Review: Balance Bar Dark Dark Chocolate Coconut Bar

After an extended absence, the blog has started a slight run on Balance Bar reviews as today's review takes another look at one of their other product lines.  With that very brief introduction, I'll dive in and report that I was able to pick up this  Balance Bar Dark Dark Chocolate Coconut Bar at Meijer for $1.00 and it comes in at 1.58 ounces and has 180 calories and thirteen grams of protein.  It's also gluten free and kosher, so it's showing a lot of balance in terms of all the audiences it can reach.  Ha, ha...get it?  What a witty writer I am.  Okay, false egotism aside, I suppose I should actually get down to the business of the review.

My immediate thought after taking this out of the wrapper (I didn't have this thought while it was in the wrapper, despite the fact that the wrapper blew the big "reveal" as to what this looked like) was that this bar immediately reminded me of a German chocolate cake with it's dark chocolate coating, dark chocolate crisp-type interior, caramel-ish topping, shards of coconut and then decorative dark chocolate icing on top.  It had a strong scent of coconut, so that definitely let me presume that the coconut in this was not going to be shy.

Much like the smell, my introduction to this bar on my first bite was of coconut flavor.  I was okay with that.  After that coconut was the taste of mild chocolate, which isn't surprising considering this was dark chocolate.  What it was lacking, which I appreciated, was the bitter taste that some dark chocolates can often have.  That dark chocolate and caramel-ish topping really didn't have a lot of flavor an all they really did was melt and/or compliment the flavor of the coconut, which I liked a lot.  As I made my way through this, I was pleasantly surprised by how chewy it was and the fact that the interior had an almost cookie-like texture to it (or maybe I should say cake-like since I've already drawn the comparison to the cake?).  I was expecting something hard and crunchy and when I got soft and chewy, it made it kind of fun.  When I wrapped this all together, it really did taste like a German chocolate cake minus some of the richness that the cake can tend to have.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I really had no idea what to expect going into this but after eating it, I can say with certainty that I enjoyed this quite a bit and it gets a very deserved BUY IT rating.  I won't go so far as to say this was delicious, but it was very good and did a good job emulating the flavor of a German Chocolate cake, whether that was its intention or not.  I'm a fan of the cake, so that made me a fan of the bar and if you are the same way, make sure you grab this one off the shelf at your local store.

BUY IT!!