  I thought that was the extent of the damage, but when I loosened the foil to get a picture, the whole thing imploded!  It was still really delicious, but I missed getting a shot of the unwrapped egg in its entirety (frowny face).

The egg was hollow, but it had a fairly thick (approx. 1/4″) shell which was studded throughout by large chunks of cashew.  A Serenata de Amor bon bon was inside!

I loved the chocolate — it was moderately dark and had a very creamy texture and rich flavor — a bit surprising to see such good quality chocolate used in a “structural” treat.  The outside of the egg was textured with a woodgrain or fur pattern — actually quite odd to see on an egg when you think about it.

The Serenata de Amor bon bon has a composition almost exactly like the Sonho de Valsa bon bon — they are competitors and each have a cashew creme filling.  The Serenata had a slightly less gooey texture — more like a truffle instead of a butter.

Treats is one of our very favorite discover-foreign-foods boxes because every item is appealing (nothing too weird included merely for shock value).  This box was a little unusual, because the egg was pretty extreme — usually there are a few fairly large items and several modest size ones instead of one huge item and a bunch of smaller ones.  We like to get the premium pack, because we hate to miss out on some of the great finds we won’t see otherwise! It looks like next month might be Oceana, which is a fun destination and should have some interesting snacks!

Visit Treats to subscribe or find out more. You can save 15% on your first month with coupon code HELLO15.