Trader Joe’s Marshmallows
Posted: May 20, 2016 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 5 stars, marshmallow, Trader Joe's 12 Comments
| What it is: | Really good marshmallows. |
| Price: | $2.99 for a 10 oz. bag |
| Worth it: | Yes. Dense, sweet and creamy. |
The Breakdown
Trader Joe’s French Roast Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate
Posted: May 6, 2016 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 5 stars, coffee, Trader Joe's, trader joe's coffee 6 Comments
Some time ago I published my review of Trader Joe’s original Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate. The product was, needless to say, an instant hit. 24 ounces of fine, dark coffee, cold press-expelled and concentrated 2-to-1. It not only scratched that caffeine itch, but it did it in a damn nice way. It was, in its own way, the cookie butter of the coffee drinking world – a remarkable game changer that everyone can agree on.
Now, I’m not much of a coffee drinker myself – my monthly coffee intake is roughly equivalent to what most people drink in one morning. I bring up this as a sort of inverse bona fides – I really know next to nothing about coffee. Nevertheless, even I, untrained palette I, was able to appreciate the fine, if subtle, qualities present in Trader Joe’s Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate. In fact, TJ’s cold brew coffee is responsible for the very first redaction I ever ran on this blog. After giving it an initial rating of “Eh, I don’t get what the big deal is”, I ended up going back to the bottle time and time again, until I’d polished the whole thing off. It’s that good. Even an untrained, unsophisticated coffee drinker preferred it to ordinary brewed coffee.
What’s the appeal? The biggest difference is that cold brew coffee is almost unbelievably mellow and unacidic, compared to ordinary brewed coffee – even for “low acidity” blends. When coffee grounds are cold brewed they’re basically just soaked – soaked in cool water for a day or more until gentle osmosis has impregnated their medium with all the flavor and caffeine of the bean. This lengthy process is the reason you have to buy your cold brew coffee pre-made – and why Starbucks runs out of it part way through the day. You simply can’t brew up more of this stuff on command.
As a result of this patient process, the resulting coffee avoids any of the acrid components that show up in hot-brewed, or over-cooked coffee, while also teasing out more subtle aspects of the bean that obliterated by being exposed to boiling temperatures. The coffee is still as bold, bitter and brawny as it would be of it was hot brewed, it’s just easier on the palette, teeth and, importantly, stomach.
So if Trader Joe’s cold-brew coffee is already such a hit, what does this new variety have to offer? Why bother with a French Toast? To be honest, there’s really not a whole lot of difference between the new brew and the old brew – more crunchy cookie butter vs. smooth than of cookie butter vs. oreo cookie butter.
“French roast” just refers to how long a
coffee bean has been roasted for, before grinding. In this case, a very long time. On the informal scale of bean roasting, the French is the penultimate roasting designation – only the Italian roast subjects beans to more heat for longer. As you might expect, a longer roast results in more of that smokey, toasty, roasted taste, but at the cost of burning away any individual characteristics of the original bean. As such, it’s not usually the coffee conisseur’s first choice. However, that same extended roasting process also breaks down the acid in the bean, making it a naturally choice for those looking for a lower acidity brew.
The end result means that this brew is a little bolder and even less acidic than its forbearer. Those are both pluses in my book. If you’re looking to expand your cold brew experience, or just trying to find the least acidic coffee on the market, you’ll want to give this one a try.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yup – if you like cold brew coffee, you’ll like this.
Would I Buy It Again: This jug is a 2x concentrate, so it should last me a year or so.
Final Synopsis: More of what you live in a cold brew.
Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Mochi Ice Cream
Posted: October 22, 2015 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 5 stars, ice cream, mochi, pumpkin, pumpkin pie, Trader Joe's 2 Comments
Trader Joe is a genius.
I’ve been hammering Trader Joe’s pumpkin-flavored frozen treats hard recently. We looked at TJ’s Pumpkin Ice Cream, we’ve looked at their (even more delicious?) mini pumpkin and ginger ice cream sandwiches, surely you’re thinking we’ve got nowhere to go from here.
| What it is: | Pumpkin ice cream balls, wrapped in tender mochi. |
| Price: | $3.49 for 6 mochi |
| Worth it: | Yes. These are awesome! |
That’s where you’re wrong, friend, because I’ve saved the best for last, with Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Mochi Ice Cream. Just go out and buy some right now and then eat them in your car. Frequently commenter Mara revealed recently that Trader Joe’s mini pumpkin ice cream sandwiches winked at her so delectably that she had to eat the entire box in the parking lot. This is an activity I understand all too well. What I’m saying to you now is, when it comes to Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Mochi Ice Cream that’s not even optional. In all seriousness I want to open the box up, in your car or on the bus or while roaring down the road on your ‘roided up hog, and pop one in your mouth. Don’t even wait, just do it.
What Trader Joe’s has done is taken their delightful pumpkin ice cream to the next level. Any ice cream is improved by enclosing it soft mochi, but TJ’s pumpkin pie ice cream – with it’s warm, delightful notes of cinnamon and nutmeg – really becomes something amazing.
Mochi, for those who may not be familiar, is a traditionally Japanese food. What it is, literally, is rice. Cooked rice that has been pounded over and over again until it forms into the sticky, chewy, malleable and unspeakably tender blob called mochi. In Japan it’s closely associated with festivals and big holidays, and is used in all sorts of sweets or just eaten by itself. The masterstroke of mochi, though, is in using it to hold little pockets of ice cream. A thin layer of soft, gently floured mochi (to prevent sticking) is wrapped around a good sized scoop of ice cream. As a result, you can hold it directly in your hand without worrying about it melting, while also enjoying the pleasant chewiness of the mochi-ice cream combo. It is, essentially, the Japanese take on the ice cream sandwich – only better.
Most Trader Joes’ carry the Mikawaya brand of mochi ice cream in a variety of common flavors (vanilla, strawberry, and green tea). Only Trader Joe’s, however, offers something as crazy as Pumpkin Pie Mochi. Surprisingly, TJ’s doesn’t just use their premium pumpkin ice cream in these mochi, but instead has formulated a slightly different version (referred to in the name, as you may have noticed, as pumpkin pie ice cream). The main difference seems to be that the mochi ice cream freezes harder than the notoriously soft pumpkin ice cream, although I’d swear that the pumpkin pie ice cream actually tastes a little more pumpkin-y than the pumpkin ice cream itself. (This is another instance of a weird quirk at TJ’s where offshoot products sometimes taste more authentic than the progenitor product. Cf. TJ’s Sriracha hot sauce vs. TJ’s Sriracah Ranch) It’s also worth noting that they got the fat content under control in these mochi bites – only 20 calories from fat per ball.
In any case, you can’t go wrong with these. If you’ve never had mochi ice cream before, do yourself a favor and pick one up. If you have had mochi ice cream before, you’ll want to add these to your arsenal. Of all the pumpkin products I’ve had at TJ’s this October, these mochi balls might be the most surprising and delicious.
By the way, one last tip – if you’ve never tried it, leave one of these out for a few minutes to melt slightly. The mochi will safely keep all the ice cream inside. Taking a bite of a partially melted ball that’s approaching room temperature is a heavenly experience.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend Them: Yes, a great combination of chewy and chilly.
Would I Buy Them Again: Yes, I’ll be crushed if they don’t have them again next year.
Final Synopsis: Mochi improves any ice cream.
Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Mochi Ice Cream – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookie Butter
Posted: October 7, 2015 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 5 stars, Condiments, cookie butter, Deserts, pumpkin pie, Trader Joe's 7 Comments
Seeing new cookie butter turns me into Cookie Monster right in the store. “COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE… butter”
Oh no. Now I’m really starting to get alarmed. Trader Joe’s has innaugarated this year’s Pumpkin Madness in a big way – with the introduction of a brand new type of cookie butter – Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spiced Cookie Butter.
| What it is: | Cookie butter that tastes like pumpkin pie. |
| Price: | $3.99 for a 14.1 oz jar. |
| Worth it: | Yes – it’s cookie butter. |
Look, on the one hand this is nothing if not welcome news. Any time Trader Joe’s wants to expand their absolutely heavenly line of cookie butter products is fine by me. Previous entries include Trader Joe’s Crunchy Cookie Butter, Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter and Nutella, Trader Joe’s Oreo-based Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter, not to mention all the countless offshoots and ancillary confections made with that tongue-melting, heart-stopping emulsified cookie sweetness.
In certain ways, Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spiced Cookie Butter is the most radical new member to the family. Here, for the first time ever, do we have a cookie butter not actually based on any real cookie. This is a huge move, on par with the introduction of the Cookies and Creme cookie butter. That Oreo-based cookie butter excited me because it suggested Trader Joe’s would start introducing new cookie butters based on entirely different types of cookies, not just the gold standard speculoos cookie. Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookie Butter takes it one step further, throwing the doors open to any sort of spice or confection imaginable.
This terrifies me slightly – in the same way that staring into the unshielded face of God himself would terrify me. Trader Joe’s has essentially taken us all one huge step closer to just selling us frosting as a sandwich spread. The Cookies and Creme cookie butter was close enough already – without cookies in the equation, there’s nothing holding them back. Give it a few more years, and we’ll be seeing Trader Joe’s Tahitian Vanilla “Cookie Butter” spread, that’s nothing more than a screw-top jar of creamy delicious frosting that we’ll all have been Pavlovian conditioned eat straight from the jar. Is that the dystopia or utopia?
Or maybe I’m just getting over excited. In any case, this is a delicious new entry into the cookie butter family. It tastes just like you hope a pumpkin pie spice cookie butter would taste. A sweet hint of pumpkin is the first taste that will hits your tongue, as well as the lingering aftertaste. In between, you’ll be treated to a gooey, nuanced mix of cookie bits, with pumpkin puree, pumpkin powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves.
Instead of speculoos cookies this time around, Trader Joe’s makes use of some sort of pumpkin, sugar cookie crumbs. These cookie crumbs are made with pumpkin puree and organic pumpkin powder, but they’re much too small to really get a taste of. This forms the basis for the crunchy bits of cookie crumb in the mix (more like crunchy cookie butter than the creamy kind), but it’s actually the least delicious part. Far more interesting are the complex notes of the pumpkin pie spices, and the enduring pumpkin flavor, all of which are captured in excellent clarity.
More than anything this cookie butter tastes like a slice of pumpkin pie (complete with crust) that has been blended down into delicious sludge – a gooey pumpkin pie in a jar. How amazing would it be to make a pumpkin pie out of this pumpkin spice cookie butter, rather than traditional pumpkin filling? Pumpkin Pie-ception
Like all other types of cookie butter, the biggest question is, “What do you actually do with this stuff?” The most obvious answer is “just spoon it straight into your face”, but for those of us who try to maintain a bit of decorum, it’s also great on waffle, pancakes and even in peanut butter sandwiches. It can also work as a seasonal dip for pretzels, apples or even celery.
Another big question – is Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookie Butter actually any better than Trader Joe’s regular cookie butter? Once again, I have to say that while this is interesting addition and delicious in its own right, it still doesn’t dethrone our glorious reigning king, the original cookie butter. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome addtion to my patry this autumn and, a seasonal treat to be looked forward to like egg nog or Halloween candy. Here’s hoping it returns again next year.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: It’s cookie butter, so yeah.
Would I Buy It Again: I have, like, three different cookie butters in my cabinet right now. Of course I will.
Final Synopsis: Pumpkin cookie based cookie butter, with plenty of pumpkin spices.
Trader Joe’s Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter
Posted: October 14, 2014 Filed under: Condiments, COOKIE BUTTER!, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 5 stars, cookie butter, joe joe's, oreos, Trader Joe's Brand 4 Comments
Trader Joe’s Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter. Not technically made from Oreos… but only technically.
Hold the goddamn presses, ladies and gentlemen. We may be in the very height of pumpkin season, the most exciting time of the year of the Trader Joe’s product reviewer, but we’ve got to forget about all that for a minute. Novel pumpkin products are all well and good, but Trader Joe’s has just released something of national importance. I’m speaking, of course, of Trader Joe’s new Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter. It is, not to mince words, Cookie Butter made from Oreos.
Yes.
Yes, Oreos. Oreo cookie butter.
Yes.
I understand if you need another minute to grapple with this fact. Take your time. Breathe.
Look guys – look. I’ve occasionally accused Trader Joe’s of screwing around, hinted that maybe they don’t always know what they’re doing. I take all that back, because this is a masterstroke. Needless to say, it is almost terrifyingly delicious.
The orignal Cookie Butter, precious Speculoos Cookie Butter, our lord and savior, has always been great. It’s been there for us in thick and thin, when times are tough as in times of bounty. Its creation objectively improved the state of affairs in the world, and its creator should be enshrined upon her death – but for all that, it always seemed to me like it peaked too early.
There was never any other place to go with the original cookie butter, regardless of how Trader Joe’s tried, and tried to improve upon what was already, it appeared to me, unimproveuponable. That was my folly, for while I was naysaying TJ’s efforts, I never in my wildest dreams realized there could be more types of cookie butter. That there was no reason to limit cookie butter just to the original, delicious speculoos cookie base, but to expand it to other types of cookies! To expand it to Oreos!! OREO COOKIE BUTTER!!!
This development is almost unbearable exciting for two reasons. One, it’s super, super delicious. It’s just so damn good. Eating Trader Joe’s Cookie and Creme Cookie Butter is like mainlining Oreos into your blood stream. Oreos or, as I should say, Trader Joe’s Joe Joe’s. Joe Joe’s are, of course, the Trader Joe’s take on Oreos – identical to their forebearer in all ways except the name.
Trader Joe’s has taken these Joe Joe’s, and broken it down into a brand new type of cookie butter – or more correctly, a cookie butter and cream filling swirl. TJ tried this sort of cookie butter swirling before with Trader Joe’s attempted Cookie Butter and Nutella mixture. While in theory this sounded amazing, a couple issues with the flavors kept it form becoming a classic. Those problems are absent here, and the oreo cookies and oreo crème mixture works beautifully together.
The thick, black veins “cocoa” cookie butter tastes exactly like the dark and crunchy cookie part of oreo cookies – only better. Whatever process they were applying to the cinnamon-spiced speculoos cookies they simply applied to the chocolate cookie shell here, making a mostly smooth, slightly crunchy, delightful cookie spread. Everyone knows that the chocolate exterior of the oreo cookie is what you put up with in order to get to the delicious creamy center. What Trader Joe’s has succeeded in doing is taking the tasty essence of that chocolate cookie and distilling it to it’s simple, beautiful core. The resulting cookie butter gives you the strange but amazing sensation of eating a cookie without the chewing.
This amazing, chocolatey cookie butter is paired, naturally, with unbelievable pure stripes of the Joe Joe’s creamy, frosting filling. This filling does taste a little different from the filling you get in a standard joe-joe/oreo, but it’s hard to say why. The creamy filling here is much softer than what you find in the cookie form, and there is much more of it. If anything, it tastes better than it does in ordinary cookie form.
I’ve often dreamed of getting a whole bag of oreo cookies, scraping out just the filling and eating it all at once, but never dared to try lest the delicious taste drive me insane. Where I only dreamed, Trader Joe’s has acted, not only combining the creamy filling together in one place, but making it even gooier and creamier. This is literally a dream come true.
The beautiful, untouched surface of cookies and creme cookie butter. It’s almost like the Bat Signal, but for deliciousness.
There is no down side to Trader Joe’s Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter – there is only the challenge it presents to your existence. How can you go on living a normal life, knowing this new product is in the world. Are any of the rationales that prop up your life strong enough to stand up against the idea of just sitting down and eating an entire jar of Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter with your bare hands? This is a non-trivial question, folks.
The biggest challenge, really, comes from trying to figure out what to do with this stuff. It’s very, very tasty, that’s true, but there isn’t really a decent way to cook with it. Even Trader Joe’s acknowldeges this on the side of the jar, listing three feeble ideas (dip pretzles in it?) before admitting that you can “eat it right out of the jar”. And really, that does seem to be the most enjoyable thing to do with this cookie butter – aside from possible covering your nude body with it and plunging into an unimaginably hedonistic orgy. This cookie butter is less a condiment than it is a confection in a jar. It’s like an advanced form of super cookie that, nevertheless, fills the exact same space in your life that regular cookies do – enjoyable moments of indulgent snacking. Cookie butter just does it more efficiently
This brings us to the big question – is Trader Joe’s Cookies and Creme Cookie Butter better than Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie Butter? It’s a serious quandary, and one that I’ve considered carefully over many spoonfuls of both these spreads. In my considered opinion, the original cookie butter is still best. While the cookies and creme cookie butter is amazing, and delicous and wonderful, it’s almost overwhelming sweet. In the long run, when eaten directly, it tends to be a bit one note compared to the somewhat more nuanced speculoos cookie butter. In the absence of any real recipes to incorporate these amazing spreads into – if we’re simply eating them out of the jars with our fingers like elevated apes – the win goes to Speculoos Cookie Butter, where the remarkable sweetness is tempered by the more complex, spiced flavor of that classic Christmas cookie taste.
That said, so long as Trader Joe’s continues producing both there’s no reason to choose. Buy them both, and enjoy them in unguarded moments, gliding upon the clouds of heaven.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: YES!
Would I Buy It Again: YES! YES!!!
Final Synopsis: COOKIE BUTTER MADE FROM OREOS! BUY NOW!
Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter Ice Cream
Posted: August 21, 2014 Filed under: COOKIE BUTTER!, Desserts, Frozen Food, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 5 stars, cookie butter, ice cream, recipie, Trader Joe's, vanilla 1 Comment
Humana humana humana- COOKIE BUTTER?!?!?
We all know about Cookie Butter. We all know that it’s a semi-divine creation that has melted hearts across the nation and, in fact, the world – lighting up the taste buds with the decanted taste of pure Christmas from here to Belgium. If, and it saddens me to even spin the hypothesis, you don’t know what cookie butter is, you had better educate yourself.
Now, it has long been my firm stance that cookie butter is like an edible form of elemental gold – pure and perfect in and of itself. We’ve seen that mixing it with anything else, even Nutella (?!), merely dilutes it’s purity and introduces imperfections.
So it was with a great deal of excitement, but also skepticism, that I picked up Trader Joe’s latest, greatest development – Cookie Butter Ice Cream. On the one hand, how could cookie butter ice cream possibly be better than cookie butter by itself. ON the other hand, it’s ice cream! Maybe “Nutella” couldn’t do the job, but if there was ever anything that could improve on CB it’s a good helping of heavy cream and sugar.
These are high stakes to be sure. Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter Ice Cream is sure to either elate me to previously imagined heights of ecstasy, or deliver a crushing blow to the solar plexus of my soul – there is no middle ground here.
It is to my elation that I can report Trader Joe’s really knocked this one out of the park – an undeniable master stroke. How did TJ manage it? The answer is as simple as it is brilliant. Starting with a nice, creamy vanilla they mixed in a plenty of crushed speculoos – permeating the medium with that cookie butter taste. On top of that, is this is what carries the day, they wove ribbons of pure cookie butter, caramel like, through the whole thing. The result is a sweet, delicious ice cream that alternates moments of low-key, pleasant cookie butter taste with bursts of intense, uncut cookie butter. I don’t see how heroine can be illegal while this isn’t, but regardless you and I get to reap the windfall.
There’s not much more to add, really – the ice cream is as good as you want it to be. If you’re still reading at my post at this point, you should obviously stop and go out to buy some cookie butter ice cream. Eat some of that, then come back and we can finish here.
The question of how to incorporate Cookie Butter Ice Cream into a recipe is may well be as futile as asking that question of cookie butter itself. It’s hard to improve on eating it straight from the bucket – sometimes even the spoon seems like a cruel impediment standing between you and sweet, sweet cookie butter. Nevertheless, I took my best shot at it with this week’s recipe for Salted Cookie Butter Ice Cream Shakes.
Is it better than the straight ice cream? I can’t look you straight in the eyes and say that. It might be better to think of the recipe as a remix of a song you really like, as another way to experience that initial rush over again.
Trader Joe’s Salted Cookie Butter Ice Cream Shake
Salted Cookie Butter Ice Cream Shake
Ingredients:
- ~ 3 cups of Cookie Butter Ice Cream
- ~1 cup milk
- A pinch of Trader Joe’s Pyramid Salt
Directions:
- Put all the ingredients in a blender and puree to your heart’s content.
I would recommend using whole milk, or even Trader Joe’s Organic Top Cream Milk, for the creamiest taste.
Also, a note on the salt. I used the pyramid shaped flake salt we’ve looked at before. The advantage is that even after blending there are small flakes of salt suspended in the shake, meaning you get little pleasant moments of saltiness to highlight the sweetness. If you don’t have flake salt on hand, consider just throwing a tiny pinch of salt on top at the end, instead of blending it in.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: Yes. If I met the President, I’d probably recommend it to him.
Would I Buy It Again: Sure, whenever they’re not sold out.
Final Synopsis: Cookie butter meets vanilla ice cream – and it’s as good as you’d hope.
Eating At Joes 
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