Zingerman's Original Zzang Bar Review

August 6, 2008

Zzang!! Go ahead, say it - it’s fun… ZZANG!!

The Original ZZANG is one tasty chocolate bar.

I posted the description yesterday but here it is again: “Made by hand at Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Charlie Frank uses the best ingredients you can pronounce. Starting with a honey nougat made with natural peanut butter, Charlie rolls it up in a sensual caramel made from muscavado brown sugar. The biggest and best peanuts we can find come next, and the whole endeavor’s finished off with a hand dip into a rich bath of 64% dark Ecuadorian chocolate.”

As a kid I was one of the few who preferred Three Musketeer and Milky Way Bars, but I love Nougat. Nougat’s a little weird - kinda chewy, kinda tough, but it complements chocolate nicely and makes a nice bed for other tastes and textures, such as caramel, nuts, etc. And Zingerman’s nougat definitely tastes different (and by different, I mean better) than the one in your average chocolate bar. Maybe that’s due to the honey, maybe it’s because they use natural peanut butter? Only they know I guess, but regardless of how they made it, I’m happy with the results.

The Zzang Bar is basically an amped up Snickers Bar. The chocolate coating is thicker and the chocolate is much more satisfying, being a higher quality dark instead of average milk chocolate. The “butter roasted peanuts” give the bar a really nice flavor as well. I think the Zzang helps proves that if you use better ingredients when you cook or bake just about anything, you will get better results.

The only criticism I can make when looking at the ingredients is that the caramel contains corn syrup which would likely bother some people. Not enough for me though. I am in love, and love is blind… when it comes to corn syrup. That’s how the phrase goes, right?

Taste tester was happy to partake in destroying it, since it doesn’t contain any tree nuts, also known as his arch-nemesis.

Another vantage point it has over Snickers - take a look at the packaging:

Someone decided to be evil and add that swirl background design as a subliminal way of hypnotizing me into eating more and more of it. So I guess I blame my gluttony on the designer! Yay!

I also love the illustrations of their products on their site and in their catalogue. Check out the fun interpretations of the above bar / packaging:

Snickers will always hold a special place in my heart and I’m sure I will keep buying them because they are cheaper and more readily available than the Original Zzang Bar. But I have a feeling every time I taste one I will be wishing it was a Zzang. Get one and taste it for yourself at Zingerman’s.

Read more about Zingerman’s in yesterday’s post.