Taco Bell is once again turning its attention to chicken nuggets. The first attempt was its Naked Chicken Chips, which were uniform tortilla chip-shaped breaded pieces of poultry marinated in Mexican spices that came with a side of nacho cheese sauce. This latest take features all-white meat chicken marinated in jalapeño buttermilk and breaded with tortilla chips and your choice of sauce.

I was not impressed after opening the clamshell packaging they came in. Six of the ten pieces looked more like popcorn chicken than nuggets. Also, those smaller pieces remind me of protein oat balls eaten by hikers or meteorites that give puppies superpowers. I haven’t noticed any powers yet, but I’ll let you know when I can lift a car.

I might’ve gotten unlucky with what I received, but I imagine someone out there might get it worse and have only popcorn chicken-sized pieces in their five-piece order and feel even more ripped off than I do. It was nine dollars for ten pieces at my local Taco Bell, which is a dollar more than a TWENTY-piece order of Chicken McNuggets.

Size and price aside, these Crispy Chicken Nuggets were tasty with the sauces, which I’ll get to in a moment. Thanks to the tortilla chips, the exterior is crunchier than other fast food nuggets. Within that coating is chicken that’s surprisingly tender and somewhat still juicy. Although the largest one in my box had noticeably dry meat. The jalapeño buttermilk marinade added some pepperiness, and I could taste the chips, but these nuggets are best when dipped.

A moment has passed, and now I can mention the sauces these nuggets are being advertised with: Hidden Valley Ranch Fire Ranch, Bell Sauce, and Jalapeño Honey Mustard Sauce. Although I ordered the last one, the location I went to did not have it. You can also order this with any of the other sauces Taco Bell offers, like nacho cheese sauce.

Both sauces I got went exceptionally well with the chicken’s spices and flavors. The Fire Ranch is basically ranch with Mexican spices, which amps the seasoning in the coating. The Hidden Valley Ranch uniqueness is there, but there’s also a very mild spicy kick. It’s a tasty dip, but my taste buds enjoyed the Bell Sauce more, which is made with tomatoes, green chiles, garlic, and onion. For some reason, two things came to mind when I ate it with these nuggets: KFC and barbecue, but with a Tex-Mex twist.

Taco Bell’s Crispy Chicken Nuggets taste very good with the sauces and have a crunchy coating, but those tiny pieces bother me A LOT. I wish they were uniform in size and shape, so this wouldn’t be an issue. Maybe it should bring back the chip shape. Or, even better, if there’s a third attempt at chicken nuggets, bell-shaped ones.

Purchased Price: $8.99
Size: 10 pieces
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (10 pieces) 670 calories, 33 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 110 milligrams of cholesterol, 1840 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 0 grams of sugar, and 72 grams of protein.

Throw on that pair of mismatched sunglasses from Pizza Hut and jump in the Delorean because we’re going BACK IN TIII-IIIIME!

… and I just realized that Back to the Future is closer to the OG release of the Caramel Apple Empanada than we are now and had a mini existential crisis.

Ahem. All good!

In case you missed the news, Taco Bell recently launched a Decades menu featuring favorites from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now the 00s with the topic of this review, the Caramel Apple Empanada.

I’m not quite sure why we had to wait an additional three weeks for said empanada, but let me first assure you all that it was well worth the wait.

The shell is perfectly crisp and flaky, with a lovely tender, yet toothsome texture. The filling is a beautiful marriage of apple chunks with just enough texture to make themselves known without being overwhelming, and the sea of gooey caramel they are swimming in has a thick, unctuous mouthfeel that made me feel nostalgic for the days of butterfly hair clips, Smash Mouth, and way too much body glitter. The Bell managed to strike a perfect balance in the ratio of filling to crust as well, just enough that the crust is there to add texture and crunch, but still know when to step back and let the filling take center stage. Even the smell was perfect, a combination of pastry, sugar, and fryer grease that someone should eye for a limited edition scented candle or perhaps an empanada-shaped car air freshener.

Those of you who remember the OG CAE (Caramel Apple Empanada) will be thrilled to learn that, just like the original, the filling is served at roughly the temperature of the sun. Please be cautious when taking that first bite, lest you wind up with a tastebud impairing burn to go along with your dessert, especially if you’re a dessert-first kinda person like me.

All in all, the CAE is a delicious callback to a bygone era of Taco Bell, when there was a dessert on the menu you could pretend was vaguely healthy due to the presence of actual fruit imprisoned within its deep fried walls. The only demerit it receives is due to its unfortunately limited availability. So go get your hands on one while you can! Maybe if they sell well enough, Taco Bell will consider bringing them back on a more permanent basis. At least, a girl can hope.

Purchased Price: $1 with App Promotion ($2.99 regular price)
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 280 calories, 13 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of total carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 14 grams of total sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

Taco Bell’s new, limited edition Midnight Cherry Freeze is a Slurpee-esque frozen drink, but right off the bat, the flavor name sounded more like a type of Gatorade. This ended up being prescient, as that’s pretty much what it tasted like too.

I was expecting something primarily sugary and syrupy with undertones of the synthetic fruit flavors that, if you’re frequenting this junk food blog, you probably know and love, so I was really surprised by how tart it actually was. Yes, tartness is a flavor that’s typically associated with cherries, but Taco Bell’s website describes this as “A sweet, blue raspberry-flavored Freeze with a swirl of black cherry flavor,” so I was thinking that the blue raspberry would be more dominant here.

The color of my Freeze certainly supported that theory; it was practically solid blue, with some faint purply red patches on the very edges, which was the only hint that another flavor was mixed in there. (Granted, my drink was served in a colorfully designed opaque Decades cup per Taco Bell’s ongoing promotion, rather than the usual clear cup, which would have made striations of different colors more visible, but still, even swirling my straw around to try to find more of that cherry color yielded nothing.) Despite this visual imbalance, either the blue raspberry flavor was extremely weak or the black cherry flavor was extremely strong because the latter was what made an impression on me.

In addition to the tartness, my Freeze had that distinctive tangy, saline sharpness that reminded me of Gatorade just as much as its dramatic “cool sounding but ultimately irrelevant word plus fruit” naming scheme. The flavor was intense enough that even as a frozen beverage aficionado, I could barely finish my Regular size and was grateful when it was done. That intensity heightened even more when I got the occasional sip that was pure syrup: without the refreshing ice to balance it out, the taste came close to crossing over from mere tartness into sheer sourness. Blessedly, though, I did notice a crisp, almost biting aftertaste that reminded me of Sprite and helped reset my palate a bit before bracing myself for the next mouth-puckering sip.

My favorite part of this drink was probably the ice. I’m used to similar frozen beverages having a disappointingly inconsistent texture, where your first few sips are pure flavor and then you’re almost instantly left with a three-quarters-full cup of solid ice, all of the yumminess and color sucked straight out of it, but that issue was gracefully avoided here. This Freeze was well-blended enough that it was more plush than grainy, which meant I was able to get to nearly the very bottom of the cup before I was confronted with some small lumps of ice that I couldn’t slurp up.

If a craving for a frosty beverage strikes you, I wouldn’t suggest you “Freeze” what you’re doing just to check this one out. But if you happen to already be in the mood for Taco Bell and want to pick this up on the side, you could do worse. This Midnight Cherry is more like “Alright (very).”

Purchased Price: $4.02
Size: Regular (16 oz)
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 130 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 35 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, 34 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of protein