Those little elves are at it again. Up in their mighty conglomerate tree-house, the Keebler elves have thought up what i’m gonna go a head and call one of their greatest inventions yet. Except the name, Cheesecake Middles, is fairly awkward and Cheesecake Centers rolls off the tongue much easier in my opinion. After calling around a few local stores – and a Wal-Mart in Oakland, CA – no one seemed to have them until we checked at the grocery store we least thought would have them. At a sweet two for $5 deal, we picked up both of these glorious confectionary innovations. The cookies themselves look like a mix of deep-dish pizza and a pie. Basically, If a cheesecake had a swollen crust then you shrunk it it would look exactly like these. Both types also feature an Adidas three stripe drizzle and a layer of milk chocolate on the bottom. Weirdly enough, the filling is actually made from Ricotta cheese with cheesecake flavoring. Now I’m no cheese expert, but I dabble, and that seems like a really strange choice to replace cream cheese.

Surprisingly though, you’d never be able to guess that it’s Ricotta cheese. The taste and consistency were very close, if not identical to a small bite of cheesecake. While it may not be chilled, the flavor they use works well with the crust and does taste very much like the dessert. The original cheesecake flavor cookies explode with graham cracker flavor, then cool you down with the low-density cheesecake dribble, which has a rich cream cheese taste. The chocolate cheesecake flavored cookies have more of a rounded flavor; the chocolate and the cheesecake parts kind of cancel each other out at first, then slowly spread a delightfully tangy chocolate flavor around the mouth. For some people this plus the chocolate coating on the bottom and the drizzles of chocolate on top could easily be too much, though the filling gives it a very nice offset. If it was a desert island scenario and I could only pick one, it would be the traditional graham cracker, but I had a few back and forths whilst deciding. I would easily call this one of the most unique cookies I’ve had, and i’m glad they took the risk and made it. Thanks a lot, you damned elves.