A Match Made in (Chocolate) Heaven
I love chocolate. It was a staple food in my household growing up, to the point that I started calling it “Vitamin C-H”.
If someone in my family discovered that we didn’t even have a spare bag of chocolate chips, we would all gasp in mock worry. Mom made sure to keep us stocked up on all kinds of chocolate. She even had a “chocolate shelf” in the kitchen, complete with a small sign at the front of the shelf that read, “Gimme the chocolate and nobody gets hurt”.
If there were no other dessert options, Dad would simply take a couple graham crackers and melt some chocolate chips on them in the toaster oven. He claimed to have a “dessert stomach”, such that he could eat dessert even after having a full meal—and I’ve claimed ever since that I inherited a “dessert stomach” from him. I always have room for chocolate, even if I have to wait a few minutes for my meal to settle.
Where chocolate desserts are concerned, I especially love cookies and the combination of chocolate and peanut butter.
My favorite packaged cookies are Oreos. I always chuckle at the suggested serving size—two cookies—as I’m grabbing three or four from the package.
My favorite chocolate/peanut butter dessert, besides Moose Tracks ice cream, is Reese’s peanut butter cups. I also like the dark chocolate peanut butter cups Trader Joe’s sells.
So, when the Hershey Company announced on July 30, 2025, that they had been secretly working with Nabisco for years to mix Oreos and peanut butter cups, my eyes bulged.
Then, they revealed they wouldn’t just be doing one version, but two versions: Oreos with Reese’s filling and Reese’s cups with Oreo filling. At that point, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I began eagerly anticipating their upcoming presence at my local Kroger (they also said you could pre-order them, but I’m not that desperate).
Last week and over the weekend, I finally found and bought both versions. And I taste-tested them. You know, for science.
(Sidebar: I’m in my thirties, so I’m trying to be more careful about my processed/refined sugar intake, but it’s hard sometimes…especially when two of my favorite desserts get combined into one. It’s probably a good thing for my health and sense of self-control that these products are being marketed as “Limited Edition”.)
I tried the Reese’s Oreos first, which is simply an Oreo cookie that has Reese’s peanut butter filling and tiny Oreo cookie crumbles in the middle. Tasty stuff—they got the peanut butter frosting right.
Then I tried the Oreo Reese’s cups, which is basically four layers instead of the usual two: chocolate on the bottom, a thin internal later of Oreo chocolate cookie crumbles, another thin internal layer of Reese’s peanut butter, and a top layer of white chocolate that’s meant to emulate the vanilla filling of a traditional Oreo.
Personally, I think the Reese’s cup version tastes better, but that’s because it has more of the flavors of both candies.
But you know what’s even better than that?
Combining them.
A Reese’s peanut butter/Oreo cup sandwiched within a Reese’s Oreo cookie. Soft, crunchy, and blending all the flavors in one bite. This is probably the exact thing Hershey’s and Nabisco expected people to do with these new treats. They listened to their fans, worked together in secrecy (who’d’ve thought such a thing was possible for competing candy companies?!), and came up with a product that gives candy and chocolate lovers the best of both worlds. And they’ll probably make a ton of money this Halloween by selling this special combination.
It's cool to see what’s possible when people from different, or even competing, groups work together, even if it’s just to create an awesome new dessert or two.