Go High Energy with this Beast of a Cookie

Last month, March, was National Caffeine Awareness Month, but I had some wonderful Easter themed chocolate creations to share with you so I'll look at some caffeinated cookies today. These big cookies are from the Beast Cookie Co. and are called Energy Cookie with "untamed energy." They are also fairly allergen friendly without soy, dairy, or eggs. I had a choice of the flavors so I went with the most chocolate variety offered: Chocolate Brownie. I hope this will be both brownie like and cookie like, combining two favorites of mine into one product. A box of these was sent to me to test out and review on Amazon via their Vine program; this review is an unexpected bonus for both brands; no other form of compensation was received for sharing my experience with you today.

These are huge. Almost 4 inches in diameter and a full half an inch thick, it weighs 3 ounces. A strong cocoa scent immediately hit my nose as soon as I cut open one individually wrapped cookie. You can see that the cookie is a reddish chocolate in chocolate and that there are visible darker chocolate chips. The chips are made of unsweetened chocolate and cocoa butter. The reddish color reflects the fact that the cocoa powder was processed with alkali. Disappointingly, the cookie also has palm oil in it as well as other "healthy" ingredients like green tea extract, pea and rice protein, and chicory root fiber. 10 grams of protein per serving along with 2 dietary fibers and 180 mg of caffeine. The cookie has a lot of extra sweetness, too, in the form of cane sugar, but also molasses. For anyone with a wheat allergy, this is not the cookie you want. 1/2 of a cookie is a serving and I have to go BS on that; who honestly would eat just one and then do what? Put it back in the wrapper and then another container so it won't dry out?

But let's taste it and see if the temptation is to eat it all or toss it out.

I try one of the chips on its own and it is shockingly sweet. If the rest of the cookie is this sweet, I may pass on even eating half of one at a time. The cookie is soft so it breaks apart easily, leaving behind just a few crumbs. Inside it looks a lot like a brownie, doesn't it? The cookie makes no noise when I take a bite. The cocoa flavor is strong and it is not nearly as sweet as I thought it might be. In fact, I can't really taste the pea or rice protein added and those types of ingredients often have an strong flavor. The texture is exactly like a brownie: firmly on the outside but very soft, almost fudgy inside. Depending on how the caffeine hits me (I am not a caffeine user so watch out!), I might be tempted to eat an entire cookie but over an hour or so because the cocoa powder is tending to dry out my mouth as I eat.

I was very surprised by how much I loved these cookies. As I mentioned, and probably mentioned in other essays on this blog, I am not a coffee or tea consumer. I also am not a big soda pop drinker, especially of most brands containing caffeine (with one exception). Yet, with one cookie I had 360 mg of caffeine! That's almost four cups of coffee worth of caffeine in the course of an hour. One of the things I paid attention to while testing this out was how my heart, head, and blood pressure reacted to the caffeine. At first, there was a heightened sense of light but that also happens to me just from chocolate and cocoa at times. First, my eyes did not become dilated as happens with a cocoa buzz for me. A half an hour after eating the cookie, my pulse was fine but I felt revved up quite a bit; same thing after another half an hour.

To give this Sacramental status or not, is the question. On the one hand, it is using real chocolate and it appeals to all of the senses. On the other hand, the brand is focusing on the caffeine not the chocolate so it is fair to compare it to cookies that are about the chocolate first and foremost? I say this is good enough to earn Sacramental status just be aware of the caffeine if you have any heart or blood pressure issues.