You Got Crickets in My Desserts?

June 8th will be National Insect Appreciation Day... You may not think of chocolate and insects, but for cocoa farmers, insects play an important role in the health of cocoa trees. We won't go into that today, but instead I want to share a product that uses crickets as an alternative protein and flour source for muffins. Hoppy Planet Foods Chocolate Chirp Muffin Bites are the type of chocolate product I only try because I love all you readers and want to help you find products without needing to spend your money first. I am grateful that the brand only sent me one box and not the four you would get if you decide to try these out using any of our links. Honestly I only need one of anything I'm sent to test and if I don't like it, that feels overwhelming to have too much of a product. I worked to keep an open mind. I promise. I was sent this free product via the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a review there. If you read my review on Amazon, you'll see that I wasn't impressed by the texture. Hoppy Planet reached out to me and sent me another box of the muffin bites plus a bag of their Chocolate Chirp Cookies Now, let's get buggy.

Let me confess that it took me a few weeks to try this product because I didn't like insects, sorry NIAD folks out there. The first thing to note is that if I see any definable bug aspects in this, I'm stopping. I love you readers, but not that much. 

Second, in terms of allergens there is wheat, eggs, milk, and soy, but also cricket are related to lobsters, did you know that? So if you are allergic to shellfish, you shouldn't eat these. There are five pouches of three mini muffins in the box; each pouch is one serving of 160 calories, mostly made of sugar carbs and wheat and barley flour. Semi-sweet chocolate chips are the third ingredient on the list. These are small muffins, 0.5 inches tall and about 1.25 inches in diameter. They are very dense pick one up and have an uneven top to them. I don't see any identifiable insect parts yet so I bit one in half. It was softer than I expected and had a sort of intense sweet flavor that was also a bit cooling in my mouth, like a hyper brown sugar might create (that is on the list). The chocolate was overwhelmed by the sweetness even when I bit into a chip. The density really made me think more cookie, a brown sugar cookie than any type of muffin.

The other box of muffins that was sent to me directly from Hoppy Planet looks quite different, had muffins that looked quite different. These were much lighter in color, more muffin like in texture, still a bit dry though. Better a touch dry than doughy. Indeed, to give you an idea of the difference between those two muffin batches, consider the height of the muffins: 0.5 vs 1 inch; that's a big difference! The second batch of muffin bites were also less sweet and that allowed the chocolate to be stronger compared to the other ingredients.

Next I tried the Chocolate Chirp cookies. These are supposed to be soft baked but they seemed a bit dense when I took one from their box. There are 120 calories per 1.25 inch diameter and 1 inch thick cookie. These have a strong sweet scent that reminds me of the first muffins, so I'm a bit worried. I would classify these as soft baked cookies they make little sound when I took a bite and chewed them. The sweetness is still a bit too intense for me, but I do get bursts of chocolate when I hit one of the chips which are big enough to be clearly seen in the cookie. I don't know if the cookies once looked like the image on the resealable bag and have been worn down in the box, but that might be the case since they are not individually wrapped; good, we don't need more waste in the world.

I couldn't tell there was anything insect about either of these products from Hoppy Planet, that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I think the first book was a mistake and I'm glad that seems the creators have fixed that error. I say give them a try. You can use the Amazon links to order that way or go directly to the Hoppy Planet website and I'll even let you use this one time order code (HOP30) to get 30% off.