Wednesday, September 08, 2021

Quest Peanut Butter Cups

I've been waiting for these, and they've finally arrived! Behold—Quest Peanut Butter Cups, the low-carb answer to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups:

You get twelve packs in a box:

Here's what a single pack (2 peanut-butter cups) looks like:

And here's a single cup:

But how do they taste? you ask. Well... they are definitely peanut-butter cups, but because they're sugar-free, the erythritol they're using makes the chocolate taste different. It's closer to a dark-chocolate sort of taste. The peanut butter, to its credit, tastes plausibly peanut-buttery. Overall, it's not bad, but after you eat two of the little cups, you do notice a bit of a strange aftertaste. Each serving (2 peanut-butter cups) contains less than 1 gram of carbs. On the downside, a single serving is 190 calories, so you can't go gulping three or four of packs at a time and still expect to remain under your daily calorie budget. 

This is a bit like the problem with heavy cream: heavy cream is considered very keto, but it's extremely calorific, and a dieter has to watch both his macros and his calories. I'm still trying to find that balance, but the quest to find it is going to be interrupted by my upcoming east-coast walk, so here's what's going to happen: I'm going to lose weight during the walk, and then I'll come back and probably put on a couple kilos while I continue to figure out how to keep losing weight and then maintain my goal weight. This is an ongoing process; ask anyone who has tried diets for years whether the journey ever ends. It doesn't. There's no "happily ever after"; there is only the struggle. Sometimes, you have good days; sometimes, you have bad days. If you have a bad day, you get up, forgive yourself, and soldier on. 

Anyway, I can eat Quest peanut-butter cups on occasion to satisfy my Reese's jones when it's not a cheat day, but these treats are damn expensive at W62,900 via Coupang, or $54.09. Divide $54.09 by 12, and that's a whopping $4.50 per pack of two. So these treats bring a little perspective. This isn't like picking up a Diet Coke, which is popular enough to be cheap. Once I run out of Quest, I'm going to have to think hard about whether I'll order another box anytime soon. Are these peanut-butter cups worth it, or should I switch to making keto desserts on weekends only? I do like my chia pudding, and I've got some very addictive sugar-free Jell-O chocolate pudding on the way...



7 comments:

John Mac said...

Well, $4.50 a pack ought to be a great deterrent to over-indulgence, that's for sure. But if they satisfying a craving and prevent eating the real thing in a moment of weakness, then it's probably money well spent.

I'm curious if they melt as easily as the Reese's do?

Charles said...

Sort of related. Remember back when we were talking about allulose? Well, I finally tried the bottle of 100% allulose syrup that we had gotten. It is... interesting. The predominant flavor is closest to what I would describe as caramelized sugar, but there is also a weird, faintly medicinal flavor in there as well that I can't quite put my finger on.

For a sweetener, though, it is surprisingly not sweet. Sugar primarily tastes sweet, but with allulose syrup it feels like "sweetness" is maybe third or fourth on the list of sensations you get.

Also, as HJ put it, it lacks "body." It's kind of there and then it's gone. It doesn't really have any depth to it, despite the much more complex flavor profile (more complex than straight sucrose, that is).

It actually also reminds me a little of agave syrup, but agave syrup is sweeter and has body.

Anyway, though you might be interested in that.

Kevin Kim said...

John Mac,

Some of the peanut-butter cups were indeed melted, which is the risk that comes with ordering chocolate during a warm-weather season. Fortunately, Quest cups don't come with a wax-paper wrapping, so there's nothing to peel off, and therefore no loss of chocolate to the paper.

I think I'm going to start making my own chocolate/peanut-butter cups. I've put a silicone Reese's mold into my Coupang shopping cart; probably won't order it until after I'm back from my walk. I also have a kilogram of 100% "cocoa mass," which is pure coca, absolutely no sugar. On keto, if you eat chocolate, it's supposed to be at least 70% dark. I tried a bit of coca mass (comes in flattened choco-chip form), and it's pretty intense. I'm going to have to thin it out with a combination of heavy cream and artificial sweeteners.

Charles,

Allulose! Get the runs yet?

I'm finding that monkfruit sweetener is not bad (a famous brand is Lakanto). It's actually a mix of erythritol (75%) and processed monkfruit (25%). Apparently, monkfruit by itself is (1) 300-400 times sweeter than table sugar and (2) a bit weird-tasting on its own, hence the blend. For my morning smoothies, I use 1 heaping tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder plus 2 tablespoons of monkfruit sweetener. I add a dollop of almond butter, 2 small boxes of almond milk (my grocery used to sell the big containers, but now, they sell only the six-packs of tiny drink boxes), and a glug of heavy cream, and that's my most basic smoothie. Fancier smoothies might include blueberries and strawberries, alone or in combination. I find that the addition of fruit doesn't actually do much for the taste. Maybe I need to add vanilla extract, which I have in my cabinet. Fruit and vanilla go well together.

There's always a feeling that something is missing when you're dealing with artificial sweeteners. Call it "body" or "umami" or whatever, but something feels hollow. That said, all artificial sweeteners are not created equal. I use Splenda all the time (though keto-heads frown upon it), and it serves me well for tea and other things. Powdered Stevia, by contrast, is horrible, and although I have a huge tub of it, I'm thinking of just throwing it out. I don't want that taste anywhere near me. Liquid Stevia, by contrast, is not bad at all.

Charles said...

No runs, but I only had a very small taste of it, a few ml at best. And after that taste, I'm not sure what we're going to do with the rest of the bottle.

I wonder if it's flammable. We could keep it around as an emergency fuel source.

Daniel said...

Pick up some protein bars at Costco. Cookie dough and chocolate flavor, nearly zero carbs. 25k for a pack of twenty.

Kevin Kim said...

Charles,

Put some in a bowl and try lighting it on fire.

Daniel,

I assume you're not talking about these because these protein bars have 10 grams of net carbs, which means their total carb count must be scary.

Daniel said...

Ouch. I should have double checked the carb count before recommending them! Can't beat the taste or price, but Kirkland needs to do better on the carb count.