Fannie May Candy Bars to Share

When I was growing up in the 1970s, Fannie May didn't mean housing it meant chocolate and candy that was good enough and cost enough that it could be given as a nice gift. While there has been an explosion of fine chocolates, bean to bar chocolates, and luxury chocolates, this company is still around and still creating their products that you can find in grocery stores and pharmacies around the United States of America. Today I'm going to look at the Fannie May Assorted Chocolate Bars that has 12 bars in four flavors -- milk chocolate, caramel, peanut butter and 46% dark chocolate bars. Presented in this simple white box, these look to be the type of bars you could keep on hand or that you could wrap up nicely as a gift. But are these worth your money and the calories? Keep reading to find out. Fannie May Fine Chocolates sent me this box of their bars via the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a review on that website but this feature is a bonus them and the readers of The Chocolate Cult. No other form of compensation was received for my honest sharing of my experiences with this product.

We'll start with the basic Milk Chocolate bars and work out way to through the other bars. A bar has 260 calories and the ingredients reveal this will be on the candy side more than the chocolate side of the products we look at her on this blog since the first ingredient is sugar followed by cocoa butter and chocolate liquor in that order. The bar has a very candy smell to it, sweet with the chocolatey scent secondary. But it looks good, right? you can see from the back of the bar that it was probably made by filling up a mold so that we can see the Fannie May name on the front of the bar; all the bars have this on the back so I won't show both sides on the next flavors. The 1.8 ounce bar is thick at 1/2 an inch at the tallest section, 5 inches measures long, and 1.5 inches across. It takes a bit of strength to snap off one of the six sections of the bar. The initial taste is a lot like a milk chocolate hot cocoa -- sweet, vanilla, creamy, and then the chocolate flavor. It isn't bad or great tasting but if I were offered a milk chocolate bar with chocolate liquor first, I'd take that over this.

The Caramel Milk Chocolate bar is next and clocks in at 250 calories. Not surprisingly the ingredients are the same order as the previous putting this firmly in the candy aisle. This bar has a sharper sweet fragrance than the previous bar. It seems a bit more challenging to break apart but the dimensions of the bar is identical to the bar I wrote about above. I hope you can see in my photo to the right that inside each of the section is caramel filling. That caramel is thick and barely comes out when I broke the section open. The caramel has a slightly tangy flavor it is basically sweet and not sticky. The chocolate candy around it is the same flavor as the previous bar -- sweet, creamy, vanilla, but the chocolate is a bit stronger possibly because of the contrast with the caramel itself. I do like this bar more than the basic milk chocolate candy bar because the chocolate flavor is more intense and that matters on The Chocolate Cult.

The candy trend continues with the Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Bar with the same trio of first ingredients. This time the bar has 270 calories but the other information I've been giving about the bars in terms of basic ingredients and their size still apply. The photo to the left is a bit misleading since the amount of peanut butter filling I could see depended on how closely I was able to get the sections to break apart; the filling is across the entire center of each section. The bar itself has a very vanilla scent to it and I can't really pick out the peanut butter separately until I span a section free from the rest of the bar. The peanut butter is light in color and flavor, it has a bit of a roasted flavor that gets more sweet with each chew; it is not salty. The rest of the bar is creamy, sweet, and has that hint of chocolate like the first bar we looked at today did. This was disappointing because I hoped that as with the caramel the chocolate flavor might come out more strongly. A deeper dive into the ingredient list reveals what may be part of the peanut butter filling that affects the flavor -- palm oil and white confectionery coating.

The 46% Dark Chocolate bar has a strong chocolate fragrance when I open the wrapper and it visibly darker in color than the other three bars. However, a it is still candy since sugar is the first ingredient but chocolate liquor follows it before cocoa butter which probably explains the stronger scent and deeper color. There is still milk in this bar as is butter which does not appear on the other bars ingredient list. The dimensions of this bar is the same as the others. When I snap apart one section to eat, that releases more of the chocolate scent. Taking a bite I get sweetness first but then there is chocolate essence followed by vanilla. The texture is smooth though each chew does make a bit of noise as I'd expect from a higher cacao content bar. Of the four bars in this assortment, this is my favorite.

Fannie May 4 Chocolate Candy Bar Pack

Overall I'm disappointed that these bars are really candy bars not chocolate bars. A chocolate bar needs its first ingredient to be chocolate liquor or chocolate/cocoa mass not sugar. Labeling them chocolate bars may not be illegal but it feels misleading to me. Would you or someone you love enjoy them? I enjoyed the caramel and the 46% bar but I'd be disappointed to get this as a gift if it was presented as chocolate and not candy.