Nestlé Caramac

Product name: Nestlé Caramac
Purchase details: £0.99 for a multipack of three bars (Home Bargains)
Calories: 174 per 30g bar
Country of origin: UK

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved finding a McVitie’s Gold in my lunchbox. It wasn’t until I was in sixth form and was talking about my love of these bars to a friend that I found out that the Nestlé Caramac was essentially the coating without the biscuit. For some reason, ‘the caramal flavour bar’ had never really been on my radar, but I tried my first one within days!

Oddly, my memories of this experience weren’t great, so I’ve not had another one since. However, the striking red and yellow packaging caught my attention in-store recently, so I decided to give the long, flat bars another go.

Each bar was a creamy caramel colour and was divided into six rectangular segments that each featured the Caramac logo. The main ingredient was vegetable fat, which didn’t exactly sound great, and as soon as I added it to my food diary on MyFitnessPal, I was warned of its high saturated fat content (29.8g per 100g of product). There were no artificial flavours, colours or preservatives included but the 55.5g of sugar per 100g wasn’t healthy by any means!

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the millionaire’s shortbread aroma (there was definitely a biscuit element in the scent despite the lack of it in reality!), although this didn’t spread very far. I was also really pleased to discover that the taste was more like the Gold’s coating than I remembered. I’d inexplicably been disappointed by the flavour the first time although, looking back, I can’t work out why! It was definitely one for the sweet-toothed, with a sugary sweet caramel taste that was pretty unique.

The soft chew of the texture was also pleasant but its graininess did nothing but remind me of just how much sugar was in the product so it didn’t feel like a completely guilt-free treat despite the fact that I’d earned it. This aspect also meant the bars didn’t melt nicely – the texture almost felt like an accidental case of sugar that hadn’t properly dissolved and was like butter tablet without the crumble.

The Nestlé Caramac was certainly a lot better than I’d remembered it but I definitely missed the distraction of the biscuit.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.25/10