Birthday Cake Oreos

WonderWife™ was in the desert for a girl’s weekend. Knowing that once the kids were in bed, the evening was mine, I stopped to pick up a bottle of wine when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a brightly colored change on an ordinarily familiar package and there in the corner…yup “limited edition.”

In case you hadn’t heard, the famous Oreo cookie turns 100 this year. That’s quite an accomplishment for anyone, let alone a snack food. To celebrate, they created a special edition Birthday Cake version.

Even though both kids were in tow, I somehow managed to buy the cookies right in front of them without either of them noticing what I had done. (Of course I gave them a sample later.)

I was wondering how much Birthday Cake Oreos might differ from the original. The flavor of an Oreo cookie is so familiar that it’s easy to tell when there’s something different or amiss. I discovered this when trying a Canadian Oreo for the first time. Although the cookie was basically the same, there was something slightly unusual about the taste. (I later found out that Oreos are made with coconut oil in Canada, thus the difference.) From the package it looked like Birthday Cake Oreos had colored sprinkles in the crème. But there was no other indication on the bag that they might not be regular Oreos. The cotton candy-like aroma that wafted out of the bag once opened gave the first clue that something was different.

On the cookie, a minimalist “Oreo 100” design replaced the familiar Oreo pattern on the top wafer. Inside was a double-stuff amount of crème that had the appearance of a regular Oreo (taking the aforementioned sprinkles into consideration) but the distinct flavor of vanilla birthday cake. Yet even though the flavor was different, the cookie still unmistakably tasted like an Oreo. The subtle change of the crème added a new, somehow sweeter, dimension to the cookie. 

I get asked a lot why “new” food products excite me. To fully answer that might require delving too deeply into my psyche than one could do in a blog. But a simple explanation is that I’m impressed when making a small change to something can create a product that resembles the original but has its own new identity. The Birthday Cake Oreo is about the best example of a new product that does its namesake justice. They're just really good.  Happy birthday Oreo and thanks for your present to all of us.