2 New Chewy Chips Ahoy Cookies: Sweet n' Salty Salted Caramel Chunk & Brownie Filled!

For the first time in FATGUYFOODBLOG history, we have decided to have two different members of our crew review two different flavors of something IN THE SAME REVIEW. We like to mix it up. Hope you enjoy! Let's begin!
On the way to an annual camping trip with a group of hard partying pals, I stumbled upon a new kind of Chips Ahoy and just knew that they would do nothing but enhance my trip. So I tossed the package of Chips Ahoy Sweet n' Salty Salted Caramel Chunk cookies in my waterproof dry bag and headed out into the wilderness!

Nothing says camping like a bag of cookies! 

While sitting around the campfire, I broke out the package and tore them open. Immediately, I was surrounded by drunken brutes looking to jam a handful of cookies into their faces. I had to fend them off with a flaming log from the fire and assure them that I would share, just AFTER I TOOK THE PICTURES FOR THE BLOG. They are a semi-reasonable bunch, so they backed off. But I knew I was on borrowed time. First thing I noticed was that there aren't many cookies in this package. Perhaps I'm used to OREO having like 87 cookies per bag. Not only that, but they are pretty small. I'd almost call them bite sized.

18 cookies per package...NOT ENOUGH. 

So how were they? They were actually damn good. I always get worried with Chewy Chips Ahoy that they are just going to be that weird chewy cookie with a sweet flavor that you can't really discern as being anything in particular. But these are great. You can definitely taste the caramel flavor, and then after a few more chews the saltiness bleeds into it and makes for a great Sweet n' Salty medley. 

Then I got an idea. I have cookies in my hand, and a campfire in front of me...Years ago on the fourth of July I cooked an entire bag of Chips Ahoy peanut butter cup cookies over a fire, one by one with my little brother and it was amazing. HOW WOULD THESE MEASURE UP?

The answer? INCREDIBLE. Heated up with the bottom slightly crispy, they were out of this world. I think this is something we need to make a usual thing for camping. Who's with me?

Yes that is a Dos Equis cowboy hat. Be jealous. 

After taking all my pictures and eating a half dozen of these warmed over the fire, I handed them out and the group of angry bearded mountain men around me all agreed that these cookies were indeed a hit. Some of them even warmed theirs by the fire at my recommendation.

In the end I would say that these are excellent. The salted caramel flavor is very strong and combines with the regular chewy cookie and chocolate chips perfectly. The only way to enhance these? A camp fire.
I give the Chips Ahoy Sweet N' Salty Salted Caramel Chunk cookies a B+! Would have been more if the cookies were bigger and there were more in the bag!

Review by RICH

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There are moments in time where a company really steps it up and gives people what they want when it comes to fat food. KFC's Double Down. Oreo's Mega Stuf. These are creations that give hope to us all that food companies are actually listening to the fat guys and stoners who shout out MORE STUF! A SANDWICH WITHOUT BREAD! Someday, we'll get our All Marshmallow breakfast cereal, but until then, we keep our eyes peeled for any snack the history books will remember as true game changers. The new Chips Ahoy Brownie Filled cookies looked to be one of these.

... although they actually looked pretty boring

Like Rich, I was excited about these cookies, but assumed Chips Ahoy would give us what we've come to expect from them- good cookies that are too small and kind of "just whatever" in the grand scheme of things to really freak out about. 

But upon first bite, I was pretty impressed: 

These are exactly what they advertise they are- cookies with brownies in them. 

But in order to do the actual review, I needed to step it up. I decided to bring mine along to the same camping trip, but was met with an empty container on a picnic table when I went to eat the rest of the bag. Thanks, jerks. 

So I took my second bag (always have a second bag) to the beach the next time we went swimming,

and ate some underwater.

Ok, so this probably wasn't the smartest way to eat cookies, but when Rich cooks his over the fire in a cowboy hat, you gotta step up and do what you can to out-ridiculous him in your half of the review.

Bottom line, these cookies are awesome. In someone else's hands (maybe these guys), they'd probably be better, but for a company who has really only made one cookie I've been blown away by, they really stepped it up with these ones. On first bite, they just taste like a standard Chips Ahoy cookie, and I even started to wonder if the inside wasn't actually brownie, but just a chocolate Chips Ahoy cookie inside- it was very similar in chewiness and texture. But by the end of the cookie, it really felt like I was eating a brownie. They didn't really merge as one thing like I thought they would, but rather acted like a shape- shifting cookie, transforming from a cookie to a brownie mid consumption with Michael Bay dubstep sounds. 

While enjoying the bag on a makeshift frisbee table, we suddenly acquired a guest:

"oh heeey..."

I risked the Duck Itch to hook my new buddy up. We probably gave away half the bag to this one duck just because of how awesome it was that she was getting a few feet away just to eat some cookies. 

Hey Duck, I get it. We understand each other.

She made me really question how much I like ducks when she wouldn't eat out of the frisbee (ducks aren't down with the B? yeesh...), but she demolished some crumbs I left on a buoy. 

and she just kept coming back for more.

After we split the cookies between us and the duck, we headed out and started to go home, laughing at how awesome it was that this duck just hung out with us for that long. And sure enough, after a few minutes of packing away everything, look who had walked the several hundred feet to the parking lot:

"hey guys... you got any more of those cookies??"

So unless you really want a pet duck (it might be pretty cool...), I'd recommend eating these somewhere else. And don't eat them underwater- really enjoy them, and think about how awesome it is that we live in a world where cookie companies are jamming brownies inside of cookies. I'll give these an A- and I'll keep making wishes to the Food Gods that Chips Ahoy starts making bigger cookies. 

Oh, one more thing- if you eat these near water, watch out for this guy. He looks nice, but all he wants is to eat your cookies:

-review by Mike

Ben & Jerry's New Exclusive Flavor: Cotton Candy Ice Cream?!

After a few e-mails and a request on our last Ben & Jerry's post, we knew that when we saw it, we had to buy their new offering, Cotton Candy ice cream. But nobody wanted to. We stood in Walmart looking at each other with faces of nervous disgust. "Who's gonna do it?"

I really didn't want to, but someone had to take the bullet, so I grabbed it, threw it in the cart, and hoped that my fellow FGFB brethren would take a 4 dollar bullet for me some time.

I absolutely love that the cow is holding cotton candy

Cotton candy ice cream loaded with candy sprinkles doesn't sound entirely bad, but at the same time- does anyone (other than little kids who haven't learned yet) really like cotton candy? Why would I want crunchy-from-sugar-crystals clumps of disintegrating alien hair in my ice cream? 

Look, Irwin couldn't even bring himself to look at the container!

Although he's clearly still interested. Aren't we all?

When I opened the container, this is the face I made:

This was not what I was expecting. This truly looks alien. 

No hair though!

Taking my first nervous bite, I found that, like with all Ben & Jerry's flavors, this actually wasn't that bad. I hadn't read the ingredients before, so I assumed that the candy pieces were supposed to be little balls of cotton candy. They had that too-much-sugar crispiness to them, and they mostly disintegrated in my mouth in a cotton candy-esque way. I was surprised to find that the ice cream itself is the part that's supposed to be cotton candy flavored, and the candy pieces are just that- candy pieces. 

Ben and Jerry are smart dudes though- they did this on purpose. While on their own, where the ice cream and candy pieces are drastically different, combining the candy and ice cream is what creates the taste illusion of cotton candy. The ice cream is actually rather vanilla tasting, and the candy pieces carry a fruity, almost frosting-like taste to them. This ice cream isn't far from some of those cake batter ice creams that are all of a sudden all the rage, but there's a creamy fruitiness to this that makes it just enough like cotton candy. Since there are actually lots of flavors of cotton candy, it's hard to even say which one this is- it's kind of like a subtle strawberry or cherry mixed with cake. I guess, if I can remember back to the last time I ate cotton candy, this is the standard flavor.

Does this succeed at tasting like cotton candy? Sort of. But I think the fact that it isn't a perfect representation is what makes this actually pretty good. If it had been what I was expecting, it would have had way too much hair.

Is it good? Surprisingly, yes. But if I'm honest, I'm not all that psyched about finishing the carton. For ice cream, I get psyched about vanilla and chocolate mixed with non-fruit candies. This is good, but it's odd, and it may not entirely warrant any servings past this review. 

So I'm gonna give this a C. 

But, none of us are huge cotton candy fans. If you love cotton candy or fruity ice creams, this might just be the miracle you've been waiting for. Snatch some up before this is gone and you have to jam cotton candy you get at a fair into a tub of ice cream just to pretend you tasted it!

-review by Mike

Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme Breakfast Cereal

If you're a man of carriage, the notion of Hershey's for breakfast is no stranger to your brain. Instead of feeling guilty and sad while you have chocolate smeared all of your fingers and face right after you awoke around 11am, now you can click your heels with glee, and stand proud that it wasn't only you who wanted it. So many people did in fact, they created cereal to celebrate it. May I bring to you Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme Cereal:

i'm never sure why they replace the word and with 'n'

Nothing says summer like Hershey's, so I took to the great outdoors (our porch) to do this cereal review.

1% all the way!

Alone the cereal bits are good. Your standard cocoa cereal but mixed with this odd, not so creamy white corn puff, with a HINT of what tastes like creme from the middle of an Oreo! We all know that's ridiculous, but maybe it's Hershey's subtle jab at Oreo, still bitter from the 1992 GM & Nabisco fallout. What you don't know about that? Read a book eh?

Hypno-Cereal

With milk poured atop these, the merger of both of these flavored sweet whole grain corn puffs comes together in a symphony of flavor. The chocolate, still a standby chocolate flavor similar to Cocoa Puffs is emboldened by this sweet creamy after taste, and tastes like cookies and cream ice cream with a crunch.

This cereal is absolutely stellar. Each bite was delicious, and even as the bowl waned on, the flavors didn't lose their punch, and the cereal didn't lose its crunch. Typically with a cereal like that, it cuts your mouth to shreds, thus would have effectively made this Hershey's Cookie's 'n' Creme 'n' Blood. But that was not the case, slight amount of mouth soreness but easily dismissed. The ONE problem with this cereal, if I had to come up with anything, would be the milk after drink, a staple to most cereals, is basically non existent. Who knows how they could fix this, but I'm sure a cereal scientist is sitting here reading this blog, and just slammed his fist on the table and yelled to his colleagues "I KNEW IT WAS GONNA BE A PROBLEM!"

I give this decadent breakfast offering a B. It's great, but didn't blow my hair off my head or shoe's off my feet. It's a solid cereal and I'd definitely recommend picking up a box and sending your kid to school buzzed out of his mind on a bowl of this cookie 'n' creme gold.

-review by Josh

PS Thank you to our reader Jenny who sent in an email asking us to do this review. If you have a suggestion or just want to tell us where a cool place to get some snacks is, hit our email (fatguyfoodblog[at]gmail[dot]com) or facebook