Polvoron is a Spanish shortbread made of flour, lard, sugar, milk and nuts. The Philippines have their own version, which uses a large amount of powdered milk which is left dry, as well as toasted flour, sugar, and butter or margarine instead of lard. We received these assorted Goldilocks Assorted Polvoron with both the original flavour as well as local variants. Goldilocks Bakeshop is a popular bakery chain in the Philippines.

Each box contained 6 classic, 6 pinipig, 6 cashew, 4 peanut, 4 ube and 4 cookies n’ cream polvorons.

This is the Classic Polvoron made with wheat flour, skim milk powder, sugar, vegetable shortening and butter flavour.

The polvoron is 4.5 cm in diameter and 1 cm in height with a mellow dairy aroma. Upon tasting, it had a heavy, yet soft and very crumbly texture that’s dry, but melts on touching moisture with a gentle crunch from the sugar crystals and a creamy, buttery finish. It doesn’t have a dominating dairy flavour and is not cloyingly sweet.

This is the Peanut Polvoron, which swaps out the butter flavouring in the classic for peanuts, peanut paste and artificial peanut flavour.

The polvoron has a very strong peanut flavour with the initial crunch of the sugar crystals dissolving to a creamy peanut flavour that reveals crushed peanuts within. This is our favourite of the bunch.

This is the Cashew Polvoron, which swaps out the butter flavouring in the classic for cashew nuts and salt.

The cashew polvoron doesn’t have much of a smell, but on tasting the savoury, creamy and mellow buttery flavour of cashews came through.

This is the Pinipig Polvoron, which adds milk fat and rice crispies to the classic recipe.

The pinipig polvoron has a prominent smell of powdered milk and tastes like someone dumped a cup of sugar into milk powder and then compressed it. For someone who is not fond of the smell or flavour of dairy, this one is very offputting.

This is the Ube Polvoron, which swaps out the butter flavouring in the classic for coconut cream powder, purple yam powder, artificial ube flavouring as well as artificial colours.

The ube gave this polvoron a beautiful purple colour with the ube flavour coming through strong both in smell and taste. I enjoy the bright ube flavour, while the apt substitution of the coconut cream gave a lighter mouthfeel than the richness from the butter in the others.

Finally, this is the Cookies n’ Cream Polvoron, which swaps out the butter flavouring in the classic cocoa powder, high fructose corn syrup, salt, sodium bicarbonate, ammonium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, milk fat and artificial vanilla flavour.

This one has a restrained sweetness that recalled the flavour combination in an Oreo of the unsweetened chocolate cookie that sandwiches the sweet cream filling. It gave a warm cookies and cream flavour that’s very enjoyable and second to the peanut flavoured one.

While we’re not fans, this box was a good introduction into both the traditional and more modern flavours.

This Goldilocks Assorted Polvoron contained 30 pieces. It was produced in The Philippines and received as a gift from acquaintances visiting The Philippines in 2019.