Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter Ice Cream

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.