I need to establish something before we get into this, because apparently I have rules about snack food.
I am a purist about certain things. Dr Pepper is Dr Pepper. I don’t need somebody screwing around with it. Oreo is pretty much the same way. Give me regular Oreos or Double Stuf and I’m perfectly happy. Despite Oreo having apparently decided that anything on Earth can eventually become an Oreo flavor, I’ve never really bothered trying the flavored ones.
And Reese’s? Oh, I have opinions.
There is a correct chocolate-to-peanut-butter ratio in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. This isn’t up for debate. The regular original Reese’s cup gets it right. Those little miniature ones wrapped in gold foil also get it right. Start making them bigger, thinner, shaped like trees, pumpkins, footballs, the state of Nebraska (Ok, I might be tempted to buy one in the shape of Texas. Just cause.), whatever—and you’ve screwed with the ratio.
I won’t touch them.
So you can imagine how likely I was to voluntarily buy a package of Reese’s Peanut Buttery Creme Oreo Cookies.
How the hell did we get here?
This is actually a brand-new Oreo/Reese’s crossover. Oreo currently lists the Reese’s Peanut Buttery Creme Chocolate Sandwich Cookies among its new arrivals. The cookie uses the familiar Oreo chocolate wafers, but the middle is made with real Reese’s peanut-butter-flavored sauce and Oreo cookie crumb pieces.
And this isn’t a one-way collaboration. Reese’s also has Reese’s Oreo Peanut Butter Cups, where Oreo crumbs and white creme have been worked into a Reese’s cup. Hershey says Reese’s itself goes all the way back to 1928, when H.B. Reese created his peanut butter cups in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
So basically Reese’s and Oreo have invaded each other’s houses.
Fine.
Why I bought them
They were a dollar off at Casey’s.
That’s it.
There was no great culinary curiosity happening here. I wasn’t wandering around thinking, You know what my life is missing? Reese’s-flavored Oreos.
They were a dollar off, and I figured that if I hated them, I could give them to my dad and stepmom. Somebody would eat the damn things, and therefore I wouldn’t have completely wasted my money.
This is apparently how I justify adventurous eating. (It really is, Proverticus can confirm.)
Then came the Oreo problem
Once I actually had one in my hand, I realized I didn’t know how I was supposed to eat the damn thing.
Normally there’s a procedure.
Unscrew the Oreo. Eat the creme. Then eat the cookie.
But this wasn’t regular Oreo creme. It was Reese’s peanut butter creme. So do I unscrew it and eat the peanut butter first? Do I eat the cookie afterward? Or is this one of those situations where you’re actually supposed to eat the entire Oreo like a normal human being?
I consulted Proverticus.
Proverticus was no help whatsoever.
So I finally broke off a piece and tried it.
And then I just sort of let it sit in my mouth for a second because I was trying to figure out exactly what the hell I was tasting.
The verdict
Here’s the weird part:
It wasn’t bad.
It didn’t taste like a Reese’s.
It didn’t really taste like an Oreo, either.
Somehow these two things got shoved together and produced a third thing that doesn’t particularly satisfy my craving for either one—but actually tastes pretty good on its own.
And I was surprised by that.
The chocolate cookie and peanut-butter creme work together. I’m not going to suddenly abandon regular Oreos for these things, and this definitely isn’t one of those packages I’m likely to sit down with and mysteriously discover twenty minutes later that I’ve eaten half of it.
Regular Oreos? That could happen.
These? I think I’d eat a couple and be perfectly happy. Maybe every once in a while I’d buy another package when I wanted something different.
Which, coming from somebody who doesn’t buy flavored Oreos and has rules governing the geometrically acceptable dimensions of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, is actually a pretty decent endorsement.
I ended up sharing a whole row of them with my stepmom, so now I’m waiting to hear what her verdict is.
And apparently that dollar-off coupon at Casey’s worked, because the package did not immediately get donated to my parents.
That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about them.
Would I buy them again? Yeah, actually—but probably as an occasional change of pace. And preferably when they’re a dollar off again.
Because I may have expanded my Oreo horizons, but I’m not completely losing my mind here.
Dr Pepper, however, remains untouched.
Don’t get any ideas.