Desserts from Quiznos

Yes, I'm reviewing another fast food chain, which I know kills my foodie street cred, but at least I'm not reviewing their primary product?  And, you can probably guess why.  LevelUp, of course!

Quiznos is on LevelUp, and they seed your account with $2.  This obviously can't buy a sandwich, and I'm not really sure I would want their sandwiches anyway.  But if I had $2 to spend, I might as well try it, right?

At first I was tempted to just get chips, as they had a huge selection, and I've been really into chips lately (I have no idea why).  But then I saw that all of their desserts were $1.49!  There were several varieties of cookies, brownies, and rice crispie treats, all pre-wrapped and clearly not baked fresh nor on site.  They didn't look particularly good, and I figured they would be awful, but hey, it was free, and I'd try free dessert.

I was shocked.  They are good!  I wouldn't go out of my way for them, nor would I tell you they are just like fresh, homemade cookies ... but really, they weren't bad at all.  I can't believe I liked fast food cookies over many of the ones from local bakeries, but, I did.  After my success with the first cookie, I returned to try out several other offerings from their dessert line, and they were all equally good.  I was surprised every time!

Chocolate Chunk Cookie.  $1.49.

This was the first Quiznos cookie I tried, a classic chocolate chunk cookie.  It was huge, easily the size of 3 standard cookies.  It was soft, just like I like.  I expected a not-fresh cookie to be much crisper.  Sure, my personal preference is for it to be even softer than this, but really, a nice level of done-ness.  The chocolate wasn't anything extraordinary, just standard milk chocolate, but the chunks were large and they were distributed nicely throughout the cookie.  There were just the right amount, enough to get a chunk with most bites, but not dominating the flavor of the cookie.  The dough was buttery and flavorful.

I learned afterwards that you can get them heated up in the store, since duh, they specialize in toasting things.  I think this could have been really good warm!

Marshmallow Treat.  $1.49.

Thinking the cookie thing must have just been a fluke, I went for something completely different the next time: a marshmallow treat (aka, a Rice Krispie treat, made with generic crispies).  It was another pre-packaged treat.  I had seriously low expectations for this one.  And ... again, it was pretty good!

The rice cereal was crunchy, the entire thing was soft and not hard nor stale, and it was perfectly sweet.  I haven't had one in ages, but I'm pretty sure this was much better than the real Rice Krispie brand treats you can buy in the stores.  Probably even better than you'd make at home.

Obviously not much special about this, but if you ever want a rice crispie treat, this one really isn't bad! And like the cookie, it was huge, easily split into several portions.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie.  $1.49.

And another giant cookie.

Texture-wise, it was perfect: super soft, almost breaking apart when you touched it.

It was very sweet, with a delicious butteriness to it.  Studded with plump plentiful raisins, but not too many, just enough to generally get one in every bite.  A slight heartiness from the oats, but this was certainly a sugary cookie, not a healthy one.

Everything I liked about the chocolate chunk cookie (soft, sugary, buttery flavor in the dough, proper amount of mix ins) was true for this cookie too.  I'm not sure which was better.