Friday, April 14, 2017

Trader Joe's Coffee Toffee Shortbread Cookies


There's something very Girl Scout-esque about these cookies. At least part of it is the box and packaging—a long rectangular cuboid with a cellophane sleeve and plastic carton thing. And although I've never tried them, I know the Girl Scouts offered a toffee shortbread cookie not long ago called "Toffee-tastic." By some miracles of science and Girl Scout magic, those were rice-based and gluten free. Here's one entertaining look at them in case you're eager to learn more like I was.


This Trader Joe's selection is wheat-based, glutenful, chocolatey, and vaguely coffee-ish. If I use my imagination, I can detect some toffee candy sweetness, too. But mostly, I'd say it's a dark chocolate and shortbread kind of vibe here.

They're crispy and crumbly, and the chocolate coating and drizzle acts as a waxy covering to these otherwise grainy morsels. The texture isn't entirely unpleasant, but the chocolate coating insulates these cookies a little too well from the sometimes-welcome wetness that stems from a brief dip in your hot beverage of choice. In other words, these don't make great dunkables in my opinion, because they're simply too "weather-proof," for lack of a better term.

The flavor isn't bad, but it's not particularly memorable, either—especially after a month or so of gorging myself on boatloads of coffee and mocha flavored products for the sake of this daring TJ's blog. I should probably break up this java jones nonsense with bread that isn't coffee-flavored once in a while.

But at any rate, I'm not alone. Sonia was underwhelmed as well. She doesn't even think the shortbread is very tasty. We're not hatin'. We're just not going to buy these cookies again, because there's nothing that we really want to hang on to here. If they had slurped up our hot coffee the way those Joe-Joe's did, these cookies might have been well-worth their $2.99 price tag—which really isn't unreasonable if these are your thing. We're just gonna bet that for most people...this isn't gonna be your thing...at least not in any meaningful way.

Three stars a piece.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

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