A Pleasant Surprise, Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt Are Fun Crackers!

The Good: Good ingredients, Fairly good nutrition, Decent flavor
The Bad: A little more mild on the sea salt flavor than I'd like, Comparatively expensive, A lot of breakage in the box!
The Basics: Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt snacks are flavorful and fun, making for a pleasant surprise for a new cracker style!


One of my favorite characters from television is Captain Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Sisko, despite having moments of being a very cold and demanding commander, has times when he just lets loose and in the kitchen is one of the more frequent times he is shown happy. Sisko loves, among other things, beets. I never really got that . . . until I tried Nabisco Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers. The Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt snacks make beets fun to eat and (generally) flavorful!

Basics

Nabisco Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers are a fairly new product. The crackers are each 1 3/4" in diameter and 3/16" thick. Each cracker is slightly curved and textured. The Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers are a deep red/purple color that is reminiscent of beets. The surface of the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers contains little flecks of powdered salt and flour.

The standard box of Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers is 3.75 oz. That represents approximately three and a half servings, which is a bit esoteric, but makes for three solid servings plus a bunch of broken crackers. The bag within the box does little to protect the crackers from breakage, so my box had a full serving comprised of broken crackers.

Ease Of Preparation

Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers are very easy to consume. These are a ready-to-eat snack food and one need only open the liner inside the box, pull out twenty-three crackers and start eating them!

Taste

The Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers have a very mild aroma to them. The scent of beets and vinegar are present in the cracker's bouquet, but neither is very forceful in the nostrils, which is nice. Instead, these have a more subtle scent than some.

On the plus side, the flavor of the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers is more potent than the scent! The sweet vinegar flavor plays off the beet flour to make the crackers taste like anything but a typical dry cracker. The light, sweet flavor of the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers finishes with a slight dry taste, which seems to be the closest the sea salt comes to manifesting as a flavor. The lack of a strong salt flavor is a little disappointing, but it does keep the sodium content of these crackers in a much more healthy range!

Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers have no real aftertaste to them, which is also nice.

Nutrition

Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers are fairly nutritious, though the cracker market has not (apparently) caught up with breakfast cereals; there are no added nutrients sprayed onto these crackers to attempt to artificially boost their nutritional value. As a result, the health benefits of the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers stand solely on their (mostly) natural and recognizable ingredients. These crackers are made primarily of potato flour, beet powder, and cornstarch. There is actually nothing in the ingredient list that is not natural or recognizable, which is nice!

A single serving of Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers is considered twenty-three crackers (30 grams). In a full serving, there are 130 calories, 35 of which come from fat. On the plus side, there are only .5 g of saturated fat (3% of one's RDA) in a full serving and there is no cholesterol. For those watching their carbs, the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers can be eaten while on a keytogenic diet (if these crackers represent the only carbs one has for the day!) as these crackers have 22 grams of carbohydrates, with two grams of dietary fiber (20 net carbs). While the consumer gets 9% of their RDA of Potassium from the crackers' 330 mg of Potassium and 2 grams of Protein, the only other real nutritional benefits of the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers come from trace amounts of Vitamin C (10% RDA), Calcium (6% RDA) and Iron (4% RDA). On the plus side, while these crackers might not contribute a lot to one's daily nutritional needs, they do not detract at all from eating healthy!

The Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers obviously contain wheat, so they are not gluten-free! They also do appear to be Vegan-compliant! I am not certain why, but I could not find any indication that the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers were considered Kosher (there is no marking for that on the box!).

Storage/Cleanup

Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers are easy to keep fresh, provided they are kept in a cool, dry environment. When one is not eating the crackers, it helps to close the plastic bag inside the box to keep moisture out. Kept such, our box would not have expired until May 7, 2018, so these do not have the longest shelf life in the world!

Cleaning up after the Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers is generally easy; the crumbs may be wiped up fairly easily.

Overall

Good Thins The Beet One Sweet Balsamic Vinegar & Sea Salt crackers are a fun addition to the company's cracker line that finally makes a positive argument for beets!

For other foods from my crackers, please check out my reviews of:
Nabisco Good Thin The Oat Ones Oat & Flax Crackers
Full Circle Ranch Soy Crisps
Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Crackers

7/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the food reviews I have written!

© 2018 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Surprising Success, Peeps Oreo Cookies Are More Than Just A Novelty!

The Good: Great flavor, Surprisingly durable, Affordable, No aftertaste
The Bad: Utter lack of health benefits
The Basics: A surprisingly awesome flavor of Oreo cookies, Nabisco has a real winner with their Peeps Oreo cookies!


Every now and then when I take a chance on a new-to-market product, I find myself pleasantly surprised. It has been a long time since I was favorably surprised by a novelty food product. Today, however, the trend of disappointment in food products that seem to be released only because of some effective weird pitch is broken as Nabisco actually released a surprise winner in their Oreo cookie line. The new Oreo cookies are Peeps Oreo cookies, which are exactly what they sound like; Oreo cookies with marshmallow Peeps filling.

We were pleasantly surprised to find the Peeps Oreo cookies at our local grocery store and for a change, we eagerly paid full price for the package just to try what the potential novelty cookie would actually taste like. The Peeps Oreo cookies are more than just a novelty cookie, as they have a substantively wonderful flavor. In fact, outside the lack of nutritional benefits - which is not such a weird thing for cookies these days, as many cookies have additional vitamins and minerals infused in them, much like breakfast cereals - the Peeps Oreo cookies are perfect!

Basics

Oreo cookies are manufactured by Nabisco, which has been around pretty much forever. In recent years, Oreo has attempted to generate product enthusiasm by changing the flavor of the cream in Oreo cookies to give people new reasons to buy them. The Peeps Oreo cookies are one of the latest attempts and they definitedly succeed with that attempt.

Each 15 gram Oreo Cookie is comprised of two yellow cake colored disks approximately 1 7/8” in diameter, connected by a thin layer of pink marshmallow filling that holds the two cookies together. Peeps Oreo Cookies come in a 10.7 oz. sealed package with a plastic tray that houses the twenty cookies. The package and tray do a decent job of preventing breakage, at least until one begins to eat many or most of these cookies. A serving of Peeps Oreo sandwich cookies is two cookies.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Peeps Oreo cookies is not a real challenge, but getting to the cookies is. Oreo wisely created a package of cookies that is resealable. That resealable pouch surrounds the thin plastic tray that houses the cookies. The seam for the releasable opening is not at the top or side of the tray, though, it is at the middle. This makes it slightly more awkward to get the cookies out of the package. If this is a subtle way to enforce portion control, then bravo Oreo. If it is not, it’s just annoying.

When you have a cookie out, all you have to do is stick it in your mouth and chew; there is nothing complicated or foreign about eating these cookies.

Taste

Opening the package of the Peeps Oreo cookies, the consumer is greeted with the very inviting aroma of yellow cake and marshmallow. The marshmallow Peeps scent from the Peeps Oreo cookies is distinct, strong and very enticing to those who love Peeps!

In the mouth, the Peeps Oreo taste sweet and sugary with a strong flavor of yellow cake. The dry cookies are flavorful, much more than they are dry and they actually taste very much like yellow cake. The center is complimented very well by the sugary, marshmallow flavor of the Peeps icing in the middle of the sandwich cookies. The two flavors are distinct and play off one another exceptionally well.

Perhaps more surprising than how the two flavors within the Peeps Oreo cookies work well together is how the Peeps Oreo cookies do not leave a dry aftertaste in the mouth. These are exceptionally flavorful and enjoyable cookies!

Nutrition

Peeps Oreo Cookies are intended as a sweet snack, not a full meal. Two of these 15 gram cookies represent a single serving and they are not very nutritious at all. Made primarily of sugar, unbleached enriched flour and canola and/or palm oil, the ingredient list is far less organic the further down one ventures, like most prepackaged products. This is not an all-natural food product and these cookies were produced on equipment that forces them to add a disclaimer about soy and wheat.

Oreo's Peeps Oreo cookies have 140 calories for a two cookie serving, 60 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 10% of one's RDA of saturated fat, though they are cholesterol free. As well, they are fairly low in sodium for a cookie, having only 80 mg per serving. They have less than a gram of protein and 4% of the RDA of Iron. As one who is working on getting heart-healthy, I wish there were some dietary fiber in these cookies.

Storage/Cleanup

Peeps Oreo cookies are easy to care for and clean up. Unopened, they have a pretty decent shelf life; the package we bought last week had an expiration date of June 26, 2017. Kept sealed, I am sure they would have lasted at least that long. As cookies, one need only not shake the bag excessively to care for them and wipe away any crumbs after eating them. This is a low-stress food!

Overall

Peeps Oreo cookies are an impressive cookie that actually lives up to its promise of blending the flavors of Oreo cookies and Peeps marshmallow candies!

For other Oreo and Peeps reviews, please check out:
Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo cookies
Breyer's Blasts! Oreo Birthday Blasts Ice Cream
Chocolate Creme Peeps

8/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Overwhelmed By The Oreos, Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies Are Still Good!

The Good: Taste good, Fun, Not overly expensive
The Bad: Varying amounts of peanut butter flavor, Not nutritious at all, Environmental impact of the mini-packs
The Basics: Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are a fun, but the dry chocolate Oreo flavor occasionally overwhelms the peanut butter center.


Every now and then, I manage to find a good deal on a snack at my local discount store. Not long ago, my mother came to visit and before she left, we went shopping around. One of the many places we went was to our awesome discount store and there, my mom stocked me up on a number of treats. One was a couple of bags of Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are a snack that acts more like a cracker than a cookie, but they are very good.

Basics

Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are smaller versions of Oreo cookies, with Reese's peanut butter in the place of the usual white sugary filling in Oreo cookies. Intended as a snack more than a dessert, the Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are drier than most sugary snacks.

Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies come in various sizes, but always in a bag. I picked mine up in a 3 oz. bag. Each sandwich cookie is round and approximately 7/8" in diameter and 3/8” thick. Many of them are slightly lopsided, as the tops and bottoms are not perfectly aligned. At $1.49 for the 3 oz. bag, these seem a bit pricey to me, but not stiflingly expensive.

Ease Of Preparation

Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are simple to enjoy; all you need do it open the bag and remove the sandwich cookies from it! There is no trick to eating Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies; they are a snack that is ready to go from the bag to the mouth.

Taste

Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies smell intensely like peanut butter. The peanut butter aroma that comes out of the bag entirely overwhelms any scent of chocolate from the Oreo cookie base.

On the taste front, the Oreo Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies taste very dry. The chocolate Oreo cookies that surround the peanut butter are dry and not a true chocolate flavor. Moments after the Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are placed on the tongue, the sweet and nutty flavor of the Reese's peanut butter manifests. The center to the Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies is sweeter and, strangely, less dry than the exterior. The Reese's peanut butter is distinct and instantly recognizable. The peanut butter flavor breaks out of the dry, vaguely-sweet, and somewhat indistinct Oreo cookie flavor.

The Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies have virtually no aftertaste, which is somewhat surprising!

Nutrition

Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are not at all a natural snack, with a fair amount of preservatives. The primary ingredients are unbleached enriched flour, sugar and canola and/or palm oil, it is not surprising that the cookies do not have the strongest chocolate flavor to them. The Oreo Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies have a shelf life of approximately one year, so it's not a bad snack to stock up on.

Each nine cookie serving of Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies has 130 calories, forty-five of which come from fat. There is less than a gram of dietary fiber. While there are 5 grams of fat and 2 grams of protein, there are 140 mg of sodium, which represents 6% of one's RDA of sodium. There are a smattering of vitamins and minerals, but nothing significant. There is a dietary note that the Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies includes peanuts, wheat, and soy ingredients, which prevents them from being Gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

Kept in their bag, Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies will remain fresh for a year and as long as the bag is resealed, one suspects they will last for several weeks before getting stale. I've never had to deal with issues of freshness for my Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies.

Cleanup is simple as well. Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are a dry food and thus leave no mess behind, save crumbs.

Overall

Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are not enough to satisfy those who truly love chocolate, but they are a decent treat that balances the familiar chocolate cookie flavor with the similarly familiar flavor of Reese's peanut butter.

For other snack reviews, check out my reviews of:
Snakkers Chocolate Creme Filled Wafer Rolls
Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax snacks
BSN Syntha-6 Protein Crisp Peanut Butter Crunch Bars

6/10

For other food and drink reviews, please check out my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Pleasant Crispy Surprise! Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax Crackers!

The Good: Good ingredients, Fairly good nutrition
The Bad: Comparatively expensive, A lot of breakage in the box!
The Basics: Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax snacks are a wonderful balance between salty and subtly sweet to make for a very satisfying, but not overbearing, crispy healthy snack!


In my long history of writing reviews, it turns out that I have written incredibly few reviews of crackers. I review a lot of different snacks and I eat crackers periodically when they are inexpensive, but I have not made any real push to review the ones I enjoy. Tonight, that changes some as I am reviewing foods still from my food subscription box that my mother got me for the winter holidays. In the box of assorted yummy foods was a box of Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers.

It is worth noting up front that the box of crackers is fully called: Nabisco Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax Oat & Wheat snacks. I am not certain what separates a cracker from an "oat & wheat snack," but inside the box were crackers (seriously, is a Truth In Advertising thing? Do crackers have to have an industry recognized crispness to them? Or is Nabisco trying to quietly support the War On Drugs by not calling its crackers crack, er, sirs, that is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, I opened the box of Nabisco Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers tonight and these crackers were a clear hit with my wife and I!

Basics

Nabisco Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers arew a fairly new product. The crackers are each 1 5/8" square by about 3/16" thick. Each cracker is slightly curved and textured. The Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers are a light tan with golden brown accents, as if they have been baked (which, according to the box, they have); they do not have a uniform appearance like, for example, a Triscuit or Wheat Thin. The surface of the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers contains little nuts and seeds as well; no two crackers look identical!

The standard box of Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers is 6.5 oz. That represents approximately six servings. Our box had three good servings, one and a half servings that could be reasonably cobbled together from the various broken crackers and then a serving and a half of jagged crumbs. Our box of Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers was packed with broken crackers, which solidly diminished the value of getting the box (fortunately for me, it was part of a larger assortment; unfortunately, if one encounters the same problem in the store, odds are the consumer is s.o.l. on broken crackers!).

Ease Of Preparation

Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers are very easy to consume. These are a ready-to-eat snack food and one need only open the liner inside the box, pull out twenty-one crackers and start eating them!

Taste

The Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers have a delightfully buttery aroma to them. The scent of buttery goodness and grain dissipates surprisingly fast after the bag is opened, but for a brief moment, there is a concentrated scent that could entice anyone looking for a delicious, salty, snack!

In the mouth, the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers are lightly salty and buttery, but the dominant flavor is the oats! These crackers taste like some delightful form of crispy oatmeal! The honey in the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers adds a sweetness that keeps each cracker from ever seeming too dry on the tongue. I'm not certain what the "flax" adds on the flavor front (I'm guessing they are there for the nutrition); these are powerfully oat-flavored crackers with a hint of honey and an appropriate amount of salt. On the balance, these are a sweeter cracker than they are salty.

Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers leave a lightly dry aftertaste, but the bulk of the aftertaste that is left in the mouth (for only a few seconds) is the oats! After consuming these crackers, I moved my tongue around my mouth and the little cracker pockets I found were just like oatmeal - even from their texture! The aftertaste dissipates very quickly after the last cracker is consumed.

Nutrition

Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers are fairly nutritious, though the cracker market has not (apparently) caught up with breakfast cereals; there are no added nutrients sprayed onto these crackers to attempt to artificially boost their nutritional value. As a result, the health benefits of the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers stand solely on their (mostly) natural and recognizable ingredients. These crackers are made primarily of whole grain oat flour, enriched flour, and whole grain rolled oats. There is actually nothing in the ingredient list that is not natural or recognizable, which is nice!

A single serving of Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers is considered twenty-one crackers (30 grams). In a full serving, there are 140 calories, 45 of which come from fat. On the plus side, there are only .5 g of saturated fat (3% of one's RDA) in a full serving and there is no cholesterol. For those watching their carbs, the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers can be eaten while on a keytogenic diet (if they are pretty much the only carbs one has for the day!) as these crackers have 21 grams of carbohydrates, with two grams of dietary fiber (19 net carbs). While the consumer gets 2% of their RDA of Potassium from the crackers' 60 mg of Potassium and 2 grams of Protein, the only other real nutritional benefits of the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers come from trace amounts of Calcium (4% RDA) and Iron (6% RDA). On the plus side, while these crackers might not contribute a lot to one's daily nutritional needs, they do not detract at all from eating healthy!

The Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers obviously contain wheat, so they are not gluten-free! Only the most staunch vegans who refuse to eat honey will find anything in these crackers that is not Vegan-compliant! I am not certain why, but I could not find any indication that the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers were considered Kosher (there is no marking for that on the box!).

Storage/Cleanup

Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers are easy to keep fresh, provided they are kept in a cool, dry environment. When one is not eating the crackers, it helps to close the plastic bag inside the box to keep moisture out. Kept such, our box would not have expired until March 16, 2017, so these do not have the longest shelf life in the world!

Cleaning up after the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers is generally easy; they crumbs may be wiped up fairly easily, though there was such a mess of crumbs and broken crackers at the bottom of our box that we stopped eating them (it turns out, birds love the Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers!).

Overall

Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax crackers are delicious and made with good ingredients. For the price, though, the sheer amount of broken crackers was a serious detraction. Despite that, it seems like Nabisco has another potentially timeless cracker in its portfolio (presuming they do not simply give up on them before the marketplace can find them!) with their Good Thins The Oat One Sweet Oat & Flax Oat & Wheat Snacks!

For other foods from my subscription service box, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Loacker Creme Noisette Fine Milk Chocolate Biscuits
Kala Beautiful Beans Simply Peppered roasted fava beans
Wise Butter Flavored Air Popped Popcorn

8/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the food reviews I have written!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Coming Soon To A Clearance Rack Near You! Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar Cookies

The Good: Generally good ingredients, Do not taste bad
The Bad: Dry, Expensive, Do not taste good
The Basics: Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are a surprising disappointment from the usually solid brand.


I have a pretty good nose for products that will not last in the marketplace. Conversely, there are a ton of products that I think ought to survive in the crowded markets that fail, but those tend not to be based on inherent quality. But, to the point, there are products that when I experience them for enjoyment and/or review, I find myself wondering how they were produced at all and I am usually able to call their failure in the marketplace. Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are a product that will not be in stores in six months. Odds are pretty good they have not reached shelves near you yet, but these cookies are one that I find myself baffled as to how they got beyond the pitch stage.

Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are not horrible, but they are not good. Nabisco seems to be trying to hedge their bets with the Chips Ahoy! Thins by making a cookie that is more or less a cracker.

Basics

Nabisco has been around for decades making cookies. The Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are a new expansion to their classic Chips Ahoy! cookie line.

Each serving of Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar Cookies is four round, flat, hard cookies (30 grams) approximately 2 1/4” in diameter and 1/4” thick. Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar Cookies come in a 7 oz. package with twenty-eight cookies. The plastic tray does a decent job of preventing breakage. Each cookie is light off-white and resembles a cinnamon sugar cookie more than anything that might possess a chocolate chip in it. The Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies have vanilla chips in them instead of the traditional chocolate chips . . . and they were used so sparingly that one would never guess these were Chips Ahoy! cookies.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies is not a real challenge: simply open the package, pull out a cookie (or four) and consume. When you have a cookie out, all you have to do is stick it in your mouth and chew; there is nothing complicated or mysterious about eating these cookies.

Taste

The Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies smell like cinnamon sugar, nothing more. The initial aroma is inviting enough, but it is hard not to feel like one has been the victim of some sort of culinary bait and switch by the olfactory sense. The scent implies hot, moist cinnamon sugar . . . buns, cookies, pancakes . . . the resulting taste, however, is nothing so delightful.

In the mouth, each Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar Cookie is hard and dry and tastes like cinnamon sugar and flour. These cookies taste like cinnamon toast; sweet, but very dry. The cracker analogy for these cookies is not a bad one; these are reminiscent of a cracker with how they are crispy and vaguely sweet without being overly flavorful. When the dominant word to describe a cookie is "dry" followed by "cracker like," one is not having a real taste sensation or a treat! Sadly, such is how it is for the Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies; the flavor is so generic and mediocre that I had to remind myself while reviewing that there were vanilla chips in the cookies; the chips do not assert themselves in the flavor palate at all.

These cookies leave one with a slightly sweet aftertaste in the mouth, which endures for a few minutes after it is consumed. The cinnamon flavor and dryness of the cookie fade fairly fast, leaving just a generic, mild sweetness in the mouth.

Nutrition

Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are intended as a sweet snack, not a full meal. A quartet of these cookies makes for a full 30 gram serving and they are not at overly nutritious. Made primarily of sugar, unbleached enriched flour, and canola oil, this is not an all-natural food product. These cookies were produced on equipment that forces them to add a disclaimer about milk, soy, and wheat.

Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies have a substantive 150 calories for a single serving, 60 of which are from fat. A serving represents 13% of one's RDA of saturated fat, though they are cholesterol free. As well, they are fairly low in sodium for a cookie, having only 60 mg (3% RDA) per serving. They have a gram of protein and four percent of the RDA of Iron, with no other real nutrients. As one who is working on getting heart-healthy, I wish there had been some dietary fiber.

Storage/Cleanup

Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are easy to care for and clean up. Unopened, they have a pretty short shelf life; our arrived last week and they have an expiration date of February 17, 2017. Given how the package reseals, it is easy to keep these cookies fresh. Then again, given how hard these cookies are to begin with, it is hard to imagine that it would be easy to tell when these cookies get stale.

Overall

Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Thins Cinnamon Sugar cookies are one of the most unremarkable cookies I have ever tried and while they are not unpleasant to eat, they are in no way enjoyable and that makes them an impossible sell with me.

For other reviews of cookies, please check out:
Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled Cookies
WhoNu? Soft & Chewy Nutrition Rich Cookies
Loacker Cappuccino Fine Milk Chocolate Biscuits

3/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Interesting, But Not Audacious, Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled Cookies Are A Mixed Bag!

The Good: Generally good ingredients, Do not taste bad
The Bad: Chocolate chips are not at all chocolatey, A little expensive for what they are
The Basics: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies are a neat idea, but the underwhelming nature of the chocolate in them makes them a much tougher sell than they ought to be!


With how much my wife and I cook for one another, it is a rare thing these days for either of us to buy store-bought cookies. In fact, it has been a good six months since I purchased the Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies (reviewed here!) and so, I was a bit surprised when my wife purchased a package of Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies. The Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled flavored cookies are a soft chocolate chocolate chip cookie, that comes in a plastic tray in a resealable foil package. At $4.99 for eighteen cookies, these felt less remarkable than worth the price.

Basics

Nabisco has been around for decades making cookies. The Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies are a new expansion to their classic Chips Ahoy! cookie line.

Each 16 gram Chips Ahoy! Cookie is a single round, soft cookie approximately 2 1/4” in diameter and 3/8” thick. Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled Cookies come in a 9.6 oz. package with eighteen cookies. The plastic tray does a decent job of preventing breakage. A serving of Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies is a pair of cookies.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies is not a real challenge: simply open the package, pull out a cookie, and consume. When you have a cookie out, all you have to do is stick it in your mouth and chew; there is nothing complicated or mysterious about eating these cookies.

Taste

The Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies smell like cookies, nothing more. The cookie aroma is familiar, not audacious. Instead, these are inviting to anyone who loves the smell of fresh-baked cookies.

In the mouth, each Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled Cookie is soft and doughy, followed by strongly sweet. The chocolate chips in the Birthday Frosting Filled Cookies are more a hard, waxy texture than a true chocolate flavor. After the floury cookie flavor is almost immediately replaced by the over-the-top sugary flavor of the frosting that makes up the center of the cookie. This is like a golden Oreo in its flavor.

These cookies leave one with a sweet aftertaste in the mouth, which endures for a few minutes after it is consumed.

Nutrition

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies are intended as a sweet snack, not a full meal. A pair of these cookies makes for a full 32 gram serving and they are not at overly nutritious. Made primarily of sugar, unbleached enriched flour, and palm oil, this is not an all-natural food product. These cookies were produced on equipment that forces them to add a disclaimer about milk, soy, and wheat.

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies have a substantive 150 calories for a single serving, 60 of which are from fat. A serving represents 20% of one's RDA of saturated fat, though they are cholesterol free. As well, they are fairly low in sodium for a cookie, having only 115 mg (5% RDA) per serving. They have less than a gram of protein and four percent of the RDA of Iron, with no other real nutrients. As one who is working on getting heart-healthy, I wish there had been some dietary fiber.

Storage/Cleanup

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies are easy to care for and clean up. Unopened, they have a pretty short shelf life; we purchased ours two weeks ago and they have an expiration date of September 23, 2015. Given how the package reseals, it is easy to keep these cookies fresh. These soft cookies do not generate significant crumbs when one consumes them!

Overall

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Birthday Frosting Filled cookies taste good, but are not exceptional, which makes them a harder cookie to get truly excited about. The lack of a real strong chocolate flavor to the chocolate chips makes them feel much more average with their embedded frosting than truly special.

For other reviews of cookies, please check out:
Nestle Toll House Mint Swirled Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
WhoNu? Soft & Chewy Nutrition Rich Cookies
Keebler Peanut Butter Jumbo Fudge Sticks wafer cookies

5/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Sign Only To Me, Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations Are A Delight For All!

The Good: Taste wonderful, Generally good ingredients
The Bad: A little expensive for what they are
The Basics: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies are a delightful new addition to the Chips Ahoy! line!


I am not a believer in signs and symbols that are divinely created in real life. I love symbology in literature, but I’m not one who subscribes to horoscopes or other hokum in reality. But, just over two weeks ago, my beloved cat Gollum died (his final meal is reviewed here!) and my wife and I went out to the grocery store to pick up our components for our Thanksgiving dinner that same day. While we were out at our local grocery store, I made an uncharacteristic trip down the cookie aisle. There, on the shelf and my eye level was a single package of Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies. There were several packages of three other flavors of Ice Cream Creations cookies, but only the one of the Mint Chocolate Chip. As one who absolutely loves virtually all things that are mint chocolate flavored, I allowed myself a moment of weakness, declared that this package of cookies was a sign for me and I bought them.

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations flavored cookies are a soft chocolate chocolate chip cookie, that comes in a plastic tray in a resealable foil package. At $4.99 for eighteen cookies, these are much more of a splurge for me and I bought them entirely as comfort food. They certainly lived up on that front!

Basics

Nabisco has been around, pretty much forever, making cookies. The Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies are a new expansion to their classic Chips Ahoy! cookie line.

Each 15 gram Chips Ahoy! Cookie is a single round, soft cookie approximately 2 1/4” in diameter and 3/8” thick. Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations Cookies come in a 9.5 oz. package with eighteen cookies. The plastic tray does a decent job of preventing breakage. A serving of Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies is a pair of cookies.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies is not a real challenge: simply open the package, pull out a cookie, and consume. When you have a cookie out, all you have to do is stick it in your mouth and chew; there is nothing complicated or mysterious about eating these cookies.

Taste

The Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies smell only slightly of peppermint, though that is the dominant scent from each of the chocolate cookies. The aroma is inviting, but dissipates quickly once the package is open.

On the tongue, each Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations Cookie is a delightful blend of chocolate and mint. The slightly waxy, peppermint flavor of the embedded green white mint chocolate chips in the chocolate cookie dominates the flavor palate of the cookies. The chocolate cookies are well accented by the cool peppermint flavor. Given that these are moist cookies, the chocolate flavor endures and finishes the flavor off nicely. It’s like the mint opens the taste buds up for a more receptive flavor for the chocolate cookie portion.

These cookies leave one with a sweet aftertaste in the mouth, but not a dry sensation . . . which is nice, but only encourages one to eat more!

Nutrition

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies are intended as a sweet snack, not a full meal. A pair of these cookies makes for a full 30 gram serving and they are not at overly nutritious. Made primarily of unbleached enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup and sugar, this is not an all-natural food product. These cookies were produced on equipment that forces them to add a disclaimer about milk, soy, and wheat.

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies have a substantive 140 calories for a single serving, 50 of which are from fat. A serving represents 18% of one's RDA of saturated fat, though they are cholesterol free. As well, they are fairly low in sodium for a cookie, having only 90 mg (4% RDA) per serving. They have less than a gram of protein and six percent of the RDA of Iron . . . and no other real nutrients. As one who is working on getting heart-healthy, I wish there had been at least a full gram of dietary fiber.

Storage/Cleanup

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies are easy to care for and clean up. Unopened, they have a pretty short shelf life; we purchased ours two weeks ago and they have an expiration date of December 1, 2014. Even after I started to gorge on them and left them resealed, they did not get stale in that time. These soft cookies do not even generate crumbs when one consumes them!

Overall

Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Creations cookies taste wonderful and are about as nutritious as most store-bought cookies, but could be a little less expensive to truly thrill consumers!

For other reviews of cookies, please check out:
Nestle Toll House Mint Swirled Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
WhoNu? Soft & Chewy Nutrition Rich Cookies
Keebler Peanut Butter Jumbo Fudge Sticks wafer cookies

9/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Before They Get Clearanced, Triscuit Brown Rice Roasted Red Pepper Crackers!

The Good: Tastes good, Fairly healthy
The Bad: Portion size makes these harder to stick to in healthy proportions.
The Basics: Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuit crackers taste delightful and compliment a number of toppings . . . making them hard to eat only six of!


With eating healthy, I am shaking up my usual favorite flavors of Triscuit crackers to try some of the potentially even more healthy varieties of the crackers. To that end, I picked up a box of Nabisco Triscuit Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor crackers and I have quickly found them to be one of the better snacks I have discovered since starting to eat healthy again. The strength of Triscuits is that they are often flavorful enough on their own to not require garnish (hummus or cheese are my preferences!). Even so, the Roasted Red Pepper Triscuit crackers are predictably problematic in that they are delightful enough that it is hard to only eat six (which is the recommended serving size!).

Basics

Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits, for those who are not familiar with them, are rice and wheat-based crackers. The Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits are a bit more red than most Triscuits, though otherwise they are very familiar to those who love consuming crackers. The crackers look like shredded wheat in cracker form.

Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits come in various sizes, but always in a bag in a box. The standard size box that I have found is 9 oz. The crackers are square 1 9/16”on each side and contoured with little striations of shredded wheat.

Ease Of Preparation

Triscuit Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor are simple to enjoy; all you need to do is open the bag and remove the crackers from it! There is no trick to eating Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuit; they are a snack that is ready to go from the bag to the mouth.

Taste

Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits smell quite strongly of roasted red peppers or sun-dried tomatoes. The moment one opens the bag, the scent of dried or roasted vegetables wafts out in a way that is instantly recognizable to fans of such foods and that scent lingers for as long as the bag is open. These crackers do a great job of creating olfactory anticipation!

On the taste front, the Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits are very good. Very lightly salted, these crackers nevertheless push out a very distinct flavor instantly. As soon as they hit the tongue, they are sweet and slightly citrusy, clearly embodying an acidic vegetable. While the roasted red pepper flavor is similar to a sun-dried tomato flavor, these are quite satisfying. What might be most interesting about the flavor of the Roasted Red Pepper Triscuit crackers is that at no time do the brown rice or wheat that make up much of the cracker’s composition assert their flavor over the sweet vegetable flavor from the peppers!

These crackers leave no noticeable aftertaste, making them very satisfying on their own or supporting cheese or hummus!

Nutrition

Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuit are a surprisingly natural snack, without any recognizable preservatives. Given that the ingredients are mostly long grain brown rice, soybean oil and whole grain soft white wheat, it might surprise salty snack eaters to learn how generally good these crackers are. These have a shelf life of approximately six months, so it's not the best snack to stock up on.

Each 29 gram, six cracker, serving of Triscuit Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor crackers has 130 calories, forty of which come from fat. There are also 2 grams of dietary fiber. While there are 4.5 grams of fat and 2 grams of protein, there are only 110 mg of sodium, which represents 5% of one's RDA of sodium. There are a smattering of vitamins and minerals, but nothing significant. There is a dietary note that the Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor includes wheat ingredients, which means they are not gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

Kept in their bag in their box, Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits will remain fresh for a few months and as long as the bag is resealed, one suspects they will last for a few weeks before getting stale. I've never had to deal with issues of freshness for my Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits. The box we bought last month has an expiration date of October 23, 2013, but I know they will not last that long given how much I enjoy them!

Cleanup is simple as well. Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuit are a dry food and thus leave very little mess behind. Because they have no particles – salt or other seasonings – on them, they are exceptionally easy to clean up after and leave no messy residue!

Overall

Brown Rice with Red Bean Roasted Red Pepper Flavor Triscuits are delightful and if they were less expensive, they might even be perfect. As it is, they are a flavorful healthy treat that holds their own without garnish.

For other snack foods, check out my reviews of:
Everybody's Nuts! Garlic & Onion Pistachios
Quaker Chocolate Crunch Rice Cakes
Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Crackers

8.5/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Nabisco Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Crackers Are One Of The Best, Most Flavorful Crackers!

The Good: Tastes great, Not unhealthy
The Bad: Portion size makes these less healthy/unrealistic
The Basics: Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuit are a good snack, but require many more than the recommended serving to truly satisfy!


Even as I have been eating healthier, I still find some treats irresistible. Nabisco Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil crackers are one of those amazing treats. Unfortunately, the basic nutrition issues that initially seem insignificant in Nabisco Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil crackers are completely undone by the ridiculous portion size. According to the box, Nabisco Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil crackers are supposed to be six crackers. I defy anyone with taste to eat only six in a sitting!

Basics

Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits, for those who are not familiar with them, are whole grain wheat crackers. The Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits feature a side covered in dill and salt on the ccrackers. The crackers look like shredded wheat and crackers blended together.

Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits come in various sizes, but always in a bag in a box. The standard size box that I have found is 9 oz. The crackers are square 1 ¾” by 1 13/16” and contoured with little striations of shredded wheat.

Ease Of Preparation

Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil are simple to enjoy; all you need do it open the bag and remove the crackers from it! There is no trick to eating Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuit; they are a snack that is ready to go from the bag to the mouth.

Taste

Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits smell delightfully of dill. Anyone who loves dill will be instantly enticed by the aroma of Nabisco Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil.

On the taste front, the Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits are exceptional. These crackers are not at all dry, but they are powerfully flavored of dill and they are salty enough to make every possible bite explode with flavor. These crackers are not dry or in any way bland. Moreover, the aftertaste of these crackers is the same as the primary flavor; dill!

Nutrition

Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuit are a surprisingly natural snack, with no preservatives. Given that the ingredients are mostly whole grain soft white winter wheat, soybean oil and maltodextrin, it might surprise salty snack eaters to learn how generally good these crackers are. These have a shelf life of approximately one year, so it's not a bad snack to stock up on.

Each 28 gram, six cracker, serving of Triscuit Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil crackers has 120 calories, thirty-five of which come from fat. There are also 3 grams of dietary fiber. While there are 4 grams of fat and 3 grams of protein, there are only 170 mg of sodium, which represents 7% of one's RDA of sodium. There are a smattering of vitamins and minerals, but nothing significant. There is a dietary note that the Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil includes wheat ingredients, which means they are not gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

Kept in their bag, Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits will remain fresh for a year and as long as the bag is resealed, one suspects they will last for a few weeks before getting stale. I've never had to deal with issues of freshness for my Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits.

Cleanup is simple as well. Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuit are a dry food and thus leave very little mess behind. Because they are strongly salted and covered in dill, they may leave some spices around. Simply wash your hands, throw out the bag and cleanup is done!

Overall

Dill Sea Salt & Olive Oil Triscuits are a worthwhile snack that would not be terribly unhealthy, save that the six cracker serving size is utterly unrealistic. At the realistic serving size (one box! Seriously, they are that good!), these are not terribly healthy.

For other foods, check out my reviews of:
Everybody's Nuts! Garlic & Onion Pistachios
Quaker Chocolate Crunch Rice Cakes
Idahoan Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

7/10

For other food and drink reviews, please click here to visit my index page!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Happy Birthday Oreo! Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream From Breyers Blasts Is A Fun Limited Edition Flavor!

The Good: Yummy, Reasonably priced, Nothing bad in it
The Bad: Not the most distinctive or Oreo-based flavor!
The Basics: Breyers Blasts Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream is a fun limited edition ice cream flavor, but not one likely to make one wish it was part of the permanent line.


One of the advantages to moving to a completely new place (to me) is that I get to encounter all sorts of new things that I did not have locally in my old digs. When I saw the selection of Breyers ice creams at the local grocery store here, my heart skipped a beat! The first exciting new flavor for me to try was actually one that I picked up for my wife. She is a fan of birthday cake flavored ice creams and Breyers Blasts! has a limited edition Oreo Birthday Blast! to celebrate the iconic cookie’s one hundredth birthday. I thought that this might be an intriguing cookies and cream style ice cream, but it is all icing flavor!

The Breyers Blasts’s Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream is a simple ice cream with two additives: sprinkles and Oreo cookie pieces.

Basics

Breyers Blasts ice cream comes in a typical half gallon container. The Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream is a (surprisingly) mostly smooth ice cream: the basic ice cream has sprinkles throughout, but only a few sizeable chunks of Oreo cookies in them.

At (locally) $5.99 a half gallon, the Breyers Blasts! ice cream is an affordable, mid-range ice cream. Apparently, in Michigan (at least this area), frozen food does not get clearance!

Ease Of Preparation

The Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream is an ice cream. As an ice cream, preparation is ridiculously simple: one need only open the top of the container, scoop out a half cup and consume! There is no trick to preparing or eating the Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream.

Taste

The Oreo Birthday Blast! ice cream smells like vanilla icing and sprinkles. It is fascinating to me how an ice cream that looks just like chocolate cookies and cream can smell so much like the cake topping that it includes as (pretty much) an additive!

On the taste front, the taste is dominated by the cake frosting flavor, just as the smell implied! The sprinkles add a texture to every bite, but this ice cream does not even taste much like cookies and cream. Instead, this is very much a cake flavored frozen dairy dessert. The bites of Oreo Birthday Blast! that actually have the Oreo cookie pieces in them have a slightly chocolatey flavor that is almost a taste-equivalent of an afterthought. The chocolate flavor is in no way dominant. Ironically, even near the Oreo cookie pieces, the icing dominates, so the entire dessert tastes like a frozen, sprinkle-filled Oreo cream center!

Oreo Birthday Blast! ice cream does have a fairly dry aftertaste, though.

Nutrition

The Breyers Blasts Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream is a fairly heavy “frozen dairy dessert” with heavy additives. The half gallon represents twelve half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 130 calories, 40 of which are from fat. The four and a half grams of fat represent 7% of the RDA of fat, with 12% of one’s RDA of saturated fat coming in the 2.5 grams of saturated fat in this ice cream. One serving has 5 mg of cholesterol (that’s 2% of the RDA!) and 60 mg of Sodium (2% RDA). The only other real nutrient is two grams of protein, though there is also 4% of the RDA of both Calcium and Vitamin A in the Oreo Birthday Blast! Ice Cream.

Breyers Blasts has decent ingredients, too. Made primarily of Milk, corn syrup, and sugar the Oreo Birthday Blast! is not, technically, an ice cream, though it sure mimics one well! There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list. The Oreo Birthday Blast! Breyers Blasts! is Kosher, but not gluten free. There are no allergy warnings on the package.

Storage/Clean-Up

Breyers Blasts ice cream is both a frozen and a dairy product, so it is pretty obvious that it must be kept frozen in order to remain viable. Kept frozen it remains fresh for months (my half gallon had an expiration date of November 15, 2013).

The Oreo Birthday Blast! ice cream is fairly light frozen dairy dessert. However, when the ice cream melts and gets onto fabrics, it will require one to wash it right out. On nonporous surfaces, the ice cream wipes off exceptionally easily.

Overall

The Breyers Blasts Oreo Birthday Blast! ice cream is less cake flavored (and not at all cookies and cream flavored) and more an embodiment of frosting flavored ice cream than anything else. That makes it an enjoyable novelty flavor, but not one I’ll regret the “limited edition” nature of and miss when it is gone.

For other Breyers frozen dairy desserts, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Blasts! Snickers Caramel Swirl Chunk ice cream
Coffee Ice Cream
Blasts Klondike Krunch ice cream

5/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

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

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With A Filling So Good, It’s No Wonder The Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream Cookies Don’t Want To Stay Together!

The Good: Tastes good.
The Bad: Not very healthy at all, Fall apart exceptionally easily.
The Basics: Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies are one of the best Oreo flavors Nabisco has made, but they barely stay together for consumers to enjoy!


I have, to open with a completely candid moment, not been a fan of Oreo cookies for quite some time. I don’t think they are bad cookies, but when objectively evaluating a healthier sandwich cookie earlier this year, I came to realize that I have no particular affinity for Oreo sandwich cookies. They are dry, usually hard, and they do not (honestly) taste anything like real chocolate. So, when my wife picked up some Berry Burst Ice Cream flavored Oreo cookies, I was not at all predisposed toward them.

My wife picked up the package of thirty-six cookies for $4.99 and I did not begrudge her the treat at all. I especially did not mind the splurge when I tasted the Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies! At some point, I may have to do a comparison with the Mint Oreos, but the Berry Burst Ice Cream might be my new favorite flavor of Oreos!

Basics

Oreo cookies are manufactured by Nabisco, which has been around pretty much forever. In recent years, Oreo has attempted to generate product enthusiasm by changing the flavor of the cream in Oreo cookies to give people new reasons to buy them. The Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies are one of the latest attempts.

Each 15 gram Oreo Cookie is two black disks approximately 1 7/8” in diameter, connected by a thin layer of red and pink speckled icing that is supposed to hold the two cookies together. Berry Burst Ice Cream Cookies come in a 15.25 oz. sealed package with a plastic tray that houses the thirty-six cookies. The package and tray do a decent job of preventing breakage, at least until one begins to eat many or most of these cookies. A serving of Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream Nutrition Rich sandwich cookies is two cookies.

Unfortunately, the Berry Burst Oreos do not want to adhere to the cream! Over three quarters of the cookies in my package detached from one of the two cookie halves before or as I removed the cookie from the tray! I’m not sure why this happened, but I’ve never had an Oreo work so hard to separate from its mate before today!

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies is not a real challenge, but getting to the cookies is. Oreo wisely created a package of cookies that is resealable. That resealable pouch surrounds the thin plastic tray that houses the cookies. The seam for the releasable opening is not at the top or side of the tray, though, it is at the middle. This makes it slightly more awkward to get the cookies out of the package. If this is a subtle way to enforce portion control, then bravo Oreo. If it is not, it’s just annoying.

When you have a cookie out, all you have to do is stick it in your mouth and chew; there is nothing complicated or foreign about eating these cookies.

Taste

Opening the package to the Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreo cookies is a truly mouth-watering experience. The scent that rises up is like a blend of strawberries, raspberries and a light cream. There is no scent carried that smells like the chocolate cookies that surround the creamy center of these cookies. That makes them very enticing, at least to one who recently realized that Oreos are not their favorite cookie.

On the tongue Oreo cookies have a (predictably) very dry exterior. However, unlike most Oreo cookies, the dryness of the toasted chocolate (that is how I have come to describe dry, chocolate-“flavored” baked goods that do not actually taste like actual chocolate) is almost instantly dispelled when one bites through the cookie. Between two exceedingly dry cookies, there is a thick, soft layer of cream that tastes like strawberries, raspberries and a hint of blueberries drown in sugar. This, for some reason, moistens the cookies enough that they no longer create a dominant dry taste in the mouth. While the fruity flavor of the cream in these cookies is pretty much undeniable, the “ice cream” flavor is harder to get. In fact, this only tasted like ice cream to me when I removed the cream filling completely from the cookie exterior.

Even so, the Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreos are delicious and taste (mostly) like they promise!

Nutrition

Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream Cookies are intended as a sweet snack, not a full meal. Two of these 15 gram cookies represent a single serving and they are not very nutritious at all. Made primarily of sugar, unbleached enriched flour and high oleic canola and/or palm oil, the ingredient list is far less organic the further down one ventures, like most prepackaged products. This is not an all-natural food product and these cookies were produced on equipment that forces them to add a disclaimer about soy and wheat.

Oreo's Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies have 150 calories for a two cookie serving, 60 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 13% of one's RDA of saturated fat, though they are cholesterol free. As well, they are fairly low in sodium for a cookie, having only 120 mg per serving. They also have a gram of protein and ten percent of thirteen different vitamins and minerals! As one who is working on getting heart-healthy, I appreciate the 2 grams of dietary fiber per serving. There are no vitamins or other nutrients, outside a smattering of ones RDA of Iron.

Storage/Cleanup

Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies are easy to care for and clean up. Unopened, they have a pretty decent shelf life; my wife purchased a package in late April (2012) and they have an expiration date of October 12, 2012. Kept sealed, I am sure they would have lasted at least that long. As cookies, one need only not shake the bag excessively to care for them and wipe away any crumbs after eating them. This is a low-stress food!

Overall

Oreo Berry Burst Ice Cream cookies are good tasting cookies that make it worth the work to keep them together to eat and the exercise needed to work them off when you’re done eating them!

For other snack food and cookie reviews, please check out:
Keebler Fudge Sticks Jumbo Mint Wafer cookies
WhoNu? Soft & Chewy Nutrition Rich Cookies
Quaker Chewy S’mores Granola Bar

5.5/10

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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