Fig Where a Fig Should Be

We begin with Bobo's Fig Bars, because they're behaving themselves. A soft-baked whole-grain oat crust surrounds a rich fig filling. The blueberry version adds blueberry to the fig. Outside: oats. Inside: fruit. Good. The zoning commission approves.

Figs look suspicious even before you cut them open. Slice one and you get a pink cave packed with seeds. Bobo's puts that sticky little scene inside a tidy oat rectangle. It travels down Castro Street (and your esophagus) much better that way.

These are vegan and gluten-free, with five individually wrapped bars in a box. Keep one in a bag, desk, glove compartment, or whichever household drawer currently contains three dead batteries and a key that opens… nothing.

PB&Anything

Chocolate and peanut butter belong together. Decades of research over the kitchen sink have established that it works.

Justin's Candy Pieces hide dark chocolate inside peanut butter, which itself is inside a colorful shell. Russia's dolls are getting jealous. They're crunchy outside and creamy inside. Pour some into your hand. Pour some into your mouth. Pour some into someone else's mouth. Then, after the lawsuit, ask permission first.

While Justin's makes little candy pieces, Lily's builds full peanut butter bunkers: Milk Chocolate Style Peanut Butter Cups. The chocolate has 36% cacao, and there's no added sugar. Two individually wrapped cups make a serving. The wrappers are there to slow you down. They're not a dare, Andrew.

Put the Cookie in the Chocolate

The humble cookie was already finished. It needed no upgrades. It could've sat beside a glass of milk and enjoyed a quiet retirement.

Instead, Milka broke the cookies into pieces and put them inside Alpine milk chocolate. The Chips Ahoy bar has chocolate-chip-cookie crunch. The Lotus Biscoff bar has caramelized biscuit crumble with toasted, lightly cinnamon-spiced flavor. The chocolate has eaten the cookie for you. One less chore.

Snap off a square with coffee, tea, or milk. Creamy chocolate gives way to little crisp bits. You could eat the cookie and chocolate separately. That requires opening two packages, and apparently we're all very busy.

Just Put Everything in It

Tony's brought three bars to this investigation. The red bar is plain milk chocolate, just to set a baseline. The purple Dark Milk Pretzel Toffee bar has crunchy pretzel and toffee pieces. Now we're getting somewhere. The turquoise Everything Bar has caramel, almonds, pretzel, honey-almond nougat, a class-C CA driver's license, the concept of love, and sea salt, all inside milk chocolate. They really did add everything.

Caramel is sweet and crunchy. Pretzel adds salt. Almonds bring nuttiness. Nougat gives chew. Every bite, every chew changes before your brain can process what's happening.

Break Tony's uneven chunks and share them. Or keep the bar. We sell groceries. We don't enforce snack custody.

Lychee Disguised as… Lychee

A real lychee comes stuffed at the factory. Peel the rough red shell and find pale fruit around a dark seed. Nature packed three layers before dessert got involved.

This Lychee Sorbet copies the fruit's bumpy exterior and hides a cold lychee center inside. It's not a lychee, but it looks like lychee, tastes like lychee, and arrives in a lychee-colored box labeled “lychee.” Sherlock can take the week off.

Pro-Tip: Let it sit outside the freezer for a minute or two. The shell softens, and the center gets creamy. Then cut it open. Or bite straight in if your dental insurance is paid-up.

Strawberries Were All Like, "Me Too!"

Strawberries naturally keep their seeds on the outside. Botanically, each little “seed” is its own tiny fruit. The real berry was already breaking rules before we arrived.

This Strawberry Ice Cream is molded into a giant glossy strawberry-ish fruit with a little green top. Strawberry flavor sits inside a strawberry shape, inside a clear dome, inside a pink box. That's four strawberries, if you're not counting.

Cut it in half and the shaped outer layer gives way to a cold, creamy center. Or hand it over without explanation and watch trust disappear.

Now We're Getting Weird…

At last, a respectable pastry with an unnecessary filling. 4U Croissants come with hazelnut cream, cocoa-flavored filling, or vanilla cream inside. Pastry outside. Cream inside. France, calm down.

Each family pack contains five croissants. “Family pack” is a bold claim for something you will eat alone in a parked car. Take one out of the wrapper and warm it briefly. The pastry softens, and the center gets richer. Use a plate if you enjoy pretending that croissant flakes obey physics.

Hazelnut tastes roasted and nutty. Cocoa goes deeper and darker. Vanilla is soft and custardy. Choose vanilla if you, like the Barenaked Ladies, want the finest of the flavors.

OK People, WTF is Even Happening

There it is behind the fruit-shaped ice creams and double-chocolate mochi: Jack & King's No Chicken Drumsticks Ice Cream.

The package says NO CHICKEN because it knows what it looks like. It's shaped like a drumstick. The outside looks breaded. Inside, it's sweet vanilla ice cream. The crisp coating is crushed sugar cone, not poultry. Dessert did not need to be sculpted into fried meat, yet here we are.

Look at the cross-section. Creamy ice cream. Crisp golden shell. Unmistakable chicken-part silhouette. Somebody looked at a cone and said, “Too cone-shaped. Make it dinner.”

Take pity on us: re-ordering this is part of our job. Someone at Ava's must call a distributor and say, “We need more chicken drumstick ice cream.” Then we must explain: no chicken. Yes, breading. Except the breading is cone. We'll send a photograph because nouns have stopped helping.

Then you'll point at the freezer and ask for “that weird fake chicken thing,” as if that narrows it down. You helped create demand for this. Yes, you. Why did you do this to us?