I am a peanut butter crazed lunatic.  It’s one of those everyday kinds of foods for me, not always in abundance, I just gotta get some creamy nut butter in my life on the daily.  For this reason I don’t buy peanut butter or chocolate peanut butter flavored things because I am almost always let down and have to add actual peanut butter to it to make it decent.  In fact, I think almost all protein bars are improved with a little peanut butter, so I tend to skip PB flavor because I’ll end up adding my own anyway.  All of that aside, after being very impressed with the Muscletech NitroTech Birthday Cake protein bar (which I never reviewed but you should buy) I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and try their Chocolate Peanut Butter crunch bar.

Off the bat this bar looks like the lost cousin of a Combat Crunch, with little crunchy whey crisps poking their way through a creamy yogurty coating, wrapped around a whey protein base.  What makes this bar unique is the coating is peanut butter with the inside being chocolate, whereas most products trying to tackle this flavor do it the other way around, emulating a Reese’s peanut butter cup.

Flavor-wise this bar is pretty tasty but is still far from hitting the mark of the luxuriously creamy and perfect experience of peanut butter chocolate.  The strongest flavor here is the chocolate, which is surprisingly less sweet and more cocoa-forward than I expected.  The deep cocoa taste mixed with the soft chew of the center of the bar reminds me of a brownie kissed with the essence of peanut butter.  Since the only peanut butter taste comes from the coating, it fades quickly and unfortunately crumbles and breaks as you eat it.  The one aspect they nailed as far as a PB profile goes is an underlining saltiness, which is good since this bar has more sodium (350 mg) than I usually like to take in with my protein supplements.

Overall this is a pretty solid effort that is neither incredibly impressive or a big letdown.  It’s much better than Combat Crunch’s attempt, which is my least favorite of their bars, and the sorry attempt by Quest, but can’t touch Muscletech’s spin on Birthday Cake.  It still falls short on delivering the ultimate chocolate peanut butter experience but could be a good choice for those who really crave this combo but don’t want to dig into a Reese’s.  In all honestly, just grab a Reese’s.

Rating: 7/10

Quick Nutrition: 240 cals – 8g fat – 350mg sodium – 24g carbs – 5g fiber – 5g sugar – 22g protein