The Weird World of the Sandwich Cookie

I'm all for the sandwich cookie - two cookies with a layer of something between them (peanut butter, cream, caramel - heck, the possibilities are almost endless!).  What a great idea! But, really, I think they should be called cookie sandwiches instead of sandwich cookies.

There are some sandwich cookies featuring our old friend shortbread.  This one is by Sweet's Bakery in El Salvador:

They are made by sandwiching caramel between two shortbread (they call them shortpastry) cookies:

I thought this was like the greatest idea EVAH!  But, actually, they are kind of bland.  I think they need better caramel.  Maybe some chocolate - I dunno - they need something.

I found these in A Southern Season and they are made by a baker based in North Carolina - Mistti.  The bakery specializes in Latino cookies and they look fabulous:

But these were kind of dry - especially the chocolate one - it was downright terrible.  The others were better and the addition of the chocolate helps a lot, but these just weren't as good as I thought they should be.  That could be a cultural preference.  I purchased several Mexican baked items and I thought they were bland and dry compared to their American counterparts.

Damn - they look sooooo good!!!  And they were NOT cheap - $7.00 for the four cookies.  Totally not worth it.  : (   Yet again, appearances are deceiving.

Let's look at some good ol' cheap sandwich cookies.  These are by Basil's Bavarian Bakery (parent company Biscomerica.  My buddy Gorden hooked me up after Candy Expo - sending a whole case of these!!!  Woohoo!!!).  These are peanut butter:

The problem here is the competition - the Nutter Butter.  The Nutter Butter is so good, no other peanut butter sandwich cookie stands a chance.

These are all perfectly good, cheap sandwich cookies:

Again, the competition is the Oreo - unbeatable in the category.  More chocolately, creamier filling.

I'd never seen strawberry sandwich cookies before:

These are okay - all the flavors are okay.  Nothing extraordinary, but good and, for some reason I keep eating them.  The peanut butter and the strawberry keep sucking me in!

This is a new limited edition Oreo:

I have to say - EWWW! to this.  The strawberry is too sickly sweet and overpowering - I don't like it, don't like it at all.  But if you really like that funky fake strawberry taste of some milkshakes they have captured it pretty well and you may really like these.  Glacck! 

But summer IS time for milkshakes and ice cream!  So soon we'll discuss Godiva's and Lindt's summer flavors - involving ice cream and yogurt.  Life is good!!!

More Easter Eggs - Candy Coated & Dark

Hi Gang! Are you loving the spring weather? I had to take a few days off from blogging to recovered from the great cake pig out. Good grief. But I won't be parted from sugar, fat and chocolate for long!

These candy coated chocolate Easter eggs are a great spring celebration - like M & M's but with more chocolate - what could be better than that?

Cadbury Mini-Eggs are my favorite of these:




This was the first year I saw the tube packaging:



Here they are:

They have a more powdery candy coating (more matte, less smooth and shiny) than the Hershey's version (below) and are a little smaller, but the chocolate is better.

Here's Hershey's:

They look great and chocolaty, but Cadbury's taste better.

Brach's offered these life-size milk chocolate robin eggs:

Wow - too sweet! Too much sugar - closer to Palmer in the sugar content - wow!! Sugar lovers rejoice!

Harry and David tries to compete with M & Ms with their Chocolate Gems (and I have to admit, I was skeptical):

While I love these crazy bright spring colors from M & M:

Harry and Davis wins this contest easily:

They have a much smoother and better taste. There really is a big difference - I was surprised at how much better the Gems were! Once again my preconceptions are dead wrong. Big advertising budgets do not mean quality. Market domination does not equal excellence.

I found these Italian Chocolate Truffle Eggs at A Southern Season and they really are different than most of these. They have the candy coating:

But they have a rich, creamy, truffle filling and there is definitely some hazelnut flavor here.

These are extraordinary! This is a creamy dark chocolate - more on the sweet side of dark and the hazelnut is what really makes them fabulous. It's really not fair to compare them to the others. Holy candy coating, Eggman!

I hadn't see the dark chocolate Cadbury mini-eggs before:

and they are good, but I like the milk chocolate ones better. But this is really a matter of personal preference - dark chocolate lovers will probably love these!

I picked these up at Harry and David. I love this line - Glimmers:

Also in dark chocolate, I thought these were about a million times better than the Cadbury Eggs. I like the Glimmer coating - it's soft, not crunchy and does a much better job of enhancing the chocolate. Delish!!

Milk chocolate still seems to be more popular than dark chocolate (just judging by the fact that there are so may more milk chocolate Easter offerings than dark chocolate ones). But I found a few!

See's had some dark chocolate eggs:

These were my least favorite - a little less creamy than the others. Also less of that fabulous dark chocolate taste:

Dove's pretty pink dark chocolate Elegant Eggs were better:

But not quite as good as Godiva's:

Godiva's dark chocolate had more depth and a richer flavor than the other two.

But the best of all was Neuhaus' dark:

This had the richest, deepest flavor and was smoother than Godiva and less sugary. If you love dark chocolate, this will put you in a state of ecstacy.

Lindt made their famous Lindor truffles in egg shapes for Easter:

(We already reviewed the peanut butter ones) - the dark blue foil eggs are dark chocolate:

Again, it's not fair to compare a truffle with a solid - that delicious creamy filling is sooooo wonderful! It should probably be illegal.

My chocolate adventures keep teaching me the same lessons:

Keep an open mind - what you think you know isn't always right.

Just because everybody likes something (or believes something or does something) doesn't mean it's right or the best or what you should do. The hardest voice to hear in this life is your own.

Candy is fun! Are you giving yourself permission to have any fun?

My Brain on Chocolate

Due to my inability to control myself with Lake Champlain's Organic Milk Chocolate with Almonds and Sea Salt, I have to cut back tonight. That's what I get for writing an entry about eating chocolate and not getting fat. Now I have to walk my own talk. What the hell was I thinking?

Luckily I have a great episode to share with you that illustrates how the crazy human brain works (or, in this case, maybe doesn't work). You may have read about the scientific studies done on the impact of too many choices on the human brain. The study usually cited involves the sale of jams (or jellies - I really don't know what the difference is and let's not even talk about preserves or marmalade). Barry Schwartz, in his book The Paradox of Choice, covers this idea like, well, like jelly on white bread. (Bwah, ha, ha!)

Here's how it works - imagine you are at some fancy, schmancy food fair and there is a table selling fancy, schmancy jams (or whatever the hell it is). One table has six different types of jam; one has 24 different types. Which table sells more jam? (No, this is not the SAT).

The one with 6! 30% of people buy there, only 3% buy at the table with 24!! 27% more people buy at the table with fewer choices! This is huge!! Schwartz refers to this section of his book as "Why Choice is Demotivating."

Bah! you may be thinking. Those food fair people are obviously plebs who don't appreciate fruit embalming artistry when they see it! More is always better! America is built on this idea - why else do we have hundreds of types of EVERYTHING? Seriously, think of all the brands of everything from breakfast cereal to toilet paper. Even paper clips come in different sizes, colors, coatings - good grief!

Sure, you feel that way until it happens to you. You celebrate, rejoice, revel in choice until you experience CHOICE OVERLOAD (CO) and your brain literally freaks out. This happened to me, dear readers, AND IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!

I was worshipping in A Southern Season http://www.southernseason.com/, aka Mecca for foodies. This place is gigantic and has huge sections for tea, coffee, wine, a bakery, a deli, an aisle solely devoted to hot sauces - you get the picture. Just about anything you might want from anywhere in the world that is food related is here. My favorite section is the candy section. Now don't be thinkin' these are some puny sections. A Southern Season has a candy section that is easily the size of three or four typical candy shops. They have a wall of jelly bellies, a full service chocolate counter, aisle and aisle and aisle of cookies, caramels, gummies, chocolates, marzipan - it's like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory - but no Ooompa Loompas, and, uh, no factory. Whatever - it's cool!!!!

I was doing okay - my basket was packed, but I was still sharp. Lots of choices, but no overload. I was buying; I was happy; life was good. Hell, life was GREAT! Then I hit the chocolate bar display.

Bars were displayed up to the ceiling - there were thousands of them. Every brand and flavor I had ever heard of and many I hadn't. We're not talking grocery check-out aisle candy bars - we're talking gourmet candy bars from all over the world. All kinds of flavors and shapes and sizes and colors. Milk, dark, white - in all their variations and percentages. That's when it happened. That's when I went into CHOICE OVERLOAD.

My eye balls bugged, I moved from one end of this fantastic display to the other, picking up bars and putting them down. My heart was racing, I was babbling to my friend Carole Walker - "I can't decide there are so many - what to get - I already have so many at home - but I want to try these - look at this - who would have thought of this - but oh - this sounds great" - all the while pacing like a wild animal up and down the aisle. I don't know if choice was demotivating me - it was more like over motivating me. I was totally overloaded. If I was a cartoon character, smoke would have been coming out of my ears. And you know what the caption would read?

Overmotivated by Chocolate

What to do about CO or in this case, OC? Stay tuned!!