Quick Bite: McDonald’s Caramel Baked Pie

Sometimes those iconic golden arches beckon in hungry operators of heavy machinery with the promise of delicious, tantalizing rewards. Kind of like the McDonald’s secret menu: http://secretmenus.com/mcdonalds/secret-menu

Much like the mermaids in that horrible Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. Today I ended up docking the SS Crappy Korean SUV outside McDonald’s because of this snack worthy siren song sighting:

Behold! McDonald’s is offering a caramel pie. Going by the lack of Google query results, this beauty is being test marketed in the Great White North first, much like the Oreo version from earlier this year. While many of our U.S. readers lost their mind over this famed cookie based McPie coup, this time around I’m here to forewarn my fellow fast food fiends Paul Revere style.

The diabetes is coming! The diabetes is coming!

This pie is sweet. Feed a piece to a hummingbird and it will have to go on dialysis sweet. It’s as if they’ve melted down 20 Werther’s Originals and funneled it into its awaiting pastry vessel. Buy a carton of milk to help foil the impending sugar onslaught and you’ll thank me.

The crust on all four of my pies (don’t judge me) was burnt. I am wondering if this version has to be left in the oven longer, as to assist the gloppy caramel in achieving a more desirable viscosity? It definitely has a shorter shelf life once it cools down and seizes up, resulting in a pudding like consistency.

There’s not much more to review. It’s caramel shoved in a turnover. Nothing that’s going to force a rocket scientist to tap out.

This pie screams to be incorporated with sea salt. This way you’d at least get sporadic breaks from the sugar onslaught. Not that we should expect a foodie spin at Mickey D’s.

The plus side to the caramel pie is its seemingly preordained soul mated pairing with any of McDonald’s soft serve desserts. Break this up over a caramel or chocolate sundae? Bliss. The creamy ice cream mixed with chunks of pastry provides an extra, welcomed texture, while cutting the overall sugary punch of the pie.

That’s DQ Blizzard 101 kids.

The bottom line being, does caramel really warrant it’s own pie? Why not caramel-apple? Have you had the deep fried caramel-apple empanada from Taco Bell? WOW. Did McDonald’s just have a surplus of caramel laying around? If you’ve managed to give us Oreo, Holiday, Peach & Wildberry varieties of your iconic dessert, the least you can do is stretch.

If anything, at least this version makes me appreciate Werther’s Originals more.