NEWS: Cinnabon Comes Up With Another Use For Their Ovens — Baking Cupcakes

Marvo 7 Comments

It looks like Cinnabon’s ovens aren’t one trick ponies.

Recently, the company that usually occupies the best smelling area in your mall’s food court introduced a lineup of cupcakes with the most inventive name ever — Cinnabon Cupcakes. Their cupcake line consists of four varieties:

Cinnacake Classic – Vanilla cake infused with Cinnabon’s Makara Cinnamon, topped with their cream cheese frosting and garnished with a caramel, cinnamon swirl.

Chocolate Passion – Chocolate cake topped with chocolate buttercream frosting.

Vanilla Bliss – Vanilla cake topped with vanilla buttercream frosting.

24-Carrot Cake – Spiced carrot cake with a hint of pineapple and coconut, topped with their cream cheese frosting and orange sugar sprinkles.

Just like Cinnabon’s cinnamon rolls, these cupcakes are baked fresh all day. But I’m not sure if these cupcakes make your stomach feel like it ate an entire Cinnabon store, like their cinnamon rolls do

REVIEW: StarKist Chunk Light Sandwich-Ready Tuna Salad

Kayla 6 Comments

Tuna is a food that people either love or hate.

Now, when I say tuna, I’m talking about the shredded stuff that’s in a can or pouch form, not the high quality stuff you may find in a nice sushi restaurant, or a shady sushi restaurant that serves it on naked women. I’m talking about good old fashioned tuna that when combined with mayo and Wonder Bread creates a brown bag lunch that everyone knows is a tuna fish sandwich before you even open the bag.

Those who make their own tuna salad are pretty hardcore about it. What brand to use, whether it’s packed in olive oil or water, how much mayo, or even if they should add celery. I’m pretty straight up with my tuna and just mix it with some mayo. But when I’m feeling daring or motivated after watching the Food Network or pissed off after watching Rachael Ray on the Food Network, I like to include some sundried tomatoes, a little bit of lemon, some celery, and if I’m pissed off at Rachael Ray, I will say “extra virgin olive oil” instead of EVOO.

But most of the time, I’m lazy and rather have someone else, or a leading producer, distributor and marketer of shelf-stable and frozen seafood products in the United States, make me tuna salad when I have a weird craving for it like I did this past weekend after I saw The Vagina Monologues.

Charlie the Tuna and his StarKist Chunk Light Sandwich-Ready Tuna Salad to the rescue!

Well, maybe not. This tuna salad was pretty blah in comparison to one that I can whip up myself. Fancy Feast cat food came to mind after I opened up the package and slopped it down between two slices of bread. Tuna in a can or space-aged pouch almost always has an odor attached to it, and this product was no different. However, this tuna surprisingly didn’t have an uber fishy taste. So even though it may have smelled like cat food, it didn’t really taste like it. Now I’m not saying I’ve had cat food, but I’ve taken a whiff of some once and that shit could be used as a bioweapon.

The taste of the StarKist Chunk Light Sandwich-Ready Tuna Salad was a little tangy and it was edible, despite my comparisons to Fancy Feast, but I just couldn’t finish an entire sandwich. There’s very little mayo in it (or any at all, I couldn’t really tell), which was probably the reason why the entire pouch of tuna was only 100 calories. Too bad the sandwich I made with it was lousy and unmemorable, unlike the nice tuna sandwiches of my yesteryear with mayo on soft Wonder Bread.

Sorry, Charlie.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 pouch – 100 Calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 370 milligrams of sodium, 4 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, 13 grams of protein, 2% calcium and 4% iron.)

Item: StarKist Chunk Light Sandwich-Ready Tuna Salad
Price: $1.79
Size: 3 ounces
Purchased at: Giant
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Low in calories. Wonder Bread. Tuna in pouches for those who don’t own a can opener. Contains Omega-3’s. Convenient when you need a tuna salad fix quick. The Vagina Monologues.
Cons: Pretty boring. Reminds me of cat food. Being too lazy to make my own tuna salad. Not having a can opener. Strong tuna fish smell. Using cat food a bioweapon. Rachael Ray creating the term EVOO.

REVIEW: McDonald’s Sweet Chili Sauce

Marvo 17 Comments

I’m glad McDonald’s introduced their new Sweet Chili Sauce because I was getting a little stir crazy having only three varieties of McNugget sauces to choose from — barbeque, sweet & sour and hot mustard. If it wasn’t for this latest sauce, I might’ve pulled a Tiger Woods and start sticking my McNuggets into things I shouldn’t, like Jello pudding, Baconnaise, the Big Mac’s secret sauce, or a Big Mac itself.

The Sweet Chili Sauce looks very much like the sauce that comes with the spring rolls I order at Vietnamese pho restaurants. Both have an orange hue with chili flakes floating in them, but the McDonald’s version has a much thicker consistency. It’s like dipping McNuggets into orange Jello that hasn’t completely set.

Unlike other McNugget sauces, it’s easy to see through the Sweet Chili Sauce, so if you collect enough packages of it, you can pull a Jim Halpert and stick the stapler of your workplace foe in a fish tank full of it. It’s also clear enough to help remind you that you’re eating chicken in the form of a nugget.

The Sweet Chili Sauce doesn’t really tickle my taste buds. It tastes somewhat like the sauce that comes with spring rolls, but a weaker version of it. While I was hoping there would be a balance, it’s much more sweet than spicy, which makes sense since sugar is the number two ingredient in it behind water. While there are chili peppers floating around in it, they barely register on my own personal heat index and don’t provide much flavor. Compared with the other McNugget sauces, I thought Sweet Chili Sauce’s flavor was bland.

While I admit it’s my least favorite, it’s unfortunate that the Sweet Chili Sauce is around for only a limited time. Because when it’s gone and I get tired of the other sauces again, I hope I’m not able to find a bottle of Baconnaise on this rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

(Nutrition Facts – Unavailable. I bow my head in shame because I am unable to provide you with this important information.)

Item: McDonald’s Sweet Chili Sauce
Price: Included with McNuggets
Size: 1 ounce
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Tastes somewhat like the sauce that comes with spring rolls. Great if you like to see your McNuggets through the sauce. Pho. McDonald’s Hot Mustard Sauce.
Cons: Doesn’t tickle my taint. Much more sweet than spicy. Not a flavorful sauce. The urge to dip my McNuggets into other things. The idea of Baconnaise.

REVIEW: Kashi Caribbean Carnival Pizza

Stacey 17 Comments

You know that expression: “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time?” Well, Kashi should just stop making pizzas, because they are pleasing none of the people none of the time. Seriously, I really wanted to like this pizza. I’m normally a fan of everything Kashi – their frozen meals, crackers, granola bars, cereals, etcetera, etcetera. But in the past I have been let down by Kashi pizzas. Yet, I decided to give them one more chance to make amends when I saw the new delicious-sounding “Caribbean Carnival” Kashi pizza.

Spoiler alert: While I expected Kashi’s “Caribbean Carnival” pizza to invoke delightful imagery like friendly anthropomorphic parrots and jovial dark-skinned men wearing brightly colored beads in their hair; this pizza was neither “Caribbean” nor a carnival in my mouth. (Discuss!) Being a healthful eater, I normally resent when others disparage health food as tasting like cardboard – however, tasting like wonderful, delicious cardboard would probably be a lofty goal for this pizza.

Its promise of plantains, kale, fire-roasted red onions, mangoes and a “sweet and spicy Guava-infused jerk seasoned sauce” yielded a smattering of toppings lumped all in one corner of the pizza, which I meticulously picked apart and spread about before putting the pizza in the oven. Below all of that was some of the nastiest pizza crust known to mankind. I would like to know what think tank thought it would be a good idea to make a pizza crust out of ingredients like buckwheat and brown rice. Poor Antonio Pizzarelli, the inventor of the pizza pie*, would be spinning in his grave if he only knew. Normally the crust is one of my favorite parts of the pizza, and I couldn’t even get it down. Even the dog gave me the stinkface when I tried to pass it off, as if to say, “I’ll eat this because it’s technically contraband people food; but only begrudgingly so.”

The “toppings” provided little relief to the gritty taste bud-assault that was the crust. The pizza was covered mostly in kale and diced tomatoes, and I think I saw a few specs of yellow that was supposed to be mango. The best part of the pizza was undoubtedly the plantains — as I have expressed my enthusiasm for Kashi products featuring plantains in the past. But unfortunately the pizza only contained four slices of plantains and two bits of something that were probably the bodily remains of brave, fallen plantains who likely fought to the death against being put on this terrible pizza. And as for this alleged sweet and spicy Guava-infused jerk sauce…Well, I did detect some kind of flavor between the cheese and the crust, but I don’t think it tasted so much like jerk sauce as it did like “a funk.”

What separates Kashi’s Caribbean Carnival Pizza from your garden variety “fail” to an “epic fail,” is that it’s not even particularly healthy. One pizza, which is a reasonable-sized meal for most people, clocks in at over 800 whopping calories. You could probably eat two slices of real pizza for that and not feel let down like a kid who gets socks for Christmas.

* Look it up!

(Nutrition Facts – 1/3 pizza (120 grams) – 280 calories, 8 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 590 milligrams of sodium, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 14 grams of protein and 10% iron.)

Item: Kashi Caribbean Carnival Pizza
Price: $6.99 [sale price, reg. $7.99]
Size: 12.7 ounces
Purchased at: Shop Rite
Rating: 2 out of 10
Pros: The bites with plantain on them were almost not terrible. Pleasing all of the people all of the time. Friendly anthropomorphic parrots.
Cons: Pizza crust tasted like puppies crying. No mango. Not enough plantains. Eating this instead of real pizza. Horrible taste plus not great nutritional value plus outlandish price like getting raped in three orifices. Getting socks for Christmas.

ANNOUNCEMENT: SPAM Macadamia Nut Winners!!!

Marvo 2 Comments

Read our review of SPAM Macadamia Nuts here.

To many, winning a can of SPAM macadamia nuts from some overweight blogger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean who writes reviews in his underwear may not seem like a win. But five lucky Impulsive Buy readers now have to opportunity to find out if it truly is. Here are the five winners of the SPAM Macadamia Nut giveaway and their comments:

kristen – “I love Spam.”

jperonto – “Interesting flavor. Send them here! :)”

Marc – “Okay.”

Nicole – “http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/spampersand. Spam and punctuation marks. Our fair civilization has progressed!”

Mary – “Spam nuts”

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to everyone who participated.