As I’m sure that most of my fellow southerners understand, the arrival of May means the start of the hot, humid weather that’s going to be around for the rest of the summer. Most people give up trying to endure the heat and crank up the air conditioner at this point, but I normally try to stick it out until the official start of summer before turning mine on.
So, considering that my house is 87 degrees right now, there’s no way I’m going to turn my oven on to bake anything. Luckily, the grocery store has a wide enough variety of ready-to-eat cookies that I can enjoy a different treat every night of the week without ever having to heat up my kitchen!
Keebler’s Fudge Stripes have been a favorite of mine ever since I was a kid, and I love things that pair chocolate and caramel together, so the idea behind Keebler’s new Special Batch Chocolate Caramel Fudge Stripes sounded awesome to me when I spotted them while I strolled around Walmart, taking in the breeze from their industrial air conditioners.
Once I got them home and actually opened up the bag to grab a handful, though, my expectations started tank fast. First off, they smelled super weird. It’s kind of hard to describe, but they have this buttery, artificial aroma to them that reminds me of microwave kettle corn.
That’s probably due to the caramel fudge coating on them, which I’d say took up about 80 percent of the chocolate shortbread cookie’s surface area. Setting that aside, seeing the abundance of caramel fudge on these cookies made me excited that I was going to get some big caramel flavor from Ernie’s newest creation!
But it was a super let-down. Even though these have a distinct appearance and aroma when compared to the original ones, they taste about the same. The caramel coating got completely lost somehow, and the shortbread cookies only had the very lightest hints of cocoa when I was really searching for it.
That’s a real shame! Chocolate and caramel done right should complement one another like peanut butter and jelly.
In retrospect, these cookies might have tasted better if Keebler had used caramel-flavored shortbread and stuck to dipping it into their standard fudge coating. Something about trying to make the fudge taste like caramel makes the cookie’s entire flavor profile not work.
In any case, if the Keebler elves want to live up to their promise of only making cookies and crackers that are uncommonly good, this is a batch of cookies that needs to head back to the Fac-Tree for some more work.
(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 6 grams of fat, 60 calories from fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 11 grams of total sugars, 11 grams of added sugars, 1 gram of protein.)
Purchased Price: $2.48
Size: 11.5 oz.
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Not having to heat up my oven. Sounded like a great idea on the package. They don’t actually taste bad on their own.
Cons: Smell like microwave kettlecorn. No caramel or chocolate taste. They taste like a regular Fudge Stripes cookie. Not being uncommonly good.
