REVIEW: Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo

Jasper 36 Comments

Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo

Spring has finally sprung in the Northeast, so all sorts of great things are happening! Grass is rising. Birds are singing. People are getting tan. My hay fever is so bad that I am wondering if cutting off my nose would really be all that spiteful to my face. Most importantly, “Writers from New Jersey review new Oreo flavors” Week is going on at The Impulsive Buy! (All of our themed weeks are incredibly wordy, exactingly descriptive, and don’t follow the normal Sunday-Saturday week schedule.)

Nabisco’s latest non-fudge-covered Oreo is the Berry Burst Ice Cream edition. I can’t find any information online about this new flavor, so we’re left to our own devices when it comes to figuring out which berries are included in the “Berry Burst.” I was hoping for a combination of blackberries (fruit), Blackberrys (phones), and Halle Berry circa 2001.

Once I actually bought and opened the package, it became obvious that the primary and perhaps only berry flavor involved was strawberry. Despite my stuffy nose, I was hit by a strawberry aroma that strongly reminded me of Special K Red Berries cereal. The scent was very pleasant and surprisingly not-too-artificial.

Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo Naked

The filling did taste like a really sweet batch of strawberry ice cream. There were little red specks that I imagine were supposed to be tiny berry shards, but they didn’t add anything in texture or taste. Since these Oreos seemed to be single stuffed rather than Double Stuf, the strawberry flavor became a bit too understated when I ate the cookies whole (“whole” meaning without taking them apart, not meaning eaten in a single bite… though, you know, there’s no wrong way to eat an Oreo).

I never got a chance to try the limited edition Strawberry Milkshake Crème Oreos in 2008, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ve recently been re-named and re-packaged. Even if that’s the case, these Berry Burst / Strawberry Milkshake Oreos are fairly tasty, so if you love Oreos to begin with, go ahead and give them a try. Apologies that this review is on the short side, but I really have to get going – X-Men, Swordfish, and Monster’s Ball aren’t going to add themselves to my Netflix queue.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 150 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, 60 milligrams of potassium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 13 grams of sugar, 1gram of protein.)

Other Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo reviews:
Grub Grade

Item: Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo
Price: $2.99
Size: 15.25 ounces
Purchased at: Kmart
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Pleasant and not-too-artificial smell. Filling tastes like strawberry ice cream. Spring has sprung. Halle Berry circa 2001. Eating cookies whole. TIB theme weeks.
Cons: Flavor becomes too understated when you eat the cookies without taking them apart. Not really any berries other than strawberries. Might just be the same product Nabisco came out with three years ago. Seasonal hay fever.

NEWS: White Castle’s New Bacon Sliders Make Me Want To Have My Own Harold and Kumar Adventure (I Would Be Harold)

Marvo 1 Comment

You scream. I scream. We all scream for ice cream.

Oh wait, my bad.

You’re taken. I’m taken. We’re all taken with bacon, including White Castle.

Recently, the fast food chain that many people wish would expand westward introduced two new Bacon Sliders: the Bacon & Ranch Slider and the Bacon & Cheddar Slider.

The way they’re promoting these two new sliders make it sound like bacon is a new ingredient for them, but they already have a bacon cheeseburger on the menu. Although the bacon in that slider comes in strip form, while the new sliders have bacon crumbles which are sprinkled on top of the beef patties and onions, like bacon snow.

But that’s not all the bacon news from White Castle. They also released their new Loaded Fries with bacon crumbles, ranch dressing and cheese sauce.

The two new Bacon Sliders and Loaded Fries are available for a limited time. Also, you can get a coupon for a free Bacon & Cheddar Slider or Bacon & Ranch Slider with any Sack Meal purchase via White Castle’s Facebook page.

REVIEW: California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Crispy Thin Crust Four Cheese Pizza Spinach Artichoke Dip 10 Flatbread Wedges

Kelley 10 Comments

California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Four Cheese Spinach Artichoke

Well, it was bound to happen. DiGiorno started it with their Pizza & Cookies and their Pizza & Wyngz. As we all know by now, once one company comes up with a batshit crazy idea, competitors must keep up with their level of insanity. And thus, California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Crispy Thin Crust Four Cheese Pizza Spinach Artichoke Dip 10 Flatbread Wedges was born.

CPK makes some of the highest-quality frozen pizzas out there. They have a wide variety of flavors that go well beyond your typical Pepperoni or Supreme, thus reflecting their products as gourmet, or as gourmet as you can get in the frozen food aisle. You might be wondering why they would kowtow to such ridiculousness. Just call me Sherlock fucking Holmes, because I did a little sleuthing and found some interesting information.

In early 2010, Kraft sold its North American frozen pizza empire to Nestle for $3.7 billion. This included brands like DiGiorno, Tombstone, and…you guessed it…California Pizza Kitchen. Given this information, it becomes clear that this is not a matter of competitive craziness. It’s more like two siblings sleeping together in the same bed. That bed is made with tomato sauce, cookie dough and spinach artichoke dip. That bed is messy in more than one way.

I feel like Nestle has tried to hoodwink all of us, but I’m not exactly sure how, and I can only pour so much of my outrage into frozen pizza conspiracies. You’d be surprised how thin my outrage is spread. Like CPK’s Bordelaise butter sauce on their Garlic Chicken pizza. Yep, just like that.

One reason I can’t get too mad at CPK is that I love spinach artichoke dip. It’s one of my favoritest foods ever. I’ve never had CPK’s version, but pick a chain restaurant and I’ve probably had theirs. I’m not an expert; I just know my dips is all I’m saying.

The store I found CPKP&ACTCFCPSAD10FW in only had Four Cheese as the pizza portion of the equation, but Marvo has seen it with Sicilian, so there are more flavors out there. CPK’s website is strangely mum about the subject, so you’ll just have to check for yourself.

California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Four Cheese Spinach Artichoke Box Back

Let’s tackle the cooking method of CPKP&ACTCFCPSAD10FW. When you’ve got three different items that need to be cooked, things can get tricky. Bear with me as I slog through this mire of directions. It’ll be a pretty dry portion of this review, but if you find yourself giving up halfway through reading this, you may not have the patience necessary to cook the real thing. Consider it a litmus test for your level of interest in making CPK’s Pizza & Appetizer.

Method 1: Appetizer First, As God Intended

Preheat oven to 400. Shove pizza and flatbread into oven, right on the rack. Cook 6 minutes. Meanwhile, microwave dip with plastic cover lifted to vent for 1 to 1:45, depending on your wattage. Stir, recover, microwave 1 more minute. Take flatbread out after the first 6 minutes; cook pizza another 6 minutes while you hurriedly shove dip into your mouth with flatbread wedges so you finish your appetizer before the pizza burns.

Method 2: Appetizer and Pizza at Same Time So You Aren’t Running Around Like Crazy

Same preheat. Cook pizza 6 minutes. Throw in flatbread; cook another 6 minutes. Microwave dip the same way. Eat everything together, turning your appetizer into a side dish. Consider dunking your pizza in the spinach artichoke dip.

California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Four Cheese Spinach Artichoke Wrapped

Unwrapping CPK Pizza & Appetizer was like pulling apart a Russian nesting doll in reverse. There’s plastic shrink-wrapped around the whole package; after you take that off, you free the upside-down cup of spinach artichoke dip. Underneath is more plastic; once you remove that, you have access to the flatbread, which has a grease-stained disc of white paper separating it from the pizza itself. Unearthing all the components was like conducting an archeological dig, except instead of bones or mummies, you’re digging out an improbable trio of junk food.

At first, I was going to choose Cooking Method 1, but then I realized that from the perspective of taking pictures while the food was fresh and not having to run around frantically, having them at the same time would work much better.

Even then, the whole cooking process felt a little like conducting an orchestra. When I made this comment to my husband, he replied with, “Yes, Kelley, that is exactly what baking, photographing, and reviewing pizza and dip is like. You’re goddamned Leopold.” No respect for the process, that man. Honestly though, without the picture-taking I feel the process would have been much less hectic,

California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Spinach Artichoke Frozen-Cooked

I’ll start with the appetizer, since it is, after all…the appetizer. I thought I might have pulled the flatbread out too early because the pizza looked like it was about to burn but the flatbread didn’t look like it had enough golden brown parts like the box said it should. When I was eating it, however, the bread was a perfect consistency – soft and chewy, with a touch of crispiness on the outside. The flatbread also broke apart easily along the perforations into ten wedges that were the perfect size for dipping.

As for the spinach artichoke dip, it wasn’t quite restaurant quality, but I would consider it above average for a frozen dip. I’ve had TGI Friday’s frozen spinach artichoke dip many times, and I think CPK beats Friday’s dip hands down. I would have liked to have seen larger artichoke pieces, but other than that, it was creamy, cheesy, garlicky, and frankly more than I expected out of a frozen dip.

Unfortunately, the container was rather small. I ate all the dip in one sitting, and while I do tend to pile it on when I’m dipping, in this instance I attempted to eat like a normal human being and still wound up finishing it off after only six and a quarter wedges. My leftover wedges sat on the plate, brokenhearted, with no purpose left in life. They wanted more dip, and so did my mouth.

California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Four Cheese Frozen-Cooked

CPK’s Four Cheese frozen pizza is not a new product, but I’ve never had it, so it was new to me. Again, I thought I’d burned it, but it came out perfectly cooked, with good browning on the cheese. CPK really did get the cooking times right.

They got the cheese right, too. I’m not an easy person to impress when it comes to cheese pizza; I’m usually all about the toppings and consider cheese pizza to be for boring people who sit in the corner at parties, abstaining from booze and complaining about there being too much smoke in the room.

CPK really impressed me with their Four Cheese, however. And we’re even talking about a frozen pizza. The addition of fontina and gouda really added depth to the flavor and gave the pizza different levels of cheesy goodness. There was just the right amount of tomato sauce to compliment the cheeses, too. I found myself pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the cheese and felt it really could stand on its own.

Is this whole “pizza plus appetizer/side/desert” premise propagated by Nestle silly? Sure. But I really enjoyed California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Crispy Thin Crust Four Cheese Pizza Spinach Artichoke Dip 10 Flatbread Wedges. The dip was delicious, the flatbread a perfect vessel for it, and the cheese pizza surprised me with its depth of flavor. I’ll probably never again cook pizza and cookies together, but I can see myself indulging in this bread, dip and pie trio again and again.

Speaking of DiGiorno, where’s the third player in Nestle’s frozen pizza empire in all this? I’m talking to you, Tombstone. You may be a little more for the budget-minded pizza buyers, but there’s no reason you can’t get in on this game. We’ve already covered, appetizers, sides and desserts, but what about beverages? My suggestion: dehydrated beer packets. Get on it!

(Nutrition Facts – Four Cheese Pizza – 1/3 pizza – 320 calories, 130 calories from fat, 14 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 650 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 1 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 16 grams of protein, 10% vitamin A, 0% vitamin C, 35% calcium and 10% iron. Spinach Artichoke Dip and Flatbread Wedges – 3 flatbread wedges + 2 tablespoons dip – 130 calories, 45 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 320 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 1 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 5 grams of protein, 6% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 8% calcium and 4% iron.)

Item: California Pizza Kitchen Pizza & Appetizer Crispy Thin Crust Four Cheese Pizza Spinach Artichoke Dip 10 Flatbread Wedges
Price: $7.49
Size: 1 pizza; 3.9 ounces dip; 10 flatbread wedges
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Cooking times just right. Flatbread just the right texture. Composing a junk food orchestra. Spinach artichoke dip was creamy and delicious. Overdipping. Cheese pizza had good depth of cheesy flavor.
Cons: Not enough dip. Incestuous products from sneaky megacompanies. Not enough artichoke chunks in dip. Cooking takes a lot of planning. Heartbroken unused flatbread wedges.

REVIEW: Keebler Wheatables Toasted Pecan Nut Crisps

Nichol 6 Comments

Keebler Wheatables Toasted Pecan Nut Crisps

When I stumbled upon the newest addition to Keebler’s Wheatables line, my first thought was “Finally! Someone has tapped into the sorely neglected yet obviously lucrative grey squirrel market!” I’m serious. My brain operates in strange and fascinating ways. I am afraid of word association exercises and what horrors they might reveal about my psyche.

The Toasted Pecan Nut Crisps were strategically placed on the top row of shelves in the snack aisle. That’s a horrible position for attracting the bulk of the snacking population, but it’s prime squirrel territory, provided my local grocery store starts accepting tree-dwelling rodents as valid customers.

Keebler’s foray into the nut-gatherer segment of the population actually makes sense when you think about it. Of course the tree-dwelling elf company would be among the first to respond to the outcry of squirrels frustrated and bored with the usual range of stale mixed nuts offered up by their overly gregarious, primarily elderly suppliers. I think we can all agree that no self-respecting modern urban squirrel actually goes out foraging among the trees anymore.

Back at my alma mater we had squirrels on the main quad that survived solely on McDonald’s scraps and the adoration of the student body. It was damn near impossible to enjoy a Nature Valley bar in the shade of majestic maple tree on a warm spring day without the little guys circling like vultures, ever tighter, ever closer, chattering expectantly. San Diego’s omni-sunny, seasonless climate makes things all the worse by eliminating the need to hibernate and stockpile. It was only a matter of time before our local rodent friends evolved from hunter-gathering to lounging in little eucalyptus hammocks, munching on acorn-blasted goldfish and googling all sorts of disturbing variations of the phrase “huge savory nuts”.

At first whiff, the crisps smell like Honey Bunches of Oats with a twinge of maple syrup. Each one is rife with pecan flecks and salt crystals. I’m left with a fine nutty/salty dust coating my fingertips, making this a decent option for all those grading their snacks on the Doritos scale of puzzling powder-based messiness.

Keebler Wheatables Toasted Pecan Nut Crisps Naked

The flavor is buttery, with prominent pecan, and just a hint of salt. Think pecan French toast, only crispier, like a standard, non-amazing Wheatable. This threw my best friend into a state of existential confusion. She very much likes to categorize, organize, and keep things neat. The nut crisps shattered that careful order in just one bite.

They aren’t really crackers – too sweet. Their hexagonal shape disqualifies them from any special animal cracker exemptions. They certainly wouldn’t qualify as a cookie either, as they’re too flat and crispy. They’re far too nutritionally deficient to pass as breakfast in any but the most desperate of circumstances, yet every fabric of their being practically screams “GOOD MORNING!” from the moment one opens the box. Even the good elves of Keebler seem unable to decide what to make of this monster. The box tentatively labels them as crackers in tiny print below the giant “nut crisps” banner. So they’re crisp cracker snacks? I guess?

If you’re able to get past that philosophical quandary and dive into a box with no regard for labeling, the Nut Crisps are quite delicious and addictive snack… thingies. They apparently also come in almond, but as a former Midwesterner looking to regain some of the street cred I lost in the Popeye’s fiasco, I only bothered to hunt down the buttery goodness of pecans.

(Nutrition Facts – 16 crackers – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 3.5 grams polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 200 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, 0% vitamin A, 0% calcium, 0% vitamin C, and 6% iron.)

Item: Keebler Wheatables Toasted Pecan Nut Crisps
Price: $3.59
Size: 8.5 ounces
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Addresses the plight of bored urban squirrels. Tastes like honey bunches of hexagons. Peh-cahns. Good random snack. The Doritos powdery coating scale. Brimming with sunshine and cheeriness.
Cons: Suffers from an identity crisis. Possibly promotes squirrel obesity. Pecan dust never goes away. Makes a very sad stand alone breakfast and an even sadder lunch. Pee-cans. Failing a word association test. Stale mixed nuts.

REVIEW: Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes and Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes

Drew 5 Comments

Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes and Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes

A wise yet misunderstood sage once observed that C is for cookie, and that was good enough for him.  It’s hard to argue with truth bombs like that, and I’m not going to try.  If anything, I’ll simply observe that like women, cookies come in all different shapes and varieties, some of which you’ll never be able to get enough of and some of which will break up with you via text message because you’re “too nice,” whatever the hell that means, Rachel.  But unlike women, you’re allowed to keep trying new ones after you settle down, which is fortunate because otherwise this review would be one sentence long and say, “I love chocolate chip cookies and I would NEVER TRY A DIFFERENT ONE NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT BEGGED ME TO EAT IT.” 

Obviously that’s not going to cut it, so last Friday night I put on my finest dress shirt, headed down to the local grocery store and picked up some Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes and Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes.  I’m not one to brag, but let’s just say they both found their way home with me and leave it at that.

I naively assumed I knew what to expect with these cookies, only to realize how wrong I was once I opened the packages.  The first thing you’ll notice is that they’re pretty slim, about the thickness of a Thin Mint.  (In fact, there’s a mint version of this cookie that I’m guessing tastes exactly like a Thin Mint.)  Ergo, clearly not the “regular Oreo coated with fudge” that I had assumed they’d be.  I can’t imagine why I would have thought that, unless it’s because Oreos have a distinct “cookie/filling/cookie” sandwich configuration that literally everyone in the entire world associates with them.  Don’t ask me why they decided to deviate from that — possibly eating full Oreos covered in fudge would cause your ass to expand so rapidly that you’d give yourself an instant wedgie even if you were wearing boxers.  Or maybe it€™s a cost-saving measure. 

Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes and Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes Naked

The fact remains that Oreo Fudge Cremes are more like what you’d get if you twisted an Oreo in half and dipped it in fudge, the only real difference being that the peanut butter ones (natch) have PB instead of vanilla creme.  In retrospect I should not have been surprised, as the front of each package has a 3-step illustration showing exactly what I just described: half of an Oreo being covered in fudge until it’s completely coated, the end.  It’s literally so simple that its intended audience of children should be able to grasp it in a second, which does not reflect highly on me.  What can I say, it’s late.

As I mentioned before, the cookies really do closely resemble Thin Mints, just a bit bumpier.  Both kinds, Golden and Peanut Butter, look functionally identical when placed next to each other.  In fact, if you can correctly identify which cookies are which in the picture above and email me your answer, I will send you a hefty monetary prize.  Though I have a nagging suspicion that every single person who guesses is going to be wrong.  Call it a hunch.

Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes Innards

The peanut butter cookies definitely carry that distinctive PB smell, though it’s not overpowering thanks to the fudgy shell.  They taste decent, but unfortunately suffer from not enough peanut butter flavor… it’s a little too muted.  As my wife quite rightly points out, there are tons of ways to get your peanut butter/chocolate fix, not least of which are Reese’s peanut butter cups.  If there aren’t any PB cups available, these will do in a pinch, but their texture makes them slightly less desirable than the old standby — for some reason the cookie component doesn’t add anything, it just gets in the way of the more pronounced peanut butter and chocolate tastes.  They aren’t bad, but I stop short of being able to highly recommend them either.

Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes Innards

The Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes, on the other hand, are really good.  Here the cookie component doesn’t seem superfluous thanks to the lack of a preexisting peanut butter cup bias, and actually feels a bit crunchier.  Also, the creme filling is a much bolder taste than the peanut butter, which in this case is a good thing.  It feels odd to say this since peanut butter and chocolate are a proven flavor combination, but the components of the golden fudge cremes just mesh a lot better.  And I might just be imagining it, but the flavor seems to linger longer, for what that’s worth.

Be prepared for the fact that even though they come in large packages, there really aren’t that many cookies in there.  I can’t remember exactly how many regular Oreos used to come per package, but I guarantee you it’s more than what each of these packages contained, which makes no sense because these are thinner than regular Oreos, so in theory you should be able to cram more of them in.  Each cookie has its own little individual slot in the plastic container, and maybe there needs to be a little room between them to keep the fudge from melting and sticking all the cookies together, but they don’t need THAT much space.  At least part of that is profit inflation, so while these aren’t ridiculously expensive products, you’re not getting everything you could be either.

I don’t have much else to say without resorting to mocking Hydrox cookies (you could tell your after-school program already spent their entire month’s budget on softball equipment when they started hauling out the Hydrox, couldn’t you?), and nobody wants to hear that.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how unhealthy these fudge cremes are for you — three cookies account for almost a quarter of your recommended saturated fat intake for the day — but no one buys Oreos because they’re concerned about health, they buy them because they taste good and help to relive your childhood.  On the former count, at least, these cookies mainly succeed, but unless you still have the metabolism you possessed as a kid, tread carefully.

(Nutrition Facts – 3 cookies – Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes – 180 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of total fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 55 milligrams of sodium, 40 milligrams of potassium, 25 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 18 grams of sugar, and less than 1 gram of protein.  Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes – 170 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of total fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 100 milligrams of sodium, 80 milligrams of potassium, 23 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes and Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes
Price: $2.99 per package
Size: 11.3 ounces
Purchased at: Acme
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Peanut Butter Creme Oreo Fudge Cremes)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Golden Oreo Fudge Cremes)
Pros: Om nom nom nom!  Extending cookies/women metaphors to the breaking point.  Both kinds smell really good.  Effective texture in the golden variety, with flavors that mesh well.  Lasting taste.  Nostalgia factor. 
Cons: Getting dumped by text message.  Masquerading as Thin Mints.  Peanut butter variety not as good as PB cups.  Not overwhelming quantities.  Takes a lot of games of freeze tag to burn off the calories.