Benton’s Fudge Stripe Shortbread Cookies: A Review

Is there a suitable replacement for Keebler Fudge Stripes?

Not sure which country, kitchen, grandmother, or clan invented shortbread. Whoever did create the combination of shortening,flour, sugar, and vanilla made the world a better place. It doesn’t matter if I am sampling Walker’s shortbread, Salerno butter cookies or those incredible Lorna Doone squares (mysteriously shaped like giant pats of butter); they all taste incredible. Just when shortbread couldn’t get any better, the cookie was upgraded with “fudge stripes”. The first fudge stripe cookie I was acquainted with was the Keebler brand introduced to me when I was a young lad. Four decades later they are still tasty, but like all name brand treats be it cookies, ice creams, pastries, etc; current economic trends have only left us with higher prices, lower quantity per package, and flashy advertising to make up for these cutbacks.  The Keebler Elvin magic and whimsical packaging is not enough to maintain brand loyalty as I pursue fudge stripe cookie equivalents elsewhere.

I have tried the Meijer label fudge stripe and it is almost as good as Keebler, though at a price lower by fifty cents. While I still pick up a package of Keebler when they go on sale, I considered the Meijer brand to be my mainstay fudge stripe option, until I learned Aldi sells the Benton Fudge Stripe Shortbread cookie.

Price of Cookies

The attention grabber of these cookies was the low price of $1.29 for a thirteen ounce package. The Meijer brand usually hovers around $1.49 and the Keebler holds at $1.99.  Some sales at Aldi will position the Benton fudge stripes as low as ninety five cents a bag.

Physical Characteristics

The cookies are sold in plastic packaging with yellow/orange tones, much like Keebler. No presence of cartoonish elves but simply the picture of the cookies on the label which very much resemble the real thing inside. The actual cookies seemed a tad wider than the Keebler competition and the chocolate (or fudge) carries the dark brown tone that real chocolate is supposed to have. I always worry that a low price fudge treat will have that subpar faux chocolate that comes across as dusty or muted in color. Nope. These look like the real deal.

Taste Test

Now it was time for tasting. The cookie starts and ends with a good crispy bite and a well blended mix of rich fudge and butter cookie undercoat. If caramel was present it would resemble something close to a thin Twix bar. I would put this cookie in blind test up against the Keebler and I think it would win.

Verdict

I give the Benton’s Original Fudge Striped Cookie a passing grade with flying colors. Considering this item is frequently on sale and sometimes half the price of Keebler, this is a no brainer.

Review of Meijer Cheese Balls

Flash back to 1970s, 1980’s or even 1990’s. Grandma and Grandpa had the standard items on the kitchen counter: half completed TV trivia crossword puzzle, the ornate glass candy dish filled with cashews or ribbon candy, and last but not least, the blue cylinder container labeled “Planters Cheez Balls”.  As popular as the Planters nuts were, the cheez balls seemed to be extremely popular in U.S. households.  This snack was so damn good.  Cheetos took a back seat to these. Unfortunately in 2006, this product was discontinued by the manufacturer.

Now as we are well into the 2014 year, I will be on a quest to find a suitable replacement for the Planter’s cheez balls. Notice my focus is on cheez balls, not the puff or crinkle form. Those puffs do have their place on the lunch table. For now, I am on a quest to find a successor to the blue can favorite.

My first attempt was made during my last trip to Meijer. I picked up a nine ounce package of Meijer Cheese Balls. The snack is sold in large purple bag with the transparent window positioned in the middle to display the actual cheese balls. The packaging came across as “meh”.  I did find the price very attractive as it was part of the weekly Meijer’s 10 items for $10 campaign so this large bag of cheese balls set me back one dollar. Normally the Meijer cheese balls retail at $1.99.

These cheese balls made their debut on my table during my Sunday lunch. It was sort of a double cheese whammy of a meal as this snack was served alongside my cheddar Panini (courtesy of my George Foreman grill).  The first test of this snack was the flavor character. The flavor was surprising decent as it was cheesy but not too pungent as you get with those sharp cheddar dusts. I honestly expected flavor to be much less satisfactory given the low price. The product’s best trait was the crunch of the corn puff. I am no food chemist but the manufacturer hit the right formula with corn meal, corn starch or whatever they used to make this cheez ball fun to munch on. My kids emptied two thirds of the bag in one sitting as they enjoyed chomping on these.

The Meijer brand cheese balls are my first attempt at finding a suitable replacement for the discontinued Planter’s product. I would give these snacks a definite passing grade; especially at the low price. I will continue my pursuit of testing other brands whether they are Utz, Target Market Pantry, Wise, or any no name store brand. I will update my findings here on this site.

Review of Krusteaz Pumpkin Spice Supreme Muffin Mix

With early Saturday morning soccer games looming, we had to pick up a quick and easy to prepare breakfast. I had quick breads on my mind as I enjoy making them in the fall as they make the kitchen smell awesome; and they also seem heartier than firing up a pop tart or toaster strudel.  In addition, the kids were burned out on cereal and oatmeal from the school week. Our Friday night of shopping at Wal-Mart revealed Krusteaz pumpkin spice muffin mix. I enjoy a good homemade muffin/quick bread mix, but did not want to take the time late on a Friday to look up recipes. I was also uncertain if I would have all the baking essentials to make the old school muffins.  A quick bread boxed mix seemed like the quick and convenient way to satisfy the quick bread craving before the big games commenced on Saturday.

The Krusteaz package directions were pretty simple. I prepared the contents to be baked as a quick bread instead of muffins. I have come to the conclusion that muffins seems to dry out quicker than baking the batter in a small bread pan. The mixing of ingredients only took a few minutes and I placed the batter in a shallow eight inch pan. The baking time was approximately fifty minutes at 350 degrees.

 First and foremost, the baked bread did one heck of a job making my home smell good. The baking did a better job than any pumpkin or apple spice Glade freshener plug in. As far as physical appearance, the finished loaf of quick bread had a lighter color than those pumpkin breads that contained canned or real pumpkin fruit. The density of the bread was also much lighter than traditional pumpkin breads (made from canned pumpkin).

Our breakfast tasting was met with mixed results. The pumpkin quick bread came off tasty but seemed more to look and taste likes a light and airy spongy spice cake. I shouldn’t be overly critical of the flavor as pumpkin really does not maintain its own true taste, but is merely a compilation of a bunch of spices. It would have been much easier to accept the spice cake flavor as “pumpkin” if only the bread had carried forth that dense pumpkin finish that appeared to be lacking.

The price of this fifteen ounce box of Krusteaz pumpkin muffin mix was a mere $2.12, purchased at Wal-Mart. The price seemed somewhat reasonable for a light breakfast for our crew. The eight inch loaf allowed the five of us to have two decent sized slices. No one was overly hungry this early on a Saturday morning so the quantity proved to be enough for our group. I think if we would have had a later breakfast or even one more individual at that table, the quantity would have been insufficient for our group.

Overall, I rank this an average product at best. I will most likely not purchase this muffin mix again. I will actually take the time to make bread or muffins the “old fashioned way” using the Libby’s pumpkin filling and pudding mix and make extra to freeze for later dates. 

Aldi L'Oven Fresh Hot Dog Buns: A Review

It is not an exaggeration to state that our household burns through a package of hot dog buns every week. When it comes to hot dog and hamburger buns, I do not typically maintain brand allegiance as I will usually make purchases based on brand sales. I also keep in mind to purchase based on that is going into the bun. If I am preparing hot dogs that week, I will most likely buy store brand or generic. If I am preparing some quality brats, Polish, or Italian sausages from the butcher, then I am going to purchase some bakery fresh buns, or select well known commercial buns such as those made by Turano or Gonnella.

I don’t pay allegiance to generic  labels either.  My purchase selection includes the Meijer brand, the Walmart Great Value label, the target brand, and now the Aldi label; known as L’Oven Fresh.  The L’Oven Fresh hot dog buns are sold eight to a package.  I have yet to witness a L’Oven Fresh twelve pack  of buns as sold by Meijer and even some of the name brand companies. The buns are a deep brown color with see -through plastic packaging. The total package weight is twelve ounces with each bun containing 110 calories.

A package of these buns is priced at eighty nine cents. That is a tad lower than the Meijer label costing a dollar and Wonder bread buns around two dollars.  Further down the line are the Rosen’s poppy seed buns costing over three bucks; though I am known to buy those on certain occasions.

These ALDI  buns are surprisingly decent tasting and moist throughout.  The absence of dryness actually surprised me as I have purchased L’Oven fresh wheat bread in the past only to realize the bread was like cardboard and suitable only for making croutons or poultry stuffing; yes I have done that! I would rank the flavor and moistness of the L’oven fresh hot dogs buns better than the Meijer brand and as good as the two dollar Wonder bread buns (at half the price!)

Overall, I rank the l’oven fresh hot dog buns a solid buy.

Belmont Peanut Butter S’mores Premium Ice Cream: A Review

This past weekend we had to make a stop at Aldi once again to pick up a few essentials we had missed during the work week. The visit did not go without a stop at the ice cream freezer. We noticed a new flavor at Aldi known as Belmont Premium Ice Cream Peanut Butter S'mores.  S’mores ice cream? Are you kidding me? Our family is an outdoorsy group that enjoys backyard campfires accompanied with playing twenty questions and consuming lots of s’mores. The idea of combining s’more flavors with frozen peanut butter sounded genius, so we picked up a container.

The ice cream is sold in a one and a half quart paper container (like most ice cream).The ice cream had a tan or almost tea or light coffee colored appearance. Throughout the ice cream were chunks of peanut butter and chocolate. I did not spy marshmallows or graham bits in the blend. The sight of this ice  cream upon first  glance had me concerned  about whether this  would represent a true s’more.

First taste was definite confirmation of the essence of s’mores.  I picked up the chocolate and peanut butter flavor immediately. The unknown factor was the marshmallows, not really sure if they were in the ice cream blend or not; then again marshmallows do not have a very distinguishable flavor unless you toast the heck out of them on the end of a camp fire stick. The greatest success of this blend was the graham cracker flavor hidden within the actual ice cream. This concoction was a s ‘more plus pb grand slam. 

The ice cream was purchased for the low price of $2.29 per container. This is a bit lower than the competitive ice creams (Hudsonville, Edy’s, and Breyers) that go for three to four dollars at Meijer.

A half cup serving of this ice cream packs about 160 calories.  My serving portion ended up at about a cup of ice cream on a cone totaling out about 375 calories (adding in “cone” calories). That is a hefty dessert but still much lower than trips I have made to the DQ for a blizzard treat.

For those that love a good fix of peanut butter married with nostalgic flavors of campfire s‘mores, I highly recommend picking up a container of Belmont Peanut Butter S ‘mores ice cream.  Get some now as this is most likely an autumn promotional flavor that will most likely go away in a month or two.