Gardners Candies S'mores

Product name: Gardners Candies S’mores
Purchase details: £1.50 for a 42g bar (Bold Street Sweets)
Calories: 186 per bar
Country of origin: USA

Since my review of Kellogg's Pop Tarts: Frosted s'mores, I’ve still not tried the real thing, but I was intrigued by Gardners Candies’ chocolate bar version of the product so I decided to give it a go.

The bar came described as marshmallow and ‘graham cracker covered in our creamy milk chocolate’ and came in quite an unusual wrapper that combined fake with real. The background featured close-ups of real graham crackers, as well as drawings of chocolate, marshmallow, and a fire (the latter to remind of the campfire aspect of real s’mores). I also liked the way the letter ‘O’ of the brand name was made of a chocolate-topped marshmallow.

I was surprised at just how good-looking the S’mores bar was. It wasn’t huge but it was pretty chunky and had a thick chocolate shell – I could see how this was the main ingredient! The drizzled chocolate  was a nice finishing touch too. Inside, the decent-sized biscuit base was topped with another (much thinner) layer of chocolate, and then a slab of smooth, white marshmallow that looked like a creme filling. It was this marshmallow that seemed to provide the sweet and creamy scent that was noticeable on opening the wrapper and was even more evident up-close.

 
The chocolate was very milky, if a little on the sweet side, but I figured this was partially down to its contact with the marshmallow. This soft centre was very chewy and provided a vanilla flavour that blended nicely with the digestive biscuit-like taste that came from the graham cracker. This biscuit was, unusually, more soft than crunchy, and I found the contrast in textures, generally, made the bar slightly difficult to eat as the chocolate and biscuit crumbled as they sunk into the marshmallow on biting.

For textural reasons, marshmallow isn’t one of my favourite foodstuffs, but I was pleased that the thick chocolate shell was the stand-out aspect of this product. It wasn’t the best bar I’ve ever tasted but it was an interesting concept – I had been concerned it would taste like Wagon Wheels (I don’t like those!) but it didn’t so that was a bonus. Despite being served cold, the S’mores bar offered a good combination of flavours, but I imagine a real s’more would be a bit more special! 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.25/10

Kellogg's Pop Tarts: Frosted s'mores

Product name: Kellogg’s Pop Tarts: Frosted s’mores
Purchase details: £1.65 for a pack of two tarts (cybercandy.co.uk)
Calories: 400 per pack
Country of origin: USA

I first heard of s’mores a couple of months ago when watching an episode of 19 Kids and Counting. Having discovered they were toasted graham cracker ‘sandwiches’ filled with marshmallow and chocolate, I was intrigued to try them, so I happily added this packet of Kellogg’s Pop Tarts: Frosted s’mores to my Cybercandy basket when taking up a free delivery offer, recently.

On opening my packet, I was hit with a very sweet scent and a pastry that was slightly darker in colour than the other Pop Tarts I’ve tried recently – the shade resembled that of a digestive biscuit which, arguably, is the UK equivalent of a graham cracker. These tarts were then topped with an icing that was a pale chocolate brown.

Since proper s’mores are supposed to be toasted, I thought the concept of eating these Pop Tarts cold, was a strange one. However, the packet stated that, as usual, the pastries could be eaten cold, microwaved or toasted, so I proceeded to try them in all three ways.

When cutting into the cold Pop Tart, the knife was immediately met with resistance from the marshmallow within and, on examining the inside, I realised that the alternating chocolate and marshmallow filling was already in a molten form. I won’t go into too much detail over the pastry as I found it to be the same in taste and texture to the pastry used for Kellogg’s Pop Tarts: Frosted chocolate chip cookie dough (see here). However, I was surprised at just how flavoursome the filling was – there was quite a strong chocolate taste, and the chewy marshmallow also added a bit of flavour, although not a lot. Topped with the sweet, crispy icing, I enjoyed the cold version of this s’more tart more than I expected.

As previously, I tried half of one of these tarts microwaved for 10 seconds. This didn’t do much to the smell of the product, but it did make the pastry softer and caused it to fall away with the weight of the filling, which I thought was a good thing. The nature of the filling meant that it did heat well and so the sweet, gooey marshmallow, combined with the cocoa flavour, resulted in a taste similar to chocolate pudding. I was pleased, though, that the icing remained crispy as this provided a bit of variety to the otherwise soft texture.

In order to honour the whole point of s’mores, I decided to toast my remaining whole tart. This resulted in an appearance that was most similar to the picture on the front of the packet. The pastry edges became slightly crunchy, but the hot filling caused the base to be generally soft which was pleasantly offset, once again, by the crunchy frosting.

For me, the best thing about these Kellogg’s Pop Tarts: Frosted s’mores, was the texture. They were far more chocolatey than I expected, which I didn’t consider to be a bad thing, but I was slightly disappointed that the marshmallow flavour was so mild. Since I’ve not yet tried an actual s’more, I don’t know how this product compared to the real thing, however, I would have expected them to be a little creamier. Even so, this is definitely one of my preferred varieties of Pop Tarts. 

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10