The Well-Tempered Chocolatier

Following an exciting but exhausting weekend, I’ve been laying low at my parents’ place. Three cheers for home cooking, my old bed, and bubble baths.

There are no fewer than four – four! – kinds of Oreos in the cupboard. There are original chocolate Oreos, Golden Vanilla Oreos, Chocolate Creme Oreos, and Oreo Cakesters.

Golden Vanilla Oreos have a white cookie instead of a chocolate cookie. To be fair, the cookies are slightly golden, but they have no discernable vanilla taste. Actually, the cookie just has a generically sweet taste, which is fleeting anyway. All you get is the creme filling.

Chocolate Creme Oreos are regular chocolate Oreos, but with – you guessed it – a chocolate centre. Of course, none of it actually tastes like chocolate.

Oreo Cakesters are the most revolting thing I’ve eaten in a long time. It tastes like two circles of industrial-strength chocolate cake (now with more calcium pyrophosphate!) held together with slimy white “filling” whose primary ingredient is probably petroleum by-product. It’s actually worse than Twinkie filling, if you can believe it. I almost want you to try it because it’s so brain-bustingly awful, but I don’t really want anyone else to experience the horror that is the Oreo Cakester.

Also, in a final food imposter hurrah, Oreo Cakesters are thoughtfully packaged in packs of two. Between the cardboard box, the foil wrapper, the plasticized cardboard that holds the Cakesters and the Cakesters themselves, I dare you to find something remotely edible.

Having said that, I’m holding myself back from the original chocolate Oreos. I think their secret ingredient is crack.