I recently had the chance to visit Cornell for big kid science camp. The drive from Rochester to Ithaca is a gorgeous wind through the Finger Lakes region, and I stopped at a cidery along the way. It was there that I picked up this Berkshire Bark bar.
The blurb on the back of the box: “Berkshire Bark is handmade… Premium quality Belgian dark and milk chocolate holds together pretzels, homemade sea salt caramel, and natural peanut butter.”
I appreciated the artisan nature of the bar, which contains only natural ingredients and no preservatives. And it sounded like a delicious combination – pretzels and salted caramel and chocolate? Yes, please!
Unfortunately, I found the execution to be less than stellar. The chocolate was way too sweet, so sweet that it burned my throat. It was also quite soft, almost fudge-like in texture, and it melted in my fingers (you can see some of my fingerprints on the bar in the below photo).
And that sea salt caramel that sounded so delicious? It was not at all caramel-like in texture. Instead, it was grainy and lacked depth to its flavor. It reminded me of my caramel-flavored calcium chews.
I did enjoy the addition of the pretzels. Their crispiness and starchy flavor worked well with the sweet chocolate. The nuttiness from the peanut butter was also quite nice.
The bar was a nice mix of salty, crunchy, and creamy, but it was unreasonably sweet, and the caramel was disappointing. If they could ratchet down the sweetness and up the caramel-flavor of the caramel, this bar would be a show-stopper. As it is, an O.
Varsha