Candy Bar Lab

Rocky Road has always been one of my favorite ice cream flavor combinations. Traditionally, it’s a mix of chocolate, marshmallow, and walnuts (or sometimes almonds). This candy bar has the chocolate and marshmallow, but interestingly, the manufacturer elected to use cashews as the nut. Cashews are more expensive and softer than walnuts or almonds, so I was a little surprised they’re used in this product. On the other hand, I absolutely love cashews, so maybe they were in fact a brilliant choice. We’ll see.

Structure
A rectangular slab of marshmallow topped with chopped cashews and covered in milk chocolate.

Texture
95% of the Rocky Road is made of the marshmallow interior, which is light and fluffy. It has the texture of a homemade marshmallow, not like the Jet-Puffed marshmallows you buy at the supermarket, which tend to be drier. The chocolate, on the other hand, was disappointing. It had an unpleasant, waxy consistency. The chopped cashews were almost completely lost in the mix - as I would have predicted. Again, walnuts or almonds would have been a more logical choice.

Taste
The marshmallow is sweet and has that distinctive “marshmallow” flavor. I guess it comes from the combination of vanilla and egg whites. However it happens, marshmallow just tastes distinct and this product tastes mostly like that because the chocolate and the cashews bring no flavor of their own.

Verdict
A “rocky road” candy bar makes sense. It’s a classic combination that goes together as well as peanut butter and chocolate. Annabelle’s is the only company I am aware of that makes a candy bar like this, but I was less than impressed with their offering. All it needs to be great is better chocolate and, in my opinion, almonds instead of cashews. They would then have a huge winner.

In the candy aisle of my local Target, on a shelf full of $3 Choxie candy bars, I spotted this one marked down to $2.50. That’s not exactly a good sign, but I thought maybe people were scared away by the thought of lime and chocolate. I thought to myself however, that this bar conceptually worked. I’ve had frozen key lime pie covered in dark chocolate down in Key West and it was delicious. I’ve also made lime flavored white chocolate candies with graham pieces and they were delicious. So despite the suspicious sale price, I had high hopes for this candy bar.

Structure
The label has the following detailed description: “Dark chocolate with a truffled filling of white chocolate balanced with tart key lime and crunchy graham biscotti cookies.” The bar is constructed by lining an 8-segment mold with dark chocolate, filling the cavity with white chocolate lime ganache and sealing the bottom with another layer of dark chocolate.

Texture
The dark chocolate coating is a bit waxy, but still smooth with a firm snap. The truffle filling feels pretty much like regular white chocolate. The difference between the hardness of the dark chocolate and the inside is slight. It’s almost like biting into a solid, thick chocolate bar. The graham biscotti cookie bits are small and sparsely sprinkled throughout. This was disappointing because I was hoping they’d provide some crunch and contrast to the texture of the chocolates. Overall, the texture of this product is very one-dimensional.

Taste
The lime flavor is very subtle. I had an expectation of a sweet and sour citrus burst countered with the bitterness of dark chocolate. Instead, both the lime and the chocolate were underwhelming. You do get a little bit of the sour lime flavor on the finish, but it’s not nearly as pronounced as I would have liked. The flavor of tiny graham bits is imperceptible. Without the aid of the product label, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that they were graham biscotti versus any other type of cookie bit.

Verdict
I give Choxie credit for trying to create a unique candy bar, but I think they fell short on the execution. It’s almost like they were scared to make it taste TOO much like lime. This is unfortunate because if you’re the kind of person who would pluck this product off the store shelf, that’s exactly what you would be looking for. I wasn’t completely turned off by the Choxie brand though and I’m sure I’ll be trying out some of their other products in the future.

Mr. Goodbar is a classic. First sold in 1925, it’s in the same iconic league as Snickers and Baby Ruth. It was also one of my favorites growing up. Whenever I came across a bag of Hershey’s miniatures, I quickly combed through and picked out all the little Mr. Goodbars; especially leaving the Special Darks behind. Well it’s been a few years since I’ve had one of these and I was pretty devastated to learn that Mr. Goodbars no longer contain real chocolate. Apparently, in an effort to cut costs, Hershey’s has decided to downgrade one of their greatest brands. But how noticeable is it? I figured it was worth a shot to see if maybe one of my childhood favorites was still as awesomely tasty as I remembered.

Structure
A 12 segment, molded milk chocolate bar with roasted peanuts.

Texture
The bar is thin and really soft - not at all like tempered chocolate should be. Worse, the chocolate is grainy. This is characteristic of real Hershey’s milk chocolate anyway, but this is worse. The peanuts are at least crunchy, but in a molded chocolate product like this, the consistency of the chocolate is the most important part and Mr. Goodbar fails in that department.

Taste
Sugary sweet with a lot of vanilla and little real chocolate flavor. The peanuts are fine enough, but it’s interesting to me that there’s no salt in this bar. Peanuts, salt, and chocolate go so well together. I can understand not wanting to go overboard with the salt, but just a little bit would go a long way. Especially if Hershey’s is going to make such a sweet fake chocolate product, it needs something to balance it.

Verdict
It’s really sad to see a classic like this suffer in the interest of reducing production costs. Some day, I hope Hershey’s regains their senses and refocuses on quality with this product. Until then, I’m going to try to get my hands on a Ritter Sport Voll Erdnuss, which I’m confident will be of a much higher quality than Mr. Goodbar.