Strauss Crembo Vanilla / Mocha

More exciting than a carton of eggs

The Attraction

An ice cream substitute for people that can't eat ice cream? This sounds too interesting to not review. 

The Review:
My pal Grace comes through again. She somehow comes across these "Crembos" by Strauss. Upon some more research, these aren't just your run of the mill chocolate snacks. These are known and marketed to people who specifically follow a kosher diet. More info here.

In a nutshell, that means you cannot mix meat and dairy within several hours of each other. Enter Crembo. In lieu of having ice cream or another dairy-based sweet treat that would not align with kosher eating habits, the good people at Strauss came up with Crembo, but how does it do that? Let's find out.

I crack open the carton that the Crembos come in. Grace was kind enough to split a pack of the Vanilla and Mocha cartons with me so I can sample each flavor. Already the packaging is intriguing. Why a carton? We'll get back to that shortly.
 

It's as light as a foiled wrapped cloud

I pull out a vanilla Crembo first and I notice how light the snack is. Hmm, the mystery deepens. I carefully unwrap it and find a chocolate coated..something before me. It looks like a chocolate covered marshmallow on a cookie, but lighter feeling. I'm dying of anticipation in terms of what on earth this thing must taste like and what awaits me inside this chocolate fortress.

I finally indulge and take a bite from the top. Chocolate splinters and cracks identical to when you have a chocolate coated ice cream bar. Crembo has certainly mastered that part of the ice cream eating experience.

Not sure what to make of this just yet

As I break through, there is a sticky cream on the other side of the shell. It's of a marshmallow-like texture and flavor, but lighter and fluffier. Not as dense as a regular marshmallow....but boy is it sweet. My taste buds go into overload from the sweetness, but I eventually make way to the wafer base the Crembo sits upon. Thankfully the wafer helps ground some of that sweetness from the creme filling. Talk about a sugar rush!

This looks good, but is it?

The Sweet:
Physically light and great crispy chocolate shell.

The Bitter:
It's a little sweet. When I say a little, I mean a lot. Particularly the vanilla-flavored Crembo.

Conclusion:
I get it. There is no easy substitute for ice cream that doesn't involve dairy, so you try your best to find a proxy. Strauss comes close with Crembo, but where it falters is not in the texture of the marshmallow filling, but rather the sweetness of it. It does a great job in almost every other way; the light fluffy filling, the crispy chocolate shell, the reserved cookie base the snack rests upon, but all that goes out the window when your sweetness-o-meter goes off the charts.

Crembo's Mocha offering is far more tempered in it's sweetness and gives a mild interpretation of "mocha", which is the way I prefer it, but still doesn't resonate enough to make me dream of Crembos dancing in my head on a hot summer's day.

Video of the Week

I hate to see what she looks like when she's really mad

If you are like me and are bored when the band takes the field during halftime, well be bored no more. This band chick rocks out in her own way as much as one can rock out to mid evil sounding music. I think at the end she throws in a weird impersonation of The Rock to boot.