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