New Puddings #2

Whereas we previously covered two chocolate bar based puddings, we're onto Sonic milkshake puddings. 

It should be noted that I know nothing about Sonic shakes. There's a Sonic near me and I've gotten food there maybe twice and I don't think I ever included a shake. So I won't be attempting to evaluate how well they simulate what they're trying to simulate and I'll just focus on whether they're enjoyable.

Sonic Birthday Cake Shake Pudding

You can probably imagine how this tastes by the name but I was trying to figure out how to describe "birthday cake" flavor anyway. Is it... vanilla + butter + more sugar? It's that in pudding.

What shines here is the Vanilla. I am a huge Vanilla pudding fan, so I'm down for this. Nothing spectacular but good.

Sonic Strawberry Shake Pudding

What are the top dessert flavors? Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, right? So it would seem to follow logically that we've had Strawberry pudding a million times and yet... I think this is the first time in my life I have had it. That is a strange revelation.

And I don't think I like it. I mean, it's not bad, I'm not sure any pudding is bad, but I don't like it. It's obviously an artificial strawberry flavor but it's just not a good artificial strawberry. Mine also had a hint of garlic but that was picked up from sitting in my fridge. Even taking the garlic out of the equation, it's just not a hit.

Sonic Banana Shake Pudding

I love Banana pudding. That's my bias. I love this. This is my favorite. Is this better than the other brands of Banana pudding? I can't tell. That would take a side-by-side comparison. Does the "shake" simulation part throw it off somewhat, or is it an improvement? I don't know. But it's great.

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My favorite pudding is Vanilla so I would have liked to try that, but it appears to have been discontinued. I'd also like to try plain old Chocolate but that's hard to find also.

New Puddings #1

 Pudding's been a stale game for a while - it's Jell-O, with the standard flavors, and it's the other guys. But I recently saw - I don't remember where - some people are changing up the game, ya dig?

Milky Way Pudding

Now between the two candy bars represented in this post, Milky Way is my favorite, so this pudding theoretically had the greatest chance of success.

The pudding, I suppose, is attempting to simulate the chocolate, the nougat and the caramel. The chocolate and nougat, it simulates well. The caramel is represented by a weird taste that seems to me to have nothing to do with caramel. I'd call it butterscotch... maybe.

I wouldn't say this tastes at all like a Milky Way bar but, at the same time, it has a deep earthy cocoa flavor that I really appreciate, so I would marginally recommend it (if that's your thing).

Snickers Pudding

I think Snickers are Milky Ways with peanuts. Am I wrong about that? I think so. So this has to simulate the same flavors plus peanuts. And this it does well - there is a definite peanut flavor with the chocolate. I would give this a thumb's up in the aspect of simulating the candy bar.

The thing is, though, do you really want this kind of smooth artificial peanut simulation? Make regular chocolate pudding and add real peanuts. Even better, make regular chocolate pudding and add peanut butter. Have you ever done that? It's the best (aside from the seed oil aspect).

Conclusion

In the end, these aren't terrible but are also skippable. Try them if you really want to. Available at Walmart and Amazon, and probably other places. Peanut butter and chocolate pudding is the real MVP.

Movie Theater Popcorn At Home - Results

 A while back, I shared a video which claimed to have cracked the code on movie theater popcorn at home and I teased that I would try the experiment myself. I have done so and can now report back from the field.

First off, using Amazon and area grocery stores I was able to obtain the recommended elements. Here is my own photo as proof.

The Results

It works. The result tastes exactly like movie theater popcorn in my opinion. In order to be authoritative, I would like to have tried other methods and recipes to determine a ranking but I have not done that so all I can say is this is as authentically movie theater popcorn as I can imagine any popcorn being.

Criticisms and Warnings

Jeers to the original video for not giving ingredient measurements. Yes, everyone is going to need to figure it out according to their own tastes but that's going to happen anyway, you might as well give a starting point. You can keep adding more coconut oil until it's enough, so that's easy, but I overdid the Flavacol and paid the price. So for that I will pass on to you: 1/3 to 1/2 of a tablespoon.

The video mentions using 4 test kernels and waiting until all 4 have popped before adding the rest. It's a small moment in the video but a very important point: wait until all 4 have popped. I lifted the lid and got a kernel pop as I was working with it. The result was a spray pattern of oil on the wall and myself and probably other places that I just haven't found yet. Wait until all 4 have popped.

Other Notes

Part of the movie theater experience is the fake butter chemicals. For the video, I believe that's the "Popping and Topping Oil" that is covered briefly. I love the fake butter chemicals and would have liked to evaluate that as well but here my completionist tendencies butted head-on against my sense of trying not to eat like an absolute madman and I excluded that aspect as overkill. A future consideration perhaps; if you try it, you  let me know.

One of the ingredients that he recommends (and I bought) was the "Movie Theater Butter Salt." That seems unnecessary to me. It's salt and the Flavacol is salt, so why both? Well, you might find at the end it needs more salt, but in that case, why not add more Flavacol? I say you can exclude this item but there may be a nuance I'm missing. Dunno.

What Is This Stuff?

Are you like me, are you horrified by a giant orange vat and a substance called Flavacol? What are we talking about here? Well, here are the ingredients.

Snappy Popcorn Colored Coconut Oil - Coconut oil and beta carotene. So that's actually, surprisingly, not horrifying.

Flavacol - Salt, natural flavors, artificial flavors, dyes. Hmm, so that's not actually horrifying either.

Popping and Topping Oil - Soybean oil, artificial flavor, beta carotene - Don't need more seed oils but not horrifying in the grand scheme of things.

Surprising result! Did not expect that.