Martha & Marley Spoon Fiesta Box Review – April 2018

Martha & Marley Spoon is a meal kit box that offers fresh, seasonal recipes delivered weekly to your home, featuring Martha Stewart’s recipes and techniques. They occasionally do some special boxes, such as their Thanksgiving box, Holiday cookie Box, and this box: The Fiesta Box.

We received this box for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)

This review is of the Martha & Marley Spoon Fiesta Box, $78 + free shipping, one-time purchase box. This box is still available for purchase!

About The Martha & Marley Spoon Fiesta Box

The Box: The Fiesta Box

The Cost: $78 for 4 people or $148 for 8 people

The Products: You’ll receive everything you need to cook a three-course fiesta for either four or eight people:

• Smoky Shrimp Tortilla Soup with Corn and Cilantro
• Chile-Spiced Steak Tacos with Corn, Bean & Poblano Sauté
• Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling

Availability: The last day that you can order your Fiesta Box is May 12, 2018.

Good to Know: The box can be purchased alongside your regular Marley Spoon box, or as a one-off with no subscription attached. If you’re an existing member and won’t be at your regular address, you can change your address during checkout.

Martha & Marley Spoon Fiesta Box Review

When you open the box, the recipe cards are tucked neatly into the top flap. The packaging for this box was nice and simple, and 100% recyclable. The box was free of styrofoam and instead used a thick plastic insulator (much like cotton batting for quilting), with brown paper and plastic bags for the ingredients, plus some reusable ice packs at the bottom to keep the meat cold. It worked brilliantly and was super simple to break down for recycling.

Since this box contains three courses of food for four people, I invited three girlfriends over for our own fiesta night!

Smoky Shrimp Tortilla Soup with Corn and Cilantro

Calories: 282

Time to Table, According to Marley Spoon: 20-30 minutes

Actual Time to Table: 25 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Spice Level: A little kick— you control the heat with the chipotle though!

This dish was pretty simple to make. Once everything was chopped, off into a pot it went to simmer! I was worried it would lack flavor because of the quick cooking time, but the flavor of this soup was incredible. I couldn't believe that in less than thirty minutes so much flavor had developed. The fresh tortilla strips and cilantro leaves really were the perfect finishing touch for this dish, and there was a TON of shrimp in this dish. Marley Spoon definitely didn't skimp on the seafood! I used the entire container of chipotle and it had the perfect hint of heat without being too spicy.

Here are my tortilla strips fresh out of the oven.

Here is everything (minus the shrimp) simmering away and becoming delicious. The shrimp were added in about four minutes before we were ready to eat so they didn't get overcooked.

Here is the finished result! One thing I will say is that I think this soup would have been even better if the shrimp were given a hard sear before going into the soup. That would have given some nice texture, and the shrimp would have been even more flavorful!

Chile-Spiced Steak Tacos with Corn, Bean & Poblano Sauté

Calories: 895

Time to Table, According to Marley Spoon: 40-50 minutes

Actual Time to Table: 40 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Spice Level: Very subtle, but it is there

Here is where hosting a fiesta got in the way of being a good reviewer— I forgot to take enough pictures! This was another easy to assemble dish— the steaks marinated in chili powder and olive oil, sliced poblanos sautéed before being mixed with corn and beans, and the tortillas were heated up. This was my first time pickling radishes and I wasn't the biggest fan. However, even though the meat had such a simple marinade it was incredible! I already have meat cooked this way on the recipe list for this week. The group consensus was that the meat was very tasty, the tacos would have benefited from some cheese, and the corn and bean sauté wasn't anything special. There was more than enough taco fillings for four people, and I had enough to use the leftovers in a quesadilla for lunch the next day!

One thing to note: since the nonperishable items were kept in brown paper bags, my poblanos were in the same bag as heavy cans of black beans. One of the poblanos did not survive the journey. Luckily, one pepper was more than enough for the recipe. When we reached out to Martha & Marley Spoon, they said that they usually rectify situations like this by refunding a part of the box cost to reflect the damaged item. That sounds like a  fair resolution to me!

Here are my radishes pickling in apple cider vinegar, sugar, and salt.

And here is the meat cooking. I prefer my meat between medium rare and medium, and to get my steaks there it took 10 minutes on the 6-10 minute spectrum they gave us for cooking. If you like your meat more done, you'll need to cook it longer than the stated time. This is where having a meat thermometer is super useful!

Here is the finished dish. The meat was fantastic, and when I went to the butcher this past weekend I asked about purchasing hangar steak (the meat in this recipe). Did you know that each cow has exactly one hangar steak, and that is why it is hard to find?

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling

Calories: 231

Time to Table, According to Marley Spoon: 50-60 minutes

Actual Time to Table: 60 minutes (you could probably do it faster if you had a cookie scoop)

Difficulty: Easy

Spice Level: A little kick

I felt bad that my tacos didn't have enough photos of the process, so I really tried to document the process of making these delectable cookies. While I love to cook, I am not much of a baker.

Here are all of the dry ingredients whisked together.

Here are the eggs, sugar, and butter creamed together. Next, the dry ingredients were slowly added while mixing until the dough was fully incorporated.

Here is the rolling sugar the cookies were rolled in! It is a mix of cinnamon, sugar, and chili powder!

Here were the cookies fresh out of the oven. I could have stopped right here because I was so proud of how they looked (and tasted!). The 8 minute time on the recipe instructions was the perfect cooking time for the cookies to be cooked through but still incredibly soft.

After mixing the cream cheese with powdered sugar and more cinnamon, I spooned it into a ziplock bag to frost half of the cookies. My claws got in the way, and there was frosting coming out of multiple holes in the bag. Oops.

Here is the finished result. Without a doubt, these are the most beautiful and tastiest cookies I have ever made. Everyone who tried them loved them, and even though the ingredients were pre-measured I still took all of the praise showered upon me. These cookies had the perfect mix of flavor and sweetness— the cocoa powder was unsweetened, so these cookies are more than just a sugar bomb. The chili powder didn't make anything spicy, but rather just added to that savory depth of the cocoa powder. This recipe was supposed to make 24 sandwich cookies, and I ended with 19. I think that is because of my uneven cookie balls rather than a flaw in the recipe.

The Verdict: Overall, this was a really tasty box! The portions were generous, and while the corn, poblano, and bean sauté fell a little flat everything else was a knockout. I asked my friends after eating if they would pay the $19 (the price per person for three courses) for a meal like this in a restaurant, and the unanimous consensus was that they would. I do wish that the recipes were broken down into how to make the soup and tacos concurrently because that is how we cooked the meal. Other than these small things, however, this box is a success. This would be a great box to get for Cinco De Mayo for hosting a fiesta of your own!

To Wrap Up:

Can you still get this box if you sign up today? Yes! You have until May 12 to get this box!

Value Breakdown: This box costs $78 for four people with free shipping. That breaks down to three courses for $19.50 per person.

Check out all of our Martha & Marley Spoon reviews and the Meal Food Subscription Box Directory for other great meal kits and boxes to try.

Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add Marley Spoon to your subscription list or wishlist!

What do you think of the Martha & Marley Spoon Fiesta Box?