safeway

REVIEW: Coolhaus Bananas Foster

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Coolhaus are a small “architecturally inspired” Los Angeles based gourmet ice cream company founded on making big, craft ice cream cookie sandwiches, or, “cool houses”.  While their sandwiches are the main attraction, their pints have started popping up in Northern California grocery stores, and are now getting distribution in 4,000 stores across the United States, Asia, and the Middle East.  They are a quickly growing company that are simply too hot to ignore, and I was excited to find some of their flavors at my local Safeway.  After perusing all of the options I decided to make my first foray into Coolhaus with something you don’t see too often – Bananas Foster – which combines banana ice cream with a rum-spiked dulce de leche swirl.

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The banana base is great – smooth and creamy with a light but very authentic banana flavor that tastes natural and absolutely nothing like a banana Laffy Taffy.  It isn’t over the top sweet and leaves some room for pleasant vanilla undertones to come through and round out a lovely tropical flavor.  The problem is the flavor is almost so subtle that after a couple spoonfuls it fades away and I’m left with more of a clean vanilla or sweet cream taste than the banana I started with.  The texture is still on point but the dwindling flavor makes it less enticing to want to eat more.

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The rum spiked dulce de leche swirl is also tasty but lacking in some execution as well.  What I like about it is that the texture is nice and thick like a condensed milk, differentiating it as a dulce de leche rather than just a caramel.  It isn’t too sweet but there is also almost no rum flavor whatsoever.  Maybe the rum is tempering the sweetness, but I was hoping for at least some amount of boozy kick and I’m just not finding it.  The swirl also isn’t incorporated very much into the ice cream, predominantly running down the sides, which means I have to dig and scrape the sticky stuff rather than encounter it while eating and that takes a little bit of the fun away.

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Both elements in this pint are of high quality with great texture and subtle restraint, but just missing the mark to give that wow factor I was hoping for.  There’s no doubt Coolhaus makes a solid product, but this flavor needs some kind of crunchy textural element like brûlée-d sugar  and/or more swirl to really take it to the next level.

Rating: 6.5/10

REVIEW: Hostess Limited Edition Frosted Strawberry Donettes

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There’s something appealing about mini things. Mini cupcakes, mini peanut butter cups, personal pizzas, sneaky baby bottles of booze…and, donuts, or, Donettes, as Hostess appropriately calls them. These miniature tire-esque circles of sugary delight have always tempted me, and what better time to be lured by temptation than the season of love? To help get our love juices flowing, Hostess have injected their already aphrodisiac-laden chocolate Donettes with another aphro-treat – strawberry, for a fiery start to your Valentine’s Day morning.

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Biting in there is a predominantly sweet but slightly tart strawberry flavor that breaks through the chocolate and stands out pretty powerfully on its own. The two flavors compliment each other well, with the bite beginning on chocolate and gradually transforming to berry, leaving a distinctly artificial strawberry presence on the tongue.  While the taste is artificial and candy-like in nature it isn’t too overwhelmingly sweet, which would have made it difficult to eat more than one or two (not a problem).  Fake strawberry tends to be more agreeable and easily executed than cherry, and these little dough balls are no exception.

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The strongest element of this Donette is its texture. The outside, while still having that classic Hostess waxy element to it, is incredibly soft and thin, giving an airy snap when chewing.  That outer coating is a very distinct texture that for whatever reason works better on mini donuts than any other kind of snack cake.  The inside is very moist, and may be the freshest tasting Donette I’ve ever had from Hostess.  This could be the seasonal advantage of buying a limited item close to its release, as the expiration is still six weeks away and I’m reaping the benefits, or it could just be the luck of the draw with this particular batch.

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Is this a better junky nosh than the classic chocolate frosted Donette with the yellow inside? Nope, not for me; but it is a solid limited release that is much more worthy of burning your calories than even some of the standard editions, like Glazed. It’s got that breakfast cereal-y, Sunday morning strawberry pop that you will find either nostalgic or gross, but for $2 on sale at Target it’s hard to go wrong if you find the plump little fake chocolate ‘nuts as comforting and strangely delicious as I do.

Rating: 7/10