Birthday cake & birthday frosting ARE flavors in their own right. There, I said it. It's not just vanilla and it's not just cake, it's got something special I can't quite put my finger on. American-style birthday cakes are just the slightest bit more extravagant than UK ones, as many American things tend to be. They're almost always slathered in thick buttercream frosting, with piped icing borders & sugar roses. I loved getting the roses, haha. Here's some examples of the kinds of birthday cakes my family would get. Fondant isn't that common, and any sort of frosting other than buttercream is rare. I've had some amazing cakes in the UK, but the frosting-to-cake ratio is very rarely in frosting's favor here.
That's why you gotta import your frosting-flavored goods from America - so I did.
I've spoken highly of Chips Ahoy! here in the past, both their root beer flavor cookies & the Dairy Milk collaboration. In the USA they were one of my favorite cookies, specifically I liked the standard 'crunchy' style, as I felt the chewy ones didn't have enough of a salty taste to really be like a true, homebaked cookie. This is a chewy style Chips Ahoy!, but the fact that it is full of birthday frosting really made it irrelevant - this is going to be sweet, no matter how much salt is in the initial mix.
The initial smell is very sweet & vanilla, and kind of nondescript. The look is kinda smooshy and small, interestingly not uniform but that could just be a byproduct of being shipped.
The taste is crazy sweet, without much variation. The frosting in the center is a very thin layer so it's a bit hard to notice, but carefully biting around to expose the frosting to the elements leaves me feeling underwhelmed...and also proud of my small biting ability. Years of Reese's eating, what can I say.
The frosting middle just tastes like sugar, and is a bit pasty in texture - that I don't mind, the stickiness and mouthfeel does mimic actual frosting quite well - not high quality stuff, but like, buttercreme. Bit of a margarine vs butter situation, because the taste was boring at best, and at worst, sort of odd and bitter. Surely that's from the chemicals, of which there are many in this cookie. My husband actually refused to eat any of these after the first one, and he's a guy who usually doesn't care about chemicals - I mean, he married an American and we're chock full of them from our beef & cookies.
Yeah, can't say that these cookies were a success. They did, however, get eaten by me eventually, and they were inoffensive when eaten as a whole. I don't recommend breaking them up to try & get to the cream - Oreos they ain't.
The good news is, my birthday is this week and there is a high probability that I will get the truest form of frosting-with-cookie, a cookie cake!
It's a shame these weren't that great, as they look awesome.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're feeling better now. All the best for a great birthday!
thank you! Yes, I agree - I thought they'd be a surefire hit, but it was a real disappointment. D'oh!
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