REVIEW: Limited Edition Firework Oreo Cookies with Popping Candy

Limited Edition Firework Oreo Cookies with Popping Candy

For a few years we’ve had the unimaginative Summer Oreo, which tastes like a regular Oreo, but with “fun” cookie designs and a Mylanta-colored creme.

It’s never evoked “summer” to me. I understand the antacid-colored creme is supposed to represent water and the “fun” cookie designs are things that people do during the summer if they live near a big body of water. But in my mouth, where it really should count, it doesn’t feel like summer.

But now there’s a Oreo that does — Limited Edition Firework Oreo with popping candy in the creme.

The cookie tastes like the regular Oreo variety. I know what that tastes like. You know what that tastes like. Everyone knows it tastes like sugar fairy tears between two chocolate wafers. But does the popping candy make a difference?

Limited Edition Firework Oreo Cookies with Popping Candy 2

When I chewed on the first cookie, I thought the idea was a dud. There were a few pops here and there, but the popping candy got lost in the cookie’s crunch. It’s like not feeling a small earthquake while on a roller coaster.

But then I thought back to how I ate Pop Rocks as a kid and realized the proper way to eat this cookie, which some of you classy folks might not like.

To fully enjoy it, you can’t eat it like a regular Oreo and you have to throw out your table manners. Remember how you were taught to chew with your mouth closed? Forget that. If you’ve ever gotten teased for chewing like a cow (raises hand), that slow and big mastication is going to come in handy.

Limited Edition Firework Oreo Cookies with Popping Candy 3

So take a Firework Oreo and put it in your mouth or take a big bite. Slowly chew on it a few times to get a chunky Oreo slurry going in your mouth. When you get there, stop chewing, open your mouth, let the carbon dioxide-enhanced candy melt, and then feel the popping. Now if you’re in public and embarrassed to do that, feel free to put your hand or napkin in front of your mouth.

The thing is, when you chew on it, your teeth are preventing the candy from popping. They’re crushing them instead. By opening your mouth, you’re letting the candy melt, which leads to pronounced popping.

Now if you’re a creme licker, you won’t really feel the popping as you lick, but it’s a great way to experience the popping sound. Just lick, then listen, and if you close your eyes you can imagine it’s the crackling of a fire on a beach that’s on a Summer Oreo as one of the “fun” designs.

The Limited Edition Firework Oreo Cookies are more exciting than regular Summer Oreo, and it really should be THE default Oreo for the summer.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 85 milligrams of sodium, 35 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, less than 1 gram of protein.)

Purchased Price: $3.50
Size: 10.7 oz.
Purchased at: Times Supermarket
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: More exciting than Summer Oreo. Popping candy adds to the cookie, but only if you throw out table manners. Not an exclusive flavor.
Cons: Tastes like regular Oreo. Can’t eat it like a regular Oreo. Summer Oreo.

REVIEW: Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

When I think of farmhouse food I think of an apple pie cooling on a windowsill, fresh butter on homemade country white bread, and Junior devouring bacon from the little guy that took first place in the 4-H Pig Show.

Honestly, cookies are seventh or eighth on my list of quintessential farmhouse foods, depending on whether or not said farm includes a fig tree, a tomato garden, and/or Ree Drummond’s pantry.

Yes, I get that “farm” is part of Pepperidge Farm, but really, do you expect me to believe the same people mass-producing cheddar cheese Goldfish can make anything near homemade quality cookies?

Short answer: I guess so.

At first bite Pepperidge Farm’s Farmhouse Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies taste a lot like the Chips Ahoy Double Chocolate Thins, which is a good thing because they are among the better cookies in the Chips Ahoy line.

Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies 2

Yet, where the Chips Ahoy cookies are their usually pitifully small selves, the Farmhouse cookies are wider and heftier. But they’re still able to be thin and crispy. In fact, that melt-in-your mouth, dissolve-around-the-chocolate chip goodness is intensified by the their size.

Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies 3

The chocolate flavor is definitely outstanding; a few notches down from the Wonka Factory chocolate lake, but well above your standard chocolate-chip cookie construction. The three chocolate chips (white, semi-sweet, and milk) work wonderfully together, serving as potholes of varying degrees of chocolate richness and sweetness with each bite.

The white chocolate is especially good, even if you’re the kind of person (like me) who is usually “eh, whatever” in terms of white chocolate. This is the real stuff, mind you, not some partially hydrogenated soybean oil masquerading as cocoa butter. Finally, the chocolate base gives each bite a rounded cocoa flavor that dissolves (as they say) like buttah.

Overall, Pepperidge Farm’s Farmhouse Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies are a notch above Nabisco’s and one of the best mass-produced cookie flavors I’ve had. They’re so good that if there is a farmhouse producing cookies on par with them, then I seriously suggest said farmhouse drop the whole apple pie at the county fair business and get right to the 365-day operation of making cookies.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies –140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein..)

Purchased Price: $2.98
Size: 6.9 oz.
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Crispy, buttery, chocolaty base. Multiple levels of chocolate chip sweetness. Smooth, natural, and waxless white chocolate. Perfect size.
Cons: A tad more expensive than Chips Ahoy. Poor milk chocolate chip coverage. It’s as if a thousand apple pies cried out in horror and then were never heard from again.

REVIEW: Hostess Bakeshop CupCake Cookies

Hostess Bakeshop CupCake Cookies

Everyone has a soulmate snack cake. The one sugary, refined, packaged, and questionably delicious baked good that, despite what logic, fortune cookies, retrogrades of mercury, physician advice, and foreboding messages written in your toast imply, you adore. From SnoBalls to Zingers, Cosmic Brownies to Donettes, we all are star-crossed and bound to one.

And, while I may have had a few flings with a Star Crunch — and maybe a Zebra Cake or two — okay, I love them all. But today my heart’s matched to the Hostess CupCake. Who can resist the oddly fudgy cake? The sugary icing floof? The chocolatey ganache with eight sugary squiggles you can gobble right off the top??

And now they come in cookie form, which, as we well know this is the equivalent of the muffin top of the pastry world, doused in fudge and oozing with icing. I’m hungry just typing that. Let’s dive in!

Hostess Bakeshop CupCake Cookies 2

Texture-wise, this cookie’s a winner. It’s more cake-like than crispity-crunchity and deftly walks the line between being both fudgy and more fluffy-wuffy than a bunny sleeping on a TempurPedic in a field of dandelions. That fluffy-wuffiness (using scientific terms today) serves the cookie well as it contrasts with the smooth, crisp coating and sugary squiggle.

And the smell only makes everything better. Right out of the package, aromas of chocolate burst out like 15,000 ponies cascading into a Roman Coliseum. It smells of sugar! And cocoa! And that bizarre nutty-coffee sweetness that comes at the end of Dove dark chocolate! (Is there a name for this? Professional Linguist turned Chocolate Connoisseur: please help!)

That said, this top-notch smell doesn’t fully carry over when it comes to flavor. In fact, the cake tastes of very little: mainly flour, but also a hint of cocoa and Maxwell instant coffee. The chocolate coating helps things out by the hair of its chinny chin-chin.

It’s sugar-forward and tastes like Hershey’s milk chocolate while the sugary squiggle tastes of sugar… and maybe a hint of marshmallow? And while I was bummed to discover there was no fluffy icing filling inside (cue the sad tubas!), the coating itself is definitely a step up from that in the typical Hostess CupCake… although I’m pretty sure you could wax a car with that stuff.

Hostess Bakeshop CupCake Cookies 3

All in all, these buggers end up tasting like those soft-baked Snackwell’s chocolate cookies: a not-so-exciting cake with a sugary, semi-chocolatey icing. While they were tasty enough, I found myself dreaming nostalgically of that fluffy white filling in a regular Hostess CupCake. Without it, the cake lacks pizazz.

If you give these a whirl, I encourage smooshing two cookies together with ice cream and/or questionably emulsified (but impossibly delicious) whipped topping to mimic the effect. Without that? These will be but mediocre, and you deserve better than mediocre, dear reader! Do not settle for bland cookies. Otherwise, there will be sadness, the ship will be down, the Titanic will be sunk, and you will be floating on a makeshift raft made out of a door as you talk nonsense to your frozen lover while Celine Dion sings over flute music in the moonlight, and no matter how long you say, “I’ll never let go,” you gotta let go.

So I’m letting go of you, Hostess CupCake Cookies. Or at least not buying you again without a Costco-sized vat of whipped topping. I may have built you up as lofty dreams in my head, but, as Celine Dion prophesized in 1998, “my heart will go on and ooooon.”

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cookie – 110 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 11 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 7 grams of sugar, and less than 1 gram of protein.)

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: 1 pack/10 cookies
Purchased at: Von’s
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Fudgy, fluffy cookie texture. Chocolatey icing. Squiggles! 15,000 ponies cascading into a Roman Coliseum.
Cons: No fluffy filling. Chocolatey smell doesn’t fully carry over in flavor. Not-so-exciting cake flavor of flour and cheap coffee. May have Celine Dion song stuck in head for the rest of the day.

REVIEW: Mrs. Freshley’s Chocolate Cake Crisps

Mrs Freshley s Chocolate Cake Crisps

To me, Cake Crisps are just another way to say “cookies.” They look like cookies. They crunch like cookies. They are something Cookie Monster will call “sometimes food,” but stuff his face with it EVERY time no one is looking at his googly eyes.

But the thing is, they may look like cookies, they may crunch like cookies, and they may cause Cookie Monster to dump crumbs on the head of his puppeteer, but Mrs. Freshley’s Chocolate Cake Crisps smell and taste EXACTLY like chocolate cake.

Seriously.

Go crash kids birthday parties until you find one with chocolate cake, sing Happy Birthday with everyone else, grab your slice, come up with a cover so you can mingle with strangers, eat the cake, pop a Chocolate Cake Crisp into your mouth, compare it with cake, get a high five from the birthday boy or girl, and then slip out of the party with a balloon or two in your hands, or maybe the piñata.

Or go to a child’s first birthday party and swipe the kid’s smash cake. What’s are smash cakes? They’ve been around for years, but they’re something I just learned about. Go Google it and see all the parents who have to explain to their children why as one-year-olds they get to make a huge mess they don’t have to clean up, but as eight-year-olds they can’t.

Once you do all that, you’ll find out that these Cake Crisps are like concentrated cake.

Mrs Freshley s Chocolate Cake Crisps 2

Each one is about the same size as a Thin Mint and they look like the love child of a Nilla Wafer and a chocolate Oreo wafer. And did I mention they smell AND taste exactly like chocolate cake? My goodness, they are wonderful. They also made me wish I had Duncan Hines or Pillsbury frosting to dip them in.

The bag was hard to put down, until I read the nutrition facts which said eating the entire package would give me 45 percent of my daily saturated fat. I also thought it was odd that about three-fourths into chewing on one, the cake flavor disappears. It’s super weird. It’s like you’re eating cake in a dream, but you wake up in the middle of eating it and realize you’ve been chewing on a pillow. And when the cake flavor disappears, I noticed, on occasion, smalls bursts of saltiness. That’s not a pleasant way to end something that tastes really good at first.

But with that said, I think Mrs. Freshley’s Chocolate Cake Crisps are worth a try and I think Cookie Monster would agree.

Disclosure: I received free Mrs. Freshley’s Chocolate Cake Crisps samples from the PR firm that represents them. No money was exchanged for the review and being given free samples did not influence my review in any way.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 ounces – 310 calories, 18 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 6 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 160 milligrams of sodium, 36 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 19 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: FREE
Size: 2 oz. package
Purchased at: N/A
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Smells and tastes like chocolate cake. Looks like cookies. Crunches like cookies. Cookie Monster would probably approve.
Cons: Flavor disappears 3/4ths into chewing one. Sometimes there are small bursts of salt. Crashing kids birthday parties. Crumbs on a puppeteer’s head.

REVIEW: Girl Scout S’mores Sandwich Cookies

Girl Scout S'mores Sandwich Cookies

Call me the s’more connoisseur.

I’ve bought s’mores in stores from shore to shore. Famous to obscure, I’ve explored the s’more tour.

More or less, I’ve put s’mores to the test, and yes, my rhymes ARE poor and in jest. This I confess as you snore unimpressed, I’ll shut up and give you a score and ingest.

You know who I hate? Me.

You know who I appreciate? Those hard working Girl Scouts. They really know how to get my money, especially when they camp outside of supermarkets. Who would dare say no to America’s second most intimidating Green Berets?

To celebrate 100 years of annoying office colleagues shoving order forms in your face, the Girl Scouts have blessed the world with a new cookie flavor – S’mores.

Unbeknownst to me, there are actually two new S’mores cookies available in select areas. The chocolate covered graham variety wasn’t available when I was pressured into spending twenty dollars, so I went with the sandwich cookie.

Girl Scout S’mores are described as “a crunchy graham sandwich cookie with creamy chocolate and marshmallowy filling,” so it tackles the three main ingredients of a standard s’more. Does it taste like a standard s’more? Ehhhhh.

The graham actually tasted more along the lines of a thin shortbread to me. Shortbread is probably my least favorite Girl Scout cookie, so I was bummed to be reminded of it.

The smell and taste instantly put me in mind of generic supermarket sandwich cookies. You know the ones that they toss on the top shelf that are two bucks cheaper than Oreo? The cookies there to make Hydrox feel better about itself? Those. They aren’t the worst snack on Earth, but Oreo cookies are at eye level for a reason.

The marshmallow cream may have had actual marshmallow flavor, but really just tasted like standard white cookie cream. If you’re jonesing for a cheap Golden Oreo with a little bit of chocolate cream thrown in the mix, these are for you. Sadly, the chocolate is also pretty generic.

S’mores are obviously best when hot, so I nuked one of these in the microwave for 25 seconds. The chocolate got nice and melty, and the cookie softened a tad, but that’s about it. The box gives no indication they’re meant to be heated or anything, I just figured I’d give it a try.

As a whole I wasn’t blown away. It seems that most of the time brands try to emulate a s’more they never really hit the bullseye. Kellogg’s Smorez cereal is pretty good, Oreo made a decent s’mores cookie, and Chips Ahoy tried their best, but it’s never the same as making a messy homemade s’more over a flame.

My fellow s’more connoisseurs will probably be pretty disappointed. Not quite as disappointed as they’d be if I started busting out my bootleg Dr. Seuss rhymes again, but disappointed nonetheless.

I can’t tell you NOT to try these, but you might want to just stick to the old reliables next time Heather from Accounting chases you around with a Girl Scout Cookie order form. Man, she’s pushy. Other people have daughters too, Heather!

Thin Mints are a classic. Samoas are too. Girl Scout S’mores rank near the bottom of the product line. If the chocolate covered graham variety is available to you, spend your Abe Lincoln on those instead and let me know how they are.

Look, the sandwich cookies aren’t awful. They’ll do in a pinch, but compared to other Girl Scout staples they might as well be called “B’ores.” (™ Vin at The Impulsive Buy.)

(Nutrition Facts – 2 Cookies – 150 calories, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 10 grams of sugar (includes 10 grams of added sugar), and 2 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.00
Size: 8.5 oz. box
Purchased at: My Buddy’s House (You know where to get them.)
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Girl Scouts branching out more. A decent albeit unremarkable interpretation of a s’more. 100 years of cookies. Young businesswomen.
Cons: Tastes like a boring Golden Oreo. Marshmallow doesn’t really shine. No heated option. Pushy adult cookie peddlers. My whimsical rhyme schemes.

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