Pudding on the Ritz?

By AL SICHERMAN, Star Tribune

Last update: October 21, 2009 - 2:39 PM

It has been all of three months since Mr. Tidbit's most recent discovery of a new version of Ritz crackers, so they're overdue, right? (Mr. Tidbit was getting worried.)

He might be wrong, but although there have been sweet-filling versions of the Ritz Bits mini-sandwiches, Mr. Tidbit doesn't recall any version of the full-size Ritz cracker ever crossing the bright line between savory and sweet.

Until now. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for new Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ritz crackers. (But Mr. Tidbit suggests that you not separate your hands until there is no longer danger of somebody handing you a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ritz cracker.) Although tastes surely differ, Mr. Tidbit doesn't think a cracker that sits astride that line, both savory and sweet and so neither savory nor sweet, is one of Kraft/Nabisco's best ideas.

(As he writes this, Mr. Tidbit is in the company of three dogs; two of them wouldn't eat the Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ritz cracker he placed in front of them. But maybe Mr. Tidbit is wrong: The third dog subsequently ate the other two crackers, too.)

Bready appetizers

Over at the Pillsbury part of General Mills, which last fall introduced Savorings Flaky Pastry Bites -- several kinds of little frozen dough-wrapped appetizers that you bake in the actual oven (not the microwave), so that the dough really comes out, you know, baked -- there are now two flavors of Savorings Bread Bowl Bites appetizers.

The filling in the Flaky Pastry Bites (Buffalo style chicken, cheese & spinach, or mozzarella & pepperoni) peeks through slots in the dough; with the Bread Bowl Bites, the filling (cream cheese & jalapeño or artichoke & spinach) mostly sits atop the center of a little round of bread.

Unaccustomed-inconvenience warning: As with the Flaky Pastry Bites, you have to actually bake the Bread Bowl Bites! In an oven! For 13 or 14 minutes! You could starve to death by then!

AL SICHERMAN