Today we’ve got our hands on a packet of Albeni biscuits by a company called Ülker. These biscuits were brought back from Albania by the excellent Graham and his biscuit hunting team. However Ülker is a Turkish company, and that is where these biscuits originate from and were made.

Outside, we’ve a large plastic package with a good heft to it. The picture of the biscuit is quite appealing – it looks to be a layered confection with caramel, chocolate and chocolate pieces covering the main baked goodness. The ingredients are listed in a variety of languages (including English), with no big surprises, and we’ve apparently got 170g to eat, although no nutritional information.

Inside the packet there are eight attractive biscuits in a little plastic tray (thankfully no individual wrapping here). Quite a large amount of brown chocolaty bits escaped immediately, so these aren’t going to be good for anyone who hates crumbs and mess, and I wouldn’t recommend eating them in bed!

Each individual biscuit is weighty and dense, so getting just eight in a packet might be no bad thing. The initial bite is a bit of a surprise – the texture is quite unusual and unexpected. The caramel layer makes them feel a little chewy, but the biscuit itself has a texture somewhere between a trifle sponge and shortbread – it’s simultaneously soft and crumbly, and has a micro-crunchiness, whilst being quite dry.

The outside layer of crumbling bits, which I initially took to be chocolate, is actually a sort of brown biscuit crumb, which is a little disappointing – even more so since it is almost entirely tasteless. The chocolate layer isn’t bad though, and the caramel adds a good dose of sweetness to the otherwise fairly bland inner biscuit – you definitely get a series of staged textures and flavours, which is quite pleasant.

The Albeni biscuits don’t make for good dunkers unfortunately. A whole unbroken biscuit is protected by it’s outer layer, so although you get a little softening of the caramel from the heat of the beverage, there’s no absorption, and you are likely to get the brown crumbs in your drink. If you’ve bitten through and are dunking a half, the inner biscuit does absorb a little, but less than I was expecting, and while it holds it’s structure well, there isn’t any revelatory change in taste or texture.

Overall, I found the Albeni an interesting and pleasant experience. They are well packaged, and the staged textures and tastes are unusual and exciting, at least the first few times. Thankfully these aren’t overly sweet, but they could be more chocolaty. I think eight is about the right amount, any more would start to get sickly! Definitely worth a try if you see them on the shelves.

I couldn’t find these exact biscuits to buy in the UK, but if you are desperate for something similar, the “naked” version (no biscuit crumb on the outside) is available from Amazon, so long as you buy 12 packs at a time! Albeni biscuits by Ulker (no crumb coating)