Vrettos Snappy (honey)

Product name: Vrettos Snappy (honey)
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 50g pastry (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 165 per pastry
Country of origin: Greece

For years, I had a childhood memory of eating some unknown but delicious pastry product at a buffet. Having never come across it again, I began to wonder if I’d made it up, until my friend brought her Mum’s homemade baklava into school to celebrate Eid. Despite that now being years ago, I’ve not had it since, so I couldn’t resist trying this shop-bought version. As it happens, the wrapper of the Vrettos Snappy (honey) didn’t include the word ‘baklava’, but Tesco's website confirmed that that’s what it was.

The ‘crispy snack with honey’ came in an orange wrapper that had a honeycomb design and showed an image of the pastry product sitting in a pool of honey. I had been worried that the long shelf-life would have caused the baklava to dry out but the treat was actually served in a little tray in an attempt to keep it moist from the runny ‘flower honey’ (4%) that was visible on the inside of the wrapper. It would have been rude not to have sampled this and I thoroughly enjoyed its deliciously sweet yet floral flavour.

The roll looked nice enough from the outside – the pastry made up 27% of the product and provided a crispy shell to cut through before the tougher filling which accounted for 10%. This centre looked a bit off-putting, in comparison. The translation wasn’t great but I could see it at least contained almond, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon so, arguably, that’s where the main flavours were. For some reason, though, the combination looked a bit like meat!

One of my main memories from previously trying baklava was its sweetness and this version contained 19% Greek sugar in addition to 20% glucose. With the honey, it was sticky to the touch, and all these sweet aspects provided a lovely juiciness in the midst of quite a chewy product.

I found this Snappy to be quite festive. Its scent was like a mild marzipan with a hint of the inner spices and, in the taste, I could really taste the nutmeg and cinnamon. The pastry was quite buttery and I liked the novelty of the crunchy nuts here and there too.

Whilst the product was full of flavour, I did find it a little dry in places on the outside. It wasn’t awful but the texture just wasn’t quite right. There was quite a lot of honey on the base which provided a fantastically sweet flavour and moisture and I would have loved this to have encapsulated the whole roll.

Overall, this was a really enjoyable treat which I’m glad I found. I was actually impressed that it didn’t contain more calories than it did as, what with all the sugar and greasiness from the honey, it didn’t feel particularly healthy!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.38/10