Frost in Translation - Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts

A Victim of the Flavor Craze

When Pop-Tarts were first introduced in 1964, it was a simpler time, especially with respect to flavors.  We may overstate the case if we say that ice cream came in chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, but flavors were within the realm of the possible and plausible.  Baskin-Robbins had 31 flavors, but the era of extreme mix-ins and candy bar fusions lay far ahead on the horizon..  Yogurt generally came in fruit flavors like strawberry, peach, blueberry, raspberry, and boysenberry, unlike today where "Key Lime Pie" flavor has rendered plain old lime passé, and you would never dare release an apple yogurt when "Cinnamon Apple Crumble" is an option.  Today we like our flavors to be aspirational, and we fondly hope that a simple consumer bakery item will transcend itself to become something it could never be and was never intended to be.  The era of dessertification is upon us. That way lies folly, and it brings us to the sad case of the Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tart, a confused embarrassment of a product that fails utterly to conjure the treat to which it alludes.

Cool creaminess and hot fudginess, magically shrunk down to a foil-wrapped, shelf stable pantry item! Or so Kellogg's food scientists hope.

Complexity Kills

Pop-Tarts as they were originally conceived are elegantly straightforward in concept, essentially jam and crackers turned inside out.  Kellogg's engineers had simply to acquire a competently produced fruit jam, refine it slightly by eliminating irregularities like seeds, thicken it by reducing the moisture content, and then encase that fruit reduction within a crackery pastry. The frill of frosting became an added option several years later.  This base recipe didn't require any its ingredients to substantially deviate from their essential nature, for jam is jam and crackers are crackers; bringing them together was child's play.  

Consider, by contrast, how many mutations in form and function are required to transform a hot fudge sundae into a Pop-Tart.  Vanilla ice cream, a cold solid, is required to transform into a hot liquid filling.  Hot fudge, a smooth and velvety liquid, is pressed into service as a hard glazed drizzle on the pastry's exterior on the one hand, and secondarily as the main flavoring in the cracker-pastry that makes up most of the Pop-Tart's mass.  Ignore for a second that a traditional hot fudge sundae has no baked elements at all.  This chocolate cracker is nonetheless supposed to anchor freakish adaptation, despite having almost nothing in common with the thing imitated.

A look inside gives us our first sign of trouble.  Look at the ratio of dry, crumbly chocolate cracker to the vanilla filling that presumably represents the ice cream in this ill-considered adaptation.

Does It at Least Taste Good?

All of these complaints about authenticity might be downgraded to quibbles if our Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tart made for a sweet indulgence of some other sort, so let's now concentrate on that.  Because Pop-Tarts are consumed at room temperature roughly half the time, we'll discuss the taste in both heated and unheated forms.

At room temperature is where this "hot fudge sundae" falls flattest, as you might well imagine.  Without the flavor-spreading asset of heat, the vanilla "ice cream" filling is at its meekest, leaving the chocolate cracker-pastry to dominate.  Since this pastry crust was always indeed conceived as more of a cracker than a cookie, its transformation from neutral to a chocolate flavor is inevitably awkward.  It tastes as though industrial saboteurs dumped a barrel of Nestle Quik powder into the mixer at a saltine factory.  As for the icing, decorated with brown swirls and rainbow sprinkles, it tastes no different from the standard, eerily immovable "hard icing" that has encrusted frosted Pop-Tarts for as long as the item has existed.

After some time in the toaster, the Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tart is slightly more successful.  The vanilla filling still  does nothing to remind us of vanilla ice cream, but we are at least reminded slightly of certain dishes that are hot, contain ice cream, and involve chocolate baked goods.  Indeed, "Fudge Brownie Sundae Pop-Tart" would have made a much more credible name and would have rendered this at least a qualified success.  When the warm vanilla filling combines with the warm chocolate pastry, one alternately tastes something like a warm brownie moistened with ice cream or, if one insists, plausibly even a hot fudge drizzle.  As a matter of fact, as I write this, I am tasting a toasted Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tart for the third time, and they do grow on you.  But let us not dwell on how one might warm to these over time.  Let's discuss how they might have been better.

When heated, the vanilla center asserts itself a bit, seeming to expand and blend with the now-softer cocoa crust.  In the end the resemblance is more to a brownie sundae than the titular sundae that is free from any baked-good content.

The Road Not Taken

There were other options available to Kellogg's in designing this flavor and it's puzzling that these weren't pursued.  Here are just a few things I would have expected and liked to have seen.

Actual hot fudge - It seems so obvious.  In addition to a vanilla filling, why not add some fudgy chocolate to the interior so that when the Pop-Tart is heated, some true gooey fudge, intertwined with the vanilla, comes dripping out.  For something with "hot fudge" in the name, the absence of anything resembling it is a mystery.

A vanilla pastry - Chocolate is such an intense flavor that concentrating it in the filling would have lent plenty of chocolate punch to the pastry.  Vanilla, on the other hand, is so mild that it needed heftier representation.  Saturating the pastry itself with a smooth French Vanilla accent might have lent balance and authenticity to this creation.

A maraschino cherry center - Sure the cherry atop sundae is just one tiny touch, but it's still the distinctive capstone that lends pizazz and personality to the treat.  It would have been a cute and whimsical surprise to put just a little bit of cherry jam somewhere inside the tart.  Guessing when the sudden burst of cherry would come would have added some suspense and a sense of discovery.

Conclusions

As the opening paragraph suggests, this Pop-Tart made a horrible first impression, and it could have done much more to resemble the dessert that it imitates.  But as I continued to eat while I wrote, its modest virtues came to the fore and its definite flaws receded in importance.  In the end, the Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tart is an interesting attempt, even as it's a symptom of continuing flavor overreach in the packaged foods industry.