Benton's Blueberry Breakfast Biscuits (Aldi)

They're very sweet, fake as all hell...and delicious.

The first few times I picked up Benton’s breakfast biscuits, more or less at the urge of my wife who had tried the name brand and really enjoyed them, I always stuck to the brown sugar and cinnamon flavor. It was a safe choice (how can you go wrong with that combo?), but also the only one that I was sure I would like; I’ll take risks on lots of different foods, but apparently breakfast biscuits are not one of them.

Then my wife tried the blueberry and went on and on about how great they were. I was still pretty skeptical—after all, who would know my own tastebuds better than me?—and ignored her advice for a while, positive that I would not enjoy them as much as the standard, but deliciously sweet and tempting, combination of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Eventually, I finally gave in, and now it's my previously preferred kind that's the distant memory. She was right: these things are delicious.

I guess I just figured that there’s only so much you can do with blueberry, and that the flavor would be boring. But the taste in these really jump out, with a strong, blueberry taste heightened by the appearance of what I’m just going to assume are actual pieces of the fruit. It will probably be too much and too fakey for some, but as someone who likes blueberries, I’m definitely not complaining. It’s also very sweet, completely eschewing the tartness that blueberries are known for, which will be another knock for some. Again, not for me.

There are some knocks against it though: they’re dry. I know that it’s by design, because a crunchy wafer can’t really be moist, but these things seem to sop up every ounce of spit I have in my mouth at any given time, lest I take them with water or other liquids (which I don’t always have handy when I’m eating these on the go at work). And, perhaps most depressingly, the blueberry flavor is mostly of the “natural flavor” variety, essentially meaning that most of the flavoring is “enhanced” in a lab. Hence the reason for the over-the-top candy-style sweetness. (Although the dehydrated blueberries are real; try one, though, and you'll see it's mostly for show as they don't really add much to the flavor.)

Despite those downsides, I still really like these, and get them whenever I'm in the mood for breakfast biscuits. The fact that four come in each package (with five total packages) and for under $2 means the value is pretty solid; the biggest downside is that my wife and child like these just as much as I do...

Overall: 7.5/10. They're dry, and the flavor is more candy-sweet than accurate to the tartness of an actual blueberry, but if you don't mind either of those potential qualms, these are fantastic biscuits for the price. I actually like the over-the-top, lab enhanced blueberry flavor, which is way more addicting than it should be. Even better yet: each box contains five packages of biscuits, with 4 biscuits per package...and all for under $2. There are certainly worse ways to start the day!