Candy Review: Cadbury Wunderbar

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - by Laurie

Another day… another Cadbury chocolate bar that’s not available in the United States. But hey – our American reviewers regularly get to taunt me with offerings from the likes of See’s and Trader Joe’s, so fair’s fair, right?

Anyway, this is the Cadbury Wunderbar, described on the wrapper as “A peanut butter caramel experience.” The name of the bar is actually a pun on the German word for “wonderful,” and the proper pronunciation , as any German-speaker could tell you, isn’t “wonder-bar” but “VUN-derbar.”

It’s not a bad idea for a name since, as everyone knows from that guy on TV and his miracle washcloths, the Germans always make good stuff – and that includes chocolate. However, the Wunderbar is made right here in Canada, making it, in reality, about as German as a Snickers. That little Viking helmet on my bar’s wrapper isn’t helping my confusion any – Vikings weren’t German, were they? Did Vikings like peanut butter? Who knows?

The Wunderbar consists of layers of peanut butter, caramel and what tastes like that crunchy stuff in Butterfinger bars (anybody know if there’s a proper name for that stuff?), and it isn’t a bar I really go out of my way to buy – if they didn’t come in the same fun-sized Halloween assortment as Crunchie and Caramilk, I doubt I’d even know what one tastes like.

When I open the wrapper, the bar smells like a Reese’s cup (a promising start). The peanut butter is smoother, richer and less salty than Reese’s, and it’s studded with larger chunks of peanut. The caramel is dense and chewy. The crunchy layer at the bottom of the bar is very thin, too thin to be detected with the naked eye, but you’ll know it’s there.

When you bite into a Wunderbar, your bottom teeth encounter a definite crunch as they pass into the soft peanut butter layer, at the same time as your top teeth are passing through the dense, rich caramel at the top of the bar. It’s an intriguing blend of crisp, creamy, crunchy and chewy (isn’t that like the candy version of “hot, sour, salty, sweet” for Asian food?), and it’s addictive stuff. I’m usually a candy saver and I really didn’t intend to eat the whole (300 calorie) bar in one sitting, but it was gone before I knew it.

Though really, for your calorie buck, you’re practically getting three different chocolate bars in one – a Reese’s, a Caramilk and a Butterfinger. More candy flavors for your taste buds to loot and pillage? German or not, I’m sure the Vikings would have approved.

• Cadbury’s Canadian Website

Buy Wunderbar Online:

• at Amazon.com