One of the first reviews that I did around the birth of this blog was a review on a No Sugar Added Klondike bar. It was linked by The Impulsive Buy and still remains one of my most trafficked posts of all time. For whatever reason, I've never done a follow-up Klondike review despite the fact that I see and am interested in Klondike products all the time. On a recent store visit to Meijer, I finally took the plunge during one of their sales and picked up a box of six of these Klondike Caramel Pretzel Ice Cream Bars on sale for $2.50. Each bar in the box is 3.0 grams and has a robust (for its size) 270 calories. That may seem like a lot and it sort of is, but it is comparable to an average serving of most Ben & Jerry's ice cream products. When you look at it that way, it doesn't seem as bad. Well, that's at least the logic I'm using to justify eating this to myself. When I do a bit more reading on the website, I come to find out that the ice cream in this is light ice cream and it only has 130 calories, which isn't horrible at all. As always, it's the toppings/add-ins that kill you with this to the tune of 140 calories. Another interesting thing I found while reading the website is that you can make a shake out of these and there's a recipe on how to do it. Interesting and being that this is a six-pack, that is definitely something to consider.
Anyway, enough rambling. Let's get down to reviewing this bar and first take a look at the external observations. At first glance, this is just like many of the varieties of Klondike bars. It's encased in a thin layer of crumbly milk chocolate and within that milk chocolate is the mix-in of choice (if applicable). Being that this bar is named "Caramel Pretzel", it's clear that the mix-in here is pretzels and while they are small and broken up, they are well spread throughout the entire block of treat. The Klondike website also states this bar is a triple threat of "Sweet, salty and crunchy" so the crunchy part also comes from these broken up pretzels as well. The sweet part of the bar comes from the external chocolate and as you can see above, also from the strong smelling caramel swirl that is on the inside of the bar. Based on the picture above, I felt cheated on the lack of caramel, but when I broke the bar apart a bit more, those reservations subsided as there was plenty of caramel in there as the tagline on the box that stated "Now With More Caramel" would imply (the box is missing from my picture).
As far as the taste was concerned, this was delicious and tasted just like you'd expect sweet caramel, sweet milk chocolate, salty pretzels and vanilla ice cream to taste. Like Klondike said, it was sweet, salty and crunchy. The cold ice cream also made it refreshing. What was nice about this is that while the caramel was extremely strong tasting, it's sweet qualities did not overpower the bar and actually worked in perfect balance with the saltiness of the broken up pretzels in the chocolate coating. That chocolate coating also added additional crunch to the pretzels, so the soft ice cream and gooey caramel did have some sort of textural difference to break it up, which was quite nice.
Buy It or Fly By It? It wasn't the most delicious thing I've ever had, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't delicious in itself. The taste of chocolate, caramel and pretzel is a winning combination and its one that I particularly enjoy outside of this bar, so the fact that the flavor combination was present within this bar give this a BUY IT rating. After the long delay, Klondike re-joins the blog with a winner and just know that it won't be gone for long because I do have another bar in my freezer to review (it was a two for $5.00 sale!) in the future. Based on the taste of this one, I can't wait.
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| BUY IT!! |
Easily my favorite klondike bar. I'm not sure how you thought the ice cream was vanilla though when it's caramel but everyone has different taste buds.
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