REVIEW: Dairy Queen Caramel Toffee Cookie Blizzard

/ / Reviews / 3 Comments

Have you ever been excited to see a new movie, and as you are leaving the theater, or more likely getting up off your couch, all you can think is, “Well, that was disappointing?” Let me introduce you to the rare Dairy Queen Blizzard that I might turn down if offered it for free. The new Caramel Toffee Cookie Blizzard is a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering.

The DQ website describes this one as having “chewy cookie pieces, buttery toffee and golden caramel,” which is all technically accurate. Then things go off the rails a bit with this sentence, which apparently someone got paid to write: “Picture your favorite autumn moments—the crunch of leaves underfoot, the warmth of a bonfire and family outings filled with laughter—all brought to life in this Dairy Queen Blizzard Treat.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a bonfire nearby; otherwise, I might have tossed a mostly full cup into the flames. This one made me rethink my belief that you cannot really have a “bad” Blizzard, because anything with ice cream and various other sweets will at least be palatable.

This one barely clears that bar. For starters, the cookie pieces (which, according to the ingredient list on the DQ website, are blondie cookies) are immense. They certainly are chewy, as promised, but not much else. The flavor of the cookie pieces is nondescript, but their size overpowers the other parts of the Blizzard, and they were so chewy that it distracts from the other parts.

I really wanted to like this Blizzard, and I’m a big fan of toffee. OK, I’m not enough of a fan to have ever purchased a Heath or Skor bar, but I always snatched a few in the process of “checking” my kids’ Halloween candy. And I’ve enjoyed other toffee Blizzard variations. This one just missed the target. The toffee pieces did bring a bit of crunch, but there didn’t seem to be enough of them in my Blizzard, and the caramel flavor was barely there.

Maybe this would be a bit better with more toffee and without the Godzilla-sized cookie pieces, but I can’t imagine it would make a big difference. The overall taste combination of the cookies, toffee, and caramel was inexplicably almost a little bitter. So, this one gets the rare Do Not Recommend classification in my book.

Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: Small
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 680 calories, 22 grams of fat, 14 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 430 milligrams of sodium, 106 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 81 grams of sugar, and 13 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Dairy Queen Maple Cookie Shake

/ / Reviews / 4 Comments

Just in time to make those brisk fall months feel a bit chillier is Dairy Queen’s new Maple Cookie Shake. It blends DQ’s soft serve, maple cookie crumble, milk, and whipped topping to create an off-white shake that doesn’t bring anything maple-related to mind.

What also doesn’t bring boiled tree blood to mind are the cookie crumbles floating within the shake. They’re as plentiful as the stars in the sky while gazing from a bed of orange leaves, and they maintained their crunchiness as I slurped up the entire shake, but they didn’t seem to add to the maple flavor. I expected additional maple bursts when I chewed on them, but didn’t get that. The shake’s description says maple cookie crumbles, but the ingredient list says shortbread cookie crumbs, so that probably explains the crumble’s lack of fall flavor.

However, that’s okay, because the maple-flavored soft serve does more than enough to make up for the cookie’s lack of flavor. The sweet maple in this shake is perfect, and I wanted to scoop some out and put it between some toasted Eggo waffles to create an ice cream sandwich, but being in the middle of a mall food court made that problematic. As for the whipped topping, it’s just there to add a bit of flair to the affair, just like this sentence does to this paragraph, as you might be aware.

Not into pumpkin spice or caramel apple, and want to experience another popular fall flavor through a straw? Dairy Queen’s Maple Cookie Shake is a sweet and delicious alternative to putting a straw in a bottle of pure maple syrup.

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: Small
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 590 calories, 29 grams of fat, 16 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 380 milligrams of sodium, 71 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 59 grams of sugar, and 12 grams of protein.

REVIEW: McDonald’s McDonaldland Meal feat. Mt. McDonaldland Shake

/ / Reviews / 6 Comments

“With hints of berry flavor and colorful, cloud-like pink Dairy Whipped Topping made with real cream, the Mt. McDonaldland Shake erupted from one of Grimace Island’s thick shake volcanoes.”

That’s how McDonald’s describes its new and limited time dessert on its website. But it’s hard to imagine thick shake volcanoes, just as it’s difficult to comprehend, despite McDonald’s constantly telling us, that Grimace is a taste bud. If it was a shake volcano, where’s the trail of devastation from the shake lava? Did Mayor McCheese call for evacuations when the eruptions happened? Were there earthquakes? And did those earthquakes cause Coke product tsunami waves? Did the Hamburglar take advantage of the chaos and loot the town? Is this a Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs situation here? There’s no description of any of those things, so it just sounds like Grimace Island has a working McDonald’s ice cream machine. Or there is a massive McDonaldland government cover-up.

The Mt. McDonaldland Shake is available as part of the new McDonaldland Meal, which also comes with a side of fries and your choice of 10-piece Chicken McNuggets or a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Or you can also get it à la carte. The meal also comes with a collectible souvenir tin that comes with stickers and postcards. I’m not going to review the nuggets or QPC. Instead, I’ll just focus on the new product of the meal.

The light blue shake and pink whipped topping made me think of cotton candy, My Little Pony, what Luke Skywalker might’ve had as a dessert while on Tatooine, the worst baby gender reveal idea, and the colors you’d see if you snort Pixy Stix candy. With its pink color, I thought the dairy whipped topping might have some fruitiness, but it’s all tint and no fruity hint.

As for what’s under the whipped topping, I assumed it would be blue raspberry-flavored due to its color. There are notes of that berry, but it tastes more blackberry-forward to me, and that is not a complaint because the shake was gosh darn tasty. However, after sucking up half of it, my taste buds started to become a tad overwhelmed with sweetness. So I can imagine folks saying that this shake is too saccharine. Not even mixing in the significantly less sugary dairy whipped topping helped dilute the sweetness.

With hints of berry flavor and colorful, cloud-like pink Dairy Whipped Topping made with real cream, the Mt. McDonaldland Shake is a delicious treat, and one that I would slurp up again if it ever came back, even if that means more natural disasters on Grimace Island.

Purchased Price: $15.39 (meal)
Size: Medium Shake
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (medium shake only) 650 calories, 18 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 75 milligrams of cholesterol, 250 milligrams of sodium, 105 grams of carbohydrates, 84 grams of sugar (including 68 grams of added sugar), and 14 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Dairy Queen Reese’s Caramel Craze Blizzard

/ / Reviews / 3 Comments

Reviewing Dairy Queen Blizzards is not easy. You might think I just go down to my local DQ, order a Blizzard, snap some photos, and write up a few hundred words about said Blizzard. OK, so that’s exactly what I do, and it’s pretty easy. The hard part is coming up with a rating. Because unlike some of the wild food items we review (the Archie McPhee Lobster Candy comes to mind), any mixture of vanilla soft serve and candy, cake, brownie, or other sugar-packed ingredients is going to be good. The question is: How good? Well, the new Reese’s Caramel Craze Blizzard might be the best of the best.

Not to be confused with the Summer Blizzard menu that has two new concoctions, the new Reese’s Caramel Craze is the August Blizzard of the Month. It contains Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, along with salty caramel-filled truffles and chocolatey shavings.

I’m going to assume you know what a Reese’s PB Cup Blizzard tastes like. For me, it’s a solid 8, maybe even approaching a 9 if the DQ mixologist goes a little overboard with the PB cups. What makes the difference here is the truffles. They are truly glorious. I guess the truffles are added at the end of the mixing process, because while the PB Cups in my Blizzard were pulverized, the delicate truffles were all perfectly intact. When you bite into one, you can taste the chocolate coating and then the luscious caramel oozes out with just the right touch of saltiness. It might not look like much in the close-up photo of a single truffle, but that little thing is packed with goodness (and according to the DQ ingredient list, soy lecithin, whatever that is).

DQ has used salty caramel truffles a few times in the past, including with the Caramel Cannonball Blizzard back in 2019. I gave that one a 10, and I’m giving this one a 10 as well. Since I barely remember last week, much less six years ago, I can’t tell you which is better. But what I can tell you is that if you like peanut butter cups and caramel, then you should make a trip to DQ sometime this month. I’ll also be asking you to sign a petition I’m working on to have DQ pledge to use salty caramel truffles in more Blizzards.

Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: Small
Rating: 10 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 770 calories, 37 grams of fat, 24 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 340 milligrams of sodium, 97 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 83 grams of sugar, and 16 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Baskin-Robbins M&M’s Monster Cookie Ice Cream

/ / Reviews / 1 Comment

Baskin-Robbins’ Flavor of the Month for August 2025 is the M&M’s Monster Cookie Ice Cream, which should not be confused with Baskin-Robbins’ blue Cookie Monster Ice Cream. The limited time only scoop features brown sugar ice cream with M&M’s Minis milk chocolate candies, cookie dough pieces, and peanut butter cookie swirls.

First off, let’s start with the brown sugar ice cream, which wasn’t as satisfying as the brown sugar base I’ve had from Ben & Jerry’s. Something was lacking from it to make the brown sugar stick out and convince my taste buds that a cookie inspired the Flavor of the Month.

What sticks out are the peanut butter cookie swirls. They were sweet, salty, and had a satisfying, gritty, and crunchy texture. Some might find them to be too salty, and that might’ve happened because of the ice cream base’s lack of flavor, but I enjoyed that salty kick, and I found these to be the highlight of the scoop.

Unfortunately, due to the luck of the scoop and that mine was the first drawn from the tub, I ended up with just four M&M’s Minis in my order. I wish there were as many of them as there were in the store window’s poster because the chocolate added a sweetness that cuts through the peanut butter cookie swirl, making things a bit more balanced between sweet and salty. But I felt like that job should’ve also been done by the base.

Finally, the cookie dough pieces were another lowlight. They added a weird, mild savoriness that reminded me of Japanese rice crackers. However, they had a chewiness that gave the scoop another textural dimension to go along with the creamy ice cream, crunchy and gritty swirls, and crunchy M&M’s.

After trying the Baskin-Robbins M&M’s Monster Cookie Ice Cream, I kind of wished I had accidentally ordered the Cookie Monster one. The new flavor isn’t awful, but parts of it were unsatisfying or weird, and I wouldn’t order it again.

Purchased Price: $3.79
Size: 2.5 oz scoop
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 200 calories, 10 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of sugar, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 115 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 19 grams of sugar (including 16 grams of added sugar), and 3 grams of protein.

Scroll to Top