Local Spotlight: Kelly's Cookie Jar

This is a bit of a local spotlight of sorts on Kelly's Cookie Jar cookies, from Exeter, New Hampshire. I found these at Fiddlehead Farms in Dover, and I would assume that you may be able to find them at other places specializing in local foods, although I could be wrong- based on the website, it looks like Kelly's Cookie Jar is literally one person (Kelly) who cooks these at her house and bakes them by order. This means that although they may not be in many stores, you can order your own online, and I may just do that myself. 

What shocked me about these cookies were their size. They're enormous. They are the thickness of 2 cookies stacked on top of each other, and absurdly full of the goodies that make up each flavor. I tried the basic chocolate chip first, and it was pretty impressive.

lookit all those chocolate chips!

Tons of chocolate chips, and the perfect combination of salty and sweet made these rival a lot of cookies I've had. You can really taste the salt, and it works wonderfully. And their thickness makes them almost too much. Almost.

Next up was an incredibly unique flavor- peanut butter toffee. 

I wasn't sure what this meant, but it was exactly what it said- peanut butter flavor with chocolate chips and chunks of toffee. I've never had peanut butter with toffee before, and it works, incidentally also in the sweet and salty way. They compliment each other nicely, and the chocolate chips just drop-kicked these into another world entirely.

Although the first 2 flavors were awesome, I think the Oreo Chocolate Chip were my favorite.

They're delicious, salty and sweet, and filled with chocolate chips and, yes- chopped up Oreos. I think the sheer ridiculousness of having cookies in my cookie made these, while rich and kind of fancy, fatguy-chortle worthy in a way only XZibit can express: 

Xzibit is a huge FGFB fan

Homemade cookies are usually the best, and based on the simplicity of ingredients, Kelly is not messing around in her just-the-basics approach. These are cookies like mom used to make- only better, and you can pretend Kelly is your mom and get your own whenever you want. Except you might be weirded out that your mom was charging you for cookies. 

These are enormous and flavorful and come in some pretty sweet varieties. I really want to try the white chocolate chip and cranberry ones. 

The only downsides with these cookies are that they're a bit expensive, but when you feel the weight and see the thickness of the cookie, any price seems fair. 

The other downside is that these may be too much for some people. They have the softness of a perfectly cooked cookie, but because of just how thick they are, they lose some of that chewy-ness. They also are quite filling. I want to high five Kelly for making them this big, but at the same time, I want to whisper (so no other fat guys hear me), "can you maybe make these a little thinner?"

I give all 3 of these cookies an A and look forward to trying more. 

-Mike

International Delight : Heath Bar Coffee Creamer

Truth be told, I saw this in the store and exclaimed excitedly, but had no intentions of reviewing it for FGFB. Only because with something like this, there are so many different factors on prep and nuanced portions to how people enjoy their coffee, that I wasn't sure how to attack it properly. So, I decided to say "BUCK IT" and review it on how I make my coffee, the correct way.

feast your eyes on this megalith of coffee creamery

first we start off with the only coffee (nationally optioned) that should ever be delivered into your coffee pot, a Starbucks bold roast. I prefer to grind my beans, but sometimes you have to slum it and go with a bag of ground.

i like my coffee strong, so add a little less water to the brewing process

Pour a generous cup of black gold into your favorite mug

I've slowly weened myself off of adding sugar to my coffee. I enjoy a coffee taste, and the sugar piss that Dunkin Donuts has been offering the past few years as completely turned my stomach to overly sweet coffee. That way you can let the creamer actually do the work of sweetening the coffee, and perform the symphony of candy flavored notes that it so claims it does.

i pour in about 3 teaspoons of creamer

still dark, but sweetened up to my tastes

 

down the ol hatch!

As far as coffee creamers go, this one is just mediocre. It tastes a lot like the Italian Sweet cream offerings, dialed down, and added a hint of candy. you can't really tell WHAT kind of candy, as the candy flavor is so far away you'd need a North Korean missile test just to try and reach it. And just like the last North Korean missile test, this coffee creamer breaks up half way to flavor, and leaves your coffee feeling, weak, impotent, and isolated.

personally, this creamer deserves a C.
if you're a little piglet that has a 80/20 creamer/coffee ratio, you might like it more. 

But as an addendum to an already great coffee, it neither enhances nor detracts. 

snag it up, or don't. 

-josh

BIRTHDAY CAKE GOLDEN OREO FUDGE CREMES

If you read Fatguyfoodblog, you know we love Oreo's. You know that every time we go shopping, we check for a new Oreo, because let's face it, the people at the Oreo factory just love tossing new flavors out into the wild, and we at Fatguyfoodblog headquarters love tracking down these new flavors.
Well imagine my surprise when I went shopping the other night and discovered BIRTHDAY CAKE GOLDEN OREO FUDGE CREMES...

So. Many. Words.

Everyone knows we loved the Birthday Cake Oreo's a while back, so when I saw the logo on this bag, a package of them was in my cart so fast that any onlookers would have only seen a yellow blur. I'm surprised I didn't smash these things to dust when I spiked the package into my cart like I was celebrating a Superbowl touchdown.

SPRINKLES.

So basically what you're looking at here is one Golden Oreo cookie half with Birthday Cake frosting on it. Then it's covered in chocolate (they call it fudge) and gets some sprinkles tossed onto it. Is it good? Hell yes. It's freaking delicious. The second you peel back the sticky metallic membrane covering the cookies your sinuses are drowned in the birthday cake Oreo smell. It's a scent that's almost impossibly good. Like something from another world that your sense almost have trouble comprehending. 

Artsy up-close shot, complete with reflection.

One of the good things about these is that the chocolate fudge that they are dipped in isn't that waxy, tasteless kind you get on some items like this. It's very chocolate tasting and threatens to melt the moment your fingers touch it.

Now if I had to give these a down side, it's that without the other cookie to balance things out, these are too sweet. That just means you can't eat a dozen of them without feeling sick. The birthday cake frosting is very sweet and when coupled with the chocolate fudge outside, it's like a sugar bomb going off in your mouth. I found myself having to take breaks from them for a bit before going back for another. 

Bottom line? These cookies are great. They are a neat limited edition variation of a classic that we know and love, so absolutely try them out if you can. 

I give them an A-!

Review by Rich.

RUFFLES ULTIMATE: Kickin' Jalapeno Ranch , Sweet & Smokin' BBQ, & Ultimate Smokehouse Bacon Dip!

There is a trend taking over the chip world as of late. It's the chip equivalent of a regular dude hitting the gym like a madman.  Much like when Doritos recently got Jacked, it looks like the people at Ruffles decided that it was time they stepped up their game too. But they couldn't just toss a couple new flavors out there,oh no, they had to change the chip too. How? MAKE IT ULTIMATE!!!

Feast your eyes on the ULTIMATE RUFFLES!

So what exactly does that mean?

Well...They kinda make the ridges a lot deeper, and the chip is a bit thicker. (this is debated at Fatguyfoodblog headquarters). The bags boast "HardERcore ridges for hardcore dips". 

Other than that, they have lots of flavor. But are they good flavors?

Kickin' Jalapeno Ranch.

These chips are very interesting. There is the tang of ranch, and a slight spice from the jalapeno, that certainly intensifies as you eat them, but there's also another flavor...Grass. yes. Grass. Like your front lawn. These chips have a grass flavor. I think it's actually them trying to get the flavor of the actual jalapeno pepper before just making it spicy. But it ends up being grass. That being said...it isn't bad. Here's how the taste goes:

1- Hmmm tangy Ranch

2- Wait is that grass?

3- Ohhhh spicy ranch

4- Wait...Grass?

They will weird you out a bit, but in the end, they are pretty good. I know that probably sounds weird, but trust us. We're chip experts. 

Sweet & Smokin' BBQ.

Aside from the ULTIMATE style chip, these are pretty standard. They are a sweet BBQ flavor with a bite. Like the other flavor, the heat intensifies as you eat them, but never hits the point where I would call them hot. I'm a wimp when it comes to spicy things and I could eat these all day.

But I probably wouldn't want to because there isn't anything very special about them. They are a decent BBQ chip. They kind of taste like sweet beef jerky. Which isn't terrible, but it's also not the best flavor of all time. 

They also have a plain ULTIMATE RUFFLE, but at Fatguyfoodblog, we don't mess around with plain chips. If someone brings a bag of plain chips to my house during a barbecue, I snatch it out of their hands, spike it onto the ground and stomp on it, then let the hound dog gobble up the crumbs. We are into serious chips, son. With serious flavor!

Like, the best chips of all time. Utz Smoke N' Sweet BBQ.

When I got home with these two bags of chips, as I was sampling them, I noticed on that back that they had new ULTIMATE DIPS!

Man, I wanted to be an Ultimate Dipper. So over the next few days I looked all around and finally scored some of the Smokehouse bacon dip. The Beef N' Cheddar one is nowhere to be found. If anyone else out in the world tracked it down, let us know how it is.

The Bacon Smokehouse dip wasn't bad. It's consistency reminds me of French Onion dip, but instead of little pieces of onion, there's little chunks of bacon. It's got a very smoky, kind of generic bacon flavor. Not terrible but not delicious either. 

I tried it on both the Ultimate chips so that there wouldn't be a soul on Gods Green Earth who could make a case that I wasn't an Ultimate Dipper. The result? It was actually better on the BBQ because it stuck out the most. I feel like the Ranch taste on the Jalapeno Ranch ones just kind of mask the base of the dip so it ends up just being a blob on your chip that's taste can't be discerned.

Should you buy them? They aren't terrible, and they are something new. If you're tired of the same old thing and you've taken down too many of whatever chip it is that you love more than the rest, then give these a try. I'd go with the Jalapeno Ranch first though. So you can taste the grass and then agree that they aren't bad at all.

 I'd give the Kickin' Jalapeno Ranch a B-

The Sweet & Smokin' BBQ a C,

and the Smokehouse Bacon Dip gets a C-

-Review by Rich

Peanut Butter Choco Taco

We've probably all seen the new Choco Taco commercial by now- a dude eating a peanut butter Choco Taco, then going nuts and dancing like a lunatic for 5 seconds. I still don't quite understand the point of it, but it did its job in making me want to try them- peanut butter is the surefire flavor to add to an existing lineup to make us fatguyfoodbloggers interested. And, being a famous food blogger, I couldn't just get peanut butter- I had to get the other new one (chocolate) as well as the original, because, well, I probably haven't eaten a Choco Taco for 15 years. 

Choco Taco lineup

First up, peanut butter. These are surprisingly thin. I didn't, but I could put away a box of these without even trying. 

The first thing I noticed (other than the fact that it didn't have the stripes of peanut butter shown in the picture) was that although this was small and the very idea of frozen and kind of oddly chewy waffle mixed into a taco is kind of odd- this was damn good. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's a nice mini dessert. The peanut butter isn't very strong, but its more nutty taste (as opposed to super sugary peanut butter) does well in complimenting the waffle and chocolate. Frozen nutty chocolate waffles. 

I give it a solid B: nothing to freak out about, but solid and tasty. 

The chocolate on the other hand, pretty much sucked. As with other Choco Tacos, there's a layer of chocolate between the ice cream and waffle, but with this one, it was much more prominent. Why is that a bad thing? Well, for some reason, this chocolate tasted different. It could just be that the chocolate ice cream was a bit too dark chocolate tasting for my tastes, or it could have been that the quality of ice cream was extremely lacking, I don't know- but for some reason, this is just very strong on the chocolate flavor, and when that flavor isn't good, you have yourself a bad Choco Taco in your hands. Also, maybe it was just the box I got, but the waffle was super soggy/chewy. Poor chocolate flavor mixed with soggy waffles? Not good. D-.

To run the gamut of flavors, I got a box of the original too. Again, no lines of chocolate in the ice cream. What's with the false advertising, Klondike? I ought to sue you and get paid out in Heath Bar Crunch Klondike bars.

This was solid though- the right amount of crispy chocolate, the waffle was the right amount of crispy, and the ice cream, while being fairly weak in flavor, still hit the spot for a decent ice cream snack. Nothing special, but good enough, which gives it a C I guess. 

SO, if you want a small ice cream snack this summer, you won't be blown away by Choco Tacos, but you could do a lot worse. They're solid and tasty, but I wouldn't waste your time with the chocolate flavor. Stick with original for a classic taste, or get peanut butter if you want the best they have to offer. 

-Mike

Tombstone Double Top Pizzas

I think to most people, frozen pizza is an alternative- the thing you buy and throw in the freezer for when you really want pizza but don't want to spend 12+ bucks on a fresh one. "I'll just get Digiorno for 6 bucks. It's close enough."

I am in the every small minority of people who treat frozen pizza as a separate thing. Sometimes I want frozen pizza. I have always gone with Tombstone because it's like $3.50 and doesn't pretend to be real pizza by having rising dough (that, in my opinion, just turns the entire pizza into 4 pounds of subpar dough). Tombstone's sauce is both sweet and kind of spicy, and I like the crunch of the crust. These things are flat, leaving nowhere for flavor to hide. The dough is merely a plate for deliciousness to be stacked on top. 

So when i saw this, I got pretty excited. What the hell is a double top pizza?

2 times the meat!

It was frighteningly thick compared to a normal Tombstone. 

Yup, that's a lot of topping. 

(2X to be exact)

Here's the beauty in the oven.

And here's a nice side angle. You kind of can't tell how much is going on, but there's a lot. Obviously, I put extra cheese on- much like my feelings for Oreos vs. Double Stuf Oreos, pizza shouldn't exist without extra cheese. And frozen pizza REALLY shouldn't- who are they hiring at these factories? Put some damn cheese on my pizza!

(I go with a montery jack and cheddar combo)

I think this picture illustrates the absurdity of this pizza best. Look at how much topping each piece has. It's ridiculous. I felt full after 2 pieces. Each bite was a battle.

That being said, it was good, you had just better like 4 meat frozen pizzas a LOT if you're planning on getting this. My problem with 4 meat pizzas is that the sausage flavor always seems to overpower everything else. I barely tasted the tiny ham cubes, occasionally tasted the pepperoni, and never tasted bacon- in fact, I just had to look and see what the other meat was. It's that inexistent. It was just sausage, sausage, sausage. It's truly amazing how much is on what is generally considered a thin pizza, but the sausage was just overpowering. 

When I get Tombstones, I just get pepperoni. Call me boring, but there's nothing quite like a pepperoni (and extra cheese) pizza. SO, thankfully Tombstone put out a Double Top Pepperoni too. It was impressive.

This had the same problem though, in that it is absolutely absurd how much pepperoni is on this. Not only did they put what looks like 3 times the amount of pepperoni slices they normally put on top, but they put more of the chopped up stuff in the sauce I always forget about.  

But, there seemed to be more sauce too (to the point where the crust almost got soggy in places), and with extra cheese, this was pretty monumental. Over time, I remembered that I love pepperoni, and this became pretty impressive.

Much like the 4 meat, you had better REALLY like pepperoni if you're considering this. Or maybe just eat a few pieces and call it a day rather than eating the whole thing. This is heartburn and stomache ache city. 

The bottom line: 

Tombstone Double Top 4 Meat Pizza: D. Literally too much topping, and all I tasted was sausage. A waste of other meats.

Tombstone Double Top Pepperoni Pizza: B+. Again, if I'm being honest, it's too much, but honestly, it's pretty freaking awesome. The next time I want to get sick, I'll get one of these again. 

-Mike