Review: Balance Bar Chocolate Craze Bar

When I walk through the "healthy" aisle at the store, it always amazes me how many products CLIF Bar puts out there.  I think the only company that may compete with them in terms of flavor varieties (at least in my stores) is Balance Bar.  They have a seemingly endless amount of flavors and lines and in my half-hearted quest to add to my Balance Bar review collection, I'm going to review the Chocolate Craze bar in today's review.  This came via my free sample shipment from Balance Bar and it weighs in at the standard Balance Bar weight of 1.76 ounces.  Packed into those 1.76 ounces are 200 calories and fourteen grams of fun...I mean protein.

For something called Chocolate Craze, you'd expect it to be all chocolate all the time and after unwrapping this and breaking it in half, that is certainly the case.  The interior is a chocolate mix that includes chocolate chips for crunch.  What I found remarkable about this was that the interior chocolate mix was remarkably soft.  That's not something I expected from this bar, or any of these protein bars for that matter.  The soft interior was then covered with an outer coating of...wait for it...chocolate!  Yep, that's right, a bar called Chocolate Craze was "crazy" with chocolate.

After I took my first bite, I was still taken aback by how soft the interior was and when I say taken aback, I mean it in the most positive way because this soft interior made this entire bar.  Its softness was almost brownie-like and if you can simulate a brownie in any form, you are doing something really well.  The chocolate taste was thick and strong, but not overly sweet and the small, but sporadic chips, added a periodic crunch.  In fact, I would almost say that it was "fudgy" in its texture.  As for the exterior chocolate coating, well, it was pretty much the same.  It was thick but not overly sweet.  All in all, this tasted like a brownie in candy bar form.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Being that I've used the brownie comparison twice in a glowing way, this clearly gets a BUY IT rating.  Balance Bar generally does a good job with their bars and that has continued with the flavor on this one.  Ordinarily I find their bars to be slightly above average, but this one is well above average and I would almost be willing to say that Chocolate Craze is crazy good.  I just wished there was more of it, because after eating it, I had a raging brownie craving.  If you love brownies and/or chocolate, you are going to love this bar like I did, so definitely give it a shot.

BUY IT!!