Turrón, a sweet Christmas (and all year round) treat!

Turrón is a type of nougat made with almonds which is eaten mainly at Christmas time in Spain.  It is eaten all over the country but is a traditional recipe from the Alicante province.  There are two main types - Turrón de Jijona (Turrón from Jijona) which is a soft type formed in rectangular blocks and packaged and Turrón de Alicante (turrón from Alicante) which is crunchy and brittle and is sold in a round shape the size of a plate.

I personally prefer the Jijona type which looks like this:

Turrón de Jijona

A friend of mine's parents run a factory making it in an artesanal way and ice cream as well, so it's called a torronería y heladería (turrón and ice cream sellers).  The main ingredients are toasted almonds, honey, sugar and egg.  A block of 300g (above) of this costs around 7€.

There is also slightly less soft version of this made with chocolate which includes cacao, milk and butter.

Turrón de Jijona de chocolate

They also make some rather nice Almendras Garrapiñadas, which are almonds roasted and tossed with sugar giving them a crunchy, sweet coat.

Almendras garrapiñadas

We also bought some Almendras Rellenas (filled almonds) which is an almond shape made from sugar paper and filled with soft turrón.

Almendras rellenas

If you want to try turrón and are not here at Christmas time there are some shops in Alicante city that sell it all year round.  You could try turrón ice cream that's great all year round, and also there is a bar called in the old town in Alicante city that serves a montadito (small filled roll) called Iván which has steak, rocket, parmesan, foie and turrón, and it's really delicious!

Enjoy!