If I'm going to eat pancakes, I much prefer buckwheats. Aunt Jemima Buckwheat Pancake Mix was a great product to have around for those days when I really wanted some buckwheats.
The loss of this product was inevitable. It's one of many hard-to-find products that I always looked for when traveling. Now I'll have to update my list again.
While doing a bit of research, I found a comment on Amazon.com that provides a way to make the mix yourself. According to the commenter, the recipe is from the Quaker Oats Company, the company that made--and discontinued--Aunt Jemima Buckwheat Pancake Mix. It makes me wonder whether this is the actual recipe Quaker used for their mix. It's possible.
3/4 cup Aunt Jemima Original pancake mix
1/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Stir dry ingredients together. Add milk and egg according to the instructions on the box of pancake mix.
I haven't tried this, but I'm thinking about it.
Aunt Jemima Buckwheat Pancake Mix
Choco' Lite
Choco' Lite candy bars were around in the 1970s and possibly the '80s. The "whipped" chocolate contained air holes to make it seem light and airy. Nestle discontinued this product long ago, but many people think they've found the modern equivalent. I'm not one of them.
For years, I've noticed that some people say the Aero bar is identical to Choco' Lite, so when I saw one at a specialty store one day, I decided to buy one.
It is absolutely not the same.
Other people say it's the same as Cadbury's Wispa. I haven't tried that one, but I'm already skeptical. I can't forget the Aero bar experience--not that the bar was bad, mind you. It just wasn't the same as Choco' Lite.
This photo of a Choco' Lite wrapper confirms something I knew all along: there was something crispy in the chocolate. More than once, I let the chocolate melt in my mouth so that I could try to figure out what was so crispy. I thought they were itty bitty pieces of crisped rice, but I was wrong; nothing like that is mentioned in the ingredients list. It does contain honey and corn syrup (not HFCS!), so maybe the "crispy chips," as the wrapper called them, were hardened pieces of honey or corn syrup.
Aero bars don't contain anything crispy. If I had to guess, I'd say that neither do Wispa bars.
A lot of people like both of those other bars. In fact, Wispa was discontinued and then brought back by popular demand. This shows that people do like this airy type of chocolate.
Nestle really should bring back Choco' Lite bars.
Pitter Patter Cookies
Pitter Patter cookies used to be one of my favorite after-school snacks. Here is a photo of a package of these cookies, which were made by Keebler.
Pitter Patter cookies were sandwich cookies filled with peanut butter creme. The cookies themselves were crunchy and made with oats. I liked to take them apart, eat one of the hard cookies, and then eat the remaining one with the peanut butter creme.
These were similar to Do-Si-Dos, the Girl Scout version of a peanut butter sandwich cookie. The main difference was that Pitter Patters were much harder and crunchier, whereas Do-Si-Dos tend to be crumbly and somewhat easier on the teeth.
Peanut Butter Frost Candy Bar
I discovered Peanut Butter Frost candy bars in the early 1980s. I saw one in a vending machine and had no idea what it was. Because of the name, it sounded good, so I decided to try one.
Peanut Butter Frost was coated in white chocolate, which I normally don't even like. Inside, it contained peanut butter and crisped rice. I think it also had some caramel, but I'm not sure about that. My less-than-perfect memory is also telling me that it came in two pieces about the same size as Almond Joy halves, but again, I'm not sure.
I couldn't remember who manufactured Peanut Butter Frost, so I did some digging and found that it was made by Luden's. I don't think it was available for very long. I know I had very few of them. Too bad. They were delicious!
Keebler Opera Cremes
Opera Cremes were sandwich cookies. That may not sound like anything special, but they were special. One package of Opera Cremes came with two kinds of cookie: chocolate and vanilla. What made them so good was that the creme filling was lemon.
I always gravitated toward the chocolate ones. Chocolate sandwich cookies with lemon creme filling are incredible. It's just such a delicious combination. I don't know why they were discontinued or why they haven't been resurrected. All I know is I would love to see them return to the store shelves. I would definitely be buying them.
Fudge Jumbles
Back in the 1980s, Pillsbury had a variety of boxed dessert mixes called Fudge Jumbles. Each box contained a mix for three-layer dessert bars, all of which contained fudge. I think they all contained oats as well, but I'm not sure.
Fudge Jumbles were quick and easy to prepare. I've seen quite a few recipes, such as this one, that attempt to recreate the magic.
The person who posted the aforementioned recipe decided to try a peanut butter version. I really don't know whether there was a peanut butter version of Fudge Jumbles. I don't think there was, because it's definitely something I would have tried if I'd seen it. In any case, this recipe looks incredible!
Apple Slice
There used to be several flavors of Slice soft drinks. They all contained real fruit juice. It wasn't much--only 10 percent--but it was more than any other fizzy soft drinks had. I liked the mandarin orange, but my favorite flavor was apple. That's probably why it didn't last long.
Apple Slice was available briefly in the 1980s (late '80s, if I remember correctly). It was discontinued before the rest of the product line went away. It might have even been the first to go.
I haven't tried any other apple-flavored carbonated drinks. There are apparently a few still around, but I haven't seen them. If I ever do, I'll probably have to give them a try. Then again, maybe not. It just wouldn't be the same.
Dewey Stevens Wine Coolers
Am I the only one who remembers Dewey Stevens wine coolers?
These were around back when Seagrams and Bartles & Jaymes still made wine coolers, as opposed to the flavored malt beverages they mostly make now. Even though people still refer to them as "wine coolers," most of the ones made today don't contain wine.
Anyway, Dewey Stevens wine coolers were good. I'm pretty sure that the flavor was passionfruit, but I can't find any proof of that. In fact, I can't find much information about them at all.
Made by Anheuser-Busch, these coolers were billed as a lighter alternative to traditional wine coolers, and they had 1/3 fewer calories. The commercial even depicted women working out at the gym.
I thought Dewey Stevens wine coolers were great. They were sweet, but not overly so--very refreshing. As I recall, they weren't around long.
