Saturday, January 11, 2014

Giving Sheila G’s A Second Chance Is Worth It For The Mint Chocolate Brownie Brittle!


The Good: Tastes great, Affordable, Good ingredients, Good company!
The Bad: Packaging does not protect the Brownie Brittle, Not especially nutritious
The Basics: Sheila G’s Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle is a good-tasting treat worth trying!


It is always exciting to me to see that the manufacturer of a product I have reviewed has found my little blog and I am always interested in seeing how they react when they encounter a negative review I have written. I try very hard to be unbiased and approach each experience as I experience it and when I reviewed the Sheila G’s Mint Chocolate Brownie Brittle (reviewed here!), I was not impressed and my review apparently concerned the fine folks at Sheila G’s. Within hours of the review being posted, they contacted me and today I received a “care package” from the company featuring all four flavors of Brownie Brittle they now produce (I’m happy to see they no longer make Walnut Brownie Brittle as I’m not a fan of walnut brownies and would hate to be immediately biased against one of the flavors!). Whenever a company starts a relationship with me, I pick the product they send me that I am most biased in favor of to start my reviews. While this, admittedly, prejudices me in favor of the product, it also shows the company that sends me products that I am appreciative of their finding my blog and sending me products to review. Given my love of mint chocolate products, the Brownie Brittle I was most biased toward was the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle.

Opening the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle, unbiased by my expectations of what a product called “Brownie Brittle” “ought” to be, I discovered almost instantly that my first experience with Brownie Brittle might have been biased by a bad batch. The first thing I noticed was that the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle in the bag directly from Sheila G’s was quite a bit more intact than the packages I bought in the store. This makes me believe that one of the serious detractions to Sheila G’s Brownie Brittle is the packaging; while I love resealable packages, the type of bag that the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle comes in does not adequately protect the product so consumers get the most out of it.

Regardless of everything else, I wanted to put right upfront in my review of the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle that the customer service at Sheila G’s is exceptionally good. The people who work at Sheila G’s are remarkably friendly and responsive. They seem to genuinely want to produce the best possible product and they seemed exceptionally concerned that my first experience with the Brownie Brittle might have been based on a batch that was handled improperly/was sold too close to the expiration date. Their responsiveness and the fact that their business is a Women’s Business Enterprise certified company are both big pluses as far as I am concerned!

That said, the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle did not need anything to push up its rating given how good it is on its own.

Basics

Redefining the nature of traditional brownies, Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle are 1/8 – 1/4" thick (depending on whether or not they have the chocolate chips in the piece of Brownie Brittle) and, in their unbroken form, they are uniformly 2” square. Each piece of Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle is fairly smooth on one side (like the slightly glazed top of a brownie) and textured on the bottom, like a cookie or toasted bagel top. Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle comes in a 4 oz. bag. According to the nutrition facts, a serving of Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle is one ounce, 28 grams and there are four servings per container. Measuring out this bag, we found that meant four and one half pieces of Brownie Brittle

For those who have never had Brownie Brittle before, Brownie Brittle are flat, hard chips that are similar to bagel chips. Moisture - or saliva - dissolves Brownie Brittle on the tongue. They are more like a thin cookie than a soft, chewy brownie and in the well-protected bag sent directly from the company, there were only ten completely unbroken pieces of Brownie Brittle; the rest were broken up, though nowhere near as bad as in the first bag I had (which had none of the Brownie Brittle that were even remotely regular or 2” in length on any side!). The Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle has the actual mint chocolate chips with irregular frequency; some of the pieces have as few as two mint chocolate chips, some as many as ten! Regardless of how many mint chocolate chips a piece of this Brownie Brittle actually had, every piece smelled deliciously of mint.

Ease Of Preparation

Unlike making brownies from scratch, Brownie Brittle is easy to prepare. Simply open the resealable bag and remove four and a half pieces and consume. There is no other preparation needed; this is a ready-to-eat product. As one who absolutely loves the end of cereal (cereal crumbs), I found a certain delight in taking the two tablespoons of crumbs at the bottom of the bag, adding milk to it and eating it like cereal crumbs!

Taste

Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle smells entirely like mint. As one who loves chocolate mint, the smell of peppermint is entirely recognizable. There is almost nothing chocolate to the aroma of the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle, though it still manages to insinuate the scent of brownies. There is something to the scent of brownies that is not chocolate, but is distinctly the scent of brownies and that is captured perfectly in the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle.

In the mouth, the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle has the immediate and impressive flavor of mint. The chocolate flavor comes in as a secondary flavor, sublimated to the cool, clear, peppermint flavor. The mint flavor finishes with the chocolate and the chocolate and chocolate brownie flavor is flavorful enough to impress those who love brownies. As one salivates, the chocolate flavor is fleshed out. Because these are crispy, they never quite take on the expected flavor of a brownie, but they are the exact flavor experience one expects from a chocolate cookie. As a result, the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle blends in the mouth to take on the well-rounded flavor of a mint chocolate cookie.

The Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle leaves a slightly dry aftertaste in the mouth, much like what one gets when eating a cookie. It is nowhere near as dry as one might think for a cookie, but quite a bit drier than a brownie’s usual aftertaste.

Nutrition

Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle is a baked sweet, so one ought not to be living off it. The Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle pieces are made primarily of sugar, enriched bleached wheat flour, and cocoa. There are, surprisingly, no unidentifiable ingredients in this food product and nothing that seems at all artificial (in fact, this is one of the few mass-produced product I have reviewed where the ingredients list reads more like a recipe than a chemical equation!). The bag of Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle carries an allergy warning for wheat, eggs, soy, and milk.

Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle has 120 calories per serving, 35 of which are from fat, though it is tough to stick with the somewhat nebulous serving size of 28 grams. The 4 grams of fat represent 6% of the recommended daily value of fat and 5% of the daily recommended saturated fat; there are no trans fats in this Brownie Brittle. As well, there are 95 milligrams of sodium and 14 grams of sugars (21 total grams of carbohydrates). There is a gram of protein and 4% of one’s RDA of Iron in a serving of Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle, but there are no other real nutrients in these.

These are not nutritious, but have nothing bad in them, so they make for a wonderful snack!

Storage/Clean-up

The Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle stores just fine in its bag, breakage aside, and as long as they are kept in a cool, dry (preferably dark) place they ought to last for a few months. The bag I received today directly from the company bore a September 15, 2014 expiration date.

Unless one really crunches down sloppily on these or lets the few Mint Chocolate Chips in them melt, cleanup ought not to be an issue. If it becomes an issue, consult a fabric cleaning guide. Chocolate stains might be a problem, but again, it only becomes an issue if it gets melted. The rest of the brownie brittle very easily may be wiped up. This product generates quite a few crumbs, but they are pretty easy to clean up.

Overall

Sheila G’s Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle are a delicious snack that is worth trying. While I might be biased in favor of chocolate mint products, I can honestly say that Sheila G’s execution of those flavors is accurate and fun. The mint chocolate chips in this Brownie Brittle are flavorful and do not have any hint of waxiness that mass produced chocolate often possesses. The Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle is, essentially, a high-quality cookie that is a nice treat; one only wishes they were less breakable so one might enjoy the full bag better!

For other chocolate mint snacks, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Ferrara Milk Chocolate Peppermint Orange
Edy’s Mint Cookie Crunch
Jelly Belly Mint Chocolate Dips

8/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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