Mars Bar (A.K.A. Milky Way if you’re in the States) is an absolute classic. It’s essentially the platonic ideal of a candy bar: it’s chocolatey, substantial, chewy, sweet, and thoroughly satisfying. It’s always been one of my favourites — I haven’t had one in years, and it might have been even better than I remembered.
(In fact, I think I was so eager to eat it that I actually forgot to take a photo of the bar itself. Whoops.)
It’s extremely simple: it’s just nougat, caramel, and chocolate.
Everything here just works. The fluffy nougat and dense caramel are chewy, but not aggressively so (it’s not going to work out your jaw like some overly enthusiastic nougat or caramel bars). The nougat has malted milk powder mixed in, which might just be the bar’s secret weapon. It adds a delightfully malty flavour that brings some complexity and helps to balance out the intense sweetness of the bar. Mars Bar is very, very sweet, but it’s a well-tuned sweetness; it never tastes overbearing.
And then, of course, there’s the generous layer of decent quality milk chocolate, which is what you want it to be. Sometimes the chocolate on a candy bar is basically there for appearances only, or just to bind everything together, but the chocolate here adds a lot to the bar. It’s good stuff.
Manufactured by: Mars
Nutritional info (1 bar, 52 grams): 240 calories, 9 grams of fat (6 grams of saturated fat, 0.1 grams of trans fat), 5 mg cholesterol, 70 mg sodium, 36 grams of carbohydrates, 30 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fibre, 2 grams of protein.
Ingredients: Sugar, corn syrup, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, hydrogenated palm and palm kernel oil, lactose, malted milk powder (malted barley, milk ingredients, sodium bicarbonate, salt), palm oil, soy lecithin, salt, dried egg-white, artificial flavour.
