REVIEW: Limited Edition Cherry Cordial Delight Peeps

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Limited Edition Cherry Cordial Delight Peeps

As far as childhood traumas go, cherry cordials are on the “Really, why didn’t you address this with your therapist?” list.

At seven years of age, my first efforts with cordials were an immediate disaster with red cherry, fondant, and shards of milk chocolate splashing all over my favorite Looney Tunes t-shirt (how I loved that shirt!). I tried to wash it out, but alas, not even Snuggle the Bear could save that humble garment. While I loved the taste of the cordial, fear of ruining the rest of my favorite t-shirts detracted me from ever returning to cherry cordials again.

Until today.

It seems Peeps, in all their tidy, poofy, non-goo-filled selves, are inviting me to make amends with my cherry cordial childhood traumas by putting those flavors into marshmallow form, which is a good thing because chocolate, cherry, and sugar? That’s a recipe for a party.

Limited Edition Cherry Cordial Delight Peeps 2

Right out of the cellophane, the smell makes it clear that chocolate and cherry run the show. If you’ve ever wanted Febreze to make an air freshener that smells like maraschino cherries and brownie batter, this is for you: the bright, sugared cherry aroma completely absorbs the smell of anything within a two-foot radius.

And that smell immediately transports into the flavor. These fluffy little devils hold nothing back, going full-throttle for artificial cherry. Biting in, the red crystal sugar flecks crisp through before breaking into a white marshmallow fluffier than the luxury bath towels at the Ritz.

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The cherry flavor harkens back to a cherry popsicle or Skittle: a little tart, extremely sweet, and mildly bitter. The dark chocolate, while not astounding, is also not palm oil gunk.

On its own, it’s like a mock-up of a Dark Dove Promise, adding a woodsy note with a bit of brownie batter sweetness, but, when taken with the marshmallow, the chocolate gets swept away in the wake of cherry flavor. This can be overwhelming as the cherry, when taking in multiple bites, starts verging on medicinal, harkening back to days of tissues and trying to stomach cherry cough syrup. Those are sad days. There is no need for sad days.

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It has occurred to me that there will be a time, probably soon, in which I have a traumatic encounter with a chicken that somehow deters me from eating chickadee-shaped products. Until then, I will keep trying all the versions of Peeps, holding that particular fear, reluctance, and joy that comes with peculiar flavor efforts.

These particular Peeps could’ve suffered (as they sometimes do) by being a little too sweet, but the monitored three-chick pack kept things in check. The biggest downfall was the extent to which the fake cherry flavors muscled out the chocolate, but, taken as a whole, these reminded me of cordials: cherry takes the lead, fondant (or sugary marshmallow) stands as a sidekick, and chocolate is a background character. Not an unimportant character, per se. More like the Cabbage Vendor in Avatar: adding color and depth without being allotted much time for development.

All that said, if you love cherries, sugar, and chickadees that stare at you ominously, these are worth dishing out $1.99 to give ‘em a shot.

(Nutrition Facts – 3 Chicks – 150 calories, 30 calories from fat, 3.5 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 10 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, Less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 28 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Limited Edition Cherry Cordial Delight Peeps
Purchased Price: $1.99
Size: 3 pack/1.5 oz.
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Cherry cordial flavors in marshmallow form. Cherry flavor similar to cherry Skittles. Quite puffy. Crispy sugar outside. No goo is involved. Non-palm-oil chocolate is used. The Cabbage Vendor in Avatar
Cons: Cherry overpowers chocolate. Red dye adds bitterness. Chickadees stare at you ominously. Childhood traumas involving cherry cordials. Non-childhood traumas involving chickens.

REVIEW: Burger King Flame Grilled Chicken Burger

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Burger King Chicken Burger

Burger King was busier last year than Humpty Hump was in a Burger King ba…ugh, that reference is so old. Half of you aren’t going to get it, so I’m not going to finish it.

Anyhoo, in 2015, the burger chain introduced Buffalo Chicken Fries, an extra long list of Extra Long sandwiches, a red velvet milkshake that may or may not have turned your poop a different color, a black bun Halloween Whopper that may or may not have turned your poop a different color, and, of course, they brought back the dead-eyed King mascot, which will give some of us nightmares…again.

Surprisingly, the year didn’t end with one last Extra Long sandwich, instead BK came out with their Flame Grilled Chicken Burger.

The menu item features a flame-grilled chicken burger patty topped with tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, and white onions on a soft, toasted brioche style bun.

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I have to admit, when I pulled out the burger from its paper cocoon, it looked good. I peeled back the bun and saw those grill marks, which made me want to bite into it even more. Then I cut it in half and the cross section reminded me of photos I saw in the college anatomy class I stopped going to during my junior year after seeing said photos. At that point, the chicken burger lost some of its appeal. But it lost all of its appeal when I took my first bite from it.

Burger King Chicken Burger 3

The patty had a good thickness to it, but it also makes the Whopper patty look scary thin. The patty was also…juicy? I don’t know if saying that is correct. Maybe saying it was sweating hard like it knew it was guilty of not being very good is more accurate because the liquid was like sweat in that it was salty and mostly made of water. I thought it was another ingredient that was bringing the liquid, but that wasn’t the case. Maybe, instead of Flame Broiled Chicken Burger, it should’ve been called the Fully Brined Chicken Burger.

At times, the sandwich as a whole tasted like, I swear, a Subway Cold Cut Combo, which to me isn’t bad. But, again, it was just too salty. The chicken patty itself was spiced in a way that made me think chicken breakfast sausage. Its texture was also sausage patty-like and easy to bite through. If it wasn’t so damn salty, it would probably be nice in a Croissan’wich.

None of the other ingredients did a good job at cutting through that saltiness, and the pickles probably enhanced it. As for the bun, it was shiny like other brioche-style buns, but it don’t think it had the slightly sweet flavor that the McDonald’s and Jack in the Box brioche buns have.

I didn’t get a chance to try every new item Burger King offered in 2015, but I did like almost every one I tried. The two exceptions are the Extra Long Pulled Pork Sandwich and this Flame Grilled Chicken Burger.

(Nutrition Facts – 480 calories, 25 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 1160 milligrams of sodium, 42 grams of carbohydrates, 10 grams of sugar, 22 grams of protein.)

Item: Burger King Flame Grilled Chicken Burger
Purchased Price: $8.49 (medium value meal)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Burger King
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: At times, it tastes like a Subway Cold Cut Combo (if you like them). Burger King taking chances with protein. Doesn’t turn your poop a different color.
Cons: At times, it tastes like a Subway Cold Cut Combo (if you hate them). Very salty. Lots of liquid. Other ingredients couldn’t cut through that saltiness. Bun didn’t seem that special.

REVIEW: Kellogg’s Limited Edition Frosted Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts

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Kellogg's Limited Edition Frosted Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts

If I told a younger you that “bacon overkill” would become a thing, you’d probably cry and scream “Stranger Danger” because some old weirdo was talking to you about breakfast meats. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we’re getting too much bacon.

Too much bacon?! Surely, I jest.

Don’t get me wrong, bacon is amazing. But when did we all become the dog from the Beggin’ Strips commercials? Why does it seem like Big Bacon is trying to take over our lives?

I guess its bacon’s world and we’re all just living in it.

Mini rant aside, I was excited to try Frosted Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts. I knew I had to have them the second I saw them because I’m part of the problem.

After opening the pouch I was met with a welcome pancake smell. Each pastry has the standard white frosting with brown flecks that I assume are bacon flavored. I’ll get back to that in a moment. The filling itself has a nice maple scent and an appropriate light brown coloring.

I’m normally an “eat ’em right out of the pouch” kinda guy, but for the sake of this review, I did my due diligence and tried them toasted and untoasted. I opted against the “heat in the microwave for 3 seconds” option.

I set my rarely used toaster to medium heat and waited for what felt like an hour. A watched toaster never toasts.

The flavor was faint with the maple far outweighing the “bacon.” I’d go as far to say the toasted crust and (vanilla?) frosting were the most prominent flavors. There’s just not enough of a filling to crust ratio to really get a ton of the maple bacon flavor. That’s a universal Pop-Tart problem for me.

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I scraped a few of the brown flecks off the icing, and while they did have a salty flavor to them, they didn’t scream “bacon.” I’m really only assuming they were the bacon element. I even cut one of the Pop-Tarts open and scraped the filling out with a knife so I could taste it. No bacon, it just was salty.

While I don’t know how it would have worked, I definitely think these would have benefitted from having little pieces of real bacon instead of being “artificially flavored.”

Kellogg's Limited Edition Frosted Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts 3

The maple taste is the one that stands out, but even that should have been more powerful. It didn’t taste like I just ate a pancake with a big glob of maple syrup, it tasted like I ate one 20 minutes prior. They seem to have kept the maple intensity low so that the artificial phantom bacon could burst through, but it doesn’t.

I wish they swung for the fences more with this flavor. It could have been truly memorable. I definitely preferred them untoasted because there was a better balance, but, again, there wasn’t enough bacon flavor. Normally I’d tell you a wacky product like this is worth a try simply for the novelty of it, but I don’t think you even need to bother.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 pastry – 210 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 2.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 210 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 15 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Kellogg’s Limited Edition Frosted Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts
Purchased Price: $1.98
Size: 8 pastries/box
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Decent Maple flavor. Not terrible untoasted, Ambitious idea. Beggin’ Strips Dog.
Cons: Gimmicky. No actual bacon. Mild bacon taste at best. Stranger Dangers. Pop-Tart microwave instructions.

REVIEW: Papa John’s Brookie

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Papa John's Brookie

Whether it’s Harry and Sally, Boy and World, or Scooby-Doo and the Harlem Globetrotters, we always love when two things meet. Hell, when it comes to turducken, we even love it when three meats meet.

Papa John’s must have understood this, too, because with their new Brookie, they’ve done more than just have chocolate chip cookies and brownies meet—they’ve baked their sweet, buttery essences together in a big ol’ oven of love.

Now if only Papa John’s could reconcile with his estranged son Jimmy. Maybe we’d finally get the Italian sub crust pizza the world has been yearning for.

But is it really possible for two superstars of the baked goods world to peacefully coexist under the roof of one cardboard box? Or will their sugary egos get in each other’s way? And how will Oatmeal Raisin feel about being left out of this orgy of dough?

Let’s tune in to this week’s episode of Beverly Hills 90,210 Calories and find out.

As I headed home from Papa John’s, the tantalizing, authentically homemade smell coming from my Brookie box made me check my phone to see if my technologically-illiterate grandma had somehow accidentally texted me a dozen fresh-baked cookies.

Feeling more than a little dirty, I locked myself into my room, dimmed the lights, turned on the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, and bit into a super soft, still warm slice. Better put the kids to bed for this one.

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With my mouth glued shut by dense, chocolaty goop, I observed that my Brookie’s center was far closer to batter than it was to an actual, fully cooked cake brownie. Fudgy, rich, and delicious: this sinful, eggy chocolate lava had vesicles of flaky crust on top but still melted in my hands and mouth alike. The thin bed of cookie magma it sat on was largely undetectable, but still contributed some welcome bursts of buttered dough flavor.

So while the core of Planet Brookie was molten and sugary, the thicker cookie crust was crispy and firm. It had notes of toasted sugar and browned butter with the occasional visit by a large semisweet morsel. But as a whole, the crust was far milder (and significantly less interesting) than the decadent center.

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Just like how the Force needs a dark side and a light, the Brookie benefits most from the magical area where brownie and cookie crust meet to form a tasty yin yang. The “fudgy sweet” and “golden baked” flavors pair well, and the half-crisp, half-gooey textural contrast could be a real crowd-pleaser.

It could even force a truce between those people who like the middle pieces of brownies and those people who only like the corners. I say “could,” because I’m just the guy who’s alone in his room, 48 love songs deep into 69 Love Songs and dripping with fudge. What do I know?

Papa John's Brookie 4

So as you can see from my above pie chart, approximately 87.5 percent of my Brookie currently resembles Pac-Man, while 12.5 percent does not. I’m quite satisfied with the Brookie; after all, did any of us really doubt that chocolate chip cookies and brownies would work together?

It might be a little too small and a little too expensive, and I wish Oreos had been invited to the party, but I look forward to eating the rest of this. And I’ll certainly buy another Brookie in the future and bring it to a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner…

…as my date.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/8th slice – 190 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 95 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein..)

Item: Papa John’s Brookie
Purchased Price: $6
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Papa John’s
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: The best parts of an undercooked brownie and the edge pieces of a chocolate chip bar cookie. The even better part where they kiss meet. Inevitable post-Brookie milk chugging. The guiding life philosophy of cookie-brownie Taoism.
Cons: The price. The size. Washing out those tricky post-Brookie fudge stains. Still waiting on Grandma to email me an apple pie.

REVIEW: Hot Diggity Dog Pringles

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Hot Diggity Dog Pringles

Hot Diggity Dog is the all-time greatest Pringles…

…name.

It’s the only Pringles flavor that I would want as my catchphrase if I was a Hanna-Barbara cartoon character. There’s a lonely picnic basket under that tree? Hot Diggity Dog! You came up with a new sprocket for Spacely Space Sprockets? Hot Diggity Dog! Time to punch out at the quarry? Hot Diggity Dog! Scooby Snacks? Hot Diggity Dog!

I love hot dogs. If I could eat them every single day without medical concern, I would. Of course, I’d get sick of them at some point and then switch to hamburgers, but I’d probably come back to hot dogs once I got sick of hamburgers. So having hot dog-flavored Pringles does excite me.

Now if you expect these potato crisps to taste like a hot dog with all the fixings — ketchup, mustard, and relish — please lower your expectations. If you have expectations that it’s going to taste like what’s on the packaging — a hot dog with mustard — then you will be pleased.

Opening the can releases a yellow mustard scent that, if you inhale too much of it, will tickle your nose. There’s also a porky aroma **sniffles** mixed in with the mustard. **sniffles** It’s really nice.

**Sniffles**

Give me a second. Still tickling.

**Sniffles**

Okay, I’m good.

As for their flavor…Oh. My. Dog. The yellow mustard flavor dominates, but they also have a salty and meaty flavor that’s similar to those hot dogs that have ingredients labels I avoid reading. I swear there’s even a slight bun flavor that pops up every so often. Eating through a can of Hot Diggity Dog Pringles is like having having $21 at Costco and eating their $1.50 hot dogs until the money runs out…or until you throw up.

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The food scientists behind this flavor did a wonderful job. Even the aftertaste that lingers tastes like a hot dog with mustard. My taste buds are so confused right now. They’re probably thinking, “Something crunchy that taste like a hot dog? What is going on? Are we in the future?”

With that said, I can understand if there are some of you out there who think this processed meat-flavored crunchy snack is absolutely gross. And I guess writing “processed meat-flavored crunchy snack” does make it sound unappealing, but I really love these.

The hot dog with mustard flavor is so spot on that I’ve had thoughts of having a hot dog-flavored Pringles eating competition, pretending I’m either Joey Chestnut, Takeru Kobayashi, or Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, and then swallowing as many Hot Diggity Dog Pringles I can in 10 minutes.

Hot Diggity Dog is the all-time greatest Pringles name. And it’s also one of my all-time greatest Pringles.

Disclosure: I received these from the PR firm that represents Pringles. Receiving a free sample did not affect my review in any way. A glowing review probably looks like I’m in the pocket of Julius Pringles, but I assure you I’m not. So let me say something bad about Julius Pringles. He looks like a murderer in a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 oz. – 150 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 190 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, less than 1 gram of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Hot Diggity Dog Pringles
Purchased Price: FREE
Size: 5.96 oz. can
Purchased at: Received from PR firm (available at Walgreens)
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Spot on hot dog and mustard flavor. Makes me want to pretend to be a competitive eater. Best Pringles name of all-time.
Cons: I imagine there are many people who won’t like the processed meat flavor. Comes in smaller can than regular Pringles. As of this posting, exclusive to Walgreens.

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