Craving a hamburger, fried chicken and bacon all at once? KFC's Zinger Double Down has you covered. The hamburger topped with bacon, barbecue sauce and "pepper dressing" sandwiched between two pieces of crispy fried chicken, um, doubles down on the fast-food chain's success with the original 2010 Double Down, pictured, a sandwich of bacon, cheese and the Colonel's sauce between two chicken fillets.
Why not encapsulate the delicious flavors of pecan pie in a hard M&M shell? The new fall-inspired candies have been spotted on store shelves in August.
Colorado's New Belgium Brewery and the folks at Ben & Jerry's are teaming up to produce a beer based on salted-caramel brownie ice cream. Take a stroll through the gallery for more examples of strange food mashups.
Minor League Baseball's Wilmington, Delaware, Blue Rocks announced that its ballpark will begin offering a frankenfood concoction for the ages: A hot dog served inside a traditional Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut (raspberry jelly topping optional). The team is asking for fans' help
naming the new doughnut dog.
If you've ever been tempted to drink your Easter basket,
Prairie Farms dairy has a product for you: Peeps-flavored milk. The company offers chocolate, marshmallow and egg nog varieties inspired by the cute animal-shaped marshmallow candies.
Taco Bell is testing Cap'n Crunch Delights in 26 restaurants in Bakersfield, California. A company spokesman described Cap'n Crunch Delights as "warm, light pastries coated with fruity Cap'n Crunch Berries cereal and filled with creamy, sweet milk icing."
Little Caesars launched a bacon-wrapped pizza in February. A full 3.5 feet of savory meat top and envelop this deep-dish creation.
KFC Philippines introduced the Double Down Dog at limited locations. The sandwich is composed of a cheese-filled hot dog cradled in a fried chicken fillet, topped with honey mustard and relish sauce. News of the hybrid left the Internet salivating, revolted and morbidly curious by turns. KFC, which generated hype by selling only 50 of the "legendary" sandwiches at a time, said they sold out quickly.
Sometimes you can't make up your mind when you want to indulge a snack attack. Tortilla chips or pizza, what to choose? Now you don't have to pick (if you're eating Down Under):
Pizza Hut Australia served up Doritos Crunchy Crust pizza, with the flavored chips creating a crispy ring around the pie of your choice.
The Franken-dish known as turducken is one of the most popular food mashups of all time, but Thanksgiving is when it really gets to shine. The original chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey is believed to have come from
a butcher shop in Maurice, Louisiana, that made the dish at a customer's request. Now it is a staple of Thanksgiving recipe boxes and is available across the board from Costco to Dean & Deluca.
The burger lends itself to mashups and variations by its sandwiched nature. The Original Ramen Burger, available at its namesake restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, was voted one of the "
17 Most Influential Burgers of All Time" by Time magazine in 2013. It consists of a ground beef patty sandwiched between two buns made from fresh ramen noodles.
The fried, cream-filled, croissant-doughnut hybrid known as the Cronut is so popular
it has its own trademark. Stories of customers lining up outside the Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York before dawn to purchase the pastry (limit two per customer) have become part of its legend.
Frito-Lay and Taco Bell hit pay dirt with Doritos Locos Tacos, which contain classic Taco Bell fillings inside a Doritos-flavored shell. The product is considered one of the most
successful in fast-food history, generating billions of dollars in sales and high marks from fans.
The verdict is still out on
Oreo Churros, which inject the flavor of Oreos into the spiral-shaped Spanish fried pastry. The mashup was unveiled by Mondelez International, the maker of Oreos, and churros manufacturer J&J Snack Foods.
A longstanding staple of the supermarket snack aisle, Chips Ahoy has been on an ongoing journey of experimentation since the early days of regular and chewy. Today, Nabisco offers more than 40 variations on the classic chocolate chip cookie, including cookies filled with birthday cake frosting and brownies, pictured.
Taco Bell debuted its breakfast menu in 2014 with its marquee item, the Waffle Taco. It's pretty much what it sounds like if you consider taco shells and waffles interchangeable vehicles for eggs and breakfast meats. As one headline summed it up, "
Taco Bell Tacos Keep Getting Less and Less Taco-Like."
Some mashups test the limits of human decency, like baked good chain Cinnabon's improbable foray into pizza, the Pizzabon. The sausage and cheese-topped cinnamon roll was offered at a test location in suburban Atlanta in 2012, never to be seen again, as far as we can tell.
Pop-Tarts have long been the go-to food for college students, many of whom eat them straight out of the package. (They're also, as Dave Barry once observed,
a great fire starter.) Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to the famed treat, as Carl's Jr. has done, and you get the Strawberry Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich, an ice cream sandwich that's like an instant frozen cobbler. Enjoy -- but please don't put it in the toaster.
When you think of traditional Canadian food, what comes to mind? Canadian bacon? Poutine?
Timbits? Maple Lodge Farms tried to create a new tradition: the hot dog eclair, a delicious tube of processed meat combined with a cream-filled, chocolate-covered pastry. The product debuted at the 2012 Canadian National Exhibition, so it's as purely Canadian as a hockey puck dipped in maple syrup. Hmm, that gives us another idea for a hybrid dish. ...