Haagen-Dazs Desserts Extraordinaire. Chocolate Mousse, French Vanilla Mousse, Strawberry Cheesecake, Chocolate Raspberry Torte, Bananas Foster, Cafe Mocha Frappe and Creme Brulee. $3.59 per pint.
Bonnie: When the publicist described these new Desserts Extraordinaire as the world's most decadent desserts in the form of world's most premium ice cream, I beamed, thinking what a great job I have. And I do, even though the hype for these new ice creams didn't live up to my high taste expectations.
Fortunately, these weren't as over-the-top in calories and fat as I expected. In fact, Desserts Extraordinaire are incredibly similar in calories and fat to other Haagen-Dazs premium ice creams. (Try not to indulge in these or any premium ice creams right out of the freezer; they're best when you allow them to soften for 10 minutes.)
The Chocolate Raspberry Torte tastes best, although I would have liked more chunks of cake in it. Bottom line: Chocolate Chocolate Chip remains my favorite Haagen-Dazs indulgence.
Carolyn: Some of the best new ice cream flavors created in the past 20 years have been built on the backs of cookies and candy. Heath Bar Crunch, Cookies 'n' Cream and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough are three for-instances. Desserts Extraordinaire is an attempt by the folks at Haagen-Dazs to re-create whole desserts in ice cream form, thereby (in their fondest dreams) eliminating our need to eat any other dessert but their ice cream.
But there is a reason for the popularity of mousses, puddings and cakes that has nothing to do with their taste. For instance, the appeal of mousse has everything to do with its airy texture: something that Desserts Extraordinaire's ice cream "mousses" do not duplicate. (These are simply delicious chocolate and vanilla ice creams.)
The Strawberry Cheesecake is also delicious but far from unique. (Dreyer's Dreamery has been making one just as good for years.) Starbucks Coffee Almond Fudge Ice Cream is stronger (and therefore better) than Cafe Mocha Frappe. This Creme Brulee is basically Haagen-Dazs' own Dulce De Leche caramel ice cream by a different name.
Only one of these Desserts Extraordinaire lives up to this name: That's the intensely flavored Bananas Foster. Its rich ice cream and brown sugar-rum-molasses sauce makes Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey taste like kid stuff.
Nestle Nescafe Ice Java. Chocolate Mocha, French Vanilla Cafe and Coffee Cooler. $3.49 per 22-ounce bottle.
Bonnie: Just add this new coffee syrup to cold milk to make instant iced java. You'll be adding about 80 all-sugar calories resulting in a very sweet coffee-flavored milk. Simple and convenient? Yes. Tasty? Well, that depends on whether you mind an aftertaste from the artificial sweetener sucralose.
Nescafe uses a combination of sugar and that artificial sweetener to flavor these syrups. That combo packs a powerful sweetness punch. To be fair, the sucralose aftertaste in these iced javas is more subtle than in most other products that I've tested containing sucralose. In fact, if you're eating something while drinking this, you might not even notice it.
Carolyn: Sweet is right, Bonnie. While the idea of an iced coffee syrup has merit and is unusual, the drinks they create will be way too sweet for most adults — including sugar-loving me. And there's too much coffee in these to give them to kids. (The caffeine content of each is somewhere between instant and brewed coffee.) So what's the use of these?
The Chocolate Mocha makes a pretty tasty chocolate milk for adults who are still into that kind of thing. The other two would be best used to dress up ice cream or cake desserts to new levels of sophistication (and new levels of caffeine).
GeniSoy Trail Mixes. Happy Trails, Tropical Paradise and Mountain Medley. $2.99 per 6-ounce bag.
Bonnie: Considering the explosion of soy products into the marketplace, it's not surprising that Americans are eating more soy foods. In fact, according to United Soybean Board's 2002-2003 National Report, 42 percent of Americans consume soy foods once a month or more, with an even more surprising 28 percent saying they consume them weekly. Many are doing so for health reasons and would like to consume even more.
These soy nut trail mixes are one new possibility, at least for people who don't mind the taste of roasted soy nuts. As for fat and calories, they're almost on par with other trail mixes with similar components, except for the soy protein from the "nuts." These new GeniSoy packages sport a handy graphic on each package listing the specific grams of soy protein contained in each serving. That makes it easier to measure this snack's contribution to the 25 grams of soy protein a day purported to help reduce the risk of heart disease. A 1-ounce serving of the Mountain Medley, for instance, would supply 4 grams of that protein.
Carolyn: The GeniSoy company has figured out how to get me to eat soy nuts happily. It has mixed them in with such a delicious array of better-tasting nuts and dried fruits that the soy nuts can hardly be noticed.
This Mountain Medley has raisins, almonds, cashews and dried cranberries and apples, in addition to the soy. It's the only one of the three GeniSoy Trail Mixes you should buy. Happy Trails is similar, but its M&M-like candies don't mix well with the other flavors. There are no real nuts in the Tropical Mix, making the soy nuts way too prominent.
But in the Mountain Medley, the soy nuts are no more objectionable (or identifiable) than the lightweight, crunchy stuff you find in Oriental snack mixes.
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Jell-O: A Biography" (Harvest/Harcourt). Each week they critique three new food items. © Universal Press Syndicate