Questions That Really Matter, Volume II

In my last edition of "Questions That Really Matter", we discovered once and for all that everybody really does hate Ann Coulter, and that 72 virgins await you in Paradise if you arrive there after choking on a chili dog from Jack's on Eagle Street.

In today's installment, we focus the heatlamp of scrutiny onto America's newest fusion of Chemistry and Dessert: Betty Crocker's Warm Delights. Perhaps you've seen these ads on television. The one I think I remember has some woman sidling into an elevator at her office eating one of these things--the "molten chocolate" variety, if memory serves--and having a censor-friendly simulated choco-gasm in front of a justifiably curious coworker. It's a new product, designed to simulate the hot gooey essence of something actually delicious, but costs less than $3.00 and can be prepared in less time than it takes to chew a couple of Rolaids.

In the interest of you, the American Consumer, I, along with my wife and our friends P and K, undertook the perilous yet sugar-sweetened task of teasing the truth out of this Question That Really Matters: Can The Single Most Overprocessed Food On North American Store Shelves Today Provide A Satisfactory Eating Experience Without Doing Permanent Damage To Either Human Physiology Or The Environment?

For our experiment, we went with a one-to-one ratio of dessert varieties to dessert judgment officials. Four out of the seven variations of Warm Delights were selected at random from a local retailer and purchased for the on-sale price of $1.79 apiece. Flavors selected, pictured below, beginning in the upper left and moving clockwise: "Lemon Swirl Cake", "Fudgy Chocolate Chip Cookie", "Cinnamon Swirl Cake", and the aforementioned "Molten Chocolate Cake":



Each package, when opened, contains a plastic bowl, a packet of powder, and a packet of goo containing 94% pure processed sugar, 5.9% pure trans fat, and 0.1% pure artificial and natural flavoring. You dump the powder into some water, stir, spurt the goo as artistically as possible into the resulting puddle, and microwave for a bit. Let stand to congeal appropriately, and voila--dessert fit for a king, queen, or ace of any suit.

The panel initially held debate on the question "Does It Even Come Close To Looking Like The Picture On The Box". This topic was not expected to generate much controversy, as anyone who is not blind and looks at pictures of food would probably predict. However, once the panel actually compared fork-based real-life product to that shown on the box, it became fairly clear that we hadn't really looked closely enough at the boxes: there just wasn't that much difference between the two. It was only then did we realize just how bogus and unappetizing the box pictures actually look. Another case of art imitating life. Points off for it, nonetheless.

Then, the metaphorical rubber met the allegorical road, as the panel actually ingested the results of all our stirring, squeezing, and button-pushing.

The chocolate-heavy options (the molten cake and the "cookie") had a heavy, doughlike consistency that can most accurately be described as "hot, heavy, and doughlike". Think microwaved Pillsbury dough. The cookie, of course, had that whole thing down in spades, although its chocolate flavor (artificially flavored fudge) was much better than the cake's (artificially flavored devil's food). In fact, the cake was pretty much like eating a supremely undercooked Hostess Chocolate Cupcake drizzled with three year old Hershey's syrup. Neither of the two females present had any sort of choco-gasm. Not even a choco-sigh of contentment.

The non-chocolate candidates were the Cinnamon and Lemon cakes. I was in charge of spurting the goo on top of the Cinnamon cake, and as can be expected out of any decent clod with a packet of shelf-stable icing, I made a total mess of the whole thing. So artistically it was a failure. The panel, meanwhile, reacted universally with a resounding "Eh", reflecting large-scale indifference. We don't recommend it unless you have a cinnamon swirl cake fetish, not a lot of time, and have to make up your recommended daily allowance of distilled monoglycerides.

The winner of the competition--the Gold Medalist of our little Special Dessert Olympics--was the Lemon Swirl Cake. It was actually light(ish) and fluffy(ish), and the lemon goo had that great Lemon Life Saver taste that indicates the highest quality artificial lemon flavor. We all went "Hmm" after eating it, and those of us who can raise one eyebrow did so. Our only comment was that there's actually no need to serve this one warm; it probably would be fine completely cool, but waiting for these things to fully congeal and cool goes so far against the Warm Delights ethos that it wasn't even seriously considered.

So there you have it--dessert just like Grandma used to make, assuming Grandma was a multibillion dollar congolomerate with easy access to cellulose powder, tocopherol, and potassium sorbate as a preservative. Do yourself a favor, and if absolutely must come up with a hot dessert, microwave a Twinkie or something. It's cheaper and your body is probably more used to the chemicals they use.

Come back some other time for more answers to Questions That Really Matter!