BlissCandies Caramels

I got a selection of homemade caramels today from BlissCandies. One thing that I adore about her items is the way they're packaged. She puts things in these little baggies that are sealed, they look factory done, but are better because they're homemade, and then into a perfect little box. It just looks extremely professional, and I love it.

The first caramel I was sent was a traditional vanilla caramel, and even as I was opening the wax paper wrapper, I could smell a strong vanilla scent coming from the package.

The traditional vanilla caramel starts out plain, with just a buttery and sugary taste, but finishes off with a fantastic vanilla-y-, vanilla bean aroma and taste that literally dominates your senses. This is not the caramel you find in Grandma's candy bowl. It's soft, chewy, and creamy, with just a bit of roughness in the texture.

6/10- TASTY
This next caramel has a funny little story to it. The spicy ginger caramels, it was funny. When I got the request from BlissCandies to try her caramels, I immediately thought, wouldn't a ginger caramel be nice, and didn't tell her.

Proof, of course, that the reviewer and chef can read minds. ;)

Ooooh. This really was a spicy caramel. But the spiciness didn't linger and burn my throat. The ginger flavor was a little more mild than I would have liked, but was still very tasty, like a ginger snap cookie. I liked the kick of spice and think that this flavor works well with the candy.

6/10- YUMMY
The next flavor was vanilla hazelnut. I had high hopes for this candy, as it smelled very nutty and boasted a nice brown color. The flavor was more vanilla than hazelnut, but there was still a very buttery flavor to it, and it tasted like a nice coffee.

7/10- DELICIOUS
This flavor was very fascinating, as I'd never seen a caramel like it before. I was sent an orange creamsicle caramel. The color is a bright orange, one that I can only attribute to the orange flavor, and the flavor was sublime. It was caramely, malty, creamy, and orangy all at once, and was overall, a real winner in the flavor department. The texture was a lot smoother than the other caramels, and like ginger, the orange works well with the caramel and creates a pair where neither flavor dominates.

8/10- LOVELY
The last caramel was a sea salt caramel, a flavor I'd really been dying to try. For some reason, it was much harder than the other caramels, or maybe my jaw was just tired from eating the rest! The sea salt hit my tongue as soon as I ate it, and it was really salty, but dissolved into the traditional and delicious caramel that I know and love. A winner.

7/10- MMMMM

BlissCandies
www.blisscandies.etsy.com

Chilean Sweets

Here it is, the cookie that might very well rival the Clairesquare.

I was sent two famous items from the Chilean Sweets company, out of Maine, two traditional Latin American desserts: Dulce de leche and alfajores.

Dulce de leche is that caramel sauce we all know and love. It's paired excellently with pancakes, ice cream, and, in the case of the alfajores, cookies, but like Nutella, I ate this out of the jaw in spoonfuls. It's an achingly sweet caramel, almost a large, soft caramel candy than a sauce, with creamy undertones from its milk base.

I made pancakes with these this morning, using the sauce in two different ways. I incorporated the sauce into the pancake batter, as a starter, and then used it as a topper. It was definitely superior as an addition to the batter, but melted nicely on top. In the batter, it caramelized the outside of my pancakes and gave them this complex, buttery, salty flavor that made them perfect without needing any topping at all. They were moister and still maintained a dignified fluffiness.

This particular sauce is so deliciously authentic. It's a wonderful addition to any dessert, and perhaps a few savory dishes, too. I'm definitely going to use this in a baking project, as it is too good and rich to pass up.

9/10- LOVELY


The real treat in this selection were the alfajores, though. Alfajores, or the singular, alfajor, is a traditional cookie made with two graham or shortbread-like cookies, sandwiched with dulce de leche in the middle, and coated with chocolate or coconut.

These particular alfajores broke my Chilean cherry into the most indulgent and incredible cookies. They were wrapped like those little soaps you get at hotels, in dark green paper, and when I got them, were almost completely melted, but with the richness of the chocolate, peeled off the paper incredibly and just collapsed in my mouth.

Quite simply, they're one of the most amazing treats.

The cookie base is soft, but holds up to itself, like a graham, as it's eaten. The chocolate keeps it firm and inside, just before it completely collapses in on itself. The dulche in the middle is perfect, and regardless of the temperature, the cookie melts in your mouth.

The chocolate on the outside is a fine chocolate, that coats the cookie entirely, not a bare spot to be found, and encases it entirely. The dessert is rich and large and can easily be split with two people.

10/10- AMAZING

Chilean Sweets
www.chileansweets.etsy.com

Wow, two tens in two days. Send me crap, people. I have to keep up my image, here.

Necco Twilight Candy Hearts

I bought these on a whim with some of the best people in the world. How could we pass these up?

Necco made these for the Twilight craze. It was probably the best purchase I've ever made. These were fucking hilarious. I mean, first, you have flavor names like Passion Fruit, Tempting Apple, Orange Obsession and Secret Strawberry. Then there's the "from and to" header on the box so your own Edward Cullen can GIVE YOO HIS CANDEE HRTS OMGWTFBBW XOXOXOXOX"

I'm totally aware that says big, black woman and not barbecue.

There are the hearts. They come in a hard-to-open, vampire-piercing proof plastic bag, roughly 3/4 full. They're just like conversation hearts, except they say enigmatic and occasionally worrisome phrases like "Bite Me," "Live forever," and "Forks."

The flavors are pretty odious, but addictive. It's like eating stale bubblegum. All the flavors tasted the same, varying in acidity and color, and the texture wasn't like conversation hearts at all. Where the hearts are chalky and hard, these were chalky and chewy. Either they were left outside all night in a vampiric rainstorm, or the vampire glitter powder emulsifies them. Regardless of the cause, these are awful.

And yet, like the fangirl to Edward Cullen's tired penis, I just can't stop eating them.

Necco Twilight Candy Hearts: My brand of crappy, sparkly heroin.

1/10- HORRID

Clairesquares

Here's a homemade treat sent to me from an independent baker, Claire Keane.

She makes treats that are similar to traditional Irish recipes, like Marathon Squares from the UK, and more. The treat I tried was her signature confection, the Clairesquare.

The Clairesquare resembles, in ingredients, a Marathon Bar, with a layer of shortbread, a layer of caramel, and a top layer of chocolate. But Claire took the popular candy and gave it steroids, turning it into something downright obscene and incredible.

This post is dedicated to my dad. I told him I'd share. I didn't. I ate all three of these monsters in one sitting. It was pretty pathetic. But these cookies were not.

The shortbread layer was buttery without being greasy, and crumbled in my mouth, not in my hands. It was crispy and dense and flaky all at once. The caramel was definitely my favorite part, though. I had never tried a homemade caramel before, and this was an eye-opening experience for me. It was buttery, creamy, rich, and I'd have spooned it out of a jar, into my mouth, all on its own. The saltiness perfectly balanced with the sweetness of the chocolate, the final addition to this triple threat of a baked good.

The chocolate was a ganache-like dark, with a woodsy, smokey taste to it that blended with the caramel perfectly. It was a little soft and gooey with the caramel, which was perfect, but together, with the dryness of the shortbread, it created this delicious amalgam of flavors in my mouth.

Claire Keane, Clairesquares
clairesquares.com

10/10- INCREDIBLE

Thai Fanta

Another trek to an Asian grocery, one that's a little closer, brought this delightful...thing.

Swagger and I found this while stopping for a cool drink on a muggy day. There were a few flavors there, the standard orange and strawberry, but this looked intriguing. It was the only flavor where no english was present, so I was excited to have a drink.

The package was bright and green and featured many photos of tropical fruits, leading me to believe that maybe this was a tropical fruit, maybe a punch flavor. WRONG. When I opened the can- and it has that special can shape, that slightly more triangular shape of opening. Do you know what I mean? That one.

Well, when I opened the can, I was hit with a strong flavor of bubble gum. Strange. And when I tasted it, that was all I tasted. Bubble gum. It was as though someone had taken eighty five Bazooka Joes, thrown out the comics, and melted them down to make this soda. It was the same green color as the can, oddly enough, and threw me off for the flavor.

There might have been hints of tropical fruit flavor, but there's a chance I'm making that up because I'm confused.

2/10- STRANGE

Choco Banana Pocky

Look. Let me get one thing straight. I hate weeaboos. I hate the Wapanese. I am not racist...okay, maybe internet racist, but I hate the people that run around spouting phrases like "kawaii" and calling people "Foodette-san" or "chan" and making eyes like this >< on their photos.

Sigh.

Hi, I'm Jess, and I guess I'm racist.

But I love bananas. Possibly more than I hate Wapanese. If that makes any sense at all. So while browsing at my local Asian grocery, the same one that Swagger (who is legit, straight-up Asian, yo) and I went to, this exotic looking treat was too much to pass up, especially for a buck fifty. Even if it does scream poser.

This particular product, made by Glico, the pocky overlords, boasts a creamy banana flavor with swirls of milk chocolate. I had to test it. One thing the Japanese have completely mastered is constructive packaging. Here's another pet peeve of mine. The environment. I don't care. Glico doesn't, either. And we work together wonderfully. They've included, in the lovely box, two packages of pocky so package two doesn't get stale while you're eating the first one.

The sticks are nice and slender, with an even coating. A part of it is uncoated so it doesn't melt all over your fingers and make them sticky-icky. The flavor was pure banana, and the chocolate was in just the right amount, like the coating on a chocolate covered banana. It was delicious.

What I like best about pocky is that it's rich without being too high calorically. It's tasty and elegant, but not too bad on the tummy, too. A good snack. Even if you're not a weeaboo.

9/10- YUMMY

Mrs. S's Sensitive Treats

Whooo! It's been ages since I got these treats, and again, another huge and generous sorry from me to her. I was laid up in bed and gumming down Jell-O.

I got many things in this package. The idea with these treats is, they're made for sensitive stomachs, so all are wheat, gluten, yeast, soy, and dairy free. Oy. To best put these to the test, I actually ate some of them- well, swallowed some whole- while laid up during surgery, where I was told I may throw up. Sure sounds like a sensitive stomach to me!

I was sent a large assortment of treats in a huge package, delivered by none other than Mrs. S's HUBBY, whom I thank greatly for helping me out and going twenty minutes out of his way to drop a package at the house of a random stranger. So, in the box was a decadent chocolate cake, zany zucchini bread, two fudgey brownies, a chamomile lemon cake, and banana bread.

I tried the zucchini bread first. I can't believe this was free of so many ingredients. The zucchini pieces were delicately shredded, not chunky, and the bread was buttery, flavorful, and tasty. I ate the entire loaf in one sitting. I'm not even upset to say so, it was that good. The texture was crumbly, but stayed together, so the only place it crumbled was in my mouth. It was the perfect treat. If I had one criticism, it would be that it didn't take to spreading very well, like with margarine or cream cheese. But then again, those eating this bread probably aren't spreading it with rich toppings.

9/10- LOVELY

The next dessert to sink my teeth into were the brownies. They were good, but very crumbly. The chocolate flavor was intense, but to some, the texture might have been a little off-putting. Because of the lack of eggs, the brownies were fudgy, but somewhat dry. I personally enjoy a wetter brownie. To remedy this, I simply microwaved it. It was very tasty and, as promised, chocolatey good.

5/10- GOOD

Next was the chamomile lemon cake. It was a good cake, again, improved by microwaving it. It wasn't very intense in the way of flavor. I couldn't taste any chamomile and not much lemon at all. There was a dusting of powdered sugar on top. This cake was good, but for flavor, somewhat bland. It almost had a meringue, hazelnutty taste to it, but from what, I do not know.

The texture of these baked goods is remarkable for foods that lack some of the ingredients we take for granted and consume on a daily basis. I still don't know how all of these hold together.

4/10- OKAY

Again, I got another whole cake. I could not believe it. For ordering purposes, these are generous cakes for the prices you're getting them at. Very heavy, dense cakes, too.

This cake really hit the spot. The chocolate cake was a lot cakier than the brownies, and had a dense, rich ganache on top. I think that the frosting aspect of this was what made it really spectacular. It was a deep, dark chocolate flavor, very tasty, and microwaved, was gooey and rich. Rich. That's a good way to put it. It was a very rich cake. The chocolate flavor was consistent and the texture only improved with microwaving.

Best of all, they worked! They worked! My tummy wasn't burdened by any of the flavors, no matter how rich!

8/10- YUMMY

Last, but not least, was the banana walnut loaf. The banana taste was very natural and very subtle, a very buttery and fruity taste to it. The walnut chunks were a little too bit for my liking, but the flavor was good. The texture was that nice "wet" texture that banana breads get, the dense, yet wettish texture. You know what I mean, right? I'm not a crazy girl, right? Wet. Wetlicious? Great. Now the banana bread sounds like a porno.

Regardless, it was very tasty bread. Definitely dense enough to hold up to a spread, and sweet enough to hold its own.

7/10- LOVELY

Super treats, Mrs. S! And thanks again for your patience. :)

Mrs. S's Sensitive Treats
www.mrssstreats.etsy.com

Updates and how I can spy.

Readers, I SEE YOU. Thanks to my new Wowzio widget, that is.

So here's a question, you sneaky lurkers, you. I have a child conundrum. They're not my kids, they're the kids of my father's girlfriend. And I want to have a lot of fun with them this weekend, so I told them we'd make peanut butter.

Let's take it one step further, though. What other recipes can I make with a two and four year old that will drive them bananas and think I'm the coolest?

Comment freely! I don't bite.

Foodette

Flipz Double Dipped Peanut Butter and Chocolate

Flipz have always been a favorite movie treat for me, and when I went to see Bruno yesterday, these looked too good to pass up.

One of my favorite things about Flipz is that there's a perfect balance of crunch and cream, of salt and sweet. These were a little different in that they were "double dipped" and thus a little thicker on the coating than the other varieties of pretzels. This particular coating was a layer of peanut butter and then a layer of chocolate.

Biting into this was a soft bite, then the pretzel crunch. The flavors came together well, but the peanut butter was far more subtle than I'd thought. In the bag, which was about three dollars, there were twenty mini pretzels, a bad value, in my opinion. The chocolate was good, a little mockolate tasting, but not so bad.

Overall, I far appreciate homemade chocolate covered pretzels or at least ones with better flavor coverage.

3/10- LAME

Barker Chocolate Box

This is a series, the first of two, in which I review bakers and candy-makers who have made things and waited patiently while I recovered from my surgery to review! Sorry for being late!

This candy-maker is out of Barker, New York, and sent me a selection of truffles and delicious fudge to review. I tried the cherry chocolate fudge she sent, first. It was a nice chocolate base with mixed chopped cherries. The chocolate was a good flavor and melted nicely in the mouth with a smooth finish and none of the grainy taste and texture that fudge can sometimes have.

The cherries were a little too overpowering, giving the fudge a bit of a flowery taste to it. It's good, but just a little too much. I liked the texture mix of the chewy cherry bits and the fudge, though.

6/10- GOOD

The next selection she gave me was in a little box of items. In the box were four truffles, of raspberry ganache, a walnut caramel with sea salt, a genuine Ohio Buckeye, and a chocolate ganache.

The raspberry ganache was, like the texture of the fudge, very smooth. The taste was a bit vague, and at times, I tasted more of the essence of raspberries than the taste of raspberries, but it was delicious. It was a smooth ganache, less like the fudge than a frosting-like goo, very delicious. The outer texture was good, but the real treasure was in the shape. It was a beautiful jewel of a little raspberry, something that I think would charm guests at receptions or just as a stand-alone gift.

6/10- GOOD

I've really been broadening my culinary standpoints as of late, and two of my goals were to try salty desserts and spicy desserts. This marked the coronation of my salty dessert. The caramel was a nice piece of very buttery flavor. Having tried homemade caramels before, this was just fantastic. The walnuts were a little too chunky with this one, but the salt made a perfect mix. It was like eating gourmet salt water taffy.

7/10- DELICIOUS

The Ohio Buckeye was one I'd been dying to try, and one that Cindy touted as being an amazing treat. She wasn't lying to me, either. This was a creamy treat, and I wish I had more of them to dissect so I can appreciate and try each individual layer. An Ohio Buckeye is basically a peanut butter bon bon wrapped in chocolate. Mmmmmm. The peanut butter wasn't quite peanut butter, it was more of a fudgy, but frosting-like taste, and it was a delicious and melty, rich flavor. Incredible. The chocolate enrobing it was fantastic and the entire thing was just a joy to consume.

9/10- LOVELY

The last truffle was a chocolate ganache. This one was a surprise. The coating was the same rich flavor as the other chocolate, but the ganache inside was a little bitter. I'm not sure what was going on. It was tasty, like a semi-sweet chocolate or those natural bars, and really brought out the more subtle, woodsy flavors of cocoa, but for those seeking a sweet treat, was not exactly saccharine.

4/10- OKAY

Find her at Barker Chocolate Box
www.barkerchocolatebox.etsy.com

Wise Honey BBQ (With cheese) Cheese Curls

Cheese is an underrated delicacy, often delegated to the garnish position or simply a topping. Think about it. You see pasta with parmesan on top. A ham sandwich with a lonely American single oozing out of the top. It just ain't fair.

Wise Honey BBQ (with cheese) cheese curls stands completely true to this point. They're honey BBQ curls, so one would expect the traditional phallic cheese curl shape, with a honey barbecue flavoring. Wise is different. They've taken that, but blended it with the cheese flavoring, taking all the glory and fame from the mighty cheese curl, that rare food that features cheese, and turns it into another flash in the pan barbecue mess.

But cheese knows. Cheese knew from the moment they saw the damned bee on the package, in his bling and sunglasses and hip purple tunic, planning out a new curl. Cheese means mice on the package. Mice mean the bee loses his job and slick honey spreader. So the bee got clever, and planned a curl that featured honey BBQ. To take the fame from cheese.

Cheese is clever, though, and that's why, in the bag, these cheese curls taste like cheese, with a slight hint of barbecue. Not barely enough to be considered a flavor, much less a prominent, glossy-fonted one. The flavor is interesting, though, like a nice spicy cheese taste. The brittleness of the puffs are from the cheese's anger, curdled by the rage towards the bee, making each puff feel like a nice bite of cheesy broken glass.

The curls are plentiful, because the cheese must multiply and prosper, and bring down the bee. So there are enough to share. Just remember. Cheese is pissed. Don't fuck with the cheese.

4/10- AVERAGE

Cranberry Raisinets

These confuse the hell out of me, first off. For one, cranberries are supposed to be the color of my damaged and pained skin right now- bright red. But the cranberries in the package were a dull brown.

For another, the name. Cranberry Raisinets. Now, I realize Raisinets is the brand name, but I still think people would have gotten the message if they were called "Craisinets" and the Craisin company may have been able to cash in on some product placement there. Calling them Cranberry Raisinets sort of makes me think, as the consumer, that they're raisins flavored like cranberries, sort of an undesireable Grapple mutant, and that's just...confusing.

These were a dollar five, and for their price, it worked out to roughly ten cents apiece, and those are some pretty tiny pieces, like breath mint sized. The pack was one hundred calories. The cranberries were average sized, and tasted average, too. I went to a cranberry festival once and ate the cranberries right out of the bog. Those were fresh, juicy, and tart. Even a lot of dried cranberries are tart, but these were not. They were mildly sweet, not very memorable.

The mockolate coating on Raisinets has always gone well, in my opinion. It was the same stuff this time around, just a milder fruit.

Send some sympathy my way. Lost my job.

4/10- LAME

Toad-Ally Snax Hanky Panky

Despite sounding like an underground and illicit pleasure, this snack is not bad at all. It's advertised as chocolate drizzled popcorn with peanuts.

It's definitely chocolate drizzled. Each piece of popcorn is neatly drizzled with no clumps of chocolate, creating a nice and even selection and covering. The chocolate is just a mockolate, but makes a good attempt to not have that cheap, coconutty taste of mockolate, but a nice, creamy taste. It goes well with the popcorn.

Speaking of the popcorn, it's nice, and not clumped. The caramel is a very faint feeling, and I think that without the chocolate, this would not be a very good stand-alone snack. I'm not sure that if you told me there was caramel, I'd have been able to recognize it.

And as far as peanuts go, I don't even want to know where they went. With a name like Hanky Panky, they could be anywhere. But they're not in this bag at all. No peanuts. Not even a shred.

So it was a good snack, but for lack of accuracy and packaging that lies and utter perversion, the grade must go down.

5/10- YUMMY

Athena's Silverland Dessert Collection, Part III

Part III! Sorry it's been a slow few days. I had my graduation party yesterday, so that took up my day.

Anyhow, I still had time to come home and try some brownies and dessert bars. I had another selection of three, both room temperature and warm. I was pretty pleased with today's bunch, but mixed with some.

The first bar I tried made me a little sad. I was most excited to try this brownie, the Alpine White Chocolate, but it fell extremely short of my expectations. I'd never tried a white chocolate brownie and had no idea that such a thing was possible. I didn't really know people were capable of making baked goods with white chocolate, so it fascinated me.

The bar was very dense and very greasy. It was too thick and tasted not of white chocolate or even vanilla, but shortening and butter. There were very little chocolate chips spread around, giving it a very bland and flavorless aroma and taste. There were supposed to be white chocolate shavings on it, but none that I tasted of.

I didn't enjoy this brownie, but I really wanted to. I ate the whole thing, trying it in the fridge, warmed up, at room temperature, but it didn't cut it at all. It's a shame, because everything else was really excellent.

3/10- HM.

The next bar I tried was the English Toffee Crunch. I liked this bar. It was very similar to the chocolate toffee, but much tastier and more toffee-ee. If that makes any remote sense. It had a crunchy exterior, like a Skor bar, and a buttery bottom crust.

Microwaving this is not advisable. It melted and stuck to my teeth. Still tasted great, but was sticky. Got chewy, and then brittle. I liked the flavor. If I had to make any improvement to it, it would be to put in more chocolate. There was a drizzle, but if there was a layer of fudge or chocolate chips, it would have been absolutely sublime.

6/10- GOOD

The last flavor for today was the Snickerdoodle flavor. I think it was a little misnamed, because "snickerdoodle" usually refers to those cookies and flavors of that nature that involve cinnamon, sugar, and spices in the cookie, like a souped-up sugar cookie. This was more of a Snickers bar flavor, but I'm guessing the company made a narrow save in avoiding any copyright infringement.

Name aside, this was an excellent brownie. Truly. There was a thick, thick ribbon of caramel all over the brownie, topped with the halves of salty peanuts. I love the juxtaposition, if I might use such a pretentious term, of salty and sweet. The caramel was nice and firm, and abundant all over the brownie. The firmness of the caramel made a nice contrast to the gooiness of the brownie, and the salted peanuts were just divine. I liked how they were in pieces and halves, instead of larger chunks, or ground up. It seemed to be the perfect consistency to have as a good blend, instead of overpowering or fading away. Didn't notice any peanut butter chips, though. Still good.
9/10- AMAZING

Athena's Silverland Dessert Collection, Part II

Here's the next selection of bars from Athena's Silverland Desserts. I've been slowly nibbling away at them, little by little, and they're just fantastic. I ate three flavors of bars today, and I am full and bloated, but for you readers, I'd do anything. ;)

I started out by trying a 7-layer bar, also called a magic cookie bar. That's how I've always known them to be, magic cookie bars. They're bars with a graham cracker crust base, condensed milk, nuts, chocolate, walnuts, and coconut. I don't actually think there are seven layers, just seven ingredients. They're prepared in layers, though.

This particular bar had a nice, chewy coconutty flavor, with the addition of butterscotch chips with the chocolate. My mother doesn't like to put butterscotch chips in her bars because she thinks they're too sweet, so growing up, I never had the luxury of trying the bars with butterscotch. It's fantastic. I love how the butterscotch adds a salty bite to the bar and gives it a slightly richer taste.

The bar itself wasn't dry, but the coconut was a little flaky and fell off in parts. I could not taste any nuts, but the graham cracker crust was moist and buttery. Warm, it melted in my mouth. The bar was tasty and very rich.
7/10- WONDERFUL

I also tried the chocolate toffee crunch. This brownie was chilled in the fridge for whatever reason, so I let it sit a while at room temperature and get a little warmer. The brownie base was good, a nice, chewy, almost fudgie brownie, but there was very little toffee to see on the brownie. I couldn't taste much within the interior, either. My mother said that she felt as though the brownie was undercooked, but I thought it was perfect

The toffee that I did taste reminded me less of toffee than it did caramel, and it wasn't very noticeable. It was overpowered by the chocolate, which was good, but didn't balance well regarding the ratio of chocolate to toffee. I would have preferred to see a layer of toffee, or perhaps hard toffee pieces, because it said it was a toffee crunch, but there was no crunch to speak of.

5/10- OKAY

The last brownie I tried for today was the hopscotch bar, and I'm a little confused about it. Looking on the website for the description, I saw no notice whatsoever of the hopscotch bar. There wasn't any product description or photo for it, and nothing came up when I searched, either. I'm thinking hopscotch might be a cute nomiker for their blondies, which is the closest thing that came up for me.

Either way, it was a good bar. It had lots of chunks in it, and lots of goodies- chocolate chips, butterscotch, and walnuts, on a blonde brownie base. The texture was very rough, but it provided a nice contrast to the smoother flavors I'd been having. The walnuts were big in the flavor department here, and went very well with the vanilla-flavoring in the base.

6/10- TASTY

Again, excellent selection! See you tomorrow for Part III of the bar reviews! I have some backed up reviews for you, too, including Mia's Mallows, Barker Chocolate Box, and Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's!

Athena's Silverland Dessert Collection, Part I

Peter, from Athena's Silverland Desserts, sent me twelve dessert bars and brownies to review and showcase for you. I cut each in half and review them based on how they taste at room temperature and microwaved.

First, the flax seed bar with peanut butter. This is actually a vegan bar, and has a nice honey-brown color and smells strongly of delicious peanuts. Cutting it was hard, as it is extremely chewy. This is definitely not a bar for people who like soft or crunchy things. Biting into it was great. This bar is what granola bars are supposed to taste like. I don't think I can ever safely eat a Quaker bar again after eating this. It's simple, sweet, but not too sweet, and the flax seeds provide a nice crunch.

Microwaved for ten seconds, this bar completely transformed. The salt in the peanut butter was brought out completely, and the bar got softer, gooier, and more incredible. I didn't think such a feat was plausible, but they did it.

Vegan, guys. I'm still looking for the butter.

9/10- AMAZING

Next up is the double chocolate brownie, the brownie that purportedly made Athena's famous. The bar is a dark brown and smells really chocolatey. And it might be the most incredible brownie I've ever eaten.

I don't like my brownies chewy. I don't like them crunchy. I don't like them crispy, crumbly, cakey, or anything like that. I like my brownies mushy. This is not a mushy brownie, though. This brownie is like biting into a piece of fudge. It's incredible. This brownie falls apart in my mouth and creates a complex, textured ride of fudgey and melting goodness.

I put it in the microwave for ten seconds, hoping that the whole thing wouldn't melt all over. I keep expecting it to be completely chocolate, no cake. It is so rich. It's studded with chocolate chips all over. It didn't melt, but the chocolate chips got nice and gooey and gooooooood.

This is one rich brownie. One small square was completely satisfying without being too sweet or gloppy. It's incredible.

9/10- INCREDIBLE

The next was the sibling to the double chocolate brownie, the double chocolate with nuts. I think all the nuts were walnuts. This brownie was the same, that same not-too-sweet perfection and sublime, velvety texture. The nuts were a little too roughly chopped, but went well with the taste and made a nice crunch to the rest of the brownie.

Microwaved, it was the same delicious ganache-like flavor and consistency.

7/10- WONDERFUL

Tomorrow, I'll have another three bars and photos of these delights! Thanks again, Pete!

Buffalo Wild Wings Garlic Parmesan Chicken Flatbread

I went to the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant today with some co-workers. It's a nice place, new, and has lots of televisions and good deals on wings, like forty cent traditional wings on Tuesdays. We got takeout and took it back to work.

I ordered the garlic parmesan chicken flatbread "pizza" thing. I thought the crust would be much puffier, like a gordita bread, soft, but it was basically a brittle and cracking tortilla wrap with sauce and meat on it. The chicken was a nice, soft white meat, good chicken, sprinkled liberally throughout the pizza. There was enough sauce on it so that everything stuck to the bread without falling off and making a mess.

The flatbread was easy to eat, but was just overbearingly crispy and very dry. The chicken was moist, but the cheese was melted on in such a crispy way that it lost any gooiness of a pizza and was just hard and tough to break through in my mouth. The parmesan garlic sauce was good, a little spicy, and tasty. It was more garlic than parmesan, but was smooth and not chunky or too overbearing.

4/10- NOT WORTH IT

The french fries were absolutely disgusting. For some reason, every time I go to BWW...sorry. BWW sounds like a bad personal ad. But every time I go there, my food is always a shade lukewarm. The fries were no exception. No fry I got was longer than an inch or an inch and a half and they were skinny and absolutely soggy to the touch.

Each fry was greasy, despite being overly soft and mushy, and had no salt or pepper flavor to speak of. I didn't even finish half of these fries. They were absolutely awful. If you go to BWW, stick to their Buffalo Chips or sour cream and chive potato wedges.
0/10- INEDIBLE

Papa John's Pepperoni Pizza with Special Garlic Sauce

I started the first day of my new job today, and we ordered pizza from Papa John's for lunch. Never had Papa John's before, but from what I have heard, it's a relatively comparable chain brand, most people calling it better than Pizza Hut or Domino's.

So the pizzas came, and to be honest, I was a bit worried. They were pretty tiny to feed eighteen people, but each piece was surprisingly filling. I had two slices and was full. Could have eaten three, but we are all good sharers in camp and took enough to feed everyone. The pizzas themselves remind me of a really well-cooked frozen pizza- the way the box wants it to look. There are those little delicious crispy dots on the cheese, saying that it's cooked, and the color is nice and even.

The pizza itself is good, a softer and thick pizza, but not quite as thick as the DiGiorno's I had to completely eliminate it from the pizza category. The crust is good, if a little dry. The pepperoni was all over the pizza, which was good, and it was a nice, thin slice of meat with good flavor and a nice chew to it. There was a sauce labeled only as "Special Garlic" boxed in with the pizzas, and that was quite intriguing. I'll eat anything that looks like badly typed Engrish in Comic Sans.

I opened the sauce and found a yellow, melty substance, that could only best be described as pee. No, not pee, but it just looked like melted margarine, not a special sauce. I dipped it in my crust. Not garlicky. Not special. Just sauce. Margarine sauce.

Overall, the pizza was good. I'm not sure if I'd get it again as it is just a tiny little thing and not really worth the money, but was tasty. That being said, my pizza chain alliance lies squarely with the stuffed crust enterprise. Come on. You know that's incredible shit.

SPECIAL GARLIC: 2/10- UNIMPRESSIVE
PIZZA: 6/10- OKAY

DiGiorno Four Cheese Rising Crust Pizza

I was feeling lazy today- okay, pull my leg- and wanted pizza. Problem was, I didn't want to be social and wait around at a pizza place with the potential of social interaction, and I didn't want to deal with waiting for people to cook the pizza and bring it over. The surgery turned me into a bitch, I guess.

So I dropped by the grocery store to congratulate myself on my new job as a camp counselor and picked up a frozen pizza. I figured I'd get DiGiorno's, because I wanted delivery, and it is in their motto, if you will. Hefty pizza, for starters. Very heavy.

Inside the box is a round pizza with a good amount of cheese on it. DiGiorno boasts four cheeses on this pizza, including parmesan, mozzarella, asiago, and romano. I put it in the oven and read the back. I'm always amused by the back of the packages, like how they specify that the pizza shown in the cartoon-y illustration on the box might not actually be the pizza in your oven, and such. I wonder what asshats call into customer support for that.

So I waited for the pizza, and after about twenty minutes, it came out. Visually, it's not a very appealing pizza. The outside ring of the crust was too crispy and hard looking, and the inner, middle part was mushy looking and undercooked.

Cutting into it, though, was different. It was obviously fully cooked and had a nice texture, but having grown up around such good pizzas in my life, I don't feel like this was really a pizza at all. What they lost in circumference of pizza, they made up for in height. I don't like that at all. I'm used to big, wide pizzas with a good, crisp crunch to them, where you can eat four huge slices of. Three tiny and squat slices of this was half the pizza and made me feel fat. If anything, this was more like a cheesy bread than pizza. The cheese didn't melt off and string like good mozzarella does on pizza, it congealed and lumped off.

As for the bread, the advertisement didn't lie. The crust rose. But no more than I'd have expected a regular pizza to have risen. I gave the ends of the crust to my dog because they were almost sickly sweet and had a honeyed flavor I did not enjoy.

I guess I'm too spoiled to appreciate this. It's a bread. I was looking for a cornmeal dusted, crispy treat that I could eat a lot of and be full from, and what I got was a dense, thick bready thing.
3/10- AWFUL

Newman's Own Organics 34% Mocha Milk Chocolate Bar

This is another bar in the truly massive selection from Newman's Own Organics.

The chocolate is perfect, the same 34% milk base that I had in the plain bar, but with the addition of coffee. The bite is smooth, with a nice and satisfying snap to it, but virtually no coffee grounds to be seen. Where do they come from?

The answer is in the bar. You can smell them. You can definitely smell them, but unfortunately, the smell is more of a dairy creamer, gourmet coffee smell than a beany smell of freshly roasted Kona or coffee equivalent. Coffee enthusiasts, shield your eyes. What is meant to be an ingredient highlight is merely a flavor masking the chocolate, creating a pungent and fake-tasting flavor. The coffee extract.

Instead of taking a front seat and complementing the chocolate, the mocha flavor just sits there and fights with it. One minute I taste chocolate, the next minute, coffee. They argue like recently divorced couples. The chocolate melts smoothly, and that's it. It's an excellent milk chocolate, and I feel that by adding the extract, they really detract from the smoky, full bodiness that coffee lends to chocolate.

4/10- LAME

Teeeeefs.

Give me a few more days, guys. Unless I get an overwhelming response for Jell-O and oxycodone reviews.

Patricia is in the Midwest. Perhaps she'll bring back strange and exciting treats from the land of corn dogs.

Foodette

Updates...

I added a few more things to the blog this week.

One of them is the lovely Paypal donation button, seen here. We are not paid to do this. All of the food we get is either given to us by companies or bought ourselves. A little donation goes a long way into getting you more reviews.

The other is a small poll, up for a month, that I thought might be nice. I want YOU to tell me what you want on here. Additional suggestions are always welcomed in the comment section, too. Giveaways, food of the week, other supplements...you tell us what you want, we'll deliver!

So let us know! We have a lot of viewers, but you're an awfully quiet bunch. :) Give us a heads up. And a question for any of my Massachusetts readers- FOOD IN AMHERST. What's the best? I know Antonio's and Wings Over are sublime, but I need recommendations...foreign groceries for my strange stuff fix, little grocery stores, bakeries...

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