Tirol Coffee Jelly

First, this is just a gentle reminder that there is one week left to enter my Trident Layers giveaway! Thanks to everyone who has entered so far.

Normally, Tirol chocolates have adorable packaging designs, but it seems like Coffee Jelly slipped through the cracks. The font isn't eye-catching (not to mention the yellow stroke on brown text), and combined with the grainy picture, it just looks cheap.

Of course, as chocolates go, Tirol is cheap, but it doesn't usually look it. Still, I wasn't too deterred from adding a set of 4 Coffee Jelly chocolates ($2.79, though they are now sold out) to my napaJapan order, and I'm very glad that I did.


Under the wrapper, the chocolate was quite attractive with its contrasting white top and dark bottom, all with a slightly glossy finish. It had a mild coffee scent, and the chocolate had a great snap to it. Inside the chocolate was a sticky gel center with a pleasant, slightly firm gummy texture.

The chocolate had the stronger espresso-like flavor, and the combination of milky white and bitter dark reminded me of a mocha. The gel center had a milder, more delicate coffee flavor. It was like a much more subdued Ferrero Pocket Coffee, and it was delicious. Don't let the unassuming package fool you - there's quality chocolate in there!

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Tirol website

Burger King Cookie Dough Pie

As I've mentioned before, Keepitcoming and I have vastly differing ideas of what defines "food." So when the time comes to jump on the latest fast food products, I often have to lure her into trying them so I don't look like a schmuck sitting in my car with three chalupas and no one to share them with.

Everyone likes cookie dough. And everyone likes pie. It's an undisputed fact that will most likely be drafted as an addendum in the Constitution in the near future, at least before the Mayan apocalypse. When I saw that Burger King was testing this, I had to try it. Luckily, Keepitcoming was enthused and rather intrigued by the concept and was willing to check it out with me.The pie was housed in an unnecessarily large protective chamber that probably took Mies van der Rohe and a team of ten six months to design. The actual confection is roughly 3/4 the size of the box. It features an Oreo or Oreo poseur crust, looking as though it leans towards the latter as it was unnaturally brown, a whipped vanilla creme filling studded with pieces of chocolate chip cookie dough with more creme and miniature chocolate chips on top.

Shit is crammed with cookie dough on the pictures. Burger King's graphic designer, likely traumatized with staring at The King's lifeless, vacant face, made a cheerful presentation that gave me heightened expectations of gobs of cookie dough and fluffy peaks of cream. In reality, it was quite unappealing. The former hunks of dough were a few scattered pieces about the size of a pencil eraser, sunk to the bottom like fat kids in a pool and offering no grittiness or chips or flavor. I commend Burger King for officially creating a new way to hate cookie dough. This now bumps salmonella to number two.The whipped filling is the worst part of this pie. What was whimsical in the Butterfinger pie is now downright odious and tastes filmy, oily, and seemed to have absorbed the cardboardy flavor of the box it sat in. It sits upon a mushy and flavorless crust. The whole thing delivers a one-dimensional flavor, and that flavor is ass. Thanks to Burger King's inferior product, I am now forced to eat my Buck Doubles in the car. Bastards.

Orkney Fudge

Fudge seems to be a bit of a polarizing sweet, although that might be putting it too strongly. I don't dislike fudge, but it's not something I ever choose to eat. Every now and then, a little taste is great, but it's just so overwhelmingly sweet and rich that a little sample chunk at the fudge shop is good enough for me.

But this fudge is famous - it's Orkney Fudge. I had never heard of it in the US, but after a trip to visit her family in the UK, my boss kindly brought some back for us to try at work. She explained that this fudge experienced a surge in popularity when someone on the reality show Big Brother brought it to the house as their luxury item.


This fudge smelled amazing. It had a rich, buttery scent and an almost sparkly sheen. The fudge was slightly crumbly like very finely ground sugar, but the texture was melt-in-your-mouth delightful. It had an intense, enjoyable caramel flavor, with hints of vanilla.

Of course, the fudge was sweet, but it wasn't overwhelmingly so - the deep, rich buttery flavor was more noticeable to me than the sweetness. As fudges go, this is one of the best I've tried, and for once, I wanted more than one piece.

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Circles

It's hard to get delivery (from a restaurant I'd want to eat at) where I live. We're juuuust out of delivery range for most Center City restaurants. So, when I found out that Circles Contemporary Asian Cuisine, a casual Thai take-out in the Newbold neighborhood delivers to my area, I was on it.

I cannot tell you what Circles looks like, because I've never been there, and probably never will. That's the beauty of delivery — they come to me! From what I hear it's a corner take-out joint with a glass partition separating the cashier and kitchen from walk-in customers and the waiting room, so don't head to Circles for a romantic evening of dining out.

The vegetarian summer rolls are standard fare with vermicelli noodles, carrots, scallions, lettuce, and basil. I would have loved less lettuce and more herbs. The peanut dipping sauce is sweet with crushed peanuts.
Fried tofu with a side of thin, sweet and sour sauce with crushed peanuts arrives extra crispy thanks to the the corner of the Styrofoam box that is thoughtfully cut off to allow the steam to escape. At $2.95, the fried tofu is a great deal.
Massaman curry with fried tofu, potatoes, onions, and peanuts is aromatic and creamy, but lacks the rich depth of spices I so love about massaman curry. Circles' massaman curry is heavy on some spice giving it a strong citrus flavor, perhaps galangal or lemongrass. While a perfectly fine massaman, Circles' rendition doesn't match up to my first and favorite massaman, and I am always on the quest to find "that" massaman.Circles' tofu pad Thai gets major props for perfectly balancing the sweet, spicy, sour, and salty components of pad Thai sauce, and also for saucing the noodles perfectly — not too dry, and not too wet. Green mango slices, a lime wedge, crushed peanuts, scallions, and julienned carrots and cabbage top off the noodles.

I can't think of a better pad Thai I've had in Philadelphia. Maybe at Chabbaa Thai, but it's in Manayunk, which I don't consider the city proper, and Chabbaa Thai certainly doesn't deliver to my house.

Spice levels at Circles seem to change daily. I always order medium, and sometimes it comes mild, sometimes it comes spicy.

Circles always quotes me 40 minutes for delivery, and always delivers in under 40 minutes.

There's also a $2 delivery charge included on your ticket, which may or may not be include on the over-the-phone total quote. The first time the delivery guy came to the door and asked for more money than I was quoted, I was a bit suspicious, but after inspecting the receipt I found the $2 delivery charge.

Is Circles the best Thai in the city? I think Circles is about on par with any good Thai restaurant, but the fact that they come to my house puts them at the top of my list, and makes them my go-to Thai restaurant.

Circles Contemporary Asian Cuisine
1516 Tasker St., Philadelphia, PA 19145
215-687-1778
Mon: 5-11 p.m. Tue-Sun: 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

Stacy's Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips

Fuck yeah, pita chips. Seriously. I'm a big fan. They're in my top three chip categories, believe it or not. On my almighty scale, which I spent about ten years of research and ten minutes drawing, they're third in the category "pita chips that do not taste like ass."Allow me to clarify the latter category, that being "pita chips that do taste like ass." They're tack biscuit hard, or Zwieback if you're an infant, and have notes of Play-Doh or black sea salt, which incidentally tastes like eggs. These, however, are not.Keepitcoming buys Stacy's Pita Chips as an all purpose snack. To be fair, they probably end up in the condiment designation of our skewed food shelves because we use them more as toppings on soup or as nachos than much else. I'm nuts about the plain ones because of how perfectly thick and crispy they are, so when she brought home the cinnamon sugar chips, I pounced on them and decided that they needed reviewing.These are the perfect chip base for those dessert nachos I'm always talking about making. This is second only to the FoodShouldTasteGood chocolate tortilla chip, and if the two of these chips pulled a Wonder Twins and took the form of one chip, it would be an unstoppable force. The thickness of the chip is really what allured me the most, but now instead of scattered sea salt, the chip is covered in a blend of cinnamon and sugar.It tastes like cinnamon toast, no surprise there. Part of me is pleased with the nostalgic simplicity and another part of me wants to go all Charles Laughton a la Island of Lost Souls and start experimenting with that shit. So I compromised and added ice cream. I thought it would surely be the bane of the crunch I so lust over, but to my surprise, they stayed crispy and crunchy, creating a flavor and texture like fried ice cream without the grease. A solid, portable snack and easy dessert hack.

Dunkin' Donuts Egg White Wake-Up Wraps

Forgot to wish you guys a Happy New Year from the other side. One of my resolutions for this year was to finally stick to losing weight and keeping fit. I came into some amazing opportunities over the last year and I want to look my best for all of them. When I saw that Dunkin' was carrying new egg white sammiches, I knew it would be a good way to balance both blog and body.

Truth be told, these aren't really wraps, they're more like quesadillas. If you speak Latin and you wish to be grammatically correct, quesadillae. They come in two flavors, turkey sausage and veggie. To be fair, the turkey sausage also has veggies in it, but the veggie has no meat. I tried both of these with my morning coffee after accidentally going to work two hours early. It was the silver lining to my mistake.These are surprisingly good. Egg whites have the tendency to be cooked to a rubbery fritter or a tasteless lump, so when I bit into this and got soft, flavorful eggs, I was pleased. Egg is clearly the dominant flavor here, but all else falls into place rather well. With the turkey sausage, I tasted the saltiness of the meat, which added a juicy texture despite being in small pieces. The spinach added nothing for flavor but did offer a nice color in the egg whites. To my surprise, I actually preferred the veggie wrap to the the sausage. Where the sausage wrap was kind of one-dimensional in its flavoring, the veggie wrap offered a melange of different vegetables, each coming into play throughout the wrap- three colors of peppers and green onions welcomes each bite and reminded me of one of my favorite breakfast products, Southwestern Egg Beaters.The best part of these was the cheese. I've had very few fast food sandwiches where the cheese plays a prominent role in seasoning and adding flavor and depth to the meat and bread, but the cheese in this was perfect. Both wraps had shredded cheddar cheese inside, and each bite had an above average amount. It was flavorful and sharp, and it added a moistness to the overall texture. One aspect I loved about these was how neat and portable they were. There was nothing dripping from the sides or leaking out and the tortillas, though crispy, did not create any crumbs. These would be easy to eat in the car or on the run from the police. Everything was held in and melded together well.These are delicious, only 150 calories apiece, and well worth your buck fifty. It's interesting how the calories correspond with the price. Perhaps better choices would be made if that were the case for all foods. However, for the voracious eater, I'd recommend skipping these entirely. They're pretty tiny, about the size of a dollar bill and as thick as an iPod Classic. I found that despite eating these, drinking a small coffee, and sipping from some water throughout the day, I was hungry after about three hours. The concept is bright, though, and is certainly something I'd purchase while on the go again.

Lazy Cakes

I saw these in a gas store and had a mild seizure in front of the cigarillos and Clark Bars. Really? A brownie that makes you relax? With a creepy, Mr. Hanky-esque mascot on the front? From the website www.bakedworld.com? And a fake message warning me of future overusage of the word dude? This made my inner 14 year old squeal because drugs mean rebelling against the man, yo. They're Lazy Cakes, a brand of "baked relaxation" bringing butthurt to Georgians everywhere and a new form of rohypnol to guidos up in the cluuuuuuub. To be fair, there's no trace of drug references (overt, at least,) in these brownies. In fact, a simple check of the ingredients tells us that the relaxation elements are no more exotic than a holistic mother's medicine cabinet: melatonin, rosehips, and velarian root. Two out of three of those are actually known for helping relax the brain- rose hip is mainly a healthy treat for chinchillas. So we've looked it over and there's no weed in this feed, but is it good?

Luckily for Lazy Cakes, they've baked a brownie scientifically proven to interact pleasantly with my brownie taste preferences, according to the Foodette Scale of Brownie Baking Perfection, or the FSBBP. As I've said here and here, my brownies must be medium rare, halfway between raw and pudding-like, and these were no exception. They had a dense texture and a chocolatey flavor and were soft and squishy. Very nicely done. They felt a little better than a Little Debbie Snack cake, with none of that chewy weirdness, but doubtedly up to the level of a homemade brownie. There were no chemically aftertastes. But taste wasn't the only factor. I was here for the side effects, baby.I don't know whether this is a placebo effect or not, but I'm damned tired. Swagger made me dinner and I spent a lot of time laughing at Blades of Glory, but that was the only thing I really did today and I am absolutely beat. After eating this brownie, I had to concentrate to stay awake. I don't know the amounts of chemicals in this, as the nutrition label does not specify the dosages, but it did its job as far as I can tell. I'd have to revise the FSBBP and do some tests with my trained lab mice to get better results, but Lazy Cakes were better than I originally anticipated them to be. Good luck entering them in a middle school science fair, though.