I was in college when I'd first heard of horchata. We were at the local burrito place and one of my housemates asked if I wanted to try some.
"What is it?" I asked. "Mexican rice water," he replied. "Oh goodness no!" I said with revulsion.
Whoever first described horchata as "Mexican rice water" clearly flunked out of marketing school. It should be described as "a creamy Latin cinnamon sugar beverage," because that's what it is, and it's freaking delicious. Eventually I managed to get over the image of shady cartel members reusing water they'd used to boil filthy grains of rice to resell as a drink, and by the time I married Sonia, I was already enjoying horchata fairly regularly and it became a frequent purchase in our household as well as a fun drink to try at restaurants, parks, and other outings.
And this horchata ice cream is like a top-quality horchata beverage, but frozen. There are little chunks of "horchata flavored cookie pieces" ...!? I don't think horchata cookies are a thing...but I guess they are now. Holy cow. Has Trader Joe's been reading about how I like "stuff" in my ice cream? If any ice cream flavor would have done fine as a smooth, chunkless product, it's this one, but I gotta say the cookie bits only make it that much better.
They're like little pieces of crunchy churros almost. There's lots of 'em, and they're delicious. I might not have minded if they'd thrown in soft churros or soft "horchata cookies," but the crunchy kind works just fine here. They're a little hard to see because they're a similar color as the ice cream base.
The ice cream itself is even better—with the perfect amount of sweetness, creaminess, and cinnamon flavor. It tastes like real horchata and the texture is just about perfect, as well. There's not much in the way of rice flavor, but honestly, even Mexican rice water doesn't taste a whole lot like rice if you ask me.
One of the best desserts I've had in a long time. Even my Latina Trader Joe's cashier raved about it. Put this one in the hallowed halls of the Pantheon. $3.79 well spent. Will purchase again. And again....and again. Kosher. Perfect 10/10 from me. Sonia is down for 10/10 as well on Trader Joe's Horchata Ice Cream.
Sonia and I are both fascinated with Japanese culture. We often watch travel videos from the Land of the Rising Sun and we just finished Tokyo Vice season 2. Good show. Needless to say, Japan is on our bucket list for travel destinations. We both even took a stab at learning a bit of Japanese via the Duolingo app. I've since given up. I can barely learn Spanish.
For the most part, we really enjoy Japanese cuisine, too. We're both fond of good sushi. Sonia is big into authentic ramen dishes, and I love tempura anything. So I figured breaded chicken with some alluring Japanese dipping sauce would be absolutely scrumptious.
And I'm sure this dish has its fan base, but I wound up kinda wishing I just had a box full of Chick-fil-A nuggets and some honey mustard instead of this karaage. It's not terrible, it's just a bit oily and not super flavorful. The sauce, made of canola oil, egg yolk, vinegar, and garlic powder, along with a few other things, isn't too far a cry from plain mayonnaise if you ask me.
The chicken is all leg. I'm more of a white meat guy, to be honest. While most were soft and good quality dark meat, a few of the pieces were unpleasantly gristly and chewy. The breading was nice and crispy, but it didn't add a whole lot as far as taste is concerned.
Sonia was busy with work when I asked for her thoughts on this chicken dish.
"S'good," she blurted flatly.
I'll interpret that as something like 7 out of 10 stars.
$6.49 for the four serving bag, found in the frozen aisle. Looks like it's simply "Japanese inspired" rather than a true Japanese import. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you're familiar with authentic karaage. All I can tell you is that this wasn't my favorite, but you can't say I didn't have a go at it. I'd try the dish again but probably wouldn't purchase this TJ's offering a second time. Six out of ten stars for me for Trader Joe's Chicken Karaage.
While slicing my first piece of this cheesecake, I accidentally cut a bit too shallow in the middle of the dessert, leaving a bite-sized triangle of graham crackery crust all by itself with no lemony cream cheese on top still sitting there near the center of the confection. I made another incision to free the little section of grahamy goodness and popped it into my mouth. There was the expected graham cracker flavor, typical of traditional cheesecake, but there was also an unexpected blast of raw ginger.
Dang, I thought. This has too much ginger flavor. There's no way the lemon can shine through all this ginger. It was like a gingersnap cookie with, if anything, a bit too much raw ginger in the mix. Then I dug my fork into the slice, getting plenty of the creamy lemon layers, and tasted it...
Not only did the sweet-tart lemon outshine the ginger, it nearly eclipsed it completely. Each bite got more and more lemony, with real bits of lemon peel and rich, creamy cheese flavors. By the end of that slice, I'd nearly forgotten the gingery zing of that first bite of crust. I actually found myself wishing for a little more ginger flavor. It was nice to have it in the crust, but I feel like the body of the cheesecake could have used some ginger in order to balance out the lemon...and I'm a big fan of lemon flavored desserts.
The texture was just a tad spongier than I would have preferred, but you tend to get that with frozen cheesecakes. It's difficult to replicate that perfect dense creaminess you get with something fresh from a bakery. And the day-old slices tasted and felt tangibly less fresh than those that we tried immediately after thawing. Still, the cheesecake was thick and smooth and had a pleasant mouthfeel even if it wasn't a flawless representation of true fresh cheesecake.
The real draw here is the sweet and sour lemon zing. It's a nice summer dessert, and even just a small slice is quite satisfying. There are supposedly six servings in the box, but I think you could easily stretch it to eight or more.
$7.99 for the whole cheesecake. I don't think Sonia and I will buy this again just for ourselves, but I'd consider taking this to a group picnic or large gathering in the future. I give Trader Joe's Lemon Ginger Cheesecake 7/10 stars. Sonia will go with 8/10.
