Nestlé Lion

Product name: Nestlé Lion
Purchase details: £0.29 for a 42g bar (Home Bargains)
Calories: 207 per bar
Country of origin: France

Having reviewed the Polish Nestlé Lion: Peanut and White bars, I thought it was only right I had my first original Lion in many years.

The bar continued with the usual Lion branding and imagery but, this time, the wrapper was a nice shade of chocolate brown. It was described as ‘filled wafer, caramel (30%) and cereals (5%), covered in milk chocolate (41%)’ so I was pleased to see this French version had actual chocolate rather than the Peanut's ‘cocoa icing’!

Outwardly, the Lion had the same level of knobbliness as the White one had, but the inside looked a little different. The caramel layer looked thicker, and the wafer looked whiter and smaller than the Peanut bar.

I was surprised at just how much of a difference the chocolate made to this product. It had the sweet, milky scent of most Nestlé chocolate, as well as the same sugary taste. Combined with the caramel wafer, I was really reminded of Tunnock’s Caramel: Wafer biscuits but, the bonus for me was they weren’t quite as chewy.

This Lion, whilst still crispy, was also texturally different to the other bars. It was really stiff to bite into, and the caramel was quite stretchy, but working through this helped release the juiciness of the flavour so the effort felt worth it.

Looking back, I’m not sure why it had been so long since my last plain Lion bar...maybe they just appeared too ‘manly’ for me! I really enjoyed this, though, so I plan to buy them more often in future.

Appearance: 9/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.63/10

Clif Bar: White chocolate macadamia nut

Product name: Clif Bar: White chocolate macadamia nut
Purchase details: £1.28 for a 68g bar (tesco.com)
Calories: 263 per bar
Country of origin: USA

As a huge fan of Subway White Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies, I’ve had my eye on this variety of Clif Bar for a while. However, I did wait for it to be reduced before I took the plunge since I was a bit nervous about the fact it was an energy bar, following my not-so-great experience with the peanut butter Lenny & Larry's Muscle Brownie – proof that my favourite ingredients don’t always taste amazing!

The Clif brand was named after the founder and owner’s Dad, Clifford, who was his ‘childhood hero and companion through the Sierra Nevada mountains’ – this description didn’t half make me feel bad for munching on my bar as I sat on my bum in front of the telly! Anyway, it was clearly designed with active people and adventurers in mind, which is why the wrapper featured an illustration of a man climbing on a cliff. Despite the wrapper’s beige background colour, the blue from the sky and red from the logo really prevented the product looking boring.

On reading the description of the ‘oat, macadamia nuts and white chocolate flavour energy bar’, I realised the word ‘flavour’ didn’t sound great. The ingredients did list 16% rolled oats and 5.2% macadamia nuts, but the ‘white chocolate’ came in the form of ‘soy cocoa butter chips’ (6%). In fact, I’d never seen so many soy-containing ingredients listed on one product, but I was pleased to see lots of vitamins and minerals in there too.

The rectangular bar was quite a dark syrupy colour and looked like a knobbly flapjack with a white chocolate drizzle and visible macadamia nuts. The aroma was a bit unusual – it was like a waxy, floral vanilla scent which didn’t seem to match the bar that was sat in front of me.

As for the flavour, I wasn’t convinced at first. It almost tasted of alcohol which, as I’ve mentioned before, is not something I like. However, I found the flavour improved as I went on. The nuts tasted good but, overall, the bar was a bit bland and I couldn’t pick up on the white chocolate element at all. It certainly wasn’t a match for the Subway cookie, although I did like how it was sweet without being sugary.

Texturally, the Clif Bar was like a really dense and substantial cereal bar. It was chewy and crispy which made me think of cornflakes, at first, but then I realised that it contained rice crisps instead. I was also pleased that, despite being bitty and grainy by nature, it wasn’t dry.

On the whole, I’d say the Clif Bar: White chocolate macadamia nut was great in terms of what it was designed for – a filling boost that didn’t taste too shabby. As a ‘treat’, though, this didn’t quite work – the flavours on offer didn’t live up to my expectations and, for the calories, it just wasn’t worth it. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 6.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 6.75/10

Cadbury Dairy Milk: Chips ahoy!

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk: Chips ahoy!
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 120g bar (tesco.com)
Calories: 85 per three chunk serving (678 per bar)
Country of origin: UK

Mondelez really are rolling out the new Cadbury products aren’t they?! I must say I was really surprised when I first found out about this Dairy Milk: Chips ahoy! bar since the Chips Ahoy! cookie brand isn’t one generally sold here in the UK. Personally, I’ve only tried two of their varieties from import stores in the past (the Big & chewy original and Big & chewy chocolate), and they weren’t even the standard kind!

In keeping with the brand name, the purple wrapper contained a fun image of a pirate cookie, and my initial thought was that this product would be similar to the Golden biscuit crunch bar. However, the description of ‘milk chocolate with a biscuit flavour filling (38%) and chocolate chip biscuit pieces (12%)’ showed that it was actually a very different concept.

The bar’s appearance was very similar to the Snowy delight – it was divided into 24 chunks and had a pale filling. This time, though, the creme was a beige colour and it also had dark biscuit pieces within.

I’m so used to Dairy Milk smelling like Dairy Milk that I was stunned to find this slab actually had a strong and buttery chocolate chip cookie scent...and that was before I’d even broken it apart! The Dairy Milk’s flavour did remain prominent, though, and it was a very chocolatey bar all-round. However, the smooth, soft and creamy centre did have a part to play too. It didn’t taste as much of biscuit as I’d expected, based on the smell, but it did have a slightly syrupy flavour which was lovely. The flavour was also very sweet but I had no problem polishing off the whole bar (having saved my calories, of course!).

I’m not always a fan of added crunch in chocolate but, here, the biscuit pieces worked wonderfully. There wasn’t too much but there was plenty to fit with the theme and provide an authentic experience. The texture of the biscuit itself was spot on – exactly what chocolate chip cookies feel like to chew – and, the more biscuit a piece of the bar had, the more I enjoyed it. The only problem I found with the filling was that the combination of soft and bitty meant it was hard to get a clean break when snapping each piece off.

I didn’t, for one moment, expect this Dairy Milk bar to be bad, but I ended up enjoying it even more than I thought I would. My lack of knowledge about the American cookie brand means I couldn’t judge whether or not it lived up to the Chips Ahoy! name, but the crunchy pieces certainly met my expectations, as a Brit, of what cookies should be like!

Appearance: 8.5/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 8.5/10

CFR Bitez: Assorted sticks

Product name: CFR Bitez: Assorted sticks
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 70g box or two for £1.00 (Poundworld)
Calories: 21 per 4.5g biscuit
Country of origin: Europe

When I spotted these CFR Bitez: Assorted sticks, I knew immediately that they were Mikado-inspired, and I just had try them. The three different colours of biscuit sticks, combined with the splash of milk, caught my eye in-store, and it was the ‘breadstick with strawberry flavoured coating’ that I particularly wanted to sample.

These ‘crispy biscuit snacks, smothered in a variety of delicious coatings’ were nearly twice as many calories as Lu Glico: Mikado (milk chocolate), but each one also weighed almost twice as much. To be perfectly honest, I was a bit dubious about whether each piece would feel substantial enough to warrant the extra calories, but they were most definitely longer and thicker.

As well as the strawberry variety, the sticks came coated in ‘chocolate flavour’ and ‘white chocolate’. Strangely, the ratio of biscuit to coating differed with each one – the milk chocolate contained 43% breadstick, the white chocolate had 46%, and the strawberry had even more: 48%. Unfortunately, all three varieties also contained an awful lot of vegetable fat, but this varied too – 36% for standard chocolate, 40.5% for white chocolate, and a smaller 35% for strawberry.

Before opening, it hadn’t occurred to me that the flavour combination would result in a Neapolitan-style appearance, but the pink one still looked the most exciting to me! It was also the only type which had any kind of individual scent, reminding me of pink wafer biscuits. When all the flavours combined, though, they had the general, sweet scent of the inside of a biscuit tin...I guess that was to be expected.

The chocolate flavoured biscuit contained 19% skimmed milk powder and also contained cocoa powder to provide the chocolatey taste. I was actually able to try this variety immediately after a milk chocolate Mikado and, I must say, it tasted very different. It had a very sweet and fake chocolate taste and there was no doubting that it was the lower quality product. It did have a thick and crispy texture but the use of the term ‘breadstick’ suddenly became clear as it certainly had a different feel to other biscuit sticks – there was a slight chew at the end of each mouthful which was a bit unusual for this style of product. In fact, they reminded me of matzo crackers.

As a big fan of white chocolate, I’d been really pleased that this variety was also included in the pack. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a white chocolate Mikado to compare it to, this time, but I didn’t need this to know that, once again, the Bitez were an inferior product. I couldn’t get a sense of white chocolate from the flavour at all. Instead, it was just really sweet with a stale biscuit kind of taste, although the crispy/chewy texture remained – at least they weren’t soft!

Thankfully, the biscuits that contained both natural strawberry powder and flavourings, saved the day. These ones actually did have a white chocolate element to them but, most of all, they had a strong strawberry milkshake flavour. They were really nice (more creamy than sweet) and I would happily buy a box that only contained this variety in future. (I did see Poundworld were selling boxes of the chocolate flavoured sticks on their own but that was all!)

The box that these CFR Bitez: Assorted came in claimed that the product was ‘truly delicious!’. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this to be the case. The two chocolate varieties tasted cheap (which they were, to be fair!) and not-so-cheerful. On the plus side, the smooth coatings and crispy biscuits were texturally consistent throughout the flavour offerings, and the strawberry version did shine through as a product I’d want to eat again.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 6.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10