The Home Made Bar is a real food-based protein snack from the team at Seth Feroce’s Axe and Sledge and also the brand’s first entry into the realm of functional food. The product came to market in three flavors, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Brownie, and Salted Caramel Crunch, each packing a different amount of protein ranging from 17 to 21g per bar.
As mentioned, Axe and Sledge’s Home Made Bar is made with real food ingredients such as whey, egg white, and bovine collagen to provide the protein, as well as nut butter, honey, tapioca fiber, and sunflower oil. We recently got our hands on a bunch of each flavor to find out firsthand how good the brand’s first functional outing is compared to what else is out there.
Review
Based on the description and images we had seen of the Home Made Bar, we suspected it would be along the same lines as Marc Lobliner’s original hit real food snack, the Outright Protein Bar. The difference with Axe and Sledge’s effort is the macros are a little leaner, with the Home Made Bar having more protein and lower calories, although after trying it, we don’t feel it’s worth it.
As soon as you bite into the product, you quickly realize it is not the soft, smooth, and melt-in-your-mouth experience you get from the Outright Protein Bar. Axe and Sledge’s Home Made Bar has quite a dense body that is much more difficult to chew, and surprisingly that consistency changes from flavor to flavor.
We found Axe and Sledge’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Home Made Bar to be the smoothest of the lot and closest to that easy-to-eat expectation. The outside is still a little harder than you’d think, but once you bite in, it does melt away relatively easily. The Double Chocolate Brownie is the next hardest flavor; then Salted Caramel Crunch is the densest of the lot by a fair margin.
While the consistency of Axe and Sledge’s Home Made Bar isn’t what we hoped, especially with that real food formula, the flavors are enjoyable. The Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip has a strong peanut taste and impressively sweet chocolate chips throughout, and the Double Chocolate Brownie is a rich and chocolatey, brownie-like experience.
The taste of the Salted Caramel Crunch Home Made Bar does have some salty caramel to it, but the texture takes away from it, making it difficult to pick up on and enjoy. Of the three, the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip is the leader of the lot in our minds, as it does have the softest and smoothest consistency and drives home the two sides of its title taste.
Summary
We definitely feel the density and texture of the Home Made Bar are what let it down. The whole food ingredients and approach are solid, and the flavors are communicated well except for the Salted Caramel Crunch. The thickness and extra chewing simply make it harder to enjoy, especially knowing the smoothness of the Outright Protein Bar and how easy-to-eat a protein bar can be.
