Snack-Off: Lovingearth's Salted Caramel Swayzee vs. Banoffee Bang Bang

Hello all! First of all, apologies for the delays in posting here. I have been feeling quite under the weather lately, but luckily the sun has finally (and likely briefly) returned to the UK and I’m going to use this energy boost the best I can. In very good news, however, we've hit a little over 100 followers on Instagram! Yay! If you haven't found us through Instagram, or aren't following there, please do give it a look through. I am more active there at the minute, generally speaking. Recently I got to live-blog about one of my local vegan events, the Sneinton Vegan Market, and am hoping to do a more in-depth review at the next event of theirs I get to go to! I am also due to visit Leicester's Vegan Festival this coming weekend.

Today’s blog entry is going to roll a little differently than my last two reviews, as today will be my first comparison review! I will still be applying the tenets of Price, Taste and Quality, but rather than scoring the two items I will be picking a winner out of each category – and, obviously, the one with the most points is my favourite of the match.

Some of the future types of these blog entries will potentially be similar products versus one another, and some will be of neighbouring items from the same company in a taste-off. This review is one of the latter, as I will be talking about Lovingearth’s delicious Chocolate Bars. In particular, the Salted Caramel Swayzee, and the Banoffee Bang Bang bars.

A few notes on the two products, first: I love the packaging of these. They are vibrant but not too busy and, more importantly, they come in a cardboard packaging. As stated by Lovingearth on their website’s product information, these packets are made of 97% recycled product and are dyed with vegetable inks. Even the ‘plastic’ wrap inside is made of plant materials, and can be composted! Lovingearth themselves are a company whose integeral company feeling is that the planet is a living organism and should be respected as such – and it should – and so go forward with three main aims: healthy, sustainable, and fair products. On to the bars themselves: they both share a similar appearance, as I believe that both the bars I got ahold of were made with the company’s caramel chocolate style base. But, there were key differences between the two bars; the Salted Caramel offering contained a dark truffle layer under the main chocolate topping, and includes pink lake salt in its recipe to give that classic salted caramel flavour. The Banoffee Bang Bang, meanwhile, contains buckwheat puffs to give the bar a solid crunch, as well as powdered banana in the mix.

In regards to Taste, and based on my previous review, you might think I would be biased towards Banoffee Bang Bang. I thought I might be, too, but found that – while very delicious – banana was not the overwhelming flavour I got throughout the bar. Neither was caramel. In fact, the predominant taste I got while trying this flavour was of coconut. This makes sense, on reviewing the ingredients, as coconut features in multiple forms throughout the bar.

The Salted Caramel Swayzee, on the other hand, was a happily matched cacao-phony (haha, geddit?) of the dark, soft truffle layer against the salted caramel chocolate. It was as pronounced on the box and, while I did still get a coconutty taste in this bar, it was not as strong as in the Banoffee bar. As such, I found the Taste of the Salted Caramel Swayzee to be the winner, here.

Quality is a hard one to compare and it really comes down to the nitty gritty, which, for me, was the ingredients. Even saying this, both bars are vegan friendly; gluten-free; fair trade; low GI; dairy-free and free of cane sugar. Whew! But in weighing it up, I looked at what it was that I was really eating, and that’s chocolate. The Banoffee Bang Bang bar is delicious, but it’s 33% cocoa at a minimum, guaranteed. The Salted Caramel Swayzee is a minimum of 50% cocoa. By that, Salted Caramel Swayzee takes it by just 17%. And that really is at a push, as they are both really high quality.

Price is probably the least entertaining category here: it is a tie. They cost the same, and I would absolutely pay the £2.99 again. A strong note here is that I was bought one bar as an Easter gift – but asked the gift giver if they’d be okay telling me the price, which they were – and I then bought the Banoffee Bang Bang bar from a different store location for the same price. As such I can assume this is a generally recommended RRP for the Lovingearth chocolate bars of this size.

But even with a tie in the Price category, Salted Caramel Swayzee wins out for me over Banoffee Bang Bang at a technical 3-1. I’m still pretty surprised at myself that I didn’t immediately prefer the banana-chocolate magic combo but I guess it goes to show me I can refine my palate if I try! I really recommend checking this company and their products out if you have a stockist near you, and to have a look through their range on their website at Lovingearth - which also includes links to their social media pages. I’m especially excited to see there is a Turkish Delight style bar – I think I might have to hunt that down next…