REVIEW: Limited Edition Strawberry Nut M&M’s

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One of 2016’s biggest snack breakthroughs was the expansion of the Peanut M&M’s line. America voted between three new flavors, with Coffee Nut coming away the victor.

Coffee Nut got my vote, but really enjoyed Honey Nut, and even found Chili Nut to be a decent and novel idea. Coffee Nut has now become a candy rack mainstay, and it looks like Mars isn’t stopping there. Say hello to Strawberry Nut M&M’s.

I found it at my local Rite Aid. I was in there with intentions of buying a greeting card, which is the most tedious shopping experience known to man, so finding a new Peanut M&M’s flavor was a very pleasant surprise.

The store sold only a “Share Size” bag, which reminded me of my crippling loneliness. Hello darkness, my old friend.

I asked the first woman I saw if she would like to split the bag with me and she proceeded to mace me.

Once the sting wore off, I tore the glossy paper bag open and met a waft of that familiar stale, almost peppery chocolate scent you always get from M&M’s. This time, however, there was a nice underlying strawberry smell.

I’m always fascinated by the color selection when a new M&M’s flavor comes out. With Strawberry Nut you get red for the outside of the strawberry, pink for the inside, and green for the stem. Way to sneak in there, Green. I’m not sure anyone would have felt bad if the stem and leaf of the strawberry weren’t represented in color form, but who knows, people complain about everything these days – present company included. On to the taste!

I’m torn of what I thought of the strawberry flavor here. On one hand, it wasn’t very powerful, so while tossing back a few at a time, it started to taste like I was eating normal Peanut M&M’s. On the other hand, if they did go overboard with the strawberry, it would have been way too sweet and artificial tasting. I guess I’ll never know. I found the strawberry to be quite subtle. It was noticeable, but don’t expect too much.

I did some surgery on a piece with my teeth to isolate the chocolate because I thought the shell and peanut were masking the strawberry flavor, but even that wasn’t all that strawberry-ey(?).

Still, the flavor was nice. That’s the best I can tell ya. If these were in the running last year, I would have ranked them 3rd, just ahead of Chili Nut. I probably wanted more strawberry, but I love Peanut M&M’s, so it’s hard to complain when something tastes like slightly different Peanut M&M’s.

So, while these weren’t a grand slam, I commend the fine people at Mars. I appreciate them branching out the peanut line, as Peanut M&M’s are FAR superior than regular ones. Instead of giving us twenty regular M&M’s flavors a year, keep pushing this peanut line.

It’s also great to see Mars dive more and more into the fruit world. I know they made Cherry M&M’s, so here’s hoping Cherry Nut isn’t too far off. As a lover of those chocolate oranges, I’d be all for an Orange Nut. (don’t say “go nuts,” don’t say “go nuts.”) Go Bananas!

Oh, Banana Nut!

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 pack (46 g) – 240 calories, 110 calories from fat, 13 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 25 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 24 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $1.99
Size: 3.27 oz. bag
Purchased at: Rite Aid
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: The more Peanut M&M’s the better. Strawberry isn’t crazy powerful, but it’s there. M&M fruit flavors. A potential sign of more flavors to come? Gimmie Banana Nut!
Cons: I probably would have picked these third in the new flavor contest. No one to share your Share Size bag with. Limited Edition. Greeting cards are awful. Macing is no laughing matter.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Oat of this Swirled Ice Cream

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Ben & Jerry's Oat of this Swirled Ice Cream

Many people know Ben & Jerry’s for their clever flavor names. Take a commonly used phrase, change a word or syllable into an ingredient’s name, and BAM, a new ice cream flavor name is born.

Empower MINT.

Clusterfluff.

Cake My Day.

Americone Dream.

Karamel Sutra Core.

Oh, I could spend all day listing them and confusing my computer’s spell check.

But the brand has done it again with Oats of this Swirled Ice Cream. So is this ice cream out of this world? Let’s find oat.

The flavor features buttery brown sugar ice cream with fudge flakes and oatmeal cinnamon cookie swirls.

Ben & Jerry's Oat of this Swirled Ice Cream Top

The ice cream base has a mild buttery flavor, but it was hard to taste the butteriness by itself because it seemed like cinnamon permeated through the ice cream. That reads like a complaint, but I assure you it’s not. Cinnamon and butter is a combination I love seeing together, like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I would buy the ice cream base without anything else, if Ben & Jerry’s sold it.

While the ice cream itself is great, what makes this flavor wonderful is the oatmeal cinnamon cookie swirls. It has a fine gritty texture that’s a pleasant contrast to the creamy ice cream. However, its flavor makes me think more of a snickerdoodle than an oatmeal cinnamon cookie. Again, that reads like a complaint, but I assure you it’s not because I love this swirl. But if you can taste the oats, let me know because I don’t taste or see them.

Of course, seeing oats is a good thing and a bad thing. I don’t want to see the oats because that’ll mean dealing with the chewy texture of the oats, but at the same time seeing them will help justify in my mind that maybe I’m getting some benefit from eating ice cream with half my daily saturated fat in one serving.

As for the fudge flakes, their snap added a third texture to the ice cream and there were a lot of them. When I got a spoonful with the buttery ice cream base, cinnamon swirl, and the fudge, I thought it tasted more like a spiceless Mexican hot chocolate than any cookie. Once again, that reads like a complaint, but I assure you it’s not because this pint is wonderful and really hard to put down.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – 310 calories, 180 calories from fat, 20 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 70 milligrams of cholesterol, 110 milligrams of sodium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 28 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Ice cream base and swirl taste more like a snickerdoodle than cinnamon oatmeal cookie. All three parts taste more like a spiceless Mexican hot chocolate. Clever name. Hard flavor to put down.
Cons: Don’t get the oats. Doesn’t bring an cinnamon oatmeal cookie to mind. Having to teach my computer’s spell check Ben & Jerry’s flavor names.

REVIEW: Hostess Limited Edition Shamrock CupCakes

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I don’t eat green treats until after Valentine’s Day. But come February 15, I’m all about everything mint, pistachio, apple, lime, and even avocado.

(Seriously, mint is my favorite flavor, but why does “shamrock” have to mean mint? Why don’t other green flavors get to shine during March? Once I was talking about this with a college roommate, and he said, “Lime isn’t a St. Patrick’s Day flavor!” When I asked him to explain why mint was more relevant, he said that limes make him think of tropical places, whereas mint makes him think of…the Northern Hemisphere. I could tell he was just making things up at that point.)

On February 1, when I saw these Limited Edition Hostess Shamrock CupCakes, I had to have them, especially since they were the only box on the shelf, and especially since St. Patrick’s Day goodies are much rarer than their spooky, jolly, amorous, and hippity-hoppity cousins. I tucked them away until February 15 in my special drawer where the out-of-season treats wait their turn.

I love how pretty these are: the familiar white squiggle on top, and this time it’s on a lovely chartreuse, with a beautiful filling to match!

I’m glad these are actually a unique flavor, not just a unique color. Only the filling has a mint flavor, as far as I can tell, and it’s subtle. You can tell it’s there, but it takes a backseat to the chocolate cake.

That might be good if you don’t like mint, but if you don’t like it, you probably wouldn’t buy these anyway. Toothpaste-strong wouldn’t be good either, but I would have liked a mintier kick. The cake is just what you’d expect from a Hostess CupCake, soft but a little dense. The frosting is a waxy, flavorless substance.

Hostess products are hit and miss for me. I love the Pumpkin Spice CupCakes and the oft-maligned Sno Balls, but other products disappoint. They are so cute that I forget that they don’t always taste as good as they look.

So it is with this St. Paddy’s Day version of CupCakes. It’s a nice variation on the standard chocolate CupCake, but unlike the stereotypical March kite-flying weather, it won’t blow you away.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cake – 160 calories, 50 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 220 milligrams of sodium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 19 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein..)

Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 12.7 oz. box/8 cakes
Purchased at: Smith’s Marketplace (Kroger)
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Tastes like a standard CupCake with a bit of mint. Seasonal flavors. Lovely green.
Cons: Tastes like a standard CupCake. Mint is subtle. Waxy “frosting.” Bad puns in closing paragraphs. Why does it have to be mint for March, instead of other green flavors?

REVIEW: Hostess Chocolate Cake Twinkies

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From the dawn of prepackaged snack good creation, there have been clear lines of evolutionary development. Following the progenitor of all these treats, the Hostess Cupcake created in 1919, diverged the Ho-Ho (1920), Suzy-Q’s (1961), and finally the Ding Dong (1967).

But all of these products pale in comparison to the Twinkie. Engineered in 1930, it not only survived a flavor change in World War II, but also has evolved into one of the most nuanced and copied bakery items in history. And now it’s getting a new modification: chocolate cake.

To be sure, this is not the first time chocolate and Twinkie have tangoed together. The elusive Chocodile beguiled East Coast junk food addicts for years before a 2014 national re-release, while chocolate cream-injected Twinkies make a yearly appearance around Halloween (presumably because Hostess thinks rhyming is a good way to market empty calories).

But never before have we seen this.

The first question I had was “Why?” The second question I had was “Why not?” The third question I had was “Do you know where the toilet paper aisle is?” because I was in an unfamiliar Walmart running errands.

Having conquered my weekly duties, I made sure to rewards myself with the new Chocolate Cake Twinkies. I was unimpressed; shorter and denser than the standard Twinkie, the Chocolate Cake Twinkies had a moist devil’s food crumb that is neither overwhelmingly chocolaty nor excessively dull. It is, as you’d expect from anything Hostess makes, super sweet, so much so that the chocolate becomes a cocoa sidekick to the insane rush of sugar.

While the Twinkies tasted a lot like a chocolate Zinger sans frosting (or every other Hostess chocolate baked good, for that matter) I did find myself missing the chocolate “shell” provided by products like Ho-Hos.

I thought the chocolate might at least make the cream stand out, but this was not the case. If anything, it made my taste buds have less appreciation for the cream, which instead of balancing a rich chocolate sponge cake, mostly just tasted whipped marshmallow cream.

If there’s ever been a less satiating display of chocolate cake outside of this scene in Matilda, this is it. It’s not that the chocolate Twinkies suck, but rather that the essence of a Twinkie has always been its light, chiffon-flavored sponge cake filling. It’s what makes people eat them in droves, reference them in legal discourse, and, my personal favorite, put them on pizza. Without the light vanilla cake, the chocolate Twinkie just becomes a Zinger without the frosting, or, worse yet, Ho Hos without its shell.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cakes (77g) – 260 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 350 milligrams of sodium, 42 grams of carbohydrates, 1 grams of fiber, 29 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein..)

Purchased Price: $1.00
Size: 2.7 oz./2-pack
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 3 out of 10
Pros: Smells like Cocoa Krispies. Moist cake element. Not as bad for you as eating an entire chocolate cake.
Cons: More of a cocoa than chocolate flavor. Squishy, dense cake texture. No balance with cream element. Tastes exactly like every other Hostess chocolate baked good except without the frosting or shell.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Urban Bourbon Ice Cream

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Despite having bourbon in its name, there’s no alcohol in Ben & Jerry’s Urban Bourbon Ice Cream. That’s a good thing because if it did and parents unknowingly fed their children the ice cream, I imagine some of the kids will become emotional drunks and start shouting things like “Why don’t you love me, dad?” or “I love you, Dora the Explorer!”

Some of you might think not having alcohol in Urban Bourbon takes the fun out of the flavor, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. The new Ben & Jerry’s concoction has burnt caramel ice cream with almonds, fudge flakes, and bourbon caramel swirls.

See. Fun.

The bourbon caramel swirl was the best part of the pint and I enjoyed it so much that, even though I don’t drink, I’d drink it if it had alcohol. Now I’m not writing this to make me sound sophisticated, but I thought the bourbon had a nice woodsy flavor and it paired marvelously with the gooey caramel. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must tend to my collection of exotic birds.

Speaking of great pairings, the swirl goes well with the burnt caramel ice cream. Although, I have to admit I’m not sure I taste the ice cream’s burntness. Instead, it had a normal caramel flavor that was almost too mild. Although that’s good because if it had a strong caramel flavor, it combined with the caramel in the swirl would’ve overwhelmed the bourbon flavor.

The almond slivers added nothing flavor-wise. They had a coconut-like texture, which was kind of a turnoff for me. But, fortunately, my pint didn’t have a lot of them. However, there were A LOT of fudge flakes. Perhaps too many. At first, they were fine. But at a point I felt they got between me and my favorite ingredient. In the end, I shoving them to the side just so I could be alone with the not-burnt caramel ice cream and swirl.

While I mostly enjoyed the ice cream, I could understand how the bourbon caramel swirl’s slight astringent taste might turn off some. If that happens, I’ll gladly take yours from you because my pint didn’t have enough of them. This made me as angry as a bar patron who got cut off by the bartender because they’re so drunk that they’re yelling things like “Why don’t you love me, dad?”

Of course, your pints may vary. But if it doesn’t, feel free to yell, “Why don’t you love me, Ben & Jerry’s?”

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – 300 calories, 150 calories from fat, 17 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 27 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: The bourbon caramel swirl. The combination of burnt caramel ice cream and bourbon caramel swirl. The mild flavor of the ice cream not getting in the way of the swirl. Using “woodsy” in a review. Dora the Explorer.
Cons: Don’t taste the burnt part of the burnt caramel ice cream. My pint didn’t have a lot of the swirl (your pint may vary). Perhaps too many fudge flakes in my pint. Children accidentally consuming alcohol. Super loud super drunks.

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