100 Years of Oreo

The Oreo turned 100 on March 6th. Here's some facts about and recipes using America's favorite cookie...
Source:
http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/100-years-oreo-recipes-facts-famous-cookie-194400045.html

Which came first, Oreo or Hydrox? Though both have passionate followings, and Oreos outsell the Kellogg Hydrox sandwich cookie, Hydrox cookies actually came first, in 1908. They were discontinued in 1999, but returned to stores in 2008.

According to Kraft Foods, 84 percent of men and 59 percent of women eat the cookie without twisting it open first.

No one knows who came up with Oreos, or where the name really came from. Kraft Foods' corporate archivist Becky Tousey says that she thinks the name came from combining the "re" in creme and the two "o's" in chocolate. Others theorize that the name comes from the ancient greek word for mountain ("oros") since the cookies were once domed, or the French word for gold ("or") because the cookies once came in golden packaging.

Oreos are available in different flavors outside of the U.S.. In China you can find them in Green Tea, orange/mango, and raspberry/blueberry "Double Fruit" flavors. In Argentina, there's the Oreo Alfajor, with a half-banana, half-dulce de leche flavored filling. In Mexico, people enjoy "Trio Chocolate," with three different types of chocolate in each cookie, and Oreos with a cookies-and-creme filling (that's right -- Oreo cookies with Oreo-cookie filling, so to speak.)

Classic Oreos are 71 percent chocolate wafer and 29 percent creme. After decades of this standard, the company released the Double Stuff in 1975.

There's at least one street named after the cookie: Oreo Way, in New York City.

It takes 59 minutes for a bakery to make an Oreo.

The tiny pattern pressed into the wafer is a combination of 12 flowers (each made of 4 triangles), 37 dots, and 12 dashes. Each cookie also has 90 ridges running along its edges.


Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies:
Bon Appetit magazine calls these "the new cupcake."

2 sticks softened butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 oz bag chocolate chips
1 pkg. Oreo cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugars together with a mixer until well combined. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda. Slowly add to wet ingredients along with chocolate chips until just combined. Using a cookie scoop take one scoop of cookie dough and place on top of an Oreo Cookie. Take another scoop of dough and place on bottom of Oreo cookie. Seal edges together by pressing and cupping in hand until Oreo cookie is enclosed with dough. Place onto a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet and bake cookies 9-13 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Makes about 2 dozen large cookies.


Triple-chocolate cookie balls
This no-bake treat that looks much more complicated than it really is.

1 pkg. Oreo cookies
1/2 cup milk
1 package JELL-O chocolate instant pudding
12 to 16 Baker's semi-sweet chocolate squares
4 to 8 Bakers white chocolate squares
In a small bowl, make a paste out of the pudding and the milk. Put 36 of the Oreos into a gallon-size zip-top bag and crush them (with a rolling pin or a mallet). Add the crushed cookies to the pudding mixture and stir will. Form the mixture into small balls and place on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet; freeze them for about 10 minutes.

While they're in the freezer, please the semi-sweet chocolate squares in a microwave-safe bowl and heat, stirring often, until melted. Dip the chilled oreo balls into the melted chocolate, place them on a fresh wax-paper lined cookie sheet, and refrigerate or freeze for another 10 minutes.

Melt the white chocolate squares, and drizzle the melted white chocolate over the cookie balls using a fork or a spoon. Return them to the refrigerator to harden briefly before serving.

Makes 40 to 45 cookie balls

Cadbury Faces Rhetoric Shift After Accepting Kraft

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704561004575012733950862948.html

JANUARY 19, 2010
Cadbury Faces Rhetoric Shift After Accepting Kraft Bid
CECILIE ROHWEDDER

LONDON — Only last week, Cadbury PLC Chairman Roger Carr dismissed the management of Kraft Foods Inc. as unworthy of investor confidence, attacked its track record and said there was "no strategic, operational, managerial or financial reason" why Kraft and Cadbury should become one company.

On Monday, he and the rest of the Cadbury board unanimously voted to accept Kraft's improved, $19.4 billion offer for Cadbury. In a statement, Mr. Carr said he was "pleased" with Kraft's commitment to Cadbury's heritage, values and employees.

The move ends the independence of a 186-year-old icon of U.K. industrial history whose products, beloved by many in Britain and parts of the former British empire, include Dairy Milk, Crème Eggs, Dentyne chewing gum and Halls cough drops.

Mr. Carr now faces the task of demonstrating that his four-month war of words against Kraft succeeded in achieving a better deal for Cadbury shareholders than the one Kraft initially put on the table.

That could be difficult, given the multiple of 13 times Cadbury's earnings that Kraft is paying is less than the multiples paid in other recent food sector deal—a point Mr. Carr himself has made during the takeover battle.

Mr. Carr, who counts "The Art of War" among his favorite business books, personally penned many of Cadbury's tough public statements in the takeover battle. Along with the task of integrating the two companies, Kraft and Cadbury now must find a way to climb down from the belligerent tone between them.

"It will be very difficult," said Allyson Stewart-Allen, director at consulting firm International Marketing Partners, adding that Kraft management faces a challenge persuading Cadbury's work force of the deal's merits. " Irene Rosenfeld, the Kraft [chief executive officer], will have to sell the value, logic and benefits to Cadbury's work force unless she wants to risk having demoralized workers potentially sabotaging the deal. She has a big marketing job ahead of her."

From the start, the battle for control over Cadbury has been marked by some very aggressive rhetoric—much of it from Mr. Carr. His strategy of insulting Cadbury's suitor included calling Kraft an "unfocused conglomerate" with "unappealing categories" and a management that "under-delivers."

"The message has to be very clear in a situation that is complex," said Mr. Carr in an interview last Thursday. "We've left no doubt in anyone's mind about the value of the business."

Even Todd Stitzer, Cadbury's mild-mannered CEO, joined in the Kraft bashing, warning of cost cuts and job losses "all over the Cadbury world."

But Mr. Carr played bad cop. A 63-year-old takeover veteran, Mr. Carr has chaired some of the most prominent boards in corporate Britain, including Thames Water, now a unit of German utility giant RWE AG, pub group Mitchells & Butlers PLC and Centrica PLC, the parent company of British Gas in the U.K. and Direct Energy in North America, where Mr. Carr is still chairman. Buying and selling companies has been part of every post.

Early in his career, Mr. Carr led what came to be known as the "hit squad" at industrial holding company Williams PLC, which acquired and restructured underperforming businesses in the deal-crazed 1980s, when former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher deregulated the U.K. economy. As the group's CEO, he later led the group's break-up into two companies, which were sold off for a chunky premium. In 2000, as chairman of Thames Water, he got Germany's RWE to raise its bid for the U.K. company four times, eventually convincing the buyer to pay four times revenues, a 46% premium.

"His experience makes him ideal material for a situation like this," says John Parker, the chairman of Anglo American PLC who until last year chaired the Court of the Bank of England, where Mr. Carr is still a director. "He will do what's right for shareholders. He will not sell the company on the cheap."

A low point in Mr. Carr's career, shortly before he was named chairman of Cadbury, came in early 2008 at Mitchells & Butlers, a company operating pubs, restaurants and bowling alleys where financial bets under his chairmanship resulted in massive losses that led to his resignation. Mr. Carr called the event a "tragedy" at the time. Today, he says a long career naturally includes highs and lows, and points out that he also made money for Mitchell & Butler shareholders and fended off unwelcome bids for the company.

To be an effective chairman, he said recently, involves understanding "the choreography of a bidding process." A majority of Cadbury shareholders must now accept Monday's deal.

"I have clearly had involvement in a lot of corporate transactions," Mr. Carr said last week. "I've built something of a reputation for building shareholder value."

Mr. Carr came to Cadbury as a director in 2000 and was named chairman in 2008, two months after the sale of Schweppes, the group's drinks business, turned Cadbury into a confectionery-only business. It is now the world's second-largest sweets company behind U.S. chocolate behemoth Mars Inc. Combined, Kraft and Cadbury will outsize Mars.

Write to Cecilie Rohwedder at cecilie.rohwedder@wsj.com

Miracle Whip joins in Colbert's mayonnaise fun

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-talk-miracle-whip-colbertnov13,0,4097052.story

Miracle Whip joins in Stephen Colbert's mayonnaise fun
Northfield-based Kraft rolls with comic Colbert's satiric punches
By Mike Hughlett
Tribune reporter
November 13, 2009

With Miracle Whip's street cred called into question -- OK, let's assume that's possible -- the venerable sandwich spread's maker, Northfield-based Kraft Foods Inc., took to the airwaves in its defense Thursday during Stephen Colbert's show.

On Oct. 15, the late-night comedian ran a parody of a Miracle Whip ad, deriding the product as "Miracle Wimp" and extolling mayo as the condiment with "plenty of attitude."

Kraft's original ad sports a youthful, in-your-face theme, complete with a herd of 20-somethings frolicking to a distorted guitar riff. "Don't blend in, don't be ordinary, boring or bland," the ad commands. "In other words, don't be so mayo. ... We are Miracle Whip, and we will not tone it down."

So Colbert rolled-out "The Mayo-lution will not be televised," an homage to -- as he put it -- the "illest condiment in the hiz-ouse."

Kraft sensed a marketing opportunity. It booked four spots on Colbert's Thursday night show. The ad footage was the same as that parodied by Colbert, but Kraft modified the voice-overs and copy, said company spokeswoman Joyce Hodel. In other words, Kraft is running with Colbert's gag.

Lost in the mayo bashing is the fact that Kraft is also one of the country's two main mayonnaise manufacturers. What's up with that, Miracle Whipsters?

"We think there is room for both," Hodel said.

mhughlett@tribune.com

First-Timers Excel in Super Bowl Ads

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8cpWAqKFk116UzfnJ1nZqgEjyGAD8UJC4OG0

First-Timers Excel in Super Bowl Ads
By SETH SUTEL
2-4-8

NEW YORK (AP) — The Super Bowl can be a scary but rewarding place, and not just for the football players. This year several first-time advertisers, including Planters nuts, showed they've got what it takes to compete with marketing powerhouses like Anheuser-Busch Inc.

Cars.com and Bridgestone Firestone North America also turned in solid freshman performances, but some of the most memorable entries came from Coke.

Back in the game last year after an absence of nine years, Coca-Cola Co.'s main brand was an even bigger presence this year. A spot playing on the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade featured giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters chasing after an inflatable bottle of Coke, high over the rooftops of Manhattan.

Another Coke spot featured political rivals James Carville and Bill Frist, getting over their differences with a Coke — then tooling around Washington on Segway scooters.

Rival PepsiCo Inc. had several spots in the game as well, some of them more quizzical. A spot for Pepsi's Diet Pepsi Max featured a series of people nodding off to sleep, including a man at a deli counter with a preposterously large comb-over, who are revived with a jolt of caffeine.

The odd bent of the Pepsi commercials led one set of reviewers, a panel of MBA students led by Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, to declare that "Coke got the better of Pepsi" this year.

Also scoring high on Calkins' list this year was a spot for Tide to Go, a portable cleaning product from Procter & Gamble Co. In the ad, a distracting stain on a job applicant's shirt winds up blowing his interview.

Kraft Foods Inc.'s Planters nuts division delivered a clever ad featuring a plain-looking woman sporting a full monobrow. She still manages to drive men crazy with a secret scent — essence de cashew nut, applied by liberally rubbing cashews against the neck.

Cars.com, an online classified ad company owned by Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and other newspaper publishers, employed car shoppers who didn't have to resort to a "plan B" to get what they wanted from the car dealers. Options included a medicine man who could shrink heads.

Fellow first-timer Bridgestone Firestone North America didn't take any chances in missing out on viewers' attention. It employed exercise guru Richard Simmons, Alice Cooper, an albino snake and a band of screeching animals to make a point about the road-gripping qualities of its tires.

Job-search site CareerBuilder.com returned not with the cast of monkeys it used for several years, but with an ad featuring a bored office worker whose heart jumps out of her chest, struts down to the boss's office and jumps up on the desk with a little sign saying, "I quit."

The Super Bowl audience is by far the largest delivered in any medium. It included 93 million viewers last year. Such numbers are even harder to come by these days now that a writers' strike has knocked many scripted dramas off the air.

They're also expensive: Advertisers pay as much as $2.7 million for 30 seconds of air time, and the price edges higher nearly every year.

Anheuser-Busch Inc. was once again the largest advertiser in the game, with a series of humorous spots for its Bud Light brand and a heartfelt "Rocky"-inspired story of a Clydesdale horse that doesn't make the first cut for the carriage team, but succeeds after a year of training with an unlikely coach, a Dalmatian dog.

All of Anheuser-Busch's other spots focused on its Bud Light brand and were heavy on sight gags, including guys sneaking beers into a wine-and-cheese party with a loaf of French bread and a big wheel of cheese, a group of hapless cavemen who invent the wheel to bring their cooler of beer to a party, and a guy who gets fire-breathing power from drinking Bud Light, with some unfortunate side effects.

Bud Light pushed the envelope with a late-airing ad featuring Will Ferrell in character for his upcoming basketball comedy, "Semi-Pro." The comic extols the beer's ability to refresh the palate — "and the loins."

'Cream of Wheat' man gets grave marker

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_fe_st/odd_cream_of_wheat_man

'Cream of Wheat' man gets grave marker
Associated Press
Fri June 15, 2007

A man widely believed to be the model for the smiling chef on Cream of Wheat boxes finally has a grave marker bearing his name.

Frank L. White died in 1938, and until this week, his grave in Woodlawn Cemetery bore only a tiny concrete marker with no name.

On Wednesday, a granite gravestone was placed at his burial site. It bears his name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box.

Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher from Lansing, started the campaign to put the marker and etching on White's grave.

"Everybody deserves a headstone," Lasorda told the Lansing State Journal. He discovered that White was born about 1867 in Barbados, came to the U.S. in 1875 and became a citizen in 1890.

When White died Feb. 15, 1938, the Leslie Local-Republican described him as a "famous chef" who "posed for an advertisement of a well-known breakfast food."

White lived in Leslie for about the last 20 years of his life, and the story of his posing for the Cream of Wheat picture was known in the city of 2,000 located between Jackson and Lansing and about 70 miles west of Detroit.

The chef was photographed about 1900 while working in a Chicago restaurant. His name was not recorded. White was a chef, traveled a lot, was about the right age and told neighbors that he was the Cream of Wheat model, the Jackson Citizen Patriot said.

Long owned by Kraft Foods Inc., the Cream of Wheat brand was sold this year to B&G Foods Inc.