Trader Joe's Spicy Buffalo Cheddar

 

Certain things really don't need a sales pitch. Cold, frosty beer, for instance. A nice summer afternoon at a ballgame, or a cool autumn morning on the porch with a cup of hot coffee. Air conditioning. So on and so forth. 

Trader Joe's Spicy Buffalo Cheddar? No contest here. It's just the way it is. 

Spicy cheese is always tops on my list. It's really hard to beat a good pepperjack. And lookey here - it's not just jalapenos but also habaneros, too? This is gonna pack some heat. 

Absolutely, the cheddar is spicy, right from the start. There's not much of a gradual build - it's more of a straight up wallop, boom goes the dynamite kinda deal. For that, and that alone, I'll give this high marks - there's not much messing around here, just straight business. 

Everything else about the buffalo cheddar? Ehhhhhhhhh. 

The cheddar itself is incredibly average to perhaps even mediocre. It's mild and soft and clammy, almost like it's lukewarm even when taken right from the fridge even though it's cold, if that makes any sense. This may lead one to think this would be a good melting cheese, but in my admittedly limited experience, it's not, at least when trying to melt atop a burger. Perhaps if trying to make into a sauce for some mac n cheese or something it'd do better. 

It also doesn't help that I had to spit out a bite and dissect it to see what that sharp little shard of something was. Visual test result results were inconclusive but chances are, it was a teeny splinter of a woody pepper stem. That's fairly benign, but still was unpleasant. Really hope it wasn't anything else.  

Anyways, for an okayish cheese option at a reasonable price ($8.99/lb if I recall right) it's worth a try, if spice is your thing. Were you expecting more of a sales pitch? Not here!

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Spicy Buffalo Cheddar: 5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Bamba Puffed Peanut & Corn Snacks Dipped In Dark Chocolate

Sometimes it seems like Trader Joe's product development team runs out of ideas and just starts dipping previously existing items in dark chocolate. That's fine. I think most people like dark chocolate covered stuff most of the time. I'd prefer milk chocolate dipped stuff, but apparently I'm the odd man out as far as that goes.

In my opinion, the peanutty deliciousness of Bambas is a somewhat delicate peanuttiness. And furthermore, in my humble opinion, the dark chocolate overshadows the natural peanut flavor in the Bamba with this iteration of the popular snack. It tastes mostly like dark chocolate with a faint whisper of peanut in the background. I'd prefer the reverse.

The last iteration of Bambas paired the peanut puffs with cocoa hazelnut paste and that worked pretty freaking well. This combo is just a little too heavy on the chocolate part of the equation for yours truly, but if you're a dark chocolate lover, it might just be your thing.

I found out that the original producer of Bamba snacks, Osem, does in fact make hazelnut cream filled Bamba snacks, too, over in Israel. I couldn't verify whether they do make these dark chocolate dipped ones as well, or if that's an original creation of Trader Joe. Even the beautiful wifey, who's a much bigger dark chocolate person than I am, thought the dark chocolate layer on these Bambas was way too thick.

Considering we lavished the previous two Bamba products with near-perfect scores, we can't shaft this one too badly. It's still an inexpensive chocolatey-peanutty snack. Kosher. $2.99 for the bag. Four stars from Sonia. Three from me.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets

 Let's get honest here and get right to it: is there any way that the new Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets could fail?

Well, short of really bad quality control incidents, no, there's really not. 

It's a tale as old as time. Perfectly crunchy, snacky, salty pretzel nuggets. On the inside there's a nice little creamy nut butter, this time almond. On the outside, there's dark chocolate enrobing it all. Pretty classic here. 

The song's as old as rhyme, too. Everything's great. No complaints about the overall quality of goods here. Each component is on point, with maybe a little extra credit to the almond butter for being a touch creamier than expected. Usually peanut butter seems chalky inside a pretzel nugget, but that's not the case here. 

But certain as the sun rising in the East, just as there's not much chance to really muck it all up, there's not much here in way of abject innovation. Nothing that makes the TJ's brand really, I dunno, TJ's. Delicious as it can be, as expected, nothing more or nothing less. 

Perhaps that's the beauty and the beast of TJ's, at times. Reliable, dependable, good stuff at a fair price - I don't think this was even $4 - but nothing innovative or flat out excellent leaves a small touch of what's to be desired. That being said, definitely a rebuy. 

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons.