REVIEW: Keebler Limited Batch Strawberry Cheesecake Fudge Stripes

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 / seansskillet / 1 Comment

Within any collective community or “scene” there are always different levels of dedication. There are casual sports fans who might don a team’s hat when they’re doing well, and then the guy who shows up shirtless to every game painted in the team’s colors. There are listeners of metal music that may fancy themselves a nice studded bracelet, and then there are those true-to-the-core metalhead badasses who don’t own a single piece of non-black clothing. There are part-timers who punch in 23 hours at their workplace, and then those who crawl their way in on Sunday’s and never push less than 60. There are the Taco Bell’s who are dedicated to the insanity and the McDonald’s who never stray too far from the path. You get the picture.

In the junk food world the levels of dedication can be measured by limited time offerings, and while Oreo reigns supreme in coming out with kooky cookies (Swedish Fish, Cotton Candy), Keebler have yet to really take any risks since delving into the LTO-iverse last year…until now. While they’ve played it generally close to the vest with Pumpkin Spice, Lemon, and Cinnamon, this summer the Elves took their first step towards true dedication, trying a flavor that is no easy task and could ultimately lead to Fudge Stripe failure – Strawberry Cheesecake.

Ripping open the soft pink and off-white packaging reveals a distinctly tangy and cheesecake-y aroma. It’s mellow but sharp, and surprisingly less strawberry-forward than what I expected. These cookies were shipped to me straight from the Elfin land of Keebler’s Hollow Tree, and quite a few of them took a crumble tumble in travel, but that shouldn’t effect the taste at all. The intact cookies share in the same rosy pink as the package with the signature white “fudge” stripes on the top.

Wow – these cookies are awesome. Much like the initial smell, the flavor that I get smacked with immediately is cheesecake, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting these to taste like cheesecake at all. I was anticipating a wallop of too-sweet artificial strawberry flavor with a hint of nondescript creaminess, more akin to a strawberries and cream, but these are tangy and cheesy with a great balance of sweetness. I’m not a big fan of fake strawberry, and I don’t get much of that flavor here at all, it may even be closer to cherry, as it just has a slightly tart fruity essence beneath the layer of cheesecake.

The texture, like all Fudge Stripes, is a soft-yet-crumbly shortbread that brings a nice hit of butteriness beneath the cheesy berry flavors. Much like the Lemon Stripes, the flavors here are all around a bit muted, but with such notoriously bold tart and tangy potential I really appreciate the subtly they come across with. The ratios are spot on with the berry taking the backseat, because no one ever eats a slice of cheesecake drowning in sauce, it acts as the acidic highlight to the decadent cake, and that’s exactly what these cookies do.

Rating: 8.5/10
Found at: Sent to me from Keebler but can be found in stores and online (approx. $3)

REVIEW: Ample Hills’ The Commodore

August 11, 2017August 12, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

Vanderbilt Avenue is the street that houses the first Ample Hills scoop shop, where the company cut their teeth in 2011 cranking out all of their ice cream from its small kitchen. The street gets its name from the lore of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was an 1800’s business tycoon known for owning the New York Central Railroad, and more importantly, inventing the potato chip. Yes, he was that picky dude who sent his fried potatoes back for being too soggy. The cook, George Crum, responded in passive aggressive fashion by slicing them mega thin, too thin to be eaten with a fork, and they were the surprise hit of the evening. James, also known as Commodore Cornelius, literally paved the streets in gold with his advances in transportation, but he also blessed our tastebuds with the then dubbed “Saratoga Chips”. No slouches to churning out thoughtful delicious custard, Ample Hills’ The Commodore is a Vanderbilt store exclusive flavor that combines a salted honey base with clusters of chocolate covered potato chips and housemade honey comb candy.

In a completely un-shocking twist, this is the most restrained level of sweetness I’ve ever had in a honey based ice cream and it’s refreshingly delicious. The salt brings not only a different flavor but a different feeling as well – with a slight tingle that coats my tongue. I love the traditionally sweet and creamy bases that honey can deliver, but the salt in this one helps reduce the sugary notes and heighten the deep golden flavor of the sacred bee-vomit. It isn’t quite savory, but it has just enough of those salty earth tones that is doesn’t taste aggressively sweet, and I find myself wanting to eat more to figure out this unique sensation.

The chocolate covered potato chips are absolutely perfect. The milk chocolate adds a great sweet punch and has preserved all the crunch of the deliciously crispy fried chips. Cornelius would be completely lit on this pint. There’s a big genuine potato flavor that comes through like grabbing a handful from a bag of Kettle brand, and the saltiness still pops despite the minerals’ presence in the base. It might seem odd at first glance, but the mashup of chocolate and honey and chips really works and hits that ideal balance of interesting yet craveable that all craft companies should aspire to.

The honey comb candy in my pint has stayed somewhat intact but has also partially dissolved into little pools of honey caramel, and I’m not complaining. The pieces chomp with a lovely crystalized crunch that further release the deep golden honey notes, while the saucy caramel-esque sauce bleeds into the ice cream, once again deepening the honey presence. The honey comb is without a doubt the sweetest component in the container and adds that extra layer of candy crunch that makes The Commodore eat like a true sweet treat.

This flavor, usually only available at one store in one state is currently for sale as part of the Taste of NY 4 pack through the end of the month. If this sounds remotely delicious to you, I can guarantee you will love it, and the investment will be worth the cost.

Rating: 9/10
Found at: http://www.amplehills.com

REVIEW: Lay’s Do Us A Flavor 2017 (all three finalists)

August 9, 2017August 9, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

One of the greatest moments in modern junk food history is when Lay’s announced the Do Us A Flavor contest in 2013. Three flavors of “weird” potato chips that the consumer got to vote on and ultimately decide the fate of. I love this shit. Limited offerings and seasonal engagements are what make junk and fast food so fun, and this idea from Lay’s spawned other great offshoots like voting on peanut M&M’s and the ongoing My Oreo Creation contest from Nabisco. It also was an unfortunate reminder of how boring America’s tastebuds are, as the most snooze-worthy and underachieving flavor from that initial year – Cheesy Garlic Bread – took the potato crown from the far more interesting and successful Sriracha and Chicken and Waffles. But that’s all in the past.

Over the last four years I’ve tried every flavor from the contest, and I’m one of the weirdos that even liked 2014’s Cappuccino chip – which was a slightly creamy, cinnamon-kissed chocolate coffee sweet savory oddity that was so bizarre it worked. 2017’s lineup of the top 10 semifinalists had lots of promise, with the likes of Smoked Gouda & Honey, Sloppy Joe, and Nashville Hot Chicken sounding particularly interesting – but of course, none of them made it. I already tried and did quick “TASTE TEST” videos of each of the flavors with the lovely Sil B on Instagram, but below you will find my overall thoughts on each flavor as well as the associated video. Enjoy – and don’t forget to vote for your favorite to still be around next year!

Wavy Fried Green Tomato:

These chips came in with the natural advantage of being Wavy, aka the best type of potato chip, and they live up to their advantage in terms of texture and crunch. They’re wonderfully crispy and perfectly fried without being greasy at all. The flavor is salty and peppery with some herbaceous tomato notes that are present but not incredibly bold. Each of the chips, depending on their amount of coating, tell a bit of a different story with some packing a much bigger punch than others (classic). I haven’t had a ton of fried green tomatoes, but the most dominant flavor I get out of these is “fried coating” with a hint of parmesan cheesiness, garlic, and a nice black pepper finish. The most interesting element to this flavor is a mayonnaise-y creamy undertone to represent the sauce shown on the front of the bag. They’re good, safe, and a very eat-able chip that aren’t offensive in any way but don’t have much of a wow factor either. As I eat these I can’t help but feel like the semifinalist Fried Ravioli would have been a similar experience but much better with a more robust, oregano and basil seasoning blend and some wonderful slightly sharp mozzarella notes instead of fatty aioli. Oh well.

Rating: 7.5/10

Crispy Taco:

Wow. These chips are exactly what Do Us A Flavor is all about. When the semifinalists were announced Crispy Taco was one of the most boring average sounding flavors that have already been done as a chip seasoning for years, but Lay’s completely knocked it out of the park with this one. The flavor emulation game is on another level here with the leading flavor being lettuce – yes, lettuce. Somehow they packed the bright, crisp flavor of shredded lettuce into the powder, followed by cheddar cheese, tomato, beef seasoning, and even some tomato acidity. It’s actually unreal how this potato chip tastes nothing like a potato and somehow manages to taste more like a hard corn taco shell than the vegetable it’s actually made of. Kudos Lay’s, you officially impressed the hell out of me. And yes, I did squeeze some Fire sauce onto the chips and it tasted 95% like I had just left the Taco Bell drive through. Ridic.

Rating: 9/10

Kettle Cooked Everything Bagel with Cream Cheese:

These were the chips I was most looking forward to, since everything bagels have lot’s of great seasoning that can plop themselves onto most vessels and be delicious. What a missed opportunity. I’m not sure if Lays got too focused on the cream cheese element of the profile or simply got lazy, but these chips taste like sour cream and onion with a slight tang and hints of garlic, onion, and an extra dash of salt. Not a disgusting chip by any means, in fact it’s pretty good, but nothing new or exciting in the slightest. I can’t say they didn’t try though, as there are poppy seeds on most of the chips, but the flavor doesn’t translate. None of the more dominant elements of “everything” – like sesame, deep onion, or a twist like caraway seeds – are present at all. These are a safe bet to be enjoyed by someone seeking a salty/creamy/slightly spiced snack but do not deliver on what could have been an ultimate follow up to the now standard salt and pepper kettle chip.

Rating: 6/10

Overall this was an okay return for the annual potato battle. Keep in mind that the ratings are based mostly on whether or not the desired flavor was achieved, and that all of these chips are pretty good and a worthy sando sidekick. My biggest disappointment is that none of the finalists this year were spicy in the slightest and they are all relatively safe. Hopefully a couple more of the semis make it out as exclusives or short runs in the near future.

REVIEW: Limited Edition Dunkin’ Donuts’ Mocha Oreo

August 8, 2017August 6, 2017 / seansskillet / 1 Comment

Few things in this world go together as beautifully as coffee and chocolate – so why the hell did it take so long for Oreo to put a spin on the classic combo? When Trader Joe’s released their fantastic Mocha Joe Joe’s earlier this year I couldn’t believe they beat Nabisco in the cookie race, but they did, and they put out a real bang up of a product in the process. Although late, Nabisco teamed up with another junk food juggernaut in Dunkin’ Donuts to unearth the Limited Edition Mocha Oreo, which pairs the traditional chocolate Oreo wafer with a coffee flavored creme filling.

Coffee is one of the most fantastically seductive aromas the culinary world has to offer, and shockingly these Oreo cookies don’t smell like coffee – at all. In fact, they smell like chocolate frosting. Slightly less sweet than what I remember regular double chocolate Oreo’s smelling like, but absolutely zero traces of the roasted bean that’s the inspiration behind the product. Sometimes coffee is used in baking to elevate the flavor in a chocolate cake, adding extra depth to the bitter cocoa notes, and I’m hoping that’s what’s at play here, and not a cookie that tastes as weak and diluted as Dunkin’s overhyped coffee.

Fortunately for me, and for Nabisco’s reputation, these cookies actually taste great. There is 100% more coffee flavor than there is smell, and while it isn’t the punchiest mocha product I’ve had, it’s a damn good one. The usual bitter notes of the wafer cookie are amplified by the coffee creme, and the two play off of one another to great success. A mocha is generally less coffee-heavy, with only two or three ounces being actual espresso and the rest milk and chocolate, and with those ratios in mind this Oreo is pretty much spot on. As a daily black coffee drinker who really appreciates the natural flavor of the dark stuff these satisfy my tastebuds and are still sweet enough to actually compliment a real cup of bitter joe on the side.

As simple as this minor creme-change is, it really works, and I find these Mocha Oreo’s to be the best chocolate-based limited offering in recent memory. They’re much more interesting and endearing than Chocolate Covered Strawberry and have a much more significant flavor switch up than Filled Cupcake or Brownie Batter. While they may not deliver as big of an espresso hit as Trader Joe’s Mocha Joe Joe’s, they’re nearly just as delicious and full of that classic Oreo nostalgia.

Rating: 8.5/10
Found at: Safeway ($2.99)

REVIEW: Limited Edition Jelly Donut Oreo

August 3, 2017August 2, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

In the 2017 food scene emulation is the name of the game. Whether it be dessert hybrids like snickerdoodle cupcakes, bars of whey protein that taste like key lime pie, or plant-based burgers that bleed like real meat, people who love food are in love with making things transform in our mouths into something they aren’t. As hot as this is now, perhaps no one has been chasing after this trend in the junk food universe more aggressively and consistently than Nabisco – who in recent years have been hell-bent on making their iconic Oreo cookie sandwiches taste like other things, from syrupy waffles to chocolate dipped strawberries. Their latest Walmart-exclusive attempt at sugary transformation aims to take down an early morning indulgence disguised as an after school treat with Jelly Donut Oreo.

Taking in the general aroma from these Oreo’s is no different than your average golden package with the sweet, slightly vanilla golden Oreo wafer taking over the dominant sniff. If I dig my nose in closer and get real close there is a hint of tart berry smell that cuts through the sugary notes. there’s also a bit of that greasy donut aura that could be from the creme or could be from pure fantasy, but it’s present none the less. Much like an actual jelly donut, from the outside they don’t look much different than your average ‘nut, and it’s what lurks on the inside that will truly tell the taste tale.

Biting into these cookies is definitely different than a regular Golden Oreo and definitely delicious. The composition of the creme is setup with an outer ring of classic “white stuff” with a jelly-flavored center. The center is big enough that it comes through with an average-sized bite of the cookie and the flavor is surprisingly really good. The “jelly” is somewhere in between raspberry and blueberry, which I guess would make it boysenberry? I’m going to assume Nabisco was going for raspberry since that’s a more typical donut-filling, but no matter what you want to call it it’s damn good.

The jelly flavor, contrary to what I think about actual jelly, helps to temper the sweetness of the golden wafer and white creme for an experience that is very well balanced. The berry doesn’t come off as insanely artificial and has a very pleasant flavor that is much more desirable than what strawberry tends to bring to the table. Without any specific yeast or powdered sugar notes it’s hard for me to really lock in on “donut” when eating, but they remind me of the little thumbprint cookies with jelly filling, and for an Oreo to take me there is pretty impressive. When I pair the cookie up with some coffee, I do actually get the donut sensation, and somehow the bitter notes of the coffee washing down the vanilla-meets-berry flavor brings me to Saturday morning and delivers on the cookies’ name.

Did Nabisco knock it out of the park with this emulation? No. Had they made the center ring more gelatinous or jelly-like it could have really driven the contrast that actual filled donuts have, but with a little bit of imagination the point comes across pretty well. What they did do is deliver one of the most interesting and tasty Oreo’s I’ve had in quite some time with a perfect sweetness and great berry flavor that I would happily buy again.

Rating: 8.5/10
Found at: Walmart ($2.99)

Quick Nutrition: 2 cookies – 150 cal – 7g fat – 80mg sodium – 21g carbs – 12g sugar

REVIEW: Little G’s Peanut Butter Buckeye

August 1, 2017July 31, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

I’ve never been to Ohio, but I’ve heard a lot about the lore of the Buckeye. No, not the actual nut from the tree, but the chocolate dipped peanut butter fudge Christmas confection popular in the state that seems to have fellow choco-PB lovers goin’ goo goo ga ga. I’ll be honest, as many chocolate covered peanut butter truffles, cookies, cupcakes, and general candles as I’ve had, I’ve never had a proper buckeye, and I’m alright with letting Little G once again pop my tastebud cherry with their take on the Midwest classic. Little G’s Peanut Butter Buckeye combines milk chocolate ice cream with peanut butter swirl, buckeyes, and peanut butter cookie dough.

As promising as this flavor sounds on paper, my journey with this pint began very negatively. Digging into the sea of darkness my spoon made a heartbreaking noise to any ice cream lover – the crunchy sound of ice. Smooth creamy silence was replaced with a harsh scraping noise and tasting it wasn’t any better – it was like a Fudgesicle. As I noted in an earlier review, my shipment showed up very soft, and it seems as though this one took a hit it couldn’t recover from.

Being that I’m not a quitter, especially when it comes to my food-related splurges, I kept digging, and fortunately about half way into the pint I was greeted with lovely, creamy, ice cream that actually exceeded my expectations for a chocolate base. The milk chocolate ice cream is nearly flawless – extremely smooth and luscious with a big, bold cocoa flavor that has just the right amount of sweetness and a touch more darkness than I was anticipating, which was a very pleasant surprise.

As is evidenced by the pictures, this container is brimming with mix-ins, and is so dense it might be the heaviest pint of ice cream I’ve ever picked up. The flavors’ namesake, the buckeyes, are all over the place, and are perfectly sized to take over the spoon but not so big that they can’t be taken down whole. Even though these chocolatey balls are the most unique component at play, they’re my least favorite, and I found the sheer volume of them to be distracting. I’ve learned about myself recently that I don’t care much for an abundant amount of hard chocolate in my ice cream, and while they are filled with a peanut butter cream, the amount of filling is very small compared to the chocolate, and they lose some of their luster against the chocolate base. I may have liked them more if the ice cream was peanut butter flavored and I got that lovely Reese’s harmony, but chocolate on chocolate with a hint of PB isn’t really my thing, and I ended up eating around them more than searching for them.

Fortunately for me and my PB-hungry tastebuds, the other two mix-ins are no stranger to Little G’s arsenal and they are downright awesome. The peanut butter cookie dough pieces are big, slightly salty, and gritty with a buttery chew that I absolutely love. The peanut butter is simply peanut butter, in massive gobs, which have hardened and gradually soften in their salty fatty, just-sweet-enough splendor as I continue to eat in glee. The large amounts of peanut butter can become a problem, essentially like bricks, but I choose to just let them sit there and gradually chip away at them rather than see them as a frozen issue.

While this buckeye journey started on a down note, it definitely ended on a high, and it’s the type of ice cream that is so intense and decadent it forces you to slow down and savor the massive flavor at hand. It’s one of those flavors that demonstrates everything Little G is about, and with some more careful shipping and a bit more attention to detail, this could be a classic entry to the limited time chronicles of Little G.

Rating: 8.5/10
Found at: http://www.goldbely.com (use code seanpancake0 for $25 off of your first order!)

REVIEW: Little G’s Sticky Bun

July 28, 2017July 25, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

“Hey girl…what’s up with them sticky buns?” That’s me, verbatim, bleary eyed at my neighborhood donut shop on Saturday morning. While I generally will go with more classic raised or old fashioned donuts, when I’m feeling particularly bananas I’ll go for an ooey gooey spiral of decadent richness that will undoubtedly put me back to sleep as soon as I can finish my coffee. Trying to save me the embarrassment of tossing pseudo-pickup lines at the donut ladies, Little G put their own spin on the bad-decision-morning-staple with Sticky Bun, which combines salted caramel ice cream with sticky bun chunks, candied pecans, and cream cheese frosting swirl.

First things first – this is not a salted caramel base, it’s a burnt caramel base, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The flavor is deep, smoky, and almost astringent with an intensely dark burnt flavor that isn’t salty at all, and actually for a caramel isn’t very sweet either. For my taste I would actually prefer it to be a bit sweeter, but as a burnt caramel it’s pretty damn impressive and wears its rich, roasty, brown colors with pride. While the ice cream itself could be sweeter, it’s a smart move to not make caramel too aggressively sweet in a pint that has so many other predominantly sweet components at play and overall I give this base the skillet seal of approval.

Interestingly, the sticky bun pieces in Sticky Bun aren’t very sticky at all, and in fact they’re dry. While they do have a good eggy slightly cinnamon-y flavor, texturally they remind me of the very outer ring of a cinnamon roll that gets the most direct contact with heat in the oven, and as a result is the least desirable part of the roll. Fortunately this isn’t too big of an issue because of the moist ice cream they’re submerged in, but the pieces are big enough that I notice their lack of moisture and wish they were gooier. When I think of sticky buns I think of something so dense and caramelized that I wouldn’t dare pick it up without a stack of napkins nearby, and these chunks could certainly be taken down sans-napkin, which leads to sans-satisfaction.

The cream cheese frosting swirl is executed absolutely flawlessly, and unlike other times where Little G incorporated cream cheese and veered towards the savory route, this swirl is very sweet like a perfect cheesy frosting. The more pronounced sweetness works very well in tandem with the roasty base and the two combined are sublime and can even temporarily mask the dry-ness in the bun pieces when my spoon gets all the right pieces in harmony.

One of my favorite mix-ins in any ice cream ever are Grace’s candied pecans – this pint is loaded with them and my god they are delicious. The fatty nutty nuances of the pecans remain intact with an insanely perfect cinnamon sugar caramelization on the outside. Despite being dairy dunked and frozen the nuts keep all of their crunch and a bite with the caramel and frosting and a nut is straight up ice cream fireworks. Crunchy, super sweet, and ever so slightly spicy.

As much as I appreciate the intensity of the (burnt) caramel ice cream, I think I would have enjoyed the overall experience even more if I could swap it out with Grace’s incredible cinnamon base to really drive the bun vibes to the next level. A splash of simple syrup or some other kind of baking trick on the pastry pieces before being mixed in could have locked the moisture in and made this one a truly stellar limited batch, but as it stands, it’s just above average. This flavor was a pretty obvious play at Ben & Jerry’s Cinnamon Buns, and while I anticipated this one blowing it out of the water, it simply doggy paddled next to its mass produced, much more affordable big brother.

Rating: 7.5/10
Found at: http://www.goldbely.com (use code seanpancake0 for $25 off of your first order!)

FOOD FIND: Third Culture Bakery’s Mochi Muffin

July 27, 2017July 26, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

Third Culture Bakery are a Berkeley-based company specializing in East meets West baked goods with no designated brick and mortar location but distribution to a number of cafes and eateries in the Bay Area, including the popular Boba Guys in San Francisco. I got wind of their inventive Mochi Muffin and had to try one. I was fortunate to find a cool small shop near me called Chapter Two Coffee that gets deliveries from Third Culture a couple times a week.

The outside has a firm muffin-esque crust that gives way to a perfect squishy mochi interior. It’s soft and dense yet pillowy and just slightly sweet. Initially I thought it was kind of odd, and then I realized it’s absolutely delicious.

The flavor as a whole reminds me of the crispy caramelized exterior of a chocolate chip cookie with all of its beautiful buttery brown sugar nuances. The black and white sesame seeds on top add a nice subtle crunch and pop of savoriness that ties the unique nature of the experience together wonderfully. All the fun dense-yet-soft feeling of mochi with the heartiness of a muffin – such a delightful treat with a strong cup of coffee or espresso.

REVIEW: Little G’s Magic Bar

July 26, 2017July 25, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

When your definition of magic is getting high as all hell on sugar from one bite of a confectionary treat – look no farther than magic bars. Commonly known as seven layer bars, these graham-based blondie-brownie-hybrid delights combine chocolate, butterscotch, and coconut for a bite that is sugary enough to send your blood sugar into a never-ending spiral of sweetness. For their take on the bar, Little G combined coconut ice cream with butterscotch chips, graham cracker crumbs, mini chocolate chips, and magic bar chunks.

This ice cream is…weird. To be honest it’s hard to even call it ice cream with how much graham cracker crumble there is. Opening the pint there are some white glimmers that resemble ice cream, but the predominant color is tan and the predominant feeling is dry. The coconut base, when I can get a bit of it untouched, is good and creamy and identical in flavor to the sensational Caramel Cookie flavor from the spring line. Unfortunately, nearly every bite feels like its been rolled in graham crumbs and it reminds me coating a cookie in some kind of crumb or sugar before baking. It’s odd and off-putting. As the ice cream tempers more the coconut base doesn’t get any more shine, and instead the graham just feels like a soggy graham cracker that’s been dunked in milk – not disgusting, but not what I’m looking for in a premium pint.

The oddities don’t end there. This is the first time in my life I’ve been staring at a spoonful of butterscotch chips and can’t taste any butterscotch at all – literally none. The chips are hard, cold, and literally flavorless, and for such an intensely dominant flavor like butterscotch I can’t wrap my head around why this is happening. To assure myself I’m not crazy, because I am crazy and have some Boo-too-scotch M&M’s on hand that were made a year ago, I try one of those to compare, and yup, tons of butterscotch – my buds aren’t broken. The chocolate chips are similarly rampant in the pint and have a bit more flavor, but still nothing too exciting, especially against the relatively bland and repetitive-ness of the graham-caked coconut base.

The only saving grace in this container are the magic bar chunks, which are unfortunately almost nonexistent, so their rescue mission falters rather quickly. The chunks, when they do show up, have a nice coconut-y chew with walnut crunch and extra punch of chocolate that, even in their very small doses are more effective than the chips. These bites were great, but there were only 3-4 pieces in the whole pint, and even those were much smaller than what I expect from Little G.

Magic Bar comes off as a poor mans very lackluster and ultimately upsetting version of Cowboy Cookie. While I see where the intentions are, trying to layer graham crackers on top of the ice cream instead of making a graham ice cream to achieve the flavor and texture of magic bars, it simply does not work and is not on the level I expect when ordering ice cream in the $15-20 range. The experience isn’t revolting, I ate the whole thing trying to figure out what I was tasting, but it isn’t enjoyable either, and from Little G I want greatness, not half baked mediocrity.

Rating: 4/10
Found at: http://www.goldbely.com (use code seanpancake0 for $25 off of your first order!)

REVIEW: Little G’s Cookie Butter Crunch

July 24, 2017July 24, 2017 / seansskillet / Leave a comment

People love to lose their goddamn minds over cookie butter, and as much as I am a proponent of sugar, spice, and everything nice – I’m not one of ‘em. Yes, cookie butter is delicious, but I bought exactly one jar of it, enjoyed it, and have never had the urge to buy another. My problem is I don’t really know what to do with it, because while it’s good on pancakes and waffles I like maple syrup and butter more, and if I’m gonna eat something straight-out-the-jar like a savage it’s gonna be peanut butter. What I am a fan of though, are actual speculoos cookies, aka autumn’s shortbread, that deliver the big spicy flavor of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg in a crunchy little buttery cookie that go marvelously with a morning cup of coffee. Even though I think the buzz on cookie butter is a bit overzealous, I’m always down to get down on something cinnamon-y, which is why I am pumped for Little G’s Cookie Butter Crunch, which dunks crushed speculoos cookies in a cookie butter ice cream with a cookie butter swirl, and mini chocolate chips.

As expected, this pint of ice cream tastes like cookie butter. The cookie butter base is light and subtly spicy, but it’s honestly hard to discern how much of the flavor is coming from the base itself and how much is coming from the pieces of actual cookies. The important thing is that the flavor is very similar to diving straight into a jar of the pure brown good stuff. The speculoos crumbs have integrated themselves pretty prominently throughout the actual ice cream, so while there’s still some melty creaminess going on, a bit of a the luscious mouthfeel I want from a premium ice cream gets lost for the sake of the flavors intensity.

The actual speculoos chunks and cookie butter swirl do exactly as advertised. The bigger pieces of cookie have softened with a nice chew and have a wonderful spicy, slightly dark flavor with a hint of molasses-y caramelization. The cookie butter swirl is predominantly smooth with some slight grittiness. It’s interesting eating cookie butter frozen instead of at room temperature, as some of the fats have hardened and solidified like peanut butter and the texture has changed ever so slightly, which fades more as the ice cream tempers. Unfortunately the flavors in the base, swirl, and cookies are all so similar that after a serving of Cookie Butter Crunch it starts to feel kind of redundant and I wish I had more contrast to keep the scooping more endearing.

Ironically, what really doesn’t work for me in this flavor are the mini chocolate chips. While on one hand they’re the lone non-spicy non-cookie component in the container, there’s simply too many of them. Even though they break up the speculoos party with a pop of bittersweet cocoa, they ultimately take away from the sweet, creamy, and spicy balance that this flavor sets out to achieve, and I find their consistent chocolatey crunch distracting and unnecessary. The chips are so ample that there is at least one, and usually more, in nearly every bite.

While this flavor isn’t bad by any means, it’s a perfect example of trying to do too much and simply needing to pull back for a self edit. I would have enjoyed trying these components in Grace’s stellar vanilla bean or even a caramel base so that the cookies and swirl could really stand out. I would have also skipped out on the chips, or at the very least dialed them back by half so I can get into a true spicy groove, even though they really are the only element that bring the crunch of the flavors namesake.

Rating: 7.5/10

Found at: http://www.goldbely.com (use code seanpancake0 for $25 off of your first order!)

Sean's Skillet

ice cream, snack reviews, and bay area eats

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