Review: Balance Bar Cookie Dough Bar

Like most ordinary people, I love cookies.  Some of my fondest memories as a child involve eating my Grandma's homemade cookies every time we visited or devouring the raw, pre-made cookie dough out of the tubes that you could buy at the store.  I absolutely loved it.  Heck, when I visited her for Christmas a couple weeks ago, she had a batch made and I couldn't keep my hands off of them.  Harking back to childhood tastes, perhaps, I was interested to try Cookie Dough Balance Bar.  It weighs in at a respectable 1.76 ounces and has 210 calories with fifteen grams of protein.

When you break this one in half, it visually passes the cookie dough looks test as you can see that it looks just like cookie dough compacted into a small bar.  I didn't expect to see the "chips" in there before I split this one in half, but after I did, they were prevalent and noticeable.  That was a pleasant surprise.  The remainder of the bar in encased in a semi-pliable chocolate, so based on the eye test, this one is passing with flying colors so far.

When you get down to the taste though, it gets kind of dicey.  While this does taste initially like cookie dough and carries the inherent softness of cookie dough, it has an odd aftertaste that I can only explain as "protein."  I describe it as "protein" because it's the kind of protein taste that you get in all of these protein bars as they try to mix in their normal whey ingredients, etc. into the bar in order to crank up the protein.  It's not an offensive taste, but it does turn something as sinful as cookie dough into a product with a bunch of protein that initially tastes like cookie dough and then quickly loses its flavor like Bazooka Joe bubble gum.  Oh yeah...I guess I better cover the chocolate and the chips...neither are really noticeable other than they break up the softness of the texture of the cookie dough.  In terms of taste, there is nothing really to find.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Well, this one is a toughie.  The initial cookie dough taste is good, but the aftertaste kind of makes you pause on this one and that's what makes this decision so difficult.  After thinking about this though, I'm going to have to say I would personally BUY IT due to my overwhelming love of cookie dough.  It's similar enough to cookie dough to make it worthwhile.  If you aren't like me and worship at the altar of cookies/cookie dough, then I would steer away from this one though.

BUY IT!!