Tag: Reese’s

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.

For a second, I thought about copying and pasting the regular Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups review we did in 2010 to complete this review, because everything I said in that review would apply to these new Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Doing that would’ve been an extremely lazy and reprehensible thing to do, even though I’ve done it before. Of course, a lazier and reprehensibler thing I could’ve done was make this review consist of nothing but a link to the old review.

But you deserve better than that and these Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups deserve better than that because they’re quite tasty.

Although the packaging says they’re made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, they don’t taste like they were made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The peanut butter center of the iconic candy has such a distinct flavor that it should easily stand out in these cookies, but instead it’s a nondescript peanut butter flavor.

The cookies not only contain mini peanut butter cups, but also peanut butter flavored chips. They even contain something a bit scary called Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Drops, but none of them have that familiar Reese’s peanut butter flavor. While that’s extremely disappointing, the peanut butter in these cookies do complement the chocolate well.

The Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are wonderfully chewy with a good balance of chocolate and peanut butter. Basically, they’re forkin’ delicious. The cookies are on the smallish side, but they’re packed with chocolate chips, peanut butter flavored chips, and tiny peanut butter cups. Actually, that’s not quite correct. While every cookie I pulled out and stuffed into my mouth had peanut butter and chocolate chips, some of them didn’t have any peanut butter cups. However, that really didn’t make them taste different from the others.

Even though they lack the unique flavor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and they’re made using partially hydrogenated oil, it’s hard not to chain eat through a package of these Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Have you ever seen a double rainbow? It’s extremely beautiful. Seeing two colorful arcs in the sky with a chance to get two pots of gold is exhilarating.

These Chewy Chips Ahoy Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are like a double rainbow, except the second rainbow is a bit faded and you can barely make it out in the sky. It’s still awesome, but not as awesome as it could’ve been.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 100 milligrams of sodium, 40 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

*made with partially hydrogenated oil

Item: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Price: $3.79 (on sale)
Size: 9.5 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Forkin’ tasty. Addictive. Like a double rainbow, except with one rainbow a little faded. Lots of chocolate and peanut butter chips. Chasing double rainbows to get two pots of gold.
Cons: Doesn’t taste like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Peanut butter cups aren’t in every cookie. Made with partially hydrogenated oil. Could’ve been awesome. Smallish.

Combining Chips Ahoy! chocolate chips cookies with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups sounds like the kind of trickery that only magical asexual elves living in the Hollow Tree Factory could come up with. But, of course, due to patents and trademarks owned by Nabisco, the magical asexual elves who get off on baking packaged treats, instead of woodland creatures, couldn’t have made the Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups cookies.

Through my decades of eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I know fusing peanut butter with chocolate makes an excellent combination, much like bringing together five crazy bitches from New Jersey makes for an entertaining train wreck on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. But merging that awesome combination of peanut butter and chocolate with the equally awesome Chips Ahoy! cookie has the potential to be mind-blowing and belt-busting.

But mostly belt-busting.

The merging of the two makes sense, much like a dinner between the women from The Real Housewives of New Jersey and the cast from The Real Housewives of Atlanta makes sense for the Bravo Network. It would be the Big Bang of Bitchiness, and I believe ratings would go through the roof because hair weaves would be pulled out left and right, police officers would get involved and profanity would be spewed out as verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns.

While the Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups cookies don’t make me want to pull out someone’s hair extensions, they do make me want to spurt out profanity in the form of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. However, I would be cursing with delight and a smile on my face, and not in anger with crazy eyes, because the Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the muthafuckin’ shit.

Actually, let me take that back. Not the profanity, but how much I enjoyed these cookies.

I’m downgrading how much of the shit it is because it’s hard to detect the unique flavor of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup’s peanut butter in the cookie. There’s definitely a pleasant peanut butter flavor, which is nicely balanced with the chocolate and the rest of the crunchy cookie, but it’s not what I expected. I can see chunks of peanut butter cups in each cookie, but it’s hard for me to believe they’re actual pieces of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Thankfully there’s an ingredients list, which tells me that there are actual Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup pieces. But it’s near the bottom of the list, which tells me there isn’t much. However, there are other ingredients ahead of it on the list that relate to peanut butter cups: peanut butter baking cups, peanut flavored chips, and something called Reese’s Peanut Butter Drops. Since there are more of these ingredients, they might be the cause of the cookie’s unexpected flavor.

Although I’m disappointed Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups aren’t noticeable in the cookies, I do think they’re really good. They’ve got the same crunch as regular Chips Ahoy! cookies and are also hard to put down. While I don’t think they’re the muthafuckin’ shit, I do think they are the shit.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 160 calories, 9 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 3 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 85 milligrams of sodium, 35 milligrams of potassium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 9 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein and 4% iron.)

*may contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fat due to use of partially hydrogenated oils

(NOTE: Thanks to TIB reader Alex for letting us know about these cookies.)

Item: Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Size: 9.5 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: It is the shit. Really good. Nice balance of chocolate and peanut butter. Crunchy like regular Chips Ahoy! Being able to use profanity as verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns.
Cons: The unique flavor of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup isn’t noticeable. Getting caught in the middle of a fight between the casts of Real Housewives shows. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup pieces is listed near the bottom of the ingredients list. Getting hair weaves pulled out. Not the muthafuckin’ shit.