FrankenFood Friday: Orange Creampop Crunch

This week for #FrankenFoodFriday I took a poll on Facebook to decide whether my review would be of the new Maple Bacon Poptarts or...

...And it was a tie. So I picked the one I thought I might actually finish! Because I wish you could see the graveyard in my pantry of unfinished FrankenFoods. It's really kinda sad.

So I opened the box and was immediately hit with the aroma of an orange "Creampop", which I suspect is a branding clash because I've only ever heard them called "Creamsicles"

I actually looked forward to ripping this product to shreds about the fact that Cap'n Crunch cereal historically and infamously rips up the roof of your mouth, and so does this, but alas! Somehow for some reason, that notorious flaw in Cap'n Crunch cereals was mysteriously cured when it was made into a FrankenFood!

I also expected the flavor of the cereal to be cloying and overwhelming with an artificial orange and artificial cream flavor. I was both pleased and a bit disappointed that really, it just tasted like slightly orangey corn cereal. I was expecting the bits to be filled with some kind of cream, or for there to be some kind of little "cream" marshmallows or something to make it taste like a creampop and emphasize the gimmick, but it I guess they decided that the milk one typically uses on cereal would serve the cream function.

Finally, I thought the leftover milk might be the big creampop flavor. It was... sweetish milk that kind of reminded you of artificial oranges... and milk.

Kind of an anticlimactic tasting, really, but I was genuinely surprised that the extra sugar or something somehow eliminated that one big negative every Cap'n Crunch lover endures, walking around with a rough, scratched-up hard palate after every indulgence.

Still, in terms of FrankenFood success, I expect I'll actually finish this box of cereal, unlike those Swedish Fish Oreos, so that's a big check in the "pros" column. And it does remind you of both inspiring elements, and even arguably enhances one. It's certainly no improvement on a creampop unless you've been searching for a creampop without all that pesky wetness and coldness, but I'd argue it could easily surpass original Cap'n Crunch for people who particularly enjoy orange flavored things.

FrankenFood Friday: Swedish Fish Oreos

I got a request from a reader to review the limited time Swedish Fish flavored Oreos, so duty called and I answered!

The first thing I noticed upon opening the package was the distinct scent of Swedish Fish. I was surprised how accurately the Oreo mad scientists managed to replicate the olfactory experience of opening a package of Swedish Fish candy, but then, the odd-flavored Oreos have always been uncanny in their accuracy, the question is always whether the flavor should be turned into frosting.

I also had my husband taste-test these because he is actually a HUGE fan of Swedish Fish, whereas I can take them or leave them. 

The verdict? Well my husband didn't even finish his first cookie. I think it weirded him out. The flavor of the frosting was spot. on. but Swedish Fish is definitely one of those things that associates a flavor with a texture, and when you move it like this to a different medium, it's kind of off-putting. Interestingly, as someone with an indifference to the original candy, I didn't mind the cookies. They're yet again an interesting thing to try but not an improvement on either contributing element. Moreover, I realized through tasting the frosting on its own what exactly the Swedish Fish flavor is. I had always figured it was some weird play on artificial cherry because of the color, but somehow the new texture made me recognize that it's more of a combination of bubblegum and artificial banana flavoring. Amazing how my taste buds can be so easily be stumped by the color of the candy!

Anyway, if you LOVE Swedish Fish, I think this is worth trying- but don't buy out the store- this is one of those bucket list experiences you only need to try once.

And by the way, I had trouble finding these in the 5 stores I checked for them, so I finally ordered them online for $10! I love writing this blog and I will continue to review all the new places and items I try, and if you have suggestions I encourage you to let me know in the comments or tweet me @writingchef, but if you would like to see more variety, more wacky and potentially regrettable items, or a wider range of restaurants featured here, consider donating to this blog with the new PayPal button to the right! I'll only use the proceeds to improve the breadth and quality of the reviews on this blog.

FrankenFood Friday: Sushi Burrito at Sushi Shack

Order online to go                                                                                      Location

I've been waiting until a Friday to review Sushi Shack because they feature a FrankenFood that I have been excited to try ever since I saw a video of one from New York on Facebook ages ago: The Sushi Burrito.

I'll do a brief review of the restaurant and its other fare before diving into the insanity that is the Sushi Burrito to give you a fair opinion of Sushi Shack itself.

They are perhaps best known for their excellent all you can eat fresh sushi deals, which is only $10.99 at lunchtime. The catch, of course, is that you have to eat everything on your plate before eating more, and you reach about your fullness level after 2 whole rolls, which you may have been able to purchase individually for about $11 anyway. Still, it's a really great deal and allows for a lot of variety if you go with several people and all share several different rolls.

The all-you-can-eat meal also comes with salad from their modest buffet, and miso soup.

What you need to keep in mind at Sushi Shack is the price and value. I have a good friend who is a Japanese teacher, and has had some of the best sushi Japan has to offer, and needless to say she has extremely high standards for the quality of the fish that is served in her sushi. I am not sure that I would take her to Sushi Shack, because at the prices they offer, obviously they are not going to serve the breath-of-Poseidon quality of fish that a significantly more expensive sushi restaurant offers.

Still, for about $25 a couple can enjoy a varied, filling, delicious meal of sushi that far exceeds the quality of anything you would ever expect in that price range. For my husband and I, it has been a really fun treat to have a place we can go for affordable sushi on our budget that is good and fresh! 

Some people understandably assume that the quality of the fish must be affected when a restaurant's prices are so low. In some ways, that is a fair assumption- often, though I do not know in the case of Sushi Shack, especially in the middle of Texas, hundreds of miles from the ocean, sushi-grade fish has been frozen for transportation and thawed to serve. This process often takes some of the flavor out of the fish, making it milder. Still, such a process is a completely legitimate practice in maintaining the safety and serve-ability of meat products such as raw fish, and are one of the only ways to make such products available at a price point below $15-$20/roll. 

I am in no way asserting for certain that Sushi Shack uses fish that has been shipped frozen- I do not know! But my point is this: a slightly lower priced piece of sushi does not need to be regarded as "sketchy" purely based on price. Thawed-from-frozen fish is as safe to eat as fresh fish on the coast, sometimes even safer because it doesn't need to be thawed long before it is served, and is in that way at times much fresher than fish that was caught the day before and left aging in a fridge until it was served. I have known chefs who prefer thawed-from-frozen fish any time they can't smell the ocean from the front door of the restaurant because they can trust its safety more.

This blog is meant to inform and educate, and I digress on this point because I want people to be fair to establishments in this price bracket, and not assume that because it was a great price, that the quality and safety of the food must have suffered. I think that can really be unfair to establishments that may take a lower profit to provide competitive prices. I for one have eaten at Sushi Shack 4 times, at all different times of year including the dead heat of summer, and have never tasted anything less than fresh or felt anything less than full and satisfied after I had eaten, and I am always amazed at how easy it was to stay in budget.

Now for what you've all been waiting for! The Sushi Burrito.

This "burrito" is wrapped in pink rice paper, and stuffed with sushi rice, shredded crab (real, not artificial), tuna, salmon, and avocado. It really is, as one would expect, basically a gigantic roll of sushi. Still, the FrankenFood gimmick, while perhaps somewhat unnecessary, is a fun one. 

It is also an excellent bite of food, combining three of my favorite sushi meats into one bite. I did find myself missing a crunch or a chew after I got about halfway through, and would have enjoyed a bit of seaweed or cucumber to break up the soft upon soft upon soft texture of the meal.

Still, overall it was a great deal for the price, very filling and fresh, and a lot of fun to eat. I think it is definitely worth trying for the sake of saying you have, one of those culinary bucket list items. It is also significantly more successful than most FrankenFoods at combining the defining elements of both inspiring dishes to create a new distinct hybrid of both, and in so doing accomplishing something that is not only edible, but actually fun, delicious, and something you actually want to finish.

Finally, let me just say- the staff are darling and provide such friendly and excellent service. I was delighted at the end of my last dinner there when the waitress brought out this with our check:

So go check it out! Remember the price point, and enjoy a good plate of sushi with a friend. 

FrankenFood Friday: S'mores M&Ms

One of my all time favorite things in life is a good s'more. So when I saw the Crispy M&M S'mores, I knew I had to try them for a FrankenFood Friday.

My instinct when I first opened the package was to try all three colors at once, and they did taste... not unlike a s'more, though there was a more gingerbread sort of note to it that was a little too strong. I tasted the colors separately and was pleasantly surprised to realize that the different colors seemed to have different flavors, which corresponded to their color (white tasted a bit like marshmallow, brown tasted like a normal M&M, tan tasted like weird gingerbread). So for the full s'more effect, you have to taste all three in the same bite. It kind of carries the fun, "some assembly required" aspect of s'mores into the M&M world in a whimsical way.

Still, that said once again this FrankenFood did not meet my most valued criteria of making something better than the inspiring individual elements. I could see some people who happen to have a taste for gingerbread lattes finding this an improvement on M&Ms, but there is no way this is an improvement on S'mores, and the tan flavor is too odd. The real test of a FrankenFood is whether I want to finish it off. It's so strange that FrankenFoods are the only sweets that enter my home that ever don't get finished off for weeks. I know I wasn't too impressed with these because although I liked them fine for the taste test, I haven't gone back to eat any more in over a week. I do like the white ones, though, I think they should do a chocolate and marshmallow one without the weird spiced flavor. Over all, I think this is an inexpensive enough experiment that it's worth trying if you are the sort of person who tends to like gingerbread or pumpkin spice lattes- it might be the best M&Ms you ever try!

If you do try these, or if you already have, please let me know what you think in the comments!

Introducing FrankenFood Friday: Oreo Churros

There are so many wacky mish-mashes and hybrids of two or more beloved foods in the world, and I find myself drawn more by curiosity than appetite to see if they do justice to either of the original inspirations, or both, or if they have successfully made something mind-blowing and delicious, finding the elements of muchness contained in each inspiring component and successfully improving on one or both.

And in light of the popularity of last week's post about the Burger King Mac N' Cheetos, as well as the abundant availability of these #Frankenfoods, I've decided to designate my Friday blogs to trying them out.

First on the list is the Oreo Churros:

I am a huge fan of Oreos, they're one of my top- if not the top- store bought desserts. So when I was at Walmart several months ago and I first saw this on display in the end-cap of the freezer section, it took all my resolve not to buy a box right away. It wasn't in the grocery budget, and I could always wait and get them when I was throwing a party or something. It just seemed like a random, decadent, and risky thing to just buy on impulse and make at home on a random evening (not that there's anything wrong with that on principle, but adding in the not-being-in-the-budget thing and I didn't buy it). But last week I found these sirens of the frozen foods section on clearance, and I realized my window of opportunity might be coming to a close.

So I bought them, and found an opportunity to make them up fairly soon. When something may be limited time only, you want to leave yourself some opportunity to go back and stock up in the event that it becomes your new favorite vice. One of my husband's favorite desserts is churros, so I saw this as a strong possibility.

This is what they look like straight out of the box:

They're dense, about 2.5" long, already partially cooked prior to being frozen, so all you really have to do is heat them up and crisp the outsides. Super easy prep- always a bonus. The box said there were "about 20" pieces in the box, and there were in fact 16. IN WHAT WORLD is 16 "about 20"? I only felt slightly ripped off because I'd gotten them on clearance and was just taste-testing anyway, but don't count on planning for specific numbers based on accurate labeling.

I heated them in the toaster oven according to the instructions, and prepared the sugar coating in a small bowl. I didn't come up with this- it came in a packet in the box. It's a mixture of white sanding sugar and oreo crumb/dust:

The finished product came out looking really good, if perhaps a little dirty. I properly rolled about 6 of them in the sugar coating before I got impatient and just sort of sprinkled/dumped them over the tops on the plate. 

They were not bad! Good, even, though they failed to earn the distinguishment of surpassing their original inspirations. As churros, they were probably about as good as a frozen churro could be, especially a chocolate one. They were quite dense, even for a churro, which I mostly chalk up to the recipe being too heavy on whatever ingredients make it taste like an Oreo. Churro dough usually resembles more of a Pate Au Choux, or a cream puff dough, which is significantly lighter and eggier than a cookie dough. Also, whenever you add cocoa to a recipe, it tends to become a little heavier. That's just the nature of cocoa as opposed to flour. 

And if I had to choose between these and an Oreo, I'd almost always choose an Oreo. However, if I were craving a warm dessert with a molten center, and also craving Oreos at the same time, this would be a perfect solution for a low price and minimal effort.

Finally, my favorite parts were definitely the sugar coating and the fluffy, creamy centers. I expected it would be a slight variation on the original Oreo cookie filling, perhaps a bit more  sugary to stabilize the shortening at high temperatures. but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was much more like marshmallow fluff- very airy, gooey, and smooth.

Verdict: Worth a try, just to experience something new. It's pretty good, but you probably won't buy them twice.

Do you know of any hybrid #FrankenFoods you'd like me to review? Have you tried the Oreo Churros? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

Mac N' Cheetos: Burger King

When I saw a commercial for the new, limited time Burger King Mac n' Cheetos, I knew I had to try it for you, my readers- take one for the team.

If you haven't seen the commercials for yourself, this new menu item from the Kingdom of Burgers is advertised as a Cheeto made of macaroni and cheese, coated in Cheeto dust.

Here's the thing. I LOVE Cheetos. They are, without hyperbole, my favorite chips. I also have a deeply profound appreciation for macaroni and cheese, particularly its ability to enhance almost anything it's added to. I have successfully attempted the Mac n' Cheese Waffle Burger (let me know in the comments if you want a blog about it!), & recently had a divine experience with a mac n' cheese stuffed grilled cheese sandwich. 

So I actually held some wary optimism that this could be a successful melding of two cheesy favorites.

No such luck. For only a few more weeks, and a measly $2.50, you, too can simultaneously experience the sensation of sinking your bicuspids into a hot-yet-completely-congealed thumb sculpted from Velveeta, and licking a Cheeto-dust callous off the same thumb the likes of which can only be achieved by eating an entire family-sized bag of Cheetos with the same two fingers in one sitting without a single napkin wipe.

I'll give His Beefy Highness credit for this, these barely edible monstrosities do achieve a striking resemblance to unnervingly dense Puff Cheetos, though the seam along the outer curves bring to mind several week-old surgical scars I've had the misfortune of seeing.

The thing that sets these stubby non-appendages apart from other, more appetizing fried cheese sticks, other than the vibrantly unnatural hue of orange and the unmistakable salty flavor of processed Cheez-food, is that the cooked macaroni lends a mushy solidness that causes these dusty doodles from Hades to have the unmelted texture of not just cold Velveeta, but the distinct al dente of melted and re-congealed cold Velveeta, even when they're piping hot straight from the fryer. 

If you want to be a true and total foodie, it isn't just the unique, delicious, exotic, and gourmet food experiences that will get you your streetfood cred. There are some items on the foodie bucket list, such as Durian fruit, that you need to experience just for the sake of saying you have. I'm not saying you should try this, but I'm going to place the Burger King Mac N' Cheetos in that category to convince myself it was worth it. 

Who knows, though? If you have a secret thrill in sucking the Cheeto-dust crust off your fingers when you finish a bag, this might just be the perfect snack for you.