I dove into the box thinking I knew nothing about Sweden, but I surprised myself. Of course it is the birthplace IKEA; so you know what that means – SWEDISH MEATBALLS. Big fan of those. If you have ever seen the show Crazy Delicious on Netflix, then you have seen one of the Chefs I am most intrigued by, Niklas Ekstedt. He is known for using local ingredients and fireborn cooking techniques. That’s right, no electricity. Another one of my culinary idols, Marcus Samuelsson, born in Ethiopia and lived his life in Sweden. If you watch Food Network you know he is a samurai chef; works with precision and creativity (I absolutely love him). Outside of both those Chefs, I am unfamiliar with the food culture. Especially the snack culture. I was excited to chow down on the Swedish delights and here is how it all shook down.
#1 Marabou Oreo
Another oreo treat topping the list! This was less traditional Oreo flavor profile and more Hershey’s cookies n’ cream chocolate bar, but better than the cookies n’ cream bar. The milk chocolate makes it more well-balanced than with white chocolate. The crunchy oreo bits encased in the silky milk chocolate makes it a fantastic textural bite.
#2 Cloetta Kex Bar
With the encouragement from a friend, the Kex bar was the second snack we tried and it quickly landed at the top of our list and top of our hearts. This is a truly perfect milk chocolate snack. The creaminess of the chocolate and crunchiness of the wafer are singing in perfect harmony. The milk chocolate is melt-in-your-mouth silky and the wafer layers are light and crisp. If given the opportunity I would choose this snack again and again. The only problem we had was we shared it.
#3 Dumle Snacks
This delight is a mix of “foamed” caramel, crisp puffed rice, coated in milk chocolate. I am not sure what foamed caramel is (the goog was not helpful on this topic), but it was delicious and creamy. It didn’t have that normal stickiness that carmel has. It was in balance with the crunch of the puffed rice and the strong milk chocolate flavor. I guess you could compare it to a crunch bar only because of the crisp rice texture with creamy chocolate. The caramel is a welcomed ingredient for this candy bar!
#4 Estrella Grill Onion
These chips are scrumptious! They were bursting with a salted grilled vidalia onion flavor. Imagine having a plain Ruffles chip dipped in french onion dip, or simply a french onion chip – that perfect flavor was baked into the chip. They have great crispness and a strong bold flavor. These had me licking my fingers, that is how delicious the flavor was (don’t worry I’m vaccinated).
#5 Bubs Skalle
In the Mobile Unit we can relate to skulls, so we were pumped up to try these bright pink sour sugar covered skull gummies. They did not disappoint! The shape is a little abstract, but you get the gist. Immediately upon entry into our mouths they tasted like those sour patch watermelons and finished tasting like Bubblicious original flavor. The sour flavor was a strong punch, but faded rather quickly. The gummy had a nice chew without being sticky. These bad boys were tasty! Although, on the bag they are described as “sour foam candy,” which if I’m purchasing based on that alone I would’ve passed.
#6 Dill & Graslok Chips
These chips are extremely herbaceous. They are described as being flavored generously with dill and chives, I strongly endorse this statement. I will say the dill flavor is much more pungent than the chive flavor. High crisp and crunch factor, nice and thin, accurate flavor profile -all around a delicious chip. Solid option.
#7 Daim Bar
Oh hot damn! I just felt compelled to say it because I absolutely love the name of this candy bar. These are the Swedish version of a Heath bar…so of course it’s absolutely delish, but it has fallen lower on the list because it’s a familiar bite. I do love the smooth chocolate with the crunchy, yet slightly sticky caramel toffee and small almond bits, but it doesn’t separate itself from the pack because of the Heath bar.
#8 Plopp
This is a run-of-the-mill caramel filled milk chocolate bar. It’s not bad. Here is a little insight on how we are choosing to rank our candies. If we walked into a convenience store and all of these treats were before us, which would we choose? Not the Plopp bar is the answer. It’s tasty, but not memorable. The “decadent caramel” is incredibly light in color, so it’s not very rich. It is also very thin, it oozed out of the bar when each square was broken off from the whole. I did enjoy that you could segment the chocolate bar and share, that’s always a perk.
#9 Dubbel Nougat
Dubbel Nougat we interpreted as double nougat. It is described as light and soft nougat combined with a layer of dark hazelnut nougat. I didn’t realize there was such a thing as plain nougat, but I gave it a google and found it was a confection made from egg whites, honey and roasted nuts. Not sure what other type of nut they used, but this candy bar is cloyingly sweet. It was so sweet I couldn’t have more than one bite. It lacks the decadence of a deep hazelnut flavor, but it does deliver on nuttiness. However, what the Dubbel Nougat does deliver is a super creamy texture.
#10 Ahlgrens Bilar
Blehhhh. Our info packet says, “accidentally created in 1953 during an attempt to produce marshmallows…” Well they should have stopped there because what they did produce is not good. They are future described as, “light and chewy.” I will agree with light, but they have a weird textural resistance – it’s an odd mix of stale marshmallow mixed with a swedish fish. They are molded into little cars…why? The three colors they come in are white, pink, and green. White is reminiscent of a jet puff marshmallow, the pink a swedish fish, and the green a lime. The green are awful, the other two are tolerable.
#11 Banana Skids
It’s basically an american Laffy Taffy, but it snaps in half? It should be stretchy and soft, but it is a laborious task to chew it. The texture is extremely tough and sticky. What makes this a not terrible snack is the banana. It is most similar to the banana runt. The issue is all we taste is banana, the toffee flavor is washed away by the banana.
Sweden turned out to have simple, yet bold delicious chip flavors; and velvety chocolates. The dominant snacks were a combination of chocolate and toffee, which must be very popular in Sweden. All the combinations of chocolate and toffee tasted good, but all very similar to one another. It was hard to select which one was better because all that seemed to change between the chocolates was the texture (Crunch with smooth chocolate all the way)! Overall Sweden was a really good box with familiar flavors.
That’s a wrap on Sweden! Off to our next country, the Ukraine!
The Okayest Chef 