Sunday, June 18, 2017

Intriguing, But Without Either Flavor Breaking Out: Trader Joe's Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bars Are Good!


The Good: Wonderful flavor, Good size, Great ingredients
The Bad: Neither flavor pops, Packaging
The Basics: Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate bars are enjoyable, though for the price one tends to expect a more vibrant pairing of flavors.


For those who do not follow my reviews, I am a huge fan of chocolate mint, especially dark chocolate mint. So, when I visited Trader Joe's for the first time and stocked up on some new (to me) products, it was pretty obvious that I would go for the Trader Joe's Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar! The Trader Joe's Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar are an interesting blend of dark chocolate and minty white chocolate . . . though neither flavor truly explodes in the mouth, which was a bit of a surprise to me.

Basics

Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate bars are six inches long, two and a half inches wide and made up of eight squares. The entire bar comes wrapped in a simple white paper wrapper, with a plastic wrapper inside. The 2.82 oz. bar is a product of Ireland and was priced in-store at five dollars. This is competitively priced for similar quality products.

Ease Of Preparation

These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the paper and plastic wrappers from around chocolate bar, breaking off a segment and consuming. The seams between the different segments make it exceptionally easy to break the bar apart and leave the rest of it intact. There is no grand secret to eating the Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate bar. I discovered, however, that the inner plastic wrap was not particularly well-sealed; so when I removed the bar from the outer cardboard wrapper, the bar fell out the back of the inner plastic wrap!

Taste

The Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate smells rich and chocolatey, with only a slight hint of mint in the aroma. The scent is strong, but does not deliver as much of the mint scent as one might anticipate; the chocolate scent is fairly potent and overwhelms the mint.

The Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar bars are sweet and chocolatey. The fairly dark flavor blends with the minty flavor so that both flavors are able to manifest surprisingly well. The chocolate is dark, but not overly dry; the mint flavor is not incredibly cooling or milky. As a result, the Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar is a good blend of both flavors, without either overwhelming the other.

Interestingly, the Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar does not have an overly strong or dry aftertaste. Instead, the sweetness of the balanced chocolate flavors result in no real aftertaste being left in the mouth.

Nutrition

These are candy, so they are not particularly healthy. Even so, the Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate bars are not nearly as bad on the nutrition front as they could be. The primary ingredients are white chocolate, dark chocolate and chocolate coated mint pieces. There is nothing unpronounable in these candies and that was very reassuring.

A serving of the Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate bar is considered half a bar. From one bar, one consumes in 210 calories, including 110 calories from the 12 grams of fat. There are only 10 mg cholesterol and 30 mg sodium (1% RDA) and each bar has 3 grams of protein. There is, surprisingly enough, 8% of one's daily Calcium in a bar, so that is nice.

These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they have an allergy warning for milk, soy, wheat, egg and hazelnuts. They are not marked as kosher or gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

The bars of Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate remain fresh for quite some time. The ones I picked up last month had an expiration date of October 31, 2017. One assumes that if they are kept in a cool, dry environment they will not melt or go bad for quite some time. Given that they are plastic wrapped in a fairly sealed package, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.

As for cleanup, simply throw away the paper and plastic from around the bar when you are done with the candy bar. Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If this chocolate bar melts into most fabrics, it will stain.

Overall

Trader Joe’s Marbled Mint Crunch Chocolate Bar chocolate bars are a muted flavor delight; not one that overwhelms with either flavor.

For other chocolate reviews, please check out:
Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Filled With Speculoos Cookie Spread
Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares Milk Chocolate Peppermint Brownie chocolate squares
Lindt Dark Pineapple chocolate bars

7.5/10

For other candy reviews, please visit my Chocolate Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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