Drive-Thru Gourmet
If you're hooked on OREOS, and breakfast, this IHOP dish is for you
This week I sat down for a plate of OREO Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast, new from America's 24-hour breakfast nook, IHOP, with 1,700 restaurants 'cross America and 'round the world. Vive la difference, this dazzled French Toast truly puts the "I" in IHOP.
If you thought the 'HOP blurred the line between breakfast and dessert earlier this year with French Toasted Doughnuts, the pancake palace totally opens the floodgates with its line of Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast. Besides kissing up to the masses with everybody's OREO Cookies, there's Toffee Apple Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast and Strawberry Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast.
Here's the OREO Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast breakdown: two slices of buttery brioche French toast crammed with OREO filling and cookie crumbles, then topped with more OREO filling and crumbles, whipped topping and powdered sugar. So it's got OREO cookies in the middle and on top. You know what I say to that? Not enough OREO cookies! There's still room in the basement.
Come to think of it, why not skip the whole French toast thing and put "Box of OREO Cookies" on the menu? Do I have to come up with all the good ideas around here?
Breakfast breakdown
Total calories: 790. Fat grams: 39. Sodium: 860 mg. Carbs: 94 (whoa). Dietary fiber: 3. Protein: 17 g. Manufacturer's suggested retail price: $5.49, your mileage may vary.
But as they say on those 3 am infomercials ... wait, there's more! If you upgrade to a combo brekky with two scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage and hash browns, you're talking 1,290 calories, 74 fat grams and somewhere in the vicinity of $8.65, not including drink, tax 'n' tip. That's one heavy-duty breakfast. You may have to leave IHOP through the loading dock.
Between OREO cookies, cheesecake filling, brioche, powdered sugar and whipped topping, you're getting a week's worth of sugar rush. You'll need a nap after breakfast. (Wait, does a coma count as a nap?)
A breakfast you can't refuse
But that's the price you pay for a decadent breakfast like this. If anything in life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it's that IHOP knows how to take breakfast over the top and keep it scrumptious. I think Michael Corleone said that in Godfather Part II. At least that's what he meant.
Usually my mantra is, if there's more than three words in the name, find something else on the menu. OREO Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast has seven or eight words, depending on your opinion of "&." In this case, I make an exception. Is there a support group for OREO lovers?
Also new on the menu at IHOP: Fluffy the Snowman. This is a pancake for kiddies, shaped like a certain famous snowman (couldn't get the rights to Frosty, huh IHOP?), with bacon for his scarf, a strawberry nose, chocolate chip buttons and whipped topping snow. The geniuses in IHOP product development are clearly playing above the rim.