Tag: Eggo

Borrowing things from overseas to sell on our shores is a tricky business. As with any translation, we run the risk of not getting it quite right. Like turning the infinitely-watchable E4 series Skins into a show that no one (save for The Parents Television Council who wants to kill it with fire) cares to watch… or transforming the delicioso Mexican corn-cake-style gordita into the well-known and often-devoured Taco Bell Gordita that is basically a taco made with pita bread. How they made the leap to the Middle East by way of Mexico, I have no idea. I guess, to them, foreign food is foreign food. We’re lucky they didn’t try to stuff haggis in there.

The process of repackaging these things for consumption in the United States is clearly an attempt to make them more palatable for Americans, however unrecognizable they become. But it doesn’t explain why Kellogg’s would revise the Belgian waffle for their Eggo brand by making them toaster-sized instead of plate-sized and octagonal instead of round (or square) and calling them “Thick & Fluffy ” waffles. Did they think consumers wouldn’t understand these waffles if they used the word “Belgian”? They’ve been around for 50 years. I think we get it. Semantics aside, what it really comes down to is whether the waffles have deep pockets and taste good. For the most part, they do.

Eggo Thick & Fluffy waffles come in two flavor varieties: Cinnamon Brown Sugar and Original Recipe. The name “Original Recipe” conjures up visions of crispy, golden fried chicken offered by string-tied Southern gentlemen with dubious military origins, yet as a Roscoe’s devotee, I can attest to the fact that fried chicken does pair well with waffles. Maybe this title wasn’t unintentional.

The Original Recipe waffle was exceptional. It has a certain extra something (probably sodium) that makes the waffle taste extra malty. I scoured the ingredients list and didn’t see anything about malt, though, so I could just be imagining it. Maybe my previous experiences with other Belgian fluffy and thick waffles created an expectation for malt flavor.

On the flip side, I was all ready to love the Cinnamon Brown Sugar waffle, being the brown sugar & cinnamon addict that I am, but it was just OK. The flavor just doesn’t “pop.” It’s not super sweet, but it’s also not very cinnamon-y. Blah Sugar. Cinna-Zzzzz. The experience is underwhelming. Way to not be an enabler, Kellogg’s. I’m one step closer to recovery.

Despite the fact that it’s a toaster waffle, I was expecting preparation to be a breeze. Logistically, it is pretty easy. Place in toaster… Toast… The End. But the toasting instructions specify that you may need to use two toasting cycles in order to evenly heat the waffle. That’s far too long for a toaster-based convenience breakfast. I hate double-toasting. It ruins the feeling of relief you experience once the toaster pops up because as soon as it does, you just have to push it back down again and start all over. It’s totally defeating. Bad way to start the day.

Another negative is that even though these are Thicker & Fluffier, they don’t make you feel any fuller — just the opposite. The extra carbs and sugar you ingest in the thicker waffle make you crash faster… and if you double-up on the serving size (eating two waffles instead of one), it just makes things worse.

That’s another thing. The serving size is just one waffle, but the box shows two. WHY MUST YOU TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS, EGGO??? Sorry, that’s the cinnamon brown sugar withdrawal talking.

I appreciate Eggo’s take on Belgian waffles, though the Original Recipe flavor makes a tastier breakfast than the Cinnamon Brown Sugar one. They should try making crépes next… though they’ll probably call them “Eggo Thin & Flat Pancakes.” How gauche.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 waffle/55 grams – Original Recipe – 160 calories, 70 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 3.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 50 milligrams of potassium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, >1 gram of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. Cinnamon Brown Sugar – 170 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 3 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 270 milligrams of sodium, 50 milligrams of potassium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, >1 gram of fiber, 9 grams of sugar and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Kellogg’s Eggo Thick & Fluffy Waffles (Original & Cinnamon Brown Sugar)
Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Size: 11.6 oz
Purchased at: Vons
Rating: 10 out of 10 (Original Recipe)
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Cinnamon Brown Sugar)
Pros: Corn cakes. Southern gentlemen. Invisible malt. Octagons.
Cons: Witch hunts. Haggis. Understanding waffles. Boring me with cinnamon. The long toast. Small serving size.

The Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola was inevitable, which is unfortunate. If you break it down, you’ve got two food innovations (I use the term semi-sarcastically) that came together in a perfect storm of potential horror.

On the one hand, you’ve got the gourmet pizza movement, which cropped up a few decades ago. Based entirely on shit someone told me with no empirical evidence, Wolfgang Puck made the first gourmet pizza, so you can blame him for shit like cream cheese smoked salmon pizza and foie gras pizza and god knows what else. I also blame, again, with very little evidence, California Pizza Kitchen for bringing gourmet pizza to the masses, with creations like cheeseburger pizza and Pear & Gorgonzola pizza. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gourmet pizza and non-traditional toppings. One of the little local pizza joints in my town has a $10 large unlimited topping offer that I abuse on a regular basis to create my own monstrosities. White pizza with a butter parmesan crust with double green olives, feta, onion, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, anyone? I wouldn’t be surprised if they take that deal off the table because I’m single-handedly putting them out of business.

The other part of this equation is the recent explosion of breakfast frozen food products. I don’t know when this started – maybe it’s been around for quite a while and I just never noticed – but I seem to remember a time when, if you wanted a breakfast frozen food, you grabbed yourself a box of Eggo waffles and shut the fuck up about it. Now you’ve got crazy options, from sausage Mcmuffins to bowls with all your shit thrown together to…whatever in God’s name this is.

My point, quite obviously by now, is that Eggo took these two concepts, herded them into a small pen, watched them do the nasty, and what came out a couple minutes later (food gestates quickly) was the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza. They wiped off the amniotic maple syrup and disgusting globs of strawberry jam and said, “I think we’ve got something here.” Kind of like how my friends think their newborn babies are cute, and I think they look like horrible aliens.

I hadn’t noticed this before, but there’s a strange purple sauce-like substance underneath the toppings. Ugh, is that supposed to be yogurt? I am not looking forward to having hot yogurt in my mouth. I’m also not comfortable with that sentence.

The instructions are simple: unwrap the pizza, flip the box over that it was resting in, set it on the silver circle on the back of the container, and throw it in the microwave for a minute to 1 1/2 minutes. I split the difference, and stuck it in there for 1 1/4 minutes. It was still a little cold in the middle, so I stuck it in for the extra 15, but my microwave is also a piece of shit, so bare that in mind. Waiting a minute and a half for a quick breakfast when you’re on the go is a little impressive. It takes me longer to smear cream cheese on a bagel. I have some pretty strict rules about cream cheese.

It actually smells pretty good coming out of the microwave. It smells like a bowl of oatmeal that has berries and granola in it – warm and inviting, something you’d want to eat on a cold, snowy day. Unfortunately it’s 106 and humid right now where I live, but I’ll close my eyes and use my imagination.

There’s obviously blueberries going on, scattered about the top of the pizza, shriveled up as they tend to do when cooked. They’re distributed nicely, but I would have liked to have seen a few more of them.

I don’t see any other recognizable berries, but there’s some red glop haphazardly strewn over the top. I took some off and tasted it by itself, and it tastes like they took some raspberries and turned them into a puree. It’s definitely real raspberries; it’s got that delicious tartness of the berry and I even got some seeds stuck in my teeth, which is the one thing that annoys me about raspberries. But I welcome them here, since they offer proof of real berry, unless Eggo spent millions of dollars attempting to create a facsimile of raspberry seeds to fool consumers. Probably a lot easier just to throw some berries in a blender and hold true to their claims of “real fruit.”

The dreaded yogurt sauce was nothing to fear after all. It’s very thin, and when I tasted it on its own, it had the faint flavor of mixed berry yogurt, but it was very mild and inoffensive. The granola is spread generously on one side of the pizza, but tapers out until there’s barely any on the other side.

I was truly surprised to see that the crust wasn’t actually a waffle. If I’d look more closely at the box, I might have figured it out, but my mind associates “Eggo” with “waffles” so decisively that I just assumed that would be the case. Instead, the dough of this “pizza” seems to be made out of wheat. It looks like a thin crust pizza crust, except darker. Unfortunately, it’s tasteless, soggy and way too chewy. I’m not even really sure what to call it. Wheat…pizza crust…thing. Except it tastes more like a bland PowerBar than a pizza crust.

There seem to be two fundamental problems with the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola: sogginess and poor topping distribution. The crust and the granola were both way too soggy. Perhaps it would have turned out better if I’d cooked it in the oven, but if you’re eating fruit pizza for breakfast, you either don’t have time to wait for the oven to preheat, you’re a college student who doesn’t even own an oven or you’re young enough that you’re not allowed to use the oven.

As far as the toppings go, the mysterious purple sauce was thin to the point where in some places, you could see bare patches of crust. The raspberry puree, which I think is the best part of this item, is strewn halfheartedly across the pizza, globbed up in some places and simply nonexistent in others. The granola is piled high on one half the pizza, but peters out into scattered flakes.

I have to say, I expected this whole “fruit pizza” thing to be a horror show. Instead, it just left me disappointed. If done correctly, it would have been quite tasty. A less chewy, less soggy, more flavorful crust, coated thickly with the delicious raspberry puree, a generous layer of crispy granola, and piled high with blueberries, would have actually been something that I’d consider spending 1 1/2 minutes nuking in the morning for a quick breakfast. Unfortunately, that’s not what the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola really is, so I think I’ll just stick with real pizza for breakfast. That box of double green olives, feta, and everything else pizza that’s been sitting out on the counter all night looks pretty good right now.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 individual-size pizza (5.3 ounces) — 390 calories, 110 calories from fat, 13 grams of total fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 3 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 390 milligrams of sodium, , 62 grams of total carbohydrates, 4 grams of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugars, 10 grams of protein, 0% vitamin A, 6% calcium, 0% vitamin C and 8% iron.)

Item: Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola
Price: $1.67 (on sale; normally $3.29)
Size: 1 individual-size pizza (5.3 ounces)
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Raspberry puree was delicious. Taking advantage of unlimited topping deals. Quick and easy to make. Purple sauce was not scary.
Cons: Soggy, tasteless crust and soggy granola. “Hot yogurt in my mouth” making me uneasy. Uneven and sloppily applied toppings. Just the idea of fruit pizza making me shudder. 46 percent of total fat was saturated fat on what appears on the surface to be a healthy food item.

I’ve decided what I want to be when I grow up. Screw being a quasi-product review blogger editor. I want to be the one who comes up with new frozen waffle variations because it sounds like it’s the frickin’ easiest job in the world.

If I were in charge of developing new frozen waffle varieties, it would probably go something like this:

Frantic people will come running into my large corner office. They think consumers have grown tired of the dozens of other waffle varieties I’ve come up with, so they need me to come up with something new. As I sit in my big, comfy leather office chair, I’ll put my elbows on the armrests and bring my hands together in front of my face, forming a dome, with only my fingertips touching each other. I’ll close my eyes and pretend I’m in deep thought. While concentrating, I’ll slightly nod my head a few times and then follow that with slight shakes of my head. Then I’ll hum, “uh huh” and then inhale deeply, indicating that I’ve come up with greatness. I’ll raise my head while exhaling and opening my eyes. Then I’ll pan across the room filled with eager looks. I’ll pause for dramatic effect and then say in a confident tone, “Bacon. Filled. Waffles.”

People will yell, “brilliant.” Others will say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Some of them will fall to their knees and cry because my ingenuity is at a level that they’ll never achieve, but they’re happy they were able to witness it first-hand. When the praise gets to be a little too much, I’ll just raise my hands, quietly shoo them away with hand gestures and once they leave my office, I’ll go back to admiring my own awesomeness in the mirror behind my desk until they need me again.

I think I need to make this happen soon because whoever came up with the Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Strawberry Filled Eggo Waffles needs to get replaced.

These strawberry-filled frozen waffles are noticeably thicker than regular Eggo Waffles, which means they could only fit six to a box, instead of the usual eight. The strawberry filling can easily be seen in the waffle if you put it in front of a light, like you’re a mailbox thief looking for checks. The filling isn’t spread out from edge to edge, instead it fills up about two-thirds of the circumference.

Unfortunately, just like a juiced up baseball player with bad hand-eye coordination, it maybe thicker, but it isn’t very good. Because it’s a Nutri-Grain product, it doesn’t taste like regular Eggo Waffles and is made with six grams of whole grain. The strawberry filling, made from real fruit, has little to no flavor. The only purpose it seems to have is to possibly burn my mouth when I bite into it. I was hoping the filling would have some flavor so that I wouldn’t need to dump enough sugarrific syrup on it to turn me into a one man mosh pit.

This mediocre frozen waffle wouldn’t have happen if I were the one who came up with new varieties. Never mind the Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Strawberry Filled Eggo Waffles. It would be all about the Kellogg’s Hungry Man Bacon & Egg Filled Eggo Waffles and they would be so thick that there can only be four in a box.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 waffle – 130 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 75 milligrams of potassium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, 15 grams of other carbohydrates, 3 grams of protein and a bunch of vitamins and minerals.)

Item: Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Strawberry Filled Eggo Waffles
Price: $3.50 (on sale)
Size: 6 waffles
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Syrup makes it better. Healthier than regular Eggo Waffles. Made with 6 grams of whole grains. 3 grams of dietary fiber. If I came up with frozen waffle varieties.
Cons: Strawberry filling has no flavor. Bland without syrup. Less waffles per box than regular Eggo waffles. Contains high fructose corn syrup. Being a douchebag by admiring my awesomeness in the mirror.

Every time I try to eat the Kellogg’s Eggo Blueberry Mini Muffin Tops, my stomach gets a funny feeling. I don’t feel this way because of how they taste, instead it’s because when I eat one of their Eggo Blueberry Mini Muffin Tops, the image of multiple muffin tops jiggle around in my head. When I say “muffin tops,” I’m not talking about the remnants of a baked goodie after a Sylar-like cutting off of its top, I’m talking about the overflow of flesh seen when a tight pair of jeans is wrapped around a body that is a little too big for it.

It would be semi-all right if it were images of women with their guts hanging over the edge of their jeans, but unfortunately it’s mostly images of dudes with the physique of Chris Farley. So you can understand why I have an arduous time trying to eat a set of these mini muffin tops. Not even a variety of toppings or the finest Canadian Maple Syrup could make these go down easier while thinking about male muffin tops that flap around in Baywatch-slow motion.

If I didn’t have images of large male bellies wiggling around in tight jeans in my head, I would probably have to say that these Kellogg’s Eggo Blueberry Mini Muffin Tops were good. Each set comes with four mini muffin tops, which were each about an inch and half in diameter. It toasted very nicely and it ended up with a slightly crispy outside and fluffy inside. Its taste was very similar to blueberry pancakes, which I do enjoy. However, because they’re convex in shape, most of any topping you put on it tends to roll off and end up on your plate.

So who am I going to blame for preventing me from fully enjoying these Kellogg’s Eggo Blueberry Mini Muffin Tops? I could blame the fast food industry for making our waist sizes larger. Or I could point my finger at fashion designers who make hip-hugging jeans in sizes they shouldn’t. But I’m going to blame the asshole who came up with the idea for muffin tops because if there weren’t muffin tops to begin with, society would’ve probably named the overflow of fat something else, like mushroom waist or sign of future heart disease.

It’s probably the same douchebag who also invented doughnut holes.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 set of 4 – 140 calories, 5 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 290 milligrams of sodium, 30 milligrams of potassium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 9 grams of sugar, 11 grams of other carbohydrates, 2 grams of protein, a variety of vitamins and minerals, and many images of male bellies jiggling in my head.)

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Carolanne for recommending this product and for filling my head with images of big men in tight jeans.)

Item: Kellogg’s Eggo Blueberry Mini Muffin Tops
Price: $3.50
Size: 8 sets
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Good. Taste like blueberry pancakes. Toasted very nicely, ending up with a slightly crispy outside and fluffy inside. Vitamins and minerals.
Cons: Images of the male bellies jiggling in my head. People in tight jeans who shouldn’t wear tight jeans. Its shape tends to cause toppings to roll off. The asshole who came up with the idea for muffin tops. No dietary fiber.

If Amy Winehouse and her husband Blake Fielder-Civil were to reproduce — and I pray to God, Allah, Buddha, and football they don’t — their offspring would look like the new Kellogg’s Special K Red Berries Waffles, which are a little pale, covered with weird red splotches and deformed with indentations.

As with all Special K products, these waffles are targeted towards women who want to lose weight by torturing their taste buds with bland products and in serving sizes that would make bulimics wonder if it’s necessary to purge.

Yes, I did lose weight when I did the Special K Diet and I looked better wearing my hip-hugger jeans and showing a little male whale tail, but eating breakfast cereal every day got old quicker than me using the phrase “cool beans” to replace every positive adjective I used in daily conversation.

The Special K Red Berries Waffles are slightly healthier than regular Kellogg’s Eggo Waffles. These almost gothy-white waffles have over 50 percent less fat and 20 percent less calories, but also have 66 percent more sugar than their regular Eggo counterparts.

However, many of these differences are very small when you look at the actual numbers and not at percentages. For example, the Special K waffles have only 20 less calories, which is easy to burn with either a few push-ups or with a vial of cocaine taped to my back, running shoes, and a sober Lindsay Lohan chasing after me.

These waffles are also full of vitamins and minerals and claims it’s a good source of calcium. However, it provides only 6 percent of your daily recommend allowance of calcium per waffle, which doesn’t sound like a good source to me, unless you love waffles as much as I love the TV show Ninja Warrior and Lynne Spears’ daughters love making babies.

The red berries, which according to the ingredients list are strawberries, were noticeable when I ate one naked — the waffle, not me — but was pretty much non-existent after I poured some Canadian Maple Syrup on top — the waffle, not me. But then again, I do pour enough syrup to make those who use excessive amounts of alcohol to drown their sorrows say, “Damn, that’s a little too much there, buddy!”

All that maple syrup probably negated the slight health advantages the Special K Red Berries Waffles have over regular Eggo waffles, but it made it taste much better. Without the syrup, I felt it was not bad for diet frozen waffles, but who eats waffles without some kind of topping? That’s like Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Extra, and TMZ not showing any shots with celebrity cleavage.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 waffle – 80 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 440 milligrams of sodium, 70 milligrams of potassium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 25 grams of other carbohydrates, 4 grams of protein, and vitamins and minerals.)

Item: Kellogg’s Special K Red Berries Waffles
Price: $2.75 (on sale)
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Not as bland as regular Special K cereal. Tastes good with syrup. Ninja Warrior.
Cons: Not much healthier than regular Eggo waffles. Less than one gram of dietary fiber. More sugar than regular Eggo waffles. Amy Winehouse reproducing. Excessive use of “cool beans.” Male whale tail.