Author: Karen

REVIEW: Dairy Queen Snickers Brownie Blizzard

Karen 2 Comments

Dairy Queen Snickers Brownie Blizzard Top

Dairy Queen’s website says that the Snickers Brownie Blizzard will “transform your taste buds forever.” Maybe it means you’ll be working so hard to determine the flavor that your taste buds will level up from sheer exertion? Maybe I can now be one of those people who can taste “notes of honeysuckle” in a glass of wine because I’ve become a flavor detective? It would be nice to think I got something out of this experience.

I had this twice and had a different reaction the second time. The first time, the brownie bits were missing chocolate flavor, and I was complaining that it was too bland. The second time, the brownie bits seemed much more flavorful. Was my palette fatigued the first time, or maybe I just got a few bigger brownie chunks in my mix the second time? The second event sounds more likely. When I properly tasted them, the brownie bits had a satisfying unctuousness and chocolatey bitterness.

Moving on to the Snickers, I think this would have worked if the candy bar pieces were a little bigger, but as it stands, it’s hard to discern much flavor. I didn’t taste major Snickers components like nougat and peanuts; there was caramel flavor, but it was kind of muted. The caramel did stick to my teeth though, so at least it was definitely present.

Dairy Queen Snickers Brownie Blizzard Spoon

The DQ description states that the Blizzard has “caramel topping,” which in this case means that the topping was mixed into the vanilla soft serve ice cream. This manages to make the soft serve even sweeter than normal, but it doesn’t really register as caramel flavor; it just amps up the vanilla.

Because of the brownie bits’ chewiness and the caramel’s sticky nature, there was textural variation, so the treat has that going for it. It’s just a little underpowered in the flavor department. This is the first Blizzard I can remember having where I felt the vanilla soft serve, bolstered by the caramel bits in the mix, completely overpowered any other flavors.

Look, Dairy Queen has a lot of Blizzards on its menu, and most of them are pretty darn good. Everyone has an off day once in a while, and I have compassion for that. I allow Dairy Queen a swing-and-a-miss, and that’s what we have here. If you want a Blizzard and are tempted to get this, unless you’ve got a real yen for brownie bits, you may want to get an Oreo Blizzard instead. In that treat, the bitterness of the chocolate contrasts with the vanilla soft serve in a truly delightful way, consistently. I’m actually sitting here feeling kind of cheated because I could have got an Oreo Blizzard (twice!) but got this instead. Blizzard Remorse is a sad, sad thing.

Purchased Price: $5.19
Size: Small
Purchased at: Dairy Queen
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 410 calories, 15 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 200 milligrams of sodium, 60 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 48 grams of sugar, and 9 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Wendy’s Homestyle French Toast Sticks

Karen 11 Comments

Wendy s Homestyle French Toast Sticks Sleeve

French toast occupies a nebulous space in the breakfast continuum. On the one side, you’ve got muffins, doughnuts, and pancakes as sweet breakfasts, then you have eggs, hash browns, and bacon/sausage over on the savory breakfast side. Then you have French toast in this kind of no-man’s-land, some kind of breakfast purgatory, where it’s sort of savory because of the egg flavor, but then you drown it in syrup, and it becomes sweet. Make up your mind, French toast!

Obviously, as a French toast skeptic, I had concerns going into Homestyle French Toast Sticks, the new breakfast item from Wendy’s. However, Wendy’s got around this identity crisis by frying the crap out of these things to the point where classifications like “sweet” and “savory” become lost in an oily confection that makes deep-fried Oreo cookies look healthy. Harsh words? Perhaps, but notice I did not say that I didn’t enjoy it.

According to Wendy’s, this new menu item “delivers a mouthful of flavor, striking the perfect texture balance of a soft custardy interior and crisp, golden-brown crust.” Okay, I will give them that: the texture contrast is really nice. The very deep-fried tasting sticks have lovely little caramelized edges that clash wonderfully with the lightly egg-flavored bread. However, texture and flavor are two different things, and flavor balance is where Wendy’s might have stumbled a little.

When I ordered these, Wendy’s staff told us to move aside from the drive-through line so they could make them to order. Now, I have faith in the Wendy’s work ethic, but I’m pretty sure this did not mean cracking eggs and cooking the sticks in the pan. They are likely fried to order, which is why the overall feeling of “fried” is so strong. Four or six piece sizes are available; I got the six because of course I got the six.

Wendy s Homestyle French Toast Sticks Closeup

When I dipped my nose into the bag containing these little guys, as one does, the smell actually reminded me of carnival funnel cake, which is weird because I don’t think I’ve had funnel cake in a decade. These treats are a good size too, more like long wedges as opposed to sticks. When I bit into one, the decadent flavor of carbs fried in oil went to work on my tongue while my brain tried to remember that I was still looking for other flavors. There is an egg flavor in there, but it’s a little subtle; this likely does not taste like your grandma’s French toast because it’s just not eggy enough. When you dip these sticks into the syrup provided, the sweetness overrides everything, and the egg flavor is no longer discernible.

That said, these things are hella addictive. I had been planning to save the last strip for my husband, except I got lost in a kind of sugary breakfast haze and inhaled every single one. I was left looking at an empty plate with a few dots of syrup on it, wondering how I got here. It was quite enjoyable, but I think I’ve used up my allowance for fried foods for the rest of the month.

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: 6 sticks
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 490 calories, 25 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 175 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 50 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and 16 grams of protein.

REVIEW: DiGiorno Cinnamon Roll Breakfast Croissant Crust Pizza

Karen 14 Comments

DiGiorno Cinnamon Breakfast Croissant Crust Pizza Box

DiGiorno’s pizza is my go-to dinner on nights when “Mommy is too busy to cook,” or sometimes, “Mommy has gone to a dark place.” So I’m quite familiar with the DiGiorno product line, specifically the DiGiorno croissant crust.

Now, at the request of no one, DiGiorno has decided that it needs to break into the breakfast market and create a sweet pizza. This is hardly unprecedented: Pizza Hut sells an Ultimate Chocolate Cookie that could claim the title of “Dessert Pizza,” plus you can find recipes for them on various food blogs. But this is an indulgent breakfast pizza! Does this really go with your morning coffee, or is it just weird?

DiGiorno Cinnamon Breakfast Croissant Crust Pizza Frozen

It’s an attractive, if unusual, dish. The light dough-colored balls taste vaguely like cookie dough, and the dark swirls are pockets of cinnamon goodness. The rest of the pizza topping is made up of what I will call “sugary gunk,” a highly technical term used by professionals.

DiGiorno Cinnamon Breakfast Croissant Crust Pizza Cooked

Okay, so I felt lazy leaving it at that and looked up what the sugary gunk is. According to DiGiorno’s website, the topping includes cinnamon cream sauce, cream cheese crumbles, and churro pieces. The cream cheese crumbles are likely those little bland pieces, in which case this component is really missing the tang of cheese. The churro pieces did not make much of an impression.

DiGiorno Cinnamon Breakfast Croissant Crust Pizza Slice

The pizza really does taste a lot like a cinnamon roll, though, and the fact that it’s a flat pizza means a much higher sugary-stuff-to-bread ratio, making it arguably better than most cinnamon rolls. I get this information from my husband, who hits the Cinnabon at every rest area on the highway, so he knows his stuff.

DiGiorno Cinnamon Breakfast Croissant Crust Pizza Crust

What doesn’t quite work here is the DiGiorno croissant crust. I would be happily eating my faux-cinnamon roll when I would get some of the crust in my mouth and suddenly be reminded of a sausage-laden Supreme Pizza, and it led to a weird feeling of disconnection with the product. The sweetness is strong enough that it’s not that noticeable for most of the pizza, but when you get to the end crust, it doesn’t seem to go with what you’re eating.

Now did I have this problem because the crust genuinely clashes with the flavor profile, or is it just because I have such strong associations with the DiGiorno crust? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure the crust is something DiGiorno can improve, at the very least. Another crust-related problem was the fact that the croissant crust did not fully expand in the oven; however, this may be because of how we cooked it. After nearly destroying my oven with one of these pizzas (to the point where my Dad had to come by with professional-grade tools to clean it), I wasn’t taking any more risks, and I put this thing on a tray in the oven, as God intended. So you probably will get a crispier, flakier crust if you follow the directions and put the pizza straight onto the rack. That is, assuming the pizza doesn’t bend while cooking, pour its tasty filling onto the bottom of the oven, and rapidly become carbonized sludge. If you want to attempt it, you’re braver than me.

When it’s not destroying kitchen equipment, the Croissant Cinnamon Roll Pizza is a largely successful breakfast outing for DiGiorno, and I recommend giving it a try. Just keep in mind there’s definitely room for improvement here.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 21.5 oz
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 460 calories, 20 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 60 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar (15 grams of added sugar), and 6 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Dairy Queen Caramel Fudge Cheesecake Blizzard

Karen 4 Comments

Dairy Queen Caramel Fudge Cheesecake Blizzard Spoon

Cheesecake is a relatively new presence in my life. That may seem strange, but you have to understand: for most of my life, I was firmly on Team Chocolate. If I had the opportunity to get dessert at a restaurant, I got the chocolate cake. If I was getting ice cream, I got chocolate ice cream with hot fudge, and so on. It’s really only over the past year or so that I had the important revelation that that chocolate is not always the best choice in every scenario. Stuck in a diner recently, eating a bone-dry chocolate layer cake, I realized that the moist cheesecake would have been a much better choice.

Granted, my first forays into ordering cheesecake since then invariably took the form of chocolate cheesecake, but that was all part of the process: Baby steps, baby steps.

All that said, I don’t go out for dinner that often, so I don’t have too many opportunities to explore my new interest in tangy dairy delights. Enter Dairy Queen’s Caramel Fudge Cheesecake Blizzard, an opportunity to enjoy cheesecake in a different format without having to break the bank on a trip to The Cheesecake Factory. Unfortunately, this Blizzard doesn’t sate the cheesecake craving as well as I would have liked.

Dairy Queen Caramel Fudge Cheesecake Blizzard Top

First, the ice cream has little chocolate bits in it, giving the Blizzard a cookies-and-cream flavor to start with. I really liked this, and had to keep stopping myself from just inhaling the thing in a few gargantuan bites. Once I slowed down enough to breathe, I realized that the Blizzard had two other components: little fudge squares filled with caramel and tiny cheesecake wedges. The fudge squares were prominent, while the cheesecake pieces were rather rare. DQ definitely could have been more generous here.

Dairy Queen Caramel Fudge Cheesecake Blizzard Fudge

It was satisfying to get one of the fudge squares in my mouth and dissolve the fudge coating to get to that unctuous, slightly salty caramel inside. Unfortunately, the same was not true of the cheesecake: the wedges (or little balls, as they sometimes were) started out bland and finished with a fairly weak cheesecake aftertaste. I don’t know if the flavor was too mild or if it was just hard to discern the cheesecake flavor in the middle of tons of chocolate-packed ice cream, but it wasn’t robust.

Dairy Queen Caramel Fudge Cheesecake Blizzard Cheesecake

However, the real problem was not with any of the mix-ins but with the blend overall. Try as I might, I couldn’t get this Blizzard to feel like a coherent dessert. There was the fudge-and-caramel component, then there were the little blobs of cheesecake, and the two didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another. The flavors just didn’t seem to marry. Maybe it’s too much to expect the ingredients to all sing harmoniously in a Blizzard, which is all about “Let’s take ice cream and dump random things into it!”, but I couldn’t get past it.

I enjoyed the treat, but Dairy Queen just hasn’t fully conquered cheesecake yet, and if I’m going to take time out from my busy chocolate schedule to get something else, that something else had better be stellar.

Purchased Price: $4.89
Size: Small
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 660 calories, 27 grams of fat, 17 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 420 milligrams of sodium, 97 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 78 grams of sugar, and 15 grams of protein.

Click here to read our previous Dairy Queen Blizzard reviews.

REVIEW: Dairy Queen S’mores Shake

Karen 6 Comments

Dairy Queen S mores Shake Cup

What is Dairy Queen’s S’mores Shake?

DQ’s latest shake mimics the flavors of the classic campfire treat. It has vanilla soft serve blended with marshmallow topping, chocolate flakes, and graham cracker bits.

How is it?

The first thing I tried to figure out was what the little grainy pieces were. They were so tiny that I couldn’t discern much flavor. Were they chocolate bits or graham cracker bits? When I had drunk more of the shake and could see beyond the whipped topping, it was clear that the really tiny bits were the graham and the larger flakes were chocolate.

Dairy Queen S mores Shake Top

Flavor-wise, it’s a giant marshmallow-flavored kick in the face. There’s no subtlety here, not that I wanted any. The graham bits and chocolate flakes added enough texture to create a nice mouthfeel, but the marshmallow flavor of the product still overwhelmed the graham and chocolate notes. Strangely as I got deeper into the shake, the chocolate pieces were bigger, and it added more chocolatey-ness to the experience.

This is a thick shake, so thick that I sometimes had trouble sucking it up with my straw. This isn’t Wendy’s Frosty “Give up on straws, you need a spoon here” territory, but it’s getting there.

For some reason, this shake didn’t strike me as being as addictive as the shakes from Five Guys, currently my go-to for milkshakes. It’s good, but it just doesn’t have that same “OMG I have to shovel this in my face immediately!” quality. What’s the secret? Perhaps the quality of the base dairy product? Clearly, I need to do more research on this topic and drink many, many more shakes — for science.

Dairy Queen S mores Shake Straw

I should note that the shake is very sweet, but let’s be honest: I’m a person who reviews milkshakes from Dairy Queen. If “too sweet” were ever an issue, I probably would not be in the milkshake-review game.

Anything else you need to know?

Dairy Queen’s website tells us that “One sip and you’re sure to be left wanting s’more,” so you can be satisfied that no opportunity to make that old-as-the-hills pun was spared. It’s not a lie though; I finished my whole shake and I still kind of want s’more. Having any more at this point would probably make me sick, but I still want it.

Conclusion:

Dairy Queen S mores Shake Angle

The S’mores shake is a very respectable attempt to turn the gooey, classic summer snack into a drinkable delight. It’s a little one-note, but fortunately it’s a tasty note.

Purchased Price: $4.79
Size: 8 oz (small)
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 640 calories, 32 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, 240 milligrams of sodium, 77 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 64 grams of sugar, and 12 grams of protein.