Cadbury Dairy Milk: Marvellous creations (banana caramel crisp)

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk: Marvellous creations (banana caramel crisp)
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 200g bar (Asda)
Calories: 128 per 25g serving (510 per 100g)
Country of origin: UK

I was really excited to pick up this new and great-value bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk: Marvellous creations (banana caramel crisp) by Mondelez UK. The product featured the usual Marvellous creations branding but, unsurprisingly, had a yellow border to reflect the flavour. I also really liked the image of a chocolate cannon shooting out bananas and caramel cubes.

Whilst I’d had a banana-themed chocolate before in the form of Amadeo Solo (chocolate-banana), this Cadbury bar was a very different offering and came described as ‘milk chocolate with banana flavour candy pieces (8%), caramel pieces (5%), and malted cereal balls (3%)’.

The bar had the same design (attractive but hard to evenly divide!) as the cola pretzel honeycomb variety but was packed full of different ingredients. Yellow blobs of banana candy were visible through the chocolate’s surface and large, brown cereal balls bulged out of the bar’s base. As for the caramel, these little cubes looked a lot like fudge and weren’t immediately obvious. Whilst there didn’t appear to be a shortage of excitement in the bar, I was slightly relieved to see a less bumpy surface than the cola pretzel honeycomb as I hoped this would result in a texture that wasn’t as busy.

The milk chocolate, unsurprisingly, was standard Dairy Milk. As a result, it had the usual creamy smell, although I was a little disappointed there was no hint of banana in this. However, there was an additional sweetness that was a bit like the cola pretzel honeycomb bar.

The flavours on offer were very much dependent on what additional goodness happened to be in each piece of milky chocolate. The banana candy had a slightly artificial taste and, whilst not subtle, wasn’t overpowering either. Rather than being foam sweets, these pieces were more like sugary beans – they were very sweet and reminded me a bit of the ‘banana medicine’ I had as a kid. As a result, they were a bit harder than I thought they’d be, but they were still crumbly.

The extremely crisp cereal tended to take me by surprise when I hit a piece! It had a slight but noticeable malted taste, as promised, but its rough texture did ruin the otherwise wonderful melt of the bar. As for the caramel cubes, these made more of a difference than I thought. Their flavour was pretty weak but they did provide a bit of a fudgy taste and their soft texture made a significant impact on the overall chunky chew by providing extra resistance and making the chocolate feel more crumbly.

I thought the different elements in this bar worked really well together – it was like having a sweet shop in the mouth after the chocolate had melted! Whilst the caramel wasn’t very powerful, it did seem to mellow the sweetness of the banana. I also quite enjoyed how the flavours weren’t evenly distributed as it provided a bit more variety, whilst always filling the mouth with some kind of deliciousness.

I’m not convinced Cadbury Dairy Milk: Marvellous creations (banana caramel crisp) is about to become the next big thing but it certainly seems to fill a gap on the mainstream market and I’d definitely buy this again.

Appearance: 9/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.88/10