Candy Bar Lab

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.

The Double Decker is a British candy bar made by Cadbury. The name is presumably a reference to those red, two-level buses that are an iconic symbol of the country. Sadly, the packaging for the product has nothing to do with the buses. Instead, it’s bright orange and purple with a big, slanted logo across the front. Personally, I’m not a fan at all of the packaging design, but I won’t let that sway my opinion of the candy.

Structure
The name Double Decker fits the structure of the bar. It has two inner layers; the bottom one consisting of rice crispie balls spread amongst milk chocolate and the top one comprised of nougat. The whole bar is enrobed in milk chocolate.

Note: When your friends bring you candy bars back from overseas in their suitcases, don’t expect them to arrive in perfect condition.

Texture
The nougat is somewhere below a Charleston Chew and above a 3 Musketeers on the chewiness scale. The crispies are harder and larger than expected. I was thinking they’d be more like the kind in a Nestle Crunch. Instead, they reminded me of the ones in a Twix ice cream bar if you’ve ever had one of those before. Together, the chewy nougat, crispies and chocolate work well together.

Taste
There’s supposedly a light coffee flavor in the Double Decker. Either my taste buds were asleep or it’s REALLY light because I didn’t notice it at all. I’m sad because I thought this bar was bland. It was of course sweet, but neither the chocolate nor the inner layers had much flavor - just vanilla. I think a stronger coffee flavor would have helped.

Verdict
I’ve heard many times in my life that British candy bars are the best in the world. The Double Decker isn’t helping that cause. While the textures were good and different from anything I’ve had before, the flavor just didn’t cut it and ultimately, that’s what matters.

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.