I’ve had this bar sitting in my candy stash for a bit. I bought it with a bunch of other bars, but upon closer inspection I became a little weary of it. My fear comes from the cross section depicted on the package that seems to feature a black strip. My guess, considering where this bar comes from (Iceland) is that the black strip is black licorice. I’m not sure if I noticed that when I bought it, but if I did notice it then I was feeling much braver than I am right now.

Here’s the thing, I had nothing to be afraid about. More surprising is the fact that the black strip is in fact black licorice, but I think it kind of works. It could be that my long term goal to try and get accustomed to the flavour of black licorice is paying off, or that there’s something about this bar that works, but I actually think the flavour kind of works. I’ve said it before, but a nice milk chocolate can actually improve the flavour of black licorice for those that might not be fans. I always describe it as being like putting some cream and sugar in your coffee, it takes the edge off. The strip of caramel also helps out a bit as well.

My biggest issue is actually about the strip of caramel, or at least I assume it’s caramel. It was really hard to get a taste of that upper strip because it was so thin. It was thinner than the milk chocolate coating. And while the caramel helped tamper down the astringent licorice flavour, I think a little more would have helped a bit more. While I could taste a difference in this bar, compared to just chocolate covered licorice, I felt like the caramel didn’t really shine as well as it could have.

While I would have liked more caramel, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like this bar. In fact I will go on record saying that I liked this bar, and I’d eat it again. While that doesn’t seem like high praises, the fact that it’s a black licorice based bar, makes it a high marker for me.