Way back in freezing cold February, I made the trip from Travel + Leisure’s 6th Avenue office to shoot a little bit of Barcelona, Spain at Borne Confections on Park Avenue. I was tasked with shooting Oriol Balaguer’s Mascletà chocolates for Travel + Leisure’s World’s Strangest Chocolates slideshow. While some of the “strange” chocolates on the shoot list ranged from Shiitake Mushroom to Tobacco to Pig’s Blood, the Mascletà was quite mainstream — it contained hazelnut praline, crunchy Maldon sea salt and Pop Rocks (!) coated in cocoa butter.

While a small selection of the Mascletà will set you back quite a few bucks, I was lucky enough to end up with a goody bag full of the chocolates I had shot. Before my friends and I devoured them I took a few more photographs, which you can see below. And yes, they were like fireworks in our mouths.