Cheez Doodles are a cheese puff produced by

Wise Foods Wise Foods, Inc. is a company based in Berwick, Pennsylvania, that makes snacks and sells them through retail food outlets in 15 eastern seaboard states, as well as Vermont, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C. Best ...

. Originally developed and manufactured in 1964 by King Kone Corp. of

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, New York, it became the prevalent cheese puff snack on the East Coast.

Description

Cheez Doodles are a cheese-flavored baked cheese puff made of

extruded Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create very complex c ...

cornmeal and are similar to

Frito-Lay Frito-Lay is an American subsidiary of PepsiCo that manufactures, markets, and sells corn chips, potato chips, and other snack foods. The primary snack food brands produced under the Frito-Lay name include Fritos corn chips, Cheetos cheese-fla ...

Cheetos Cheetos (formerly styled as Chee-tos until 1998) is a crunchy corn puff snack brand made by Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. Fritos creator Charles Elmer Doolin invented Cheetos in 1948, and began national distribution in the U.S. The initi ...

and Herr Foods Cheese Curls. The snack was created by Morrie Yohai and is produced by Pennsylvania-based snack foods producer Wise Foods.

History

Originally developed and manufactured by King Kone Corp. of the Bronx, Cheez Doodles were developed by the company's owner and operator, Morrie Yohai (1920–2010). King Kone had been founded in the 1920s and manufactured ice cream cones, cheese crackers, popcorn, and

Melba toast Melba toast is a dry, crisp and thinly sliced toast, often served with soup and salad or topped with either melted cheese or pâté. It is named after Dame Nellie Melba, the stage name of Australian opera singer Helen Porter Mitchell. Its name i ...

. In the early 1960s, the company had a machine which could be used to produce three-inch lengths of extruded cornmeal. These were then baked with orange cheddar cheese powder and other flavorings to produce a new snack food. According to Yohai, the name "Cheez Doodles" came to him while he and other employees were sitting around a table sampling alternatives for the cheese flavoring of the new snack. In the mid-1960s, the company (by then known as Old London Foods) was acquired by Borden and assigned to its Wise potato chip division. In 1997, KKR & Co. acquired a majority interest in Borden; in 2002, Palladium Equity Partners purchased Wise Foods. Today, Wise Foods is owned by

Arca Continental Arca Continental is a Mexican multinational company that produces, distributes, and markets beverages under The Coca-Cola Company brand, as well as snacks under the Bokados brand in Mexico, Inalecsa in Ecuador, and Wise and Deep River in the United ...

, the second-largest

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlant ...

bottler in Central and North America, who bought Wise in 2012. Cheez Doodles remain one of the strongest brands marketed by Wise with 15 million pounds of the product produced in 2010.

Varieties

Cheez Doodles are produced in many varieties. Varieties available were: * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffs – original variety * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffs White Cheddar – white cheddar puffed rather than yellow cheddar * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffs Hot & Honey – honey and cheddar flavored * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffs Honey BBQ – honey barbecue sauce flavored * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffs Extra Cheesy – additional yellow cheddar cheese flavoring * Cheez Doodles Extra Crunchy – hard, crunchy fried variety * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffed Balls – spherical puff variety * Cheez Doodles Baked Puffed Balls

Jalapeño The jalapeño ( , , ) is a medium-sized chili pepper pod type cultivar of the species ''Capsicum annuum''. A mature jalapeño chili is long and hangs down with a round, firm, smooth flesh of wide. It can have a range of pungency, with Scovi ...

Poppers – spherical puffs with yellow cheddar with jalapeño flavoring Formerly available varieties included: * Croc-o-Doodles – crocodile-shaped puffed snacks * Cheez Doodles Crunchy – hard, crunchy fried variety * Cheez Doodles Crunchy, Reduced Fat – lower fat version of the hard, crunchy variety * Cheez Doodle-O's – circle-shaped hard, crunchy snacks

In popular culture

In the comic strip '' Big Nate'', Cheez Doodles are protagonist Nate Wright's favorite snack food. Cheez Doodles are prominently featured in

George R. R. Martin George Raymond Richard Martin (born George Raymond Martin; September 20, 1948), also known as GRRM, is an American novelist, screenwriter, television producer and short story writer. He is the author of the series of epic fantasy novels ''A Song ...

's short story, '' The Pear-shaped Man''.

References

External links

Official website

Cheese Doodles day 5th of March (Scandinavia)
{{Big Nate Brand name snack foods Products introduced in 1948 American snack foods