Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pie Mochi Ice Cream

Regardless of whether you're in the middle of a pumpkin blitz or on a paleo diet, there's always time to take a break for newfangled cookie butter. So Sonia and I did, just like the Shellys, and we concur with their assessment of the confection. But now, difficult as it may be, it's time for me to return to my strict regimen of pumpkin-flavored desserts.

In this particular instance, we're looking at an Asian-inspired treat meets country pumpkin patch meets dairy farm meets Hawaiian-themed grocery store headquartered in California: Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pie Mochi. If you're familiar with mochi ice cream, not to be confused with mochi potstickers, you'll know that it's basically balls of ice cream coated with a thin, chewy, rice-based shell. Scrump-dilly. And just like most other mochi I've tried, the exterior texture of this pumpkin pie variety is soft, gummy, and delicious.

As for the taste, well...they're perfectly sweet, pumpkin pie spice-laden, and creamy. Pretty yummerrific. That is, if you like the taste of pumpkin ice cream. It was very similar to, if not exactly like, Pilgrim Joe's Pumpkin Ice Cream. And if any of you remember that review—or if you decided to click that link just now—you'll know my main issue with that ice cream was a lack of "pie" texture.

Even though mochi shells are nothing like actual pie crust, they served the same purpose. They added a bit of breadiness to a product that would have otherwise been too smooth for me. Plus there were, in fact, a few crumbs of graham cookie scattered sparsely throughout the ice cream. Even though I would have loved a lot more of the cookie bits, they still added an extra hint of pie-ish-ness. So in that way, I found this product to be much more impressive than its counterpart in a quart cup.

Value-wise, you're getting more ice cream for your buck with Pilgrim Joe's, but in my opinion $3.49 for six mochi is well worth the money. Plus, it's a seasonal item, so it's not like you're going to be purchasing it all the time. All in all, I'm pretty impressed with pumpkin pie mochi, and I have to give it a big thumbs up with 4.5 stars, but with one final note: Try letting them thaw for a few minutes before shoveling them down your gullet, if you can. There's enough texture from the cookie crumbs and mochi shell, so in my opinion, the whole product is better if the ice cream is just a tad melted. 

Sonia gives these little guys 3.5 stars, adding that the pumpkin flavor in the mochi wasn't strong enough, and that she needed to eat three of them before the flavor built up on her taste buds enough to tell it was pumpkin.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Cookies & Creme Cookie Butter

COOKIE. BUTTER.

Seriously. Just when you thought the speculoos train had left the station. Nothing new to see here in Cookie Butter Town, folks. You got your regular. You got the crunchy, err, crispy. You got it in chocolate. You got it mixed with chocolate. There's cookie butter ice cream. And for those who like their speculoos unbutterfied, there's the regular ol' cookies. There's nowhere else to go with cookie butter, right? Right?


Haha. Nope. We've only just begun!

As amazing as speculoos cookie butter is....there's more than one fish in the sea and one kind of cookie in the world. Trader Joe's is aready pretty famous for their Joe-Joe's in all sorts of variations. Combine those Oreo clones with the cookie butter concept, and voila! Here it is: Trader Joe's Cookies & Creme Cookie Butter.

For those familiar with the concept (and if you're not, you're a better person than me), cookie butter is made from squished up cookies mixed with palm oil and all sorts of other bad stuff that tastes so darn good that most of us don't really care. The outcome is typically a spreadable, occasionally crispy butter, and this particular variation is much the same. It's only the chocolately parts that are like that as the white is a creamy, marshmallowy filling much like typical Oreo filling.

Pretty literally, imagine eating an Oreo in a spreadable form that didn't require much if any chewing, and that's almost exactly what we got here. What have you wrought, TJ's!?!?!

So, it tastes good...but what do you do with it? That's the big question for Sandy and I. We sampled the good ol' 'merican way by taking our spoons directly to the jar. With some thought, we came up with waffles (maybe), toast (occasionally), pretzels, mixing into a smoothie or some ice cream, or eating from the jar. When I looked at the jar for perhaps some ideas, the label said all of the same. So, as tasty as the cookie spread is, it might be of some limited use, which as much as I enjoy all the other cookie butters, I see that as their weak point. Particularly tasty, not particularly versatile. We're open for suggestions here, folks.

Also, and this just a small thing, really, but when I saw hazelnuts were an ingredient, I hoped the cocoa swirl would be at least a little Nutella-esque. It's not really. Oh well.

If this really takes off, I can only imagine where the next cookie butter frontier will be. Chocolate chip cookie butter? Sugar cookie butter? Peanut butter cup cookie butter (or as I would call it, "buckeye butter")? For the holidays, my mom makes awesome Andes Candies cookies and candy cane cookies, amongst others...can we have holiday variations? Is there any kind of cookie we can't make into a butter? Is this really a road we need to go down? Is this why we're all fat? Is the entire "cookie butter" mania really just a Belgian conspiracy for total world domination? So many questions...

Sandy and I will enjoy the jar we have, and while it's tasty, it's not tempting enough for me to bust loose on my diet for it (down 20 pounds in about 2 months!), and once we're out, that'll probably be that. For the $3.69, though, it's a pretty good little occasional mini-indulgence. Matching fours.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Cookies & Creme Cookie Butter: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Pumpkin Seed Brittle

And now, it's time for something pumpkin. Puuuumpkin. <shamelessly drools and makes Homer Simpson-like gurgling noises> Orange autumn harvest-time delectability. I could link each instance of the word "pumpkin" in this blog post to a different pumpkin-flavored product review...but alas, I shall be lazy. You'll just have to type the word "pumpkin" into the search bar if you're really that interested. I think we have 18 or 19 posts about pumpkin at this point, and by the end of this season, we may have double that. 

Near the end of October last year, I received several death threats via email from readers who were sick and tired of pumpkin reviews. So I took a brief reprieve from the pumpkin-mania, only to receive an even larger number of death threats from fans who enjoyed the pumpkin reviews and demanded that I persist in writing them. I told those pumpkinophiles "Sure, but you have to protect me from the pumpkin-haters." They agreed. This Pumpkin Protection Agreement (PPA) carries into Pumpkin Season 2014 by default, just FYI. By reading this blog post, you agree to do everything in your power (which, realistically, may be nothing) to protect me from the pumpkinophobes.

Mmhmm. And on to the review. This really isn't a pumpkin product, strictly speaking. There's no pumpkin "fruit" in it. Just pumpkin seeds. And pumpkin pie spices. I'm sure this product would be absolutely revolting if it had significant amounts of actual pumpkin in it. But as it stands, it's a pleasantly sweet, salty, and spicy snack. If you're into pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie spices, you pretty much can't go wrong with the taste. The pumpkin seeds are salty and crunchy, the way they should be. The pumpkin spices are definitely there, but not overpowering. There's enough nutmeg and cinnamon to pick out both of those flavors in the mix, but this treat is sweet more than anything else. You folks who are into "salty and sweet" should dig the essence of this pumpkin seed brittle just fine.

On the down side, I wasn't a huge fan of the texture of this product. It's crunchy and brittle, the way this stuff's supposed to be—and the seeds were perfect as far as I could tell. But the candy part was just a little too sticky, if that makes any sense. When touching it with my fingers, there was a noticeable stick-factor. And while chewing the product, that stickiness was even worse. It almost felt like biting down on a piece of hard candy like a Jolly Rancher or something—like it wasn't intended to be chewed. It stuck to each and every crevice in between my teeth and prompted a massive tongue workout as I tried to dislodge the wads of partially-chewed candy from my molars. If I'd had any exposed fillings or dental work, this snack would have certainly instigated an emergency trip to the dentist. If you have caps, crowns, or shoddy fillings, take heed! I realize all brittle candy is like that to some extent, but I felt that this stuff was particularly sticktastic.

But other than the risk of incidental oral calamity—and an overwhelming desire to immediately brush my teeth after consumption—I enjoyed this product. I give it 3.5 stars. Sonia gives it 4.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.