Nestle Yorkie

I often came across Nestle’s Yorkie bars during my summer in England, but I never bought them because they’re “NOT FOR GIRLS!” It wasn’t that I was intimidated by the tagline or the red-slashed purse-toting icon; it was that I believed any candy company misogynistic enough to have such a slogan, even if only tongue-in-cheek, didn’t deserve my business.

I’m just as anti-marketing solely to women (when such marketing is also done stupidly) by the way.

So how did I end up with this bar anyway? My friend Steve visited Economy Candy and was thoughtful and sweet enough to bring me back a goodie bag generously stuffed full of candy deliciousness. This bar was included in the mix.

The bar is pretty basic, just five thick segments (~3/4 inch high) of pure milk chocolate, each stamped with YORKIE in block sans-serif caps. You’d think that a no-girls-allowed bar would have some manly bits, like nuts, mixed in (I’m talking about peanuts and almonds; get your mind out of the gutter). Maybe the manliness lies in the thickness of each chunk. Girls’ jaws must be too delicate to take on that task (keep staying out of that gutter).

The milk chocolate is smooth and creamy, though it’s not as luxuriously thick on the tongue as other slightly more premium bars (such as Ghirardelli or Lindt). But that’s to be expected, as this is really more of a vending machine/checkout aisle grade candy bar.

The chocolate is sweet, with strong caramel notes, and it melts to a lingering sweet finish. I wasn’t surprised by the sugar-bomb nature of the bar, as it smelled powerfully of generic sweetness. It was too sweet for my taste. Still, it wasn’t appalling or anything, so an O.

Just to prove how sweet it was – we had a bit of a mouse problem in my house. Being smart little mice, they found their way into my candy drawer. First, my giant slab of treacle toffee (made of boiled sugar) got gnawed on and had to be trashed (I had been saving it for ages! I so love Walkers’ treacle toffee…). Next they got to a piece of taffy (made of boiled sugar).

And finally, they got into my chocolate stash. Thankfully, they bypassed my hoard of finer chocolates, included a prized Valrhona bar, and instead went straight for the Yorkie, probably due to its high sugar content (don’t worry; I photographed and tasted mouse-free chocolate).

On the plus side, I was able to use the gnawed on Yorkie bits to set a humane mouse trap and managed to catch this adorable little bugger. We had put out a store-bought humane trap – and spent weeks watching the mice dance around it. The Yorkie bar, a piece of cardboard, and a bucket did the trick in about 30 seconds.

Unfortunately, his buddy didn’t fare so well; when the store-bought nice trap didn’t work, I set out a snappy one, also baited with a bit of Yorkie. The above mouse survived because I was too racked with rodent-murdering guilt to put out anymore snap traps.

But if they get into the rest of my Walkers’ toffee stash, I might not be so nice again…