Kellogg's Pop Tarts: Frosted cookies & creme

Product name: Kellogg’s Pop Tarts: Frosted cookies & creme
Purchase details: £4.49 for a box of eight tarts (boldstreetsweets.co.uk)
Calories: 190 per tart (380 per pack of two)
Country of origin: USA 

Considering that, until a few months ago, it had been several years since I’d last had a Kellogg’s Pop Tart, I seem to have been completely sucked in by the American varieties! When I placed my order with Bold Street Sweets in December, I originally opted for a box of the Frosted cinnamon roll variety but, unfortunately, these are no longer in production. However, I knew instantly that I would like to swap them for these Frosted cookies & creme Pop Tarts, and I’d like to thank Bold Street Sweets for their great customer service around this.

 

Thanks to a Juice FM voucher, these pastries really cost me half the £4.49 website price. They came in the brand’s usual blue box and the images on the front looked very appealing – there were Oreo-style cookies as well as the tart itself which had a dark chocolate pastry and moist-looking creamy filling. The pastries contained both natural and artificial flavours, but the box also boasted the presence of seven vitamins and minerals (including calcium and four B vitamins), and the absence of cholesterol. 

Inside the silver foil wrappers, the Pop Tarts had a great appearance which was very like how the box had suggested. The very dark cocoa-containing pastry was topped with crisp white icing and crumby sprinkles. The only down-side was that the white filling wasn’t quite as abundant as the photograph had suggested. 

When cold, the tarts had a part baked chocolate and part cookie smell. The pastry was dry and soft and had quite a dark and bitter aftertaste. However, this element wasn’t really noticeable when chewing. The creme filling was more like a paste, on its own, rather than a solidified creme. With the pastry, it provided a welcome moisture and, combined with the crispy frosting, a sweetness too. Whilst I could recognise the cookies and cream theme within the flavours, I can’t say that this was as good as an actual Oreo! 

Toasting a tart made the filling look slightly softer and it also resulted in the baked aroma having a pleasant warmth to it. The pastry’s texture was barely altered (it was simply a bit firmer), but it was more flavourful to chew, providing a warm cocoa taste whilst maintaining its bitterness. I found the layers tended to separate in the mouth and, for me, there was a bit too much of a cocoa taste and not enough sweetness. However, I quite enjoyed its almost salty aftertaste. 

 

After being mircowaved for 10 seconds, the pastry was, again, not much different. Thankfully, though, the sweeter elements of the tarts were a bit more prominent and the overall experience was generally more cookie-like.  

 

There wasn’t a massive difference between the results of the two different warming methods but the microwaved tarts did just edge it for me. What I did find, with all three versions, was that the crumbs went everywhere, and the pastries provided a strong chocolatey taste at the back of the throat. I just would have preferred a little more sweetness to counteract this. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10