Trader Joe's Big Soft Pretzels

Show me a person who says s/he doesn't like soft pretzels, and I'll show you a liar.

It's impossible to not enjoy a quality soft pretzel. I mean...salty carbs, what else do you need, right? Some folks say that Philadelphia is the capital of soft pretzels, but even though I'm from that area, I disagree to an extent. Philly-style soft pretzels are often cold, a bit stale-ish, a bit more "hard" than "soft", and if bought from a street vendor who hasn't had a health department inspection in a while, who know what "extras." I mean, given the opportunity, I'll down close to my weight in them - soft pretzel party platters from these guys are the devil - but an actual warm, soft, slightly chewy pretzel with a slightly crispy outer shell? Give me that all day long.

That's what we got with Trader Joe's Big Soft Pretzels. Straight up, there's nothing too fancy about them. At $2.49 for a frozen foursome of handsized dough knots, it's a respectable value but nothing to get too crazed about...

...except, man, as any good pretzel, they're freakin' delish. To prep, you may choose to either heat for a couple minutes in the oven, or let thaw for about an hour or so. Most other frozen soft pretzels say to microwave them, which is a cardinal sin. That makes the pretzels hard and tough and generally not as enjoyable.


Sandy made these TJ's softies as part of a light "snacky" dinner the other night using both methods. The pretzels heated in the oven were softier and almost flufflier on the inside than the one we let thaw out, which makes sense. It's a pretty plain dough, with slight eggy flavor from the shell, and both types had that requisite chewiness. Couldn't seem to really get the salt to stick to the thawed out one, though, as much as we tried.

Oh. Salt. There's plenty of it, in the typical big grain crunchy crystal variety. I'm not even sure we used 10% of it. The rest is going into the winter sidewalk deicing stash for sure.

Not much else to really say, it's a good pretzel. Eat as is, melt some cheese on top, dip into whatever you'd like...it'll all work. Can't exactly go wrong. Double fours.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Big Soft Pretzel: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Neapolitan Joe-Joe's

When I first heard Neapolitan Joe-Joe's were a thing, I thought maybe there were chocolate Joe-Joe's, vanilla Joe-Joe's, and strawberry Joe-Joe's all in one package, kinda like the ice cream. But when I realized all three flavors were present in each Joe-Joe, I was even more curious. Which flavor would dominate? Wouldn't all three flavors be at odds with one another, kicking, biting, and scratching their way to beat the other two to your taste buds like a cutthroat free-for-all of flavors?

The short answer to that question is "no." They actually work together. But if you're wondering which flavor would have won that hypothetical miniature battle royale, I'll just go ahead and say in my humble opinion, strawberry would have. Strawberry creme. Heck yes. Sonia agrees.

Chocolate comes in second in this equation. I think that I, personally, might have enjoyed these cookies slightly more if they had gone with two vanilla cookies on either side of the strawberry creme and simply called them Trader Joe's Strawberry Joe-Joe's. That would have allowed the sweet, delicious strawberry flavor to shine even more. 

The chocolate cookie part of a sandwich cookie is usually not bad, but it rarely impresses me either. The chocolate cookies have a slightly more pungent taste than the vanilla cookies, but they blend well enough with the strawberry flavor that I didn't mind them much at all. After all, chocolate and strawberry is an excellent flavor combo.

We've tried a lot of Joe-Joe's and Joe-Joe derivatives throughout the years, and these are among the best. $2.99 for a pound of cookies. 3 rows of 11, all wrapped together in plastic and cellophane. I suppose it would add some cost and a little extra packaging, but individually wrapping each row might help keep some of the cookies fresher longer in case you're not planning on eating 33 cookies in one sitting—but for the sake of being "green" I guess we can put the remainder in ziplock baggies that we already have around the house. 

Double fours.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Milk & Dark Chocolate Butterscotch Bits Bar

I really can't believe what I'm about to write here...

...but, skipping all formalities and warmth and fuzziness, don't bother with Trader Joe's Milk & Dark Chocolate Butterscotch Bits Bar. At all. It's completely unenjoyable and will make you question who thought of such of an awful concoction.

No, this isn't some sort of warped attempt to dissuade all potential buyers so I can corner the market and stockpile all of them for myself. I'm serious. Don't' Buy. Ever. I don't care that it's $1.79 and sounds delicious, because that's exactly how Sandy and I got suckered in during a recent trip that we made while bordering on raging hangriness.

I'll give it this much, as it's only postive point. The chocolate, both the milk and dark (as nicely swirled on the bottom of the bar), are delicious. If you know TJ's chocolate, you know it's pretty much always on point. That's the case here, and the milk and the dark meld together nicely in a contrasting tones of creamy and solid, with sweetness and depth. That part is good, but it's what's kinda expected at this point.

Everything else? Awful. Butterscotch bits? Are you kidding me? There's probably more butterscotch bits in Milton Hershey's couch cushions than in this bar. I detected a few crystallized crumbs here and there, but it could be anything in the world, there's not enough to detect any hint of butterscotch. In the half a bar I ate, I encountered a possible butterscotch essence maybe once. It could have been miniscule bits of gravel in there for all I could tell.

But it gets worse. This is one chocolate bar that's actually painful to eat. How to explain...it'd be better if we took a picture of it but we thought the bottom swirls were pretty and more photogenic before cramming in the piehole. It's one of those bars alternates in form between divots and chunks. Like plateaus and valleys, so as to segment a bar, or as Sandy more succinctly put it, a beefed-up Toberlone candy bar. That's fine...but the "plateaus" are so tall and steep, yet so small with so little space between them, that biting into one of these is a nightmare. Your teeth naturally go sledding downhill, leaving the plateaued parts to jab your in the gums. I'm not making this up. Sandy had much the same experience. I guess, maybe in retrospect, if eaten one segment at a time and consumed sideways, it could have worked better...but still. it's as if whoever came up with the form of this bar didn't understand teeth or resented poeple who had them. It hurts. And this isn't a case of it getting too hard because of being in the fridge or freezer these hot summer months...we ate it within an hour of purchase, so it was basically at warmish room temperature.

And to top it off, it's a ten segment bar, with the chocolate bar consisting of three servings per the label. "That's not even fair or right!" Sandy the serving-size policewoman expressed dejectedly. 

Not a fan. At all. A little butterscotch could have redeemed the bar quite a bit, but I'm grasping at saying much of anything nice. Quality chocolate can be had very easily at TJ's, with actual other flavors mixed in, and so far not any other one made my mouth hurt. In all, this TJ's butterscotch chocolate bar is one of the most disappointing purchases I've ever made at TJ's, rivaled perhaps only by these failures. Maybe this is just some built up angst and spite, but I'm going zero here, while Sandy chimes in with a one simply because it's chocolate.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Milk & Dark Chocolate Butterscotch Bits Bar: 1 out of 10 Golden Spoons