Tag: Nabisco

If you find yourself standing in the cookie aisle because someone broke your heart, you’re stressed out, or “me want cookie” is thumping in your head with an EDM beat, you’re going to be faced with a wall of cookie choices.

Let me help you by figuring out if Double Chocolate or Oatmeal Chips Ahoy Thins will temporarily fill that hole in your heart, bring you down from pulling out your hair, or get the Cookie Monster voice loop out of your head.

As you probably know Nabisco offers Oatmeal Chewy Chips Ahoy and Choco Chunky Chips Ahoy, which appear to be the inspiration for these new thin cookies. To be honest, I haven’t had the oatmeal ones in years. In fact, it’s been such a long time that I forgot they have chocolate chips and not raisins (I know it’s CHIPS Ahoy and not RAISINS Ahoy).

As I mentioned in my Chips Ahoy Thins review, I love their texture, and both new varieties have that distinctive crispiness. But while the Original Chips Ahoy Thins are uniform in shape and size, these new flavors aren’t. I don’t know if it’s a production error, but in the packages I purchased half are circular and the other half are oval.

The Double Chocolate had a pleasing deep chocolate flavor because of the one-two chocolatey punch of the chips and cookie. While I loved the original Chips Ahoy Thins, I have to say the amped up flavor of these made my taste buds prefer them slightly more. They’re so tasty that it’s been hard trying to limit myself to a single serving size of four cookies in one sitting. Actually, I’ve failed almost every time.

As for the Oatmeal flavor, they’re good, but not as enjoyable as the Double Chocolate (or any of the other Chips Ahoy Thins varieties). But you probably knew that because I’m going to say 95-98 percent of you will agree with the following: Chocolate chip cookies > oatmeal cookies.

Sure, they have rolled oats in them and there’s raisin paste. Who doesn’t love raisin paste? But the ground up oats kind of get in the way of the chocolate and the raisin paste doesn’t raise the flavor of the cookie. So, basically, if you’re dealing with crap, these are not the cookies to help you cope.

So after reading this review, if you still find yourself in front of a wall of cookies at the store, pull out the Double Chocolate Chips Ahoy Thins, take a deep breath, and say to yourself either, “you deserve someone better,” “everything is going to be all right,” or “STFU, Cookie Monster!”

(Nutrition Facts – 4 cookies – Double Chocolate – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 55 milligrams of sodium, 60 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein. Oatmeal – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 65 milligrams of sodium, 45 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Purchased Price: $3.00 each
Size: 7 oz. package
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Double Chocolate)
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Oatmeal)
Pros: Double Chocolate is wonderful and I’m having a hard time stuffing my mouth with them! Love the crispiness of them. Double Chocolate ones might help you if you dealing with crap. Hearing Cookie Monster say “me want cookie” a few times.
Cons: Just thinner versions of regular Chips Ahoy varieties. Oats get in the way of the chocolate. Raisin paste doesn’t raise the flavor of the cookie. Stress. Breaking up. Hearing Cookie Monster say “me want cookie” over and over for several minutes.

The judge pounds his gavel: “I hereby call this court to order. Today we’ll handle the case of Dan vs. Nabisco. The prosecutor may present his case.”

I’ve decided to represent myself. No lawyer would understand: “Your honor, I’m suing Nabisco’s new Chewy Cinnamon Donut Chips Ahoy! cookies for their misleading packaging design.”

The judge looks at me, as I rustle through my bag and spew crumbs onto the courtroom floor: “If you’re suing them, why are you still eating the accused cookies?”

I roar to life, passionately spraying another projectile sandstorm of sugary cinnamon crumbs across the room: “Because I expected so much more!

“Ladies, gentlemen, and anthropomorphized snack food mascots of the court, I love these Cinnamon Donut Chips Ahoy! cookies. In fact, I love them so much that they’re probably the best limited edition cookies I’ve tasted in years. But it’s the ones we love the most that end up hurting us.

“I present Exhibit A: a package of these backstabbing cookies. Aside from the massive cinnamon donut on the front — which doesn’t actually appear inside — the primary offenders here are the ‘Limited Edition’ leaves. You see, my mind has been conditioned by Mrs. Buttersworth to equate orange and yellow leaves with maple syrup flavoring.

“So imagine my shock and disgust when these Cinnamon Donut cookies contained no maple flavoring whatsoever. All they had was a whole lot of deliciously doughy, buttery, and bakery-fresh donut flavor!

“But the lies don’t stop there. These disks roped me in with an authentically decadent cider mill aroma, but they don’t even look like real cider donuts! Where are the buxom, golden fried curves? Where’s the coyly puckered hole in the middle?

“They’re both gone and replaced by a granular, hyper-chewy texture that melts in my mouth like half-baked pastry dough. And don’t get me wrong, your honor, these cookies taste like cider donut dough, too. The buttered and browned base is both sugary and eggy, with sweet bursts of cake flour.

“But the apple and cinnamon donut-flavored chips suckered me in for the long con, trying to distract me from Nabisco’s shamelessly maple-free fraud. See, these creamy chips are like coagulated cones of cream cheese glaze. They explode with flavor like a Cinnabon center stuffed with applesauce!

“Their inconsistency betrays them, though. These cookie con men will sometimes lose their subtle apple taste, and sometimes they’ll taste like waxy, floral ‘Fall Harvest’ scented candles from Bath & Body Works. Heck, a couple times I even swore they tasted like pumpkin cheesecake.

“So yes, your honor, Cinnamon Donut Chips Ahoy! are great limited edition snack cookies. They have all the goodness of raw sugar cookie dough without the salmonella, and all the goodness of a cider mill without the handsy haunted house workers.

“However, it’s tough to justify buying them over real apple cider donuts, unless you’re a maple-loving masochist or the type of person who can’t finish a dozen donuts without them going stale. Because at the end of the day, these Cinnamon Donut Chips Ahoy! aren’t donuts. They’re merely cookies wearing donut Halloween costumes.

“And that, your honor, is both their gift and their true crime.”

The judge, clearly affected by my plight, wipes away a single tear: “I declare Cinnamon Donut Chips Ahoy! cookies guilty, for covering up their felony of syrup deception behind a thick alibi of deliciousness. How would the defendant like to see them executed?”

I pull out my thermos and pour a hot cup of coffee. I’ve already known the answer to that question for days.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 130 calories, 50 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 85 milligrams of sodium, 15 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and less than 1 gram of protein..)

Purchased Price: $2.49
Size: 9.5 oz package
Purchased at: Meijer
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Authentic cinnamon donut pantomime. An edible trip to the cider mill in late summer. The first ever complimentary use of the word “coagulated.” Coming soon from The Impulsive Buy: 12 Angry Kool-Aid Men!
Cons: Not maple-flavored. Playing for second place against real donuts.. Unexpected Yankee Candle flavor outbursts. Sobbing and bobbing for more apple flavor. A criminal lack of corrugated, scrunched-up donut holes.

Whether they’re about a tree falling in the forest or a bear dropping logs in the woods, there are plenty of age-old questions to ponder. One of my favorites is: “What do holiday cookies do once Christmas is over?”

Some answers are obvious: speculoos fly home to visit their Dutch families, gingerbread men work as security guards at the Keebler Elves’ Hollow Tree, and butter cookies are melted down into a fine paste to make mannequins for Madame Tussauds.

But the secret life of snickerdoodles (which sounds like it could be the name of Pixar’s next movie) has long been a mystery -— until now. Now we know that during the summertime, snickerdoodles everywhere hit the treadmill to become Cinnamon Sugar Chips Ahoy! Thins.

During the winter, snickerdoodles need to be thick in order to supply Santa with enough energy to travel 650 miles per second and reach every home in one night. But now that it’s cookie bikini season, snickerdoodles have to stay competitive with every other trendy treat.

I mean, have you seen Oreo’s midriff in that dark brown two-piece?

Each Cinnamon Sugar Chips Ahoy! Thin is thin. And I don’t mean the “someone pushed the spatula down a little too hard” kind of thin. This is the “touched by an old gypsy woman from a Stephen King novel” kind of thin.

The Thins have the girth of 2-3 stacked dimes, but they’re far from sterling when it comes to fragility. They’ll shatter into bits the moment you so much as think an unflattering thought about their mother, so don’t pack these as a snack before a half marathon or Slipknot concert. This crumbliness also gives them a mildly crisp, yet disappointingly light “crunch.” It’s like eating that last, awkwardly browned cookie in a batch.

You know, the one that was just barely large enough to justify baking instead of gobbling down the raw, doughy evidence?

The flavor is a two-part deal. The Chips Ahoy! Thins’ plain sections are half-sweet, half-bland and sandy, as if they were the result of some deluded 8-year old’s entrepreneurial quest to invent a cookie you can make while relaxing on a hot beach.

Thankfully, the overall size and dense chip ratio of these one-bite wonders means that there’ll rarely be a nibble without one or more creamy cinnamon baking chips. The slightly buttery, mildly milky, and faintly spicy chips smack of cinnamon sugar goodness, and their icing-esque nature is what makes these Cinnamon Sugar Chips Ahoy! Thins taste like abridged snickerdoodles.

But the problem with these crumbly Thins is that they’re all payoff and no buildup. The sugary cinnamon punch strikes fast and is vaporized into oblivion just as quickly—don’t expect any layers of complex flavor that unravel as you chew. It’s like a rollercoaster that instantly drop you 100 feet before booting you off the ride. Your only choice is to get back in line, or in this case: clear another line of cookies.

Despite my complaints of fleeting ecstasy, I think Cinnamon Sugar Chips Ahoy! Thins are a step in the right direction for condensed cookies. They use their size to their advantage; if this gimmick were tried in full-sized Chips Ahoy! cookies, the goodness of the chips would get lost in a desert of boring dough.

Plus, their airy crispness makes them taste exactly like the imaginary “Snickerdoodle Toast Crunch” cereal I always put on my Christmas list. One of these days, General Mills Claus will inevitably deliver, but in the meantime…

Ho ho ho.

(Nutrition Facts – 4 cookies – 150 calories, 7 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 60 milligrams of sodium, 20 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Purchased Price: $2.49
Size: 7 oz.
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: The surprisingly creamy wallop of microcosmic snickerdoodle chips. Gloriously milk-soaked cinnamon sugar shards. Cookie swimsuit competitions. Posing with a butter cookie paste replica of Bill Murray.
Cons: Rare nibbles of Saharan cookie dryness. The Chips Ahoy! equivalent of a Top Thrill Dragster ride. Accidentally eating thirty 30¢-thick cookies. The unlikelihood of Gingerbread Toast Crunch. Sandy selling sandy Sandies by the seashore.