REVIEW: Reese’s Oreo Cups

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Snack food all-stars Reese’s and Oreo have collaborated to grant fans not one, but two best-of-both-worlds mash-ups: Reese’s Oreo Cups and Oreo Reese’s Cookies. A cookies and creme peanut butter cup AND a peanut butter and chocolate sandwich cookie? Whichever product speaks to your preference, we can all agree that both brands have been reading our diaries.

I tried the candy half of this collaboration. Available in Standard Size, King Size, and Mini varieties, Reese’s Oreo cups consist of a milk chocolate and white crème shell filled with peanut butter confection and Oreo cookie crumbs.

Reese’s connoisseurs may also think of this cup as a collaboration between two past varieties: Reese’s Crunchy Cookie Cups and the seasonal Werewolf Tracks Cups. Like the former product, Reese’s Oreo cups contain delightfully crunchy chocolate cookie crumbs. Like the latter, they use half milk chocolate and half white creme to achieve a unique taste and cool colorblock look. With all this mixing and matching of parts, maybe Dr. Frankenstein was in charge of engineering this collaboration.

If Frankenstein did channel his unchecked scientific ambition into candy, I would argue that he played it safe with the Reese’s Oreo cup. The white creme doesn’t taste much like an Oreo’s center, but it adds extra sweetness to the cup. The Oreo cookie crumbs add fantastic texture to the peanut butter filling, but I wish I could taste more of the wafer’s characteristic dark cocoa flavor. The crumbs are concentrated at the bottom of the cup, which creates a cool layering effect, but a whole wafer would have been a more exciting way to achieve Oreo flavor.

Despite the Oreo’s subtle flavor, the cookie crunch—in satisfying contrast to Reese’s perfect, smooth peanut butter—is the best part of the candy. I wish I had found the Mini variety at my local store rather than the King Size pack. I suspect the cookie’s texture and flavor might be more pronounced in a smaller cup. Readers, confirm my hunch?

Although the cookie flavor is generally lacking, Reese’s Oreo cups are crunchy, sweet, peanut buttery, and very easy to eat. It’s hard to achieve snack food perfection, but this flavor pays respectable homage to two brands that already have.

Purchased Price: $1.97
Purchased at: Walmart
Size: 2.8 oz (79 g) King Size package
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (per 2 cups) 200 calories, 11 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 20 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein

REVIEW: Trolli Limited Edition Mountain Dew Sour Brite Crawlers

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If you’ve been waiting for your chance to “DO THE DEW” and “DO THE WORM” simultaneously (I wish I could take credit for this tagline, but alas, it’s ripped straight from the Mountain Dew website), you’d best slither on over to a package of the new limited edition Trolli x Mountain Dew Sour Brite Crawlers.

These candy critters aren’t the only option to fulfill all of your Dewy/wormy desires—this fruitful (ha) partnership also includes a Zero Sugar Cherry-Lemon soda—but I’m not opening that can of gummy worms today, so I’ll focus on this wriggly business.

As soon as I opened my pack, I was rewarded with a scent cloud that was certainly Mountain Dew-esque. The worms come in three flavors: the green Original Citrus, the red Original Citrus Cherry, and the blue Original Citrus Blue Raspberry.

You may, like me, be disappointed to note that there’s nary a “Code Red” or “Voltage” in sight—the savvy shopper suspects that this decision was made to broaden the pool of potential buyers to those who may be interested in gummies but unfamiliar with Mountain Dew’s intense yet vague naming conventions and while that is a bit of a bummer for Dewhards like Yours Dewly, fair enough. (What I can’t forgive as readily is the omission of Baja Blast, but maybe that’s another marketing thing—I concede that “Original Citrus Tropical Lime” does have a weird ring to it.)

Of course, I had to try the OG flavor first, and my verdict was… yeah, that tastes like what a Mountain Dew-flavored sour gummy worm should taste like! It starts with a burst of mild sourness that quickly recedes into sweetness, with a bright, refreshing throughline of fizzy citrus-ness. I usually don’t opt for snacks much sourer than a Sour Patch Kid, and fortunately for me, these fall on the lower side of the sour scale, such that even if you’re tentative towards tart treats, you shouldn’t have much of an issue. Because of the mellow flavor, if you told me these were Sprite gummies, I would have believed it, but they’re credible as Dew too. While I noticed an oddly artificial aftertaste (how dare my sugary snacks based on a radioactively-hued soda taste artificial!?), I found that to be minimized when I took smaller bites rather than gulping down a whole worm at once.

The red and blue variants had even more intense flavors, which I would say made me enjoy them more than the green, but the tradeoff was that they didn’t strike me as especially Dew-like. Rather, they tasted like pretty generic cherry and blue raspberry slushies. Appearance- and texture-wise, all of the worms are quite satisfying—they are thick, chewy but not too hard, and somewhat stretchy, with an appealing marbled pattern. (I tried to discern whether the lighter parts and the darker parts tasted different, but as best as I could tell, the difference was purely aesthetic.)

If you’re thinking about picking these up, I suggest you Mountain Dew it; they won’t be around forever, so make like an early bird and get that worm.

Purchased Price: $3.79
Size: 12.3 oz package
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (serving size of 5 pieces): 100 calories, 0 grams of fat, 45 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 14 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.

REVIEW: Marshmallow Butterfinger Bar

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I have to be honest about something up front: I have been waiting and wishing for a white chocolate Butterfinger for over 20 years. From the first glorious taste of a white chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup sometime in the mid-2000s, my brain chemistry changed. I thought to myself, “Why don’t all candy bars do this?” It is such a simple but effective swap to the whole dynamic of a flavor profile, and one that I thought would be a perfect complement to Butterfinger’s crispety crunchety peanut-buttery toffee flavor.

But I also thought the same thing about Snickers and Twix, which, when their white iterations came out, were fine, but didn’t achieve the same greatness as the Reese’s. Something about the white chocolate paired with Snickers and Twix falls short of their milk and dark counterparts, which, despite its amplified sweetness, is duller than the original.

Regardless of white chocolate’s success rate, when Marshmallow Butterfinger was announced, the second in a run of fun new flavors for the bar after Salted Caramel, I began the hunt immediately. Butterfinger is a candy that historically changes its shape as opposed to its taste, with the most significant change before this year being a dark chocolate version, so the idea of not only a white chocolate but a marshmallow white creme is a pretty big swing for an often complacent brand.

I am hoping for the sake of candy lovers everywhere that Butterfinger will continue to take some swings, because the marshmallow version is a wallop of a success. The new white coating distinctly tastes like marshmallow, extra sweet and vanilla-y, with a flavor that will remind you of Lucky Charms’ dehydrated version without the dry crunch. Sometimes white chocolate can simply be sweet, and this has an abundance of character and sweetness that really tastes unique to any other I’ve had. The texture is velvety smooth and melty to go along with the bold pop of sugariness that complements the salty and nutty core flavor wonderfully.

Where the Snickers and Twix fell short, this new Butterfinger shines brilliantly not only because of the slightly savory peanut toffee in the base, but also because of the little extra marshmallow flavoring in the creme. The addition of a strong, pronounced, sweet vanilla elevates the bar to a delightful crumbly crescendo of sweet and salty that tickles the candied fantasies of my mind 20 years ago.

Purchased Price: $3.19
Size: 2-piece Share Pack, 3.07 Ounces
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 piece, 52g) 260 calories, 10 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 140 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 22 grams of total sugars, 4 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Twix Snickerdoodle

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Soft, chewy cinnamon sugar snickerdoodle cookies are a cozy classic associated with winter holidays, but they are delicious in all seasons. Case in point: I associate them with Father’s Day, when I would often bake a large batch for my dad, a renowned cinnamon fiend. One year, I mistakenly baked enough snickerdoodles for a small army of dads. I suggested leaving a tin outside for our mail carrier, who was a family friend. Unwilling to share his treat, my dad protested that “if you leave him snickerdoodles today, he’ll get spoiled and start expecting them every time.”

The mail carrier did end up with his snickerdoodles that day, and this is all to say that the new Twix Snickerdoodle may leave me spoiled and expecting all of the brand’s subsequent novelty flavors to be successful.

The milk chocolate-coated candy is imbued with cinnamon flavor in both the caramel and the biscuit. The cinnamon cookie is subtly spiced, like a scantily coated snickerdoodle. The caramel is more forceful in its flavoring, teetering on too artificial, and generates warmth in the aftertaste that reminds me more of cinnamon hard candy than cookies. This quality of the caramel is subtle unless you strip the caramel from its cookie (which I did, for science). The milk chocolate helps to mellow the intense flavor into a more balanced bite.

Despite this, flavoring two components of the bar was the right choice because the spiced cookie alone would not have been enough flavor. I liked the candy enough to forgive Twix’s cinnamon wizard for his liberal hand.

Together, the sweet milk chocolate, buttery spiced caramel, and crispy cookie represent everything we love about original Twix, but with a warm twist perfect for the upcoming season. While I love milk chocolate and cinnamon together, I wonder if a cream cheese or yogurt-flavored candy coating would mimic the tang that cream of tartar brings to snickerdoodles. No such candy bar exists to my knowledge, but you, the cinnamon wizard, or the cream cheese chancellor may have resources that I do not.

Twix Snickerdoodle’s sugar and spice will pair nicely with your autumn chai or holiday candy dish. Are they good enough to refuse your friends, family, or mail carrier a taste? You decide.

Purchased Price: $1.69
Purchased at: Giant Eagle
Size: 1.41 oz (40 g) bar
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 200 calories, 9 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 80 milligrams of sodium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 20 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein

REVIEW: Lindt Dubai Style Chocolate Bar

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In the Venn diagram of candy lovers and the chronically online, those in the middle intersection are particularly enamored by viral food trends and their ability to provoke excitement and curiosity. How many kinds of Swedish candy are there? Does a bowl of tiny pancakes make cereal? Why is this chocolate bar so expensive?

I overheard a guy at Walmart ask the last question out loud as he passed the display of Lindt Dubai Style Chocolate bars. At nearly $15 for a 5.3 oz bar, Lindt’s newest product boasts costly ingredients, eye-catching green packaging, and generally stylish vibe. Invented by a Dubai chocolatier and popularized by social media, Dubai chocolate is a milk chocolate shell filled with sweet pistachio cream and kadayif, or shredded cooked phyllo pastry. Lindt’s riff on the sought-after confection consists of Swiss milk chocolate made in Germany, with the addition of almonds, hazelnuts, and sugared pistachios in the filling.

So, is the bar worth the splurge? I guess you could say I’m still dubai-ous.

Look, I like Dubai chocolate, I like Lindt chocolate, and I’ve often wondered if I’m singlehandedly putting my local candy store owner’s children through college. Despite these truths, Lindt’s Dubai Style Chocolate Bar left me unimpressed.

The milk chocolate itself is wonderful—lushly silky, sweet, and creamy, with notes of caramel and vanilla that make its flavor distinctive.

The filling felt like a letdown, especially compared to the viral photos of Dubai chocolate that depict overflowing green goo like something out of a Nickelodeon cartoon. (Did the Rugrats Reptar Bar foretell Dubai chocolate? Discuss.) Lindt’s filling is a modest layer of sweetened pistachio paste rich with texture: gritty bits of nuts and threads of phyllo that remind me of crispy shredded wheat cereal. It tastes nutty, salty, and good, but the flavor is a mixed medley of almond, hazelnut, and pistachio—the latter of which should be the star. In the context of the Dubai trend, the almonds and hazelnuts add more filler than filling.

The milk chocolate outshines the filling. Even with a better chocolate-to-filling ratio, the filling would benefit from a substantial addition of pistachio cream to boost the pistachio flavor, balance creamy and crispy textures, and stand a chance against the chocolate’s unique taste.

The Lindt Dubai Style Chocolate Bar is difficult to rate because, while a nutty bar of Swiss chocolate is always a pleasure, it does not fulfill the creamy, crispy, and pistachio-y promises of Dubai chocolate that—to some—justify the hefty price tag. If you are willing to part with the green in your wallet, look for a brand that provides more green filling in its chocolate.

Purchased Price: $14.97
Purchased at: Walmart
Size: 5.3 oz (150 g) bar
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (per 2 pieces, or 1/5 bar) 170 calories, 11 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 35 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

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