Mountain Bars

Along with the Idaho Spud, another delicious treat specific to the Pacific Northwest is the Mountain Bar.  (Although I dare say the Mountain Bar is better and more popular than the Idaho Spud, Almond Roca must surely rank highest on that list.  If you ask me, Aplets and Cotlets rank lowest, but I know a lot of people love them.)

Mountain Bars are produced by Brown and Haley, a candy company situated "at the foot of Mt. Rainier."  (Which is a more polite way to say "just outside Tacoma.")  Mountain Bars were first put out in 1915, when they were called the "Mount Tacoma Bar."  I can think of few names less appealing, so I think they used good judgment when they changed the name.

Mountain Bars are indeed sort of mountain-y looking.  That is a charitable description.  The uncharitable description would be something more like "small cow patty."   But no matter, because they are so delicious that the looks will just not be an issue for long.  

There are three types of Mountain Bar: Original, Cherry, and Peanut Butter.  Of the three I definitely prefer peanut butter, and I believe that is true for most people.  It's hard to say whether original or cherry is the more popular.  I dislike them both, but for different reasons.

One feature which distinguishes Mountain Bars from the competition - and in fact which distinguishes Brown and Haley candies as a whole - is the quality of the ingredients.  The chocolate used in the Mountain Bar is top notch: firm but not too solid, creamy but not mushy, and with little bits of chopped peanuts for texture, but not too many.  

The quality of the chocolate is important, because most of the bar is chocolate - the filling comprises only about 25% of the entire thing.  It's smaller than you expect, given that usually a filled candy is all filling with a thin layer of shell.  (This is probably because the filling is cheaper than the chocolate, so it behooves a penny pinching mega-corporation to use as much filling to chocolate as possible.)

The fondant used to fill original and cherry is likewise classy, but with fondant, who can really tell?  But the peanut butter they put inside the peanut butter Mountain Bar is simply outstanding.  The quality of peanut butter is variable in the confectionary biz, but the Mountain Bar filling is perfect.  It's  the best peanut butter filling available in a mass market candy, if you ask me.

The original and cherry bars have a small fondant filling.  Not as much as a Cadbury's Crème Egg, for which we can all be grateful.  It also isn't as liquid as the Crème Egg filling.  More like the filling you find in a Whitman's Sampler candy.  

The original flavor is "vanilla" apparently.  Who can really tell?  Mostly it just tastes sweet.  The cherry filling is a shocking pink color, but does a pretty good job of reproducing the flavor of a maraschino cherry.

If you live outside the Pacific Northwest, you can order Mountain Bars directly from the Brown and Haley website.  They offer free shipping on orders over $140, I'm just sayin'.