Friday, November 15, 2013

Enjoyable, But Not Indispensible: Quaker Vanilla Crème Brulee Popped Rice Snacks Are Merely Average.


The Good: Nothing bad in them, Tastes fine, Fairly healthy
The Bad: Not at all filling, Not the strongest crème brulee flavor, Comparatively expensive
The Basics: Quaker Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks are good, but not the best embodiment of the claimed flavor.


When it comes to healthy snacks, there are very few mainstream companies that look out for dieters like Quaker. One of the latest treats my wife and I have discovered in our quest to eat healthier are the Quaker Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks. We found this treat on clearance at our local grocery store, so I suspect Quaker is already done producing this. It’s not a bad sweet, healthy, treat, but it is by no means the most exceptional one, either, making it somewhat predictable that it would end up clearance and having a short production run.

Basics

Quaker is perhaps best known for making oatmeal, but for a long time has made granola bars and other healthy snacks. Their Popped rice snacks come in several flavors and the Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks are the few sweet flavors that seem to have survived from the Quakes line to the Popped line (which seems to be the same treat, just renamed).

The Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks come in a 3.5 oz. bag that is like a little potato chip bag. The bag holds just under forty Popped rice snacks. Thirteen Popped rice snack represents a single serving and each of the Popped rice snacks are 1 3/4" in diameter by 3/8” thick, mimicking the look and feel of a mini-rice cake. The Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks are mostly white with a slight tan tint to them (as if they had been glazed with cinnamon) and a light sheen.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating a Quaker Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snack is simple. After removing the mini-rice 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

The Vanilla Crème Brulee Popped rice snacks smell strongly of vanilla. In fact, opening the bag, one gets a whiff of vanilla that is potent and so inviting one is likely to want to tear right in and gobble these right up!

On the tongue, the sweet glaze is delightful, though it has a slight dry taste to it that is distinctive to vanilla. The definitely sweet, but only vaguely vanilla, flavor has a buttery secondary flavor that mimics slightly the caramel of crème brulee. What the Popped snacks lack entirely is even a hint of cinnamon that is usually associated with flavoring crème brulee. Instead, this snack – while not at all unpleasant to eat – ends up tasting like a severely weakened caramel rice cake as opposed to a truly flavorful crème brulee.

There is a slightly sweet aftertaste that lingers from the Vanilla Crème Brulee Popped rice snacks for about a minute after one is done consuming them.

Nutrition

Quaker Popped rice snacks 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 30 gram serving of the Vanilla Crème Brule Popped rice snack represent a single serving and is thirteen mini-rice cakes. Made primarily of whole grain brown rice, sugar, and corn, there is nothing in the Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks that was unpronounceable. This is a mostly-natural food product with a dietary disclaimer that this flavor contains milk and soy ingredients.

Quaker's Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks have 120 calories, only ten of which are from fat. A full serving represents 9% of one's RDA of carbohydrates and these are cholesterol free. There is a gram of protein to be had by eating an Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snack. These are not a significant source of any vitamins or minerals and have no protein.

Storage/Cleanup

As a healthy snack, Quaker Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snack remain fresh so long as they are kept in their bag. Opened, they will absorb moisture from the air and become squishy in an unappealing way. Our bag had an expiration date of January 6, 2014, and they have remained fresh, even when stored. 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 Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks makes them sticky and that would necessitate the washing of one’s hands.

These do not stain clothes, though.

Overall

Quaker Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks are good, but not filling and not the best embodiment of crème brulee flavor. They are good, but not exceptional.

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 Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

No comments:

Post a Comment