Candy Review: Jer’s Toffee Break Gourmet Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - by Nico

Jer’s all natural Toffee Break Gourmet Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars have very promising ingredients: organic peanut butter (unhomogenized, using Valencia peanuts), dark chocolate, sugar, sweet cream, salt and butter. (Notice: no trans fat or hydrogenated oils, and no artificial ingredients.) Sounds good, right? Well, you haven’t read his PR.

In the Jer’s Handmade Chocolates press release FAQ that accompanied my sample, founder Jerry Swain asks himself, “Now that you own your own chocolate business, why do you think people enjoy your story?” I won’t bore you with the answer – it’s as banal and self-congratulatory as the rest of the document’s fatuous verbiage. But hey, even hot air balloons sometimes carry good candy, right? So let’s check these out.

The Toffee Break package contains two small-to-average-sized, individually wrapped candy bars (50g, 1.75 oz each). Unless you live in San Diego, you’d have to buy these online. On Amazon, when you include shipping, they cost $35 for 4 packages (for a total of 8 bars). That works out to $8.75 per 3.5 oz package of two bars. Geez, these better be good.

Alas, these bars are not very good. I love peanut butter and chocolate. Almost everyone does, right? And my other reviews reveal that I’m a stickler for quality ingredients, and a huge dark chocolate fan. I also like toffee. But for some reason, these bars don’t work. Why, oh why? I kept trying to figure this out between ever infrequent and dissatisfied nibbles, and then my girlfriend tried the bar and said:

“All the individual flavors are fine, but the combination doesn’t work.”

That’s it. Exactly. The dark chocolate is okay (although a little flat), the distinct peanut flavor is fresh (but not very sweet), and if I work hard to isolate some toffee bits, they taste good and buttery. But this combination tastes weird, like the flavors are fighting against each other. It has another problem, too. I often complain when a candy is too sweet, but this bar isn’t sweet enough. It’s almost like it wants to be a protein bar, with toffee thrown in.

Overall, this bar tries to do too many things without doing anything very well. It’s like you went to a baseball game and they started having trumpet-playing jugglers running through the stands, too. I just want a good chocolate peanut butter bar. (In fact, Jer’s Handmade Chocolates makes a bar without the toffee, and maybe it’s fantastic, but that’s not what they sent me to taste.)

So, with the Toffee Break Gourmet Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Bar, I guess I’m saying that Jer needs to stop celebrating himself and work a bit more on the candy. And the price is ridiculous.

I’m hopeful that other Jer’s Handmade Chocolates are far better. I’m going to try the Peanut Butter Bites Coco Nutty flavor, and the Yippee Cayenne variety. Wish me luck.

• Jer’s Handmade Chocolates Website

Buy Jer’s Products Online:

• at Amazon.com