Margaret, Author at The Impulsive Buy

REVIEW: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

April 23, 2013August 14, 2023 Margaret 12 Comments

As with any decade, the 90s brought along waves of immense enthusiasm for a variety of cultural phenomena. Shoulder pads. Slap bracelets. Oat bran. I think the yo-yo came back for a brief stint in 1999. Somewhere along the way, the enthusiasm for such trends dwindled.

So it goes with the grocery store chocolate chip cookie. While not a distinctly 90s product, they, much like the nation’s love for shoulder-specific garments, seem to have fallen humbly out of the marketing spotlight, and yet I know that there are those among us who love the cheap, chewy, slightly preserved taste of a pre-packaged cookie. This is nothing to be ashamed of, dear reader, for, indeed, they are cookies. If you munch them, are they not sugary? If you chew them, are they not filled with bits of goodness?

Such were my thoughts when I happened upon the Chewy Chips Ahoy! Chocolate Made With Reese’s.

The promise of greatness.

I read somewhere that, even if we tried, it would impossible to clone a dinosaur (note to self: must re-think way to attain a pet dinosaur). While they’re not related to a triceratops, I’m convinced the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, similarly, cannot be replicated. While many companies try, the proportions of a Reese’s are exact, the peanut butter ample, and the fudgy, slightly oily chocolate give the needed contrast to the gritty, dry peanut butter. It is, in my book, what every peanut butter cup is measured up against, so the fact that Mr. Chips Ahoy (would he be a pirate?) could garner some support from The Mr. Reese definitely puts these cookies in an advantageous position. At the same time, it also raises my level of expectations.

And these do not disappoint. The chocolate and peanut butter combination is spot-on. There are milk chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and Reese’s chunks/bits all around. You get at least one in every bite. The chocolate chips are of a mild, semisweet variety while the peanut butter chips are nutty, creamy, and just sugary enough. Every now and again, a chunk of meteor-like Reese’s shows up to the party. These chunks lean more to the edge of “broken up Reese’s bits” than they do “whole Reese’s cups,” but, with at least two to three solid chunks in every cookie, I can roll with that.

If there’s anything I think Mr. Chips Ahoy could work on, it’d be his cookie base. The texture works, leaning more towards “cakey” than “chewy,” and, if I’m being nit-picky, the taste of the chocolate base is pretty weak, but, let’s be honest: that’s nothing too out-of-the-ordinary for a chocolate Chips Ahoy. These cookies are all about the chips. It even says it in the name.

Certainly, there are many prospects to consider when having an afternoon snack. Is it filling? Does it have enough protein? Is it enhanced with a fiber extracts and Omega-3 liquigels of unknown origin? Well (thankfully), these cookies have none of that. What they do have is a good portion size. Not gigantomundo. Not itty-bitty. And, not to go all “Goldilocks” on ya, but they’re just enough to make a serving size worth 2 cookies, which is all I really need, although I could stuff them all at once if I had the hankerin’.

Well, Nabisco, ya did good. I could eat these on a plane, in a car, on a bus, or in a train. The fudgy chips, cakey cookie, and dry grit of the roasted peanut butter in the Reese’s makes for an all-sensors-loaded experience. I fear the English language has yet to discover the word for the joy this combination brings, but, if I were to invent one, it would likely smoosh together an amalgam of interjections, onomatopoeias, and exclamation marks. Keep making more good cookies like this, Mr. Ahoy. I’ll keep buying.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 100 milligrams of potassium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 11 grams of sugars, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Purchased Price: $4.59
Size: 9.5 oz.
Purchased at: Met Foods
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Nutty, chocolate goodness. Lots of peanut butter chips. Lots of semisweet chocolate chips. Reese’s chunks. Nice size. Onomatopoeias. 90s trends.
Cons: Not the best chocolate cookie base. Could have more Reese’s. Lack of vocabulary to describe yumminess. The inability to have a pet dinosaur. Shoulder pads.

REVIEW: Burger King Donut Holes

April 19, 2013August 25, 2023 Margaret 5 Comments

I’ve developed a few personal rules about breakfast:

Don’t mix orange juice with coffee.

Don’t put grapefruit in the omelette.

Don’t put broccoli in the chocolate ice cream.

If you want a donut, get one.

The last of these, while the seemingly simplest of the bunch, is not always easy. When the craving for a rotund chunk of fried dough strikes, there’s no stopping it, but, in a city where the only fresh-made Krispy Kreme is in an underground cement “garden” and the price of artisan donuts could empty the bank, it’s easy to find yourself stranded in lower Manhattan without a reasonably priced fried dough option in sight…but what’s this?! Burger King offering me instant puffs of fried dough?

It proposed such unknown…and yet such happiness. And are we to deny ourselves potential happiness for fear of the unknown? Nay, dear readers! We are not chicken-bellied fools! We boldly go forth and pursue happiness!

It may be a Whopper box, but you can’t fool me!

You donuts and your secret identities.

I take a bite and, ahhh, yes, warm donut holes. Or rather, doughy, cube-like shapes. Nothing scary at all. At the same time, nothing too spectacular. On first bite, the dough is warm and a bit chewy, the glaze sticky and sugary. This is a yeast dough, to be sure, somewhat reminiscent of the cross between a grocery store donut and a brioche roll.

However, this joyous experience is time-sensitive. Give these suckers two minutes and the dough takes on taste and texture of a frozen Pillsbury dinner roll that’s been put in the microwave a few seconds. The eating process gets to be a bit of a calisthenic session for the jaw.

The glaze was simple enough, tasting mostly of sugar, sugar, and sugar, a one-note satisfaction to which I’m especially keen on, although I wouldn’t have argued if a little vanilla or cinnamon showed up in there. Both in the warm and cool phases, the glaze remained sticky. I was hoping this sugary patina may dry and crackle along the edges like a Krispy Kreme, but it remained shiny and thin as the wax on a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa at a car show.

One of the more frustrating qualities of fast food restaurants is the 10:30 breakfast shutdown. Oh, the days that have passed where my 4:30 p.m. sausage biscuit craving is left unfulfilled! Luckily, BK put these donut holes on their all-day menu, so, if the craving hits, you can trust BK will be there with your yeast rolls and sugar.

But, overall, I don’t think I’m up to buying these again. Maybe it was the weather or the lunch rush, but the dry dough and thin glaze didn’t fill the empty donut pocket in my soul. If you really, really need a glazed fix or enjoy microwaved dough, these are an acceptable stand-in, but I would recommend the grocery store Krispy Kreme first.

(Nutrition Facts – 5 donut holes – 280 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of potassium, 40 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 18 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein.)

Other Burger King Donut Holes reviews:
Brand Eating
Man Reviews Food
Serious Eats

Item: Burger King Donut Holes
Purchased Price: $1.40
Size: 5 donut holes
Purchased at: Burger King
Rating: 3 out of 10
Pros: Available any time of day. Sweet glaze. A good idea. Nice portion.
Cons: Dry. Tastes of microwaved dinner roll. Tough to chew. Weak glaze. Grapefruit in an omelette. Low Krispy Kremes population in Manhattan

REVIEW: Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Honey Caramel Greek Frozen Yogurt

March 29, 2013February 16, 2023 Margaret 3 Comments

There are so many things I don’t know. Like where Atlantis went. Or why they cancelled Legends of the Hidden Temple. Or why so many words starting with “x” sound like they should start with “z.”

It is in the fog of such mental eclipses that I become aware that I need some brain food to clear my mind. Fortunately, the folks at Ben and Jerry’s have taken heed to the call for quality brain food by expanding their line of Greek Frozen yogurt. Thus, with four bucks and a clean spoon, I set out on my Odyssey to the fluorescent depths of the freezer section, where I stared with big, lugubrious eyes at the array of compassionate new pints. Luckily, unlike Homer’s version, this Odyssey did not end in the violent murders of dozens of male courters. On the contrary: it ended in caramel. Caramel and vanilla.

Ah, yes, sitting there like freshly fallen snow.

And that’s the money shot, people: vanilla Greek frozen yogurt with a honey caramel swirl.

I go for the base first and it holds a vanilla yogurt tang, with the vanilla coming in as the forerunner in flavor. I’m happy to discover that any metallic artificial vanilla flavorings have been sent to the dry cleaners and then destroyed by said metaphorical dry cleaning machine. At the same time, the vanilla here comes from extract and, well, it’s just ho-hum. It’s still pretty good, but, if my old friend vanilla bean were to show up, he would be welcome.

Probiotics have always made me nervous. They sound like mutant slugs that emerged from the dank sewers and are now dragging their limp bodies through the city streets, leaving a trail of sludge behind. Where did these little bacteria come from? Where are they on the evolution scale? What do they want with my dairy products??

Well, at this moment, I don’t care as 1) I see no traces of mutant slugs in this pint and 2) I’m about 87 percent positive that those little microscopic organisms are responsible for this ever-so-slight tang that comes at the end of all the layers of sweetness in this yogurt, giving it a taste that is not unlike cannoli filling. In fact, if you put this in an ice cream cone, it’s arguable that you’ve got a pretty good 2-second cannoli-like treat in your ravenous paws.

As with most frozen yogurts, this pint gets soft quicker than the time it takes for a jackrabbit to chase down an armadillo in a canoe rowing down the Mississippi River, which, for those who may not have seen this sight [yet], would be really, really fast. I dig this consistency. Just a slight 5-10 minute defrost allows the yogurt to become as fluffy as those 125-dollar pillows. Only this is in a tub. And not made of cotton. And it tastes good, so nevermind. It’s nothing like pillows.

Desserts with caramel tend to hold the risk of being overpowered by caramel’s strong sweetness, but this holds a pleasant light caramel flavor without becoming toffee-like or burnt. The caramel itself has a good pull and cuts like butta’, a texture which I came to appreciate as it made it a cinch to scoop lots on one’s spoon. At various points, you may found yourself hitting glorious globs of this honey caramel swirl. If you get a big enough caramel blob, you may receive the unique experience of honey oozing from the caramel’s core. This honey is of the nonaggressive variety, bringing a sugary sweetness without smacking one in the face like a field of pollen.

Looks like something worthy of MoMA.

Ben and Jerry’s is known for taking ice cream alchemy and transfusing it with imagination; pushing the boundaries of what we believe ice cream can be and flipping it on its dairy-filled backside; and for stuffing 473 milliliters of chocolate fish and marshmallow crème into a cardboard cylinder.

This isn’t one of those ice creams.

It is, however, a vessel of agency. This time, they’re letting we [the consumers] stuff our bowls with mix-ins to our own discretion, and, boy howdy, is this hankerin’ for some mix-ins. Perhaps some Oreo cone pieces? Or chocolate covered pretzels? Or Sriracha Potato Chips? I dunno. Go crazy. Watch the walls of this Ice Cream Coliseum crumple at your feet.

In a world of unknowns, this pint’s pretty straightforward. It’s not cutting edge or froo-froo Magoo. It’s just vanilla and honey caramel and doesn’t try to be anything greater. I like it that way. While it doesn’t wow me enough to slide out my chocolate favorites, it’s a pretty good contender if I’m looking for a honey frozen yogurt.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup [99 g] – 190 calories, 45 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 85 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of potassium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 22 grams of sugars, and 6 grams of protein.)

Item: Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Honey Caramel Greek Frozen Yogurt
Purchased Price: $3.99 (on sale)
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Food Emporium
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Simple. Fluffy texture. Caramel everywhere. Nonaggressive honey. Nice balance of tang and sweetness. Good vessel for mix-ins. 2-second cannoli. Doesn’t try to be anything greater than it is. Finding a reason to use the word “lugubrious.” Jackrabbits chasing armadillos.
Cons: Melts dangerously fast. Ho-hum vanilla. No exciting mix-ins. Might be kinda boring to some. Sludge monsters. The canceling of Legends of the Hidden Temple.

REVIEW: Dunkin’ Donuts Irish Creme Donut

March 15, 2013August 30, 2023 Margaret 6 Comments

Well, it’s about time!

How refreshing to find somebody taking a stab at an Irish creme-flavored somethin’-or-other for St. Patty’s Day. Green food coloring? Snooze. Artificial mint extract? Been there, clogged that artery.

But whiskey, creme, and cocoa, all wrapped up in a pillow of cakey dough? Now that’s a breakfast of bold hooligans. Bold hooligans like you and me, so, with the blood of my Irish ancestors pulsing through my wee little veins, I dodged my regular glazed cake and nabbed this fella.

Yes, indeedy, that is my vessel of morning justice. Oval-esque and a bit wonky, it reminds me of Gilly, the pet rock I had as a child. Fortunately, unlike a pet rock, this is edible, coated in sugar, and won’t get lost in a tragic river rafting accident.

Now, to dive in…

The cake, which was fresh from the fryer, is puffy enough, if a little dry and tasteless, but I’m accustomed to that in a Dunkin’ do[ugh]nut. Now, to counteract that, there resides plenty of this beige, Irish-creme-like palm oil goo, which fills about 1/3 of the cake’s interior, but, like the mutagen that created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this goo can be used for creation…or destruction.

They say love blinds a person. If that’s true, someone loves sweetness in the Dunkin’ Donuts testing facilities because, holy bag of potatoes, Batman, the creme’s definitely sweet, which is a good thing in that it adds some sense of flavor, but I fear it also might make my great grandmother rise from her Irish grave and knock me right in the cake-hole fer consumin’ a product that defies all them laws of what Irish creme should be!

“But grandma!” I’d say, “This particular interpretation of Irish creme focuses on the beverage’s sharp condensed milk flavor!” She would then argue that there’s very little dimension to counteract that flavor, like cocoa or espresso or whiskey. On this, she would be right: where’s the whiskey? I demand whiskey in my palm oil!

However, if I put my expectations of Irish creme authenticity aside, the filling tastes okay. Like vanilla pudding and Cool Whip mixed with a hint of coffee medicine from some sort of Kahlúa flavoring. It wants to be bitter, but just can’t help but stick to its sugary ways. A little dip in the chocolate frosting might’ve added some contrast to help this guy stand up to its fellow pudgy rounds.

I really wanted to find myself scrounging for crumbs here, but, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t finish the whole thing. Alas, this one has fallen victim to one-dimension-ness.

“Et tu, Brute?”

(A little ode to the Ides of March there)

Oh, if only it were simple to create a mass-marketed success. Innovators cast the dice, but they can never be absolutely sure about how a product will fall, and this one fell off its rocker somewhere. Is it terrible? Nope. Will I buy it again? Ehhh… I’d rather have a Girl Scout cookie.

However, while not great, I would be sad if the Irish Creme offering left forever to be replaced by some Smo-Joe green-glazed doughnut. It gets props for innovation, and, at the same time, it could use some help in the flavor department. Don’t give up on it, important people at Dunkin’. With a quick dip in a vat of glaze or a reformulation of the filling, this doughnut has potential.

(Nutrition Facts – 260 calories, 135 calories from fat, 15 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 350 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of potassium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 10 grams of sugars, and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Dunkin’ Donuts Irish Creme Donut
Purchased Price: $1.00
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Dunkin’ Donuts
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Sweet. Pudding-like filling. Plenty of filling. Cake is puffy. Not nasty. Innovative. Irish ancestors. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Gilly, my pet rock.
Cons: Too sweet at times. Bland cake. Dry cake. Wimpy powdered sugar dust. Gets boring. Absence of whiskey. The fact that “not nasty” is in the pros. The Ides of March. Being haunted by my great grandmother.

REVIEW: White Chocolate Carrot Cake M&M’s

March 13, 2013August 14, 2023 Margaret 23 Comments

Click here to buy M&M’s White Chocolate Carrot Cake from Amazon

Back in the good ol’ medieval days, when the world used catapults and ate turkey legs the size of canoe paddles, some hungry, conquering genius gathered a bunch of leftovers and root vegetables, shoved them in the oven, and called it a recipe. Thus, the lumpy, bumpy carrot cake was born.

Now, for those yet to be familiarized, a carrot cake is a spice cake that had dashed dreams of being a fruit cake: it’s fluffy cake crammed with all sorts of this-n-that’s (raisins, carrots, maybe some pineapple) and topped with a honking slather of buttercream or cream cheese frosting. Its warm spices have been known to carve a soft spot in the calloused hearts of one-eyed sailors and, when placed before me, it disappears.

Unfortunately, I’m no baker, so when I heard the folks at Mars were serving up that experience in a lentil-shaped white chocolate confection, I sped, tight-knuckled, pedal-to-the-floor, to the nearest Walmart to dig them from their hiding spot in the dusty display case.

These are pudgy ovoids, notably bigger than a regular M&M. If you’ve had the white chocolate limited edition, you have a feel of what we’re dealing with here: they’re a smidge wider in diameter than milk chocolate M&M’s and have a rounder belly.

See? They’re huge.

The colors come in a trio of light orange, green, and beige, which not only stays with the theme of “carrot colors” but also reinforces my inner belief that all good things come in threes, and it’s always nice to have my inner beliefs spontaneously reinforced.

Like its white chocolate cousin, these sweet bits have a thicker shell, adding a crunch before the white chocolate filling, which is soft, sweet, milky, and melts as fast as the memories of those poems I had to recite back in high school (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” [she shudders])

One of the biggest problems I’ve faced in white chocolate M&Ms of the past is that, due to all that sweetness, it’s hard to eat more than a handful without passing out cold on the floor from a belligerent sugar rush to my frontal lobe. I celebrate with such gluttonous joy to find that these are far easier to eat. These start off sweet and, while there are no visible spices, there is a certain cinnamon/nutmeg-ish vibe that comes in the middle to contrast with the white chocolate, encouraging a higher ratio of consumption. They may give me a root canal, but I don’t care. That yoga teacher I took classes from three years ago told me to stay in the present, so I shall enjoy these right now…

And now…

In the end, eating these makes me want to do something good for the world. Like adopt a rescued guinea pig. Or educate elementary school kids about the importance of their credit score. Or pay those library fees I’ve neglected for four years. These are a solid rendition of a seasonal offering: creative enough to be pushing the boundaries, but familiar enough to inspire mouth-shoving tendencies. What’s even more exciting is that Mars took a risk and it paid off. The only downside is that I’m running out of them…and fast.

(Nutrition Facts – 1.5 oz. (about 1/4 cup) – 220 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 40 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of potassium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 28 grams of sugars, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: White Chocolate Carrot Cake M&M’s
Purchased Price: $2.88
Size: 9.9 oz. bag
Purchased at: Walmart*
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Bigger than the average M&M. Smooth melt. Crunchy shell. Spice taste balances white chocolate. Spontaneous reinforcement of inner beliefs. Rescued guinea pigs.
Cons: Never enough in the bag. Limited time. Only available at Walmart. Poobahs. Poems memorized in high school. Disco-ball-related accidents.

*If there’s a miff I have with these, it’s how hard they are to find. They’re available at “select” Walmarts only, which may or may not involve a fill up of your gas tank (a tragedy within itself)

Author: Margaret

REVIEW: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

REVIEW: Burger King Donut Holes

REVIEW: Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Honey Caramel Greek Frozen Yogurt

REVIEW: Dunkin’ Donuts Irish Creme Donut

REVIEW: White Chocolate Carrot Cake M&M’s

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