The Quest of a Cookie to Be What it is Not
The idea behind all these new Oreo flavors is to use the Oreo platform to capture and duplicate some of America's favorite tastes, and picking the iced cinnamon roll is an inspired choice for the project. But Nabisco isn't just trying to capture a collection of flavors. They're trying to trigger fond memories by association. If the cookie can remind you of the tastes and smells of the Cinnabon at the mall, it will in turn remind you of your childhood, your carefree days wasting quarters in the video arcade, your first date watching Shrek 2, getting your ears pierced, your first kiss outside The Gap.
But, needless to say, Oreo's got quite a hill to climb because a hard crunchy cookie is not a cinnamon roll. It isn't warm, it isn't soft, it isn't gooey, and - the magic of artificial flavors notwithstanding - its hard to imagine how you fit the taste of risen yeast dough into a flat, thin disc. Let's see how they tackle this challenge.
Special Flavors Always Have More Filling
If you twist apart a regular Oreo and just taste the cookie without any of the stuff, you'll probably notice that it doesn't really taste like much. There's a bit of a bitter cocoa taste, but all the sweetness in the cookie comes from the "stuff". The classic Oreo is like the classic Platonic couple that seeks its other half in order to be complete. So it is with the special flavor editions, only more so, because the "stuff" not only has to supply all the moisture, richness, and sweetness, but it has to deliver a lot of the flavor. That means more stuff than usual, as you can see from the picture.
The idea behind all these new Oreo flavors is to use the Oreo platform to capture and duplicate some of America's favorite tastes, and picking the iced cinnamon roll is an inspired choice for the project. But Nabisco isn't just trying to capture a collection of flavors. They're trying to trigger fond memories by association. If the cookie can remind you of the tastes and smells of the Cinnabon at the mall, it will in turn remind you of your childhood, your carefree days wasting quarters in the video arcade, your first date watching Shrek 2, getting your ears pierced, your first kiss outside The Gap.
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| I Can Almost Smell the Fry-Grease from the Panda Express! |
Special Flavors Always Have More Filling
If you twist apart a regular Oreo and just taste the cookie without any of the stuff, you'll probably notice that it doesn't really taste like much. There's a bit of a bitter cocoa taste, but all the sweetness in the cookie comes from the "stuff". The classic Oreo is like the classic Platonic couple that seeks its other half in order to be complete. So it is with the special flavor editions, only more so, because the "stuff" not only has to supply all the moisture, richness, and sweetness, but it has to deliver a lot of the flavor. That means more stuff than usual, as you can see from the picture.
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| More Creamy Filling is Needed to Create the Flavor and Feeling of the Icing. |
On Paper, this Shouldn't Work...but it Does!
Ok, we're almost ready to reveal how these things truly taste, but just a bit more background first. Does the ingredient list give us any reason for confidence that this cookie will really taste like a cinnamon roll? Not particularly. Cinnamon is a real, listed ingredient for the cookie component, but the filling only mentions, somewhat ominously, "natural and artificial flavor".
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| Also, who is Mondelez International Group? Interesting story, actually, they're the snack-foods half of Kraft, created when Kraft split into two companies. Still USA-based, Mondelez is a portmanteau word meaning "World (Monde) Delicious (Delez) |
Tasting the thick filling and the crisp cookie separately also doesn't give you much reason for hope. You can taste cinnamon in the cookie, but very faintly, and the filling just tastes like straight-up sugar and fat by itself. But when you bite into the two together, something special happens: the saltiness in the cookie wakes up the dull sweetness of the filling, swirling with the real cinnamon to create the hoped-for cinnamon-spiked icing. The crackery nature of the cookie transforms into something dough-flavored if not bread-textured. Suddenly you're not at your office cubicle anymore; you're gliding down the escalator, hearing the Christmas carols, as that unmistakable cinnamon scent soars up your nostrils. Not only do you taste the buns warming in the oven, you can almost taste the disinfectant they use to wipe down the counter. Oreo has not just manufactured a taste, they've revived a memory.
Conclusions
Oreo, from this entry, seems to know what they're doing. They've chosen a flavor with a few strong identifiable parts that combine to conjure something greater than the whole. Food Kingdom taster J.N. writes approvingly "It reminded me of a gingerbread cookie, which might just be my amateur palate confusing ginger and cinnamon, or cinnamon being in both types of cookie. But overall I think it was good, if not exactly living up to the billing of a cinnamon roll. To me the best part of the cinnamon roll, besides the warm sponginess of the roll itself, is the gooeyiness of the icing, which this obviously doesn’t have. 4/5 for overall taste, 2/5 for matching a cinnamon roll"
The official Food Kingdom combined verdict is slightly more generous:
Overall Taste: 4 out of a possible 5
Match to the Target Taste: 3.5 out of a possible 5
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