Admittedly, I expect to be underwhelmed when I buy these cereal bars. No matter who the manufacturer is, most of them tend to have the same flavors and basically taste the same as well. Still, some part of me hopes I'm going to discover something wonderful, so I keep buying them in that quest and that leads me to another Sunbelt Bakery review with today's review of this box of eight Sunbelt Bakery Apple Cinnamon Fruit & Grain Bars that I picked up on sale at Meijer for $2.99. Each bar in the box is 1.37 ounces, 150 calories and has one gram of protein.
Obviously based on the picture on the box, I knew going in that this wouldn't look like the typical Plain Jane cereal bar as it had the added component of a decorative icing swirl on the top. Outside of that swirl though, this bar was pretty much just standard stuff. Outer cereal bar texture with a fruit filling, although that fruit filling did have a particularly wonderful and strong apple smell. Most of these cereal bars smell a little bit like apple, but this one was very distinct apple smell and that was quite nice. It was also extremely soft and broke apart more easily than most cereal bars, so one could say that this was almost "fresh" baked in the fact that it hadn't had time to harden up.
After I took my first bite of this extremely soft bar, that softness broke up quite easily in my mouth. As it broke up, I was met with wonderful apple flavoring that had both a hint of sweetness (it was helped along with the presence of raisins as an ingredient in the crust of this bar; interesting) and also the tartness of a green apple. It truly was a delight. At first, I did not taste any sort of cinnamon, but as I chewed through slowly and allowed the bar to linger in my mouth, the cinnamon flavor came on late, although it was quite mild and did not pack the punch that I've come to expect in these bars. Sometimes that punch can be a bit too much, so I enjoyed the fact that this cinnamon was heat was noticeably more tame. As for the icing, it didn't really bring a lot of flavor, but it did melt quickly in my mouth, which allowed the mouthfeel of the bar to feel as if I was eating a truly coated product and that was simultaneously interesting, different and enjoyable.
Buy It or Fly By It? Remember in my introductory paragraph where I lamented my search for a wonderful cereal bar? Well, this bar is that and it gets a hearty BUY IT rating. I can't get over how impressed I was by this and Sunbelt Bakery deserves huge kudos for that. Well done. If you see these in the store in your area, I would definitely suggest that you pick them up.
BUY IT!! |
I'm not going to lie these bars remind of that Simpsons episode where Homer climbs a mountain fueled by energy bars.
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