Finding Chocolate & Peanut Butter on/near Long Beach Island - Part One

August 12, 2008

Helllooo people,

First of all I want to thank everyone for all of the kind birthday wishes!! :) It was a really good one, but the celebration is not over yet! I am writing from Long Beach Island where a lot of chocolate peanut butter birthday dessert consumption is going down. We don’t have wireless at the house we’re staying at so I’m going to write you a big long post today incase I don’t get to check in for a couple more days. Please check back in a few days if you don’t hear from me, because I will be back and writing regularly by the weekend.

So far on LBI, we have found a few chocolate peanut butter treats: 1. Birthday Dessert at Bobby Flay Steak in Atlantic City (okay, this one’s not on LBI, but it’s not too far away and totally worth the drive): Chocolate Chip Candy Bar Cookie with Coffee Ice Cream

Sorry I know the lighting is really yellow, but I just hate flash photography on food - it’s never flattering.

Before I even looked at the dessert menu at Bobby Flay I suspected there’d be a good amount of ice cream options, given Bobby’s frequently professed love of ice cream on his many Food Network shows. We ordered the only chocolate peanut butter item on the menu which was a circular cookie “dish” that had chopped up snickers bars baked into it and was filled with coffee ice cream.

This thing hit the spot. The texture of the cookie was perfect - we’re not sure if the snickers bar gave it a little extra chewiness (from the caramel) or if the cookie dough recipe was just dynamite, but whatever the reason it’s been two days and we’re still talking about it. Slightly crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside. Oh man.

2. The Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treat at Chocolate Bar I’ve been to Chocolate Bar in NYC many, many times, and yet somehow I had no idea that they had a location on LBI, just down the block from where we were staying. Lucky us!

Here is Taste Tester in front of the wall of chocolate bars:

(He didn’t have coffee before that shot was taken)

It’s weird being in this giant version of Chocolate Bar when I’m used to the teeny tiny NYC shoebox location. This was the counter:

Here are some shots of the second room. There was also a foozeball table in there, but I didn’t get a shot of it because there were some kids playing and I didn’t want their Dad to think I was a weirdo creep for taking photos of them.

This is the Chocolate Peanut Butter Krispie Bar:

And the Peanut Butter Cookie with Chocolate Chunks:

We haven’t eaten the cookie yet, so a review of that will have to wait! They also sold a White Chocolate Covered Nutter Butter and a Peanut Butter Patty Truffle, neither of which I purchased because even I can only take so much chocolate and peanut butter in one day. But tomorrow’s another day! Ha.

Taste Tester said that the krispie part of the bar wasn’t as good as mine (aw - he’s just kissing up so I make them for him :P. Nice try, Taste Tester), but it had a super thick layer of good quality milk chocolate on top of it. This thing wasn’t just dipped into chocolate, the layer was a good 1/4 inch thick. They don’t mess around over there. The super thick chocolate really made the treat for me.

We also picked up a chocolate peanut butter caramel bar there which was attacked before a photo was taken. It was a killing so cruel, you might see it on the five o’clock news. I can see it now: “TASTE TESTER ON THE RUN AFTER DEVOURING HELPLESS CHOCOLATE BAR. PEANUT BUTTER AND CARAMEL WERE EVERYWHERE!”. And just when I thought our vacation would be relaxing. Sigh. I can’t take him anywhere.

The last treat I found (for now!) was the:
3. Twisted Bar

A reader wrote to me telling me of this bar and after looking and looking, it seemed to be elusive. But at last! I got my mits on a couple of them at a Target on LBI. Yay! I have yet to taste this, only because it’s too hot and I’m sure it would melt in an instant if stowed away in my bag on the beach, but I promise to write up a full review for you soon. With ingredients like pretzel, caramel, peanuts, nougat and a creamy chocolate peanut butter coating, can you believe that it’s a protein bar? What is the word coming to?

Anyway I’m off to enjoy a day of sun! I’m sure I will be reporting on some ice cream before we leave. Just about every other business here is an ice creamery and you know how much we love our chocolate peanut butter milkshakes. There is also a CHOCOLATE FAIR tomorrow, and you can be sure I will be attending that. Though, “raiding” might be a more appropriate word than “attending”. So stay tuned!

UPDATE: Part Deux of this post can be found here, which includes a review of the Chocolate Chunk Cookie from Chocolate Bar and coverage of The Chocolate Fair.