I found these Choceur Milk Chocolate Almond Clusters at Aldi. I almost didn’t buy them because they didn’t sound that exciting. That is, until I took a closer look and saw the fine print: “almond and gingerbread pieces with milk chocolate.”
Now that sounds exciting! Oh yeah; they’re also supposed to be “deliciously crunchy.”
I love baking with ginger – gingerbread, ginger snaps, ginger in pumpkin desserts, etc. – so the inclusion of gingerbread pieces in this really attracted me.
Each piece was a bumpy, thumb-sized log. They have a crumbly cookie center, sweet milk chocolate coating, and lots of tiny chopped almond bumpies.
It smelled and tasted strongly of nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t get too much ginger flavor. The milk chocolate coating was pretty sweet – too sweet, in fact – and it may have covered up some of the more subtle spices.
The gingerbread added a nice, crumbly cookie crunch to it, and there was a bit of nuttiness from the added almonds. I love the textural contrast between the cookie bits that disintegrated in my mouth and the tiny chopped almond pieces that needed a bit of chomping.
I adore the idea of the spices with the cookie crunch and the chocolate coating, but the execution was just waaaay too sweet. Even though the pieces were pretty small, the cloying sweetness made it difficult to finish even one.
It should be telling that I put these out at work a week ago, and they’re still there. An —. Maybe a dark version could be better?
Varsha