Melissa and Kathleen are two career-minded women who wanted to hit the reset button on their careers, and restart them in a whole new direction.
Melissa Tong Cooper was disenchanted with her law practice, Kathleen Takushi was back from New York and ready for a change from her design career.
Their entrepreneurial spirits converged on a sweet treat they remembered from their childhood: rice crispy treats. They decided to take the recipes their moms made back in the day and revolutionize them with a variety of ‘gourmet’ twists.
The result is a line of treats they call Milk & Krunchies. They’ve introduced three flavors thus far with plans to bring more on board in the coming months. The initial three varieties are:
â‹… DJ AM’s Toffee Mix
â‹… Peanut Buttercup
â‹… PB&J Sandwich
Milk & Krunchies can be found in several stores in the L.A. and San Francisco areas, as well as Nordstrom Espresso Bars nationwide.
p(right caption). Melissa Tong Cooper (left) and Kathleen Takushi
Mel and Kat sent some of the crispy bars to The Food Channel, so we’d have a chance to review them for our readers.
The Review
Once the treats were out of their cellophane wrappers, they had a rather high-end appearance—at least for a sweet snack item like this. All three had a handsome handcrafted look.
The Peanut Buttercup had a lovely chocolate-peanut butter swirl icing that really set it off nicely, and the Toffee Mix was topped off with a chocolate-and-toffee bits layer that was equally appealing. The PB&J Sandwich, on the other hand, looked more like something you could have made in your own kitchen without breaking much of a sweat.
Our taste panel preferred the Peanut Buttercup flavor unanimously. It didn’t have that ‘store-bought stale’ texture like some similar products sometimes do. Someone commented that they wished for more chocolate, but we liked the peanut butter chips and found this little bar to be a delightful treat.
The PB&J Sandwich was a bit of a disappointment. We tasted a lot more ‘J’ than ‘PB,’ and we missed the peanut butter flavor. Plus, the strawberry jelly had a somewhat artificial flavor to it. One taster thought grape would have been a better jelly choice.
The DJ AM’s Toffee Mix offers a sweet blend of toffee bits and milk chocolate. We expected it to taste more like a toffee candy bar, but that’s not really meant to be a criticism. We found the flavor to be a welcome surprise, although it could have used a bit more crunch perhaps.
Overall, we enjoyed them all quite a lot, and believe these crispy snack treats are a winner, and we look forward to the next flavor additions to come from Melissa and Kathleen.
