Saturday, October 6, 2012

The Evolution Of Rice Cakes Produces Quaker Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes!


The Good: Nothing bad in them, Decently priced, Tastes fine
The Bad: Not the most incredible taste, Could always be healthier, Not at all filling.
The Basics: Quaker Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes are a remarkably average snack; they lack any superlative quality and thus end up as utterly unremarkable.


My wife and I try to eat healthy and a significant part of that has been snacking healthier. That has meant that we have worked to replace snacks we know are not great for us with snacks that are better for our overall health. Gone are (most) cookies and, in their place, we now have rice cakes. Fortunately, many of them taste good, like the Quaker Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes we picked up.

Basics

Quaker is perhaps best known for making oatmeal, but for a long time has made granola bars and other healthy snacks. Their Rice Cakes come in several flavors and the Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes are the only fruit flavored ones I found on my first pass.

The Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes come in a 6.53 oz. tube that has two inner wrapped packages of rice cakes. The tube bag holds fourteen rice cakes. Each rice cake represents a single serving and Quaker has the Rice Cake presented as disc that is 4” in diameter and by 5/8” thick. The Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes are mostly white with a slight reddish brown tint to them (as if they had been dusted with cinnamon) and a light sheen (as if glazed).

Ease Of Preparation

Eating a Quaker Apple Cinnamon Rice Cake is simple. After removing the cake from the package, simply stick it in your mouth. There is no particularly complicated equation to eating this snack; it is an entirely ready-to-eat food!

Taste

Unwrapping the Apple Cinnamon Rice Cake, one is appropriately overwhelmed with the scent of apples and cinnamon. What might be the most impressive aspect of this is how the main scent is actually the fruity apples! The cinnamon aroma does not squelch the scent of apples and these rice cakes almost smell like freshly-baked apple muffins!

As for the taste, the scent is a good bit of olfactory foreshadowing. The Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes are very sweet and entirely fruity. They taste as if they were dipped in apple juice, the apple flavoring is so distinct. As with the aroma, the cinnamon flavor is a bit more subtle than one might expect, but that flavor is there. What these rice cakes do not taste like is rice, which is a pleasant surprise. Each and every bite is loaded with fruity, spicy flavoring that completely obscures the taste of puffed rice.

The Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes leave the mouth dry, though, so it is a good idea to have water available when consuming them. The sweetness wears off in about ten seconds after consumption and the consumer is just left with a slightly dry sensation in the mouth.

Nutrition

Quaker Rice Cakes are intended as a snack and they are a fairly healthy snack, more by not having anything bad in them, as opposed to being loaded with a lot of nutrients. Each 13 gram Rice Cake represent a single serving. Made primarily of whole grain brown rice, sugar, and fructose, there is nothing in the Apple Cinnamon rice cakes that was unpronounceable. This is a mostly-natural food product with a dietary disclaimer that this flavor contains soy ingredients. They are, however, gluten free.

Quaker's Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes have 50 calories, none of which are from fat. A full serving represents 4% of one's RDA of carbohydrates and these are fat, sodium, and cholesterol free. There is a gram of protein to be had by eating an Apple Cinnamon Rice Cake. These are not a significant source of any vitamins or minerals.

Storage/Cleanup

As a healthy snack, Quaker Apple Cinnamon Rice Cake remain fresh so long as they are kept in their wrapped tube. Opened, they will absorb moisture from the air and become squishy in an unappealing way. Our bag had an expiration date of October 10, 2012, and they have been fresh all summer long. As long as the cakes are sealed, they remain fresh and the only real clean-up for them comes from wiping up crumbs. If, however, they get hot, they coating on the Apple Cinnamon rice cakes makes them sticky and that would necessitate the washing of one’s hands.

These do not stain clothes, though.

Overall

Quaker Apple Cinnamon Rice Cakes are good, but not filling and not incredibly nutritious. They taste fine, but they do not add much to one’s diet and do not fill one up enough to get excited about snacking on them, especially when one is attempting to change their dietary habits.

For other Quaker reviews, please check out:
Blueberry Stila Cookie Bars
Original Life Cereal
Low Fat S’mores Granola Bars

5/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my index page on the subject! That is available by clicking here!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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