Since then, the novelty of the hard shell ice cream has worn off, especially since they started selling the stuff in grocery stores. And, of course, I'm not thirteen anymore. But even as an old man, I still enjoy some creamy treats topped with child-like wonder every once in a while.
So I was excited when I squeezed this bottle of Trader Joe's Hard Top onto my bowl of ice cream for the first time. Except instead of a shiny chocolate liquid emerging, a long, narrow cylinder of dull brown goo came out of the container. It didn't coat the ice cream at all. We'd kept it at room temperature and never refrigerated it. So why was it so solid?
At any rate, Sonia read that you can put the squeeze bottle in warm water to re-liquefy it. After just a few minutes, I shook the bottle and determined that it had, in fact, returned to a much more viscous state. I squeezed out another shot and voila! Our vanilla ice cream had an attractive chocolate shell atop its center scoop (see photo above).
It's a darker chocolate than most chocolate shells I've had. It's rich and tasty. It coats and then immediately solidifies. It's still fun to tap the shell and listen to the little thud and then crack it into pieces before eating it.
Both the price and the ingredients of this product are comparable to other leading brands. Here's a link to the only other do-it-yourself ice cream hard top product I've ever had: Smucker's Magic Shell, in case you're interested.
$3.29 for the 6.17 oz squeeze bottle. This isn't a product we have any use for on a regular basis, but if for some reason we needed chocolate hard shell for our ice cream again, we'd consider grabbing Trader Joe's Hard Top Chocolate Shell Topping. Seven and a half stars from Sonia. Seven out of ten stars from me.
Bottom line: 7.25 out of 10.
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