Trader Joe's Pumpkins Sugar Cookie Dough

These are pretty commonplace sugar cookies in most regards. The pumpkins are cute, but they're just there for decoration. No pumpkin or pumpkin spices here. And honestly, the pumpkins aren't even all that distinct once you bake the cookies. They're like a faded shade of orange on a golden-brown background.

Flavor-wise, there's nothing wrong with these cookies. They taste like every other sugar cookie I've ever had. Particularly when they're fresh out of the oven, they're pretty scrumptious, both taste and texture-wise. They're nice and soft, warm, and the sweetness just melts in your mouth.

Unfortunately, after an hour or so, these cookies lose almost all of their charm. They get oddly hard and crunchy. They still taste fine, thankfully, but they're not the type of snack or dessert that I'm craving with any regularity. If you have a big family, it wouldn't be any problem at all to finish them within a few minutes. If you're just an individual or a couple, you might struggle to finish the dozen.

Check out the video review embedded below to see me (Nathan) refer to myself as a "culinary idiot," use a tape measure to space the cookies exactly three inches apart, and find out what the only class I ever flunked in school was. Madcap antics ensue when Sonia accidentally hits the time lapse button to record most of the video. It's five minutes of fun you don't want to miss.

$3.99 for 12 sugar cookies, each one about 2.5 inches in diameter, found in the refrigerated section. Kosher. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes (ours took closer to 15). 

Nothing particularly wrong with this product, but nothing particularly memorable either. Probably wouldn't buy again. Seven out of ten stars from me for Trader Joe's Pumpkins Sugar Cookie Dough. The beautiful wifey will go with seven and a half.

Bottom line: 7.25 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Icelandic Style Skyr Yogurt

Never had Icelandic yogurt before. "Skyr" sure sounds like an Icelandic word, though. I bet Björk eats a lot of skyr.

It's very thick. It's on par with Greek yogurt in terms of thickness. It's not an unpleasant texture by any means, but I almost want to compare it to the texture of paste. Not that I've ever eaten paste. I mean, some kids did, but I wasn't one of those kids. I was pretty weird as a kid, but not like paste-eater weird.

Sonia wanted to say the texture was slightly "gritty." I think that's primarily from the berry base, which might contain some faint whispers of raspberry seeds or something along those lines. I don't know that I'd call it gritty. It was pretty smooth to me. Thick. Tacky. But not particularly coarse.

The flavor is unusually subtle. In both cases, there's just a faint fruit flavor behind the tangy yogurt essences. It's slightly sweet—and I mean very slightly sweet. It's almost like what you'd get if you mixed plain Greek yogurt with a spoonful or two of berry flavored yogurt. Color-wise, the product is an extremely faint shade of pink, just a hair on the reddish side of plain yogurt white. Both flavors look remarkably similar.

On the plus side, calories and fat are very low. Protein, on the other hand, is very high. Each cup boasts 15 or 16 grams, about a third of your recommended daily allowance. This skyr yogurt is quite filling.

$1.19 for each 5.3 oz cup—40 cents to one dollar cheaper than leading brands of Greek yogurt in the same size container. Kosher. Found in the refrigerated yogurt and cheese section. Trader Joe's also sells a vanilla skyr flavor, but we weren't able to get our hands on that one this go around. Despite its health benefits, Sonia and I both think we'd stick to more familiar, more palatable yogurts before buying Trader Joe's Icelandic Style Raspberry and Cherry Skyr Lowfat Yogurts again. Still, we're very glad to have tried this interesting product. Seven out of ten stars from both of us.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Apple Cinnamon Sourdough Bread

Sonia has gotten me into sourdough. It's so much better for your gut than regular bread. After you get used to it, you miss that tangy taste if you go back to a normal loaf. Even when used for sandwiches, paired with soup, or turned into croutons for a salad, sourdough is superior in almost every way.

That said, this product isn't very sour at all. You can't taste that typical sourdough starter like you can in the really good stuff. I guess they didn't want to make it too sour since the tartness might detract from the apple cinnamon sweetness they were going for as well.

There are little pieces of apple all through the bread. They lend a nice wholesome harvesty vibe. There's some brown sugar sweetness in the background, which is nice. It's not too extreme. If anything, I almost wish it were a tad sweeter. This is definitely not a dessert bread.

But that can be a good thing. It's more versatile that way. Sonia made a turkey and brie sandwich with hers and really enjoyed it. She said it works way better than regular bread for that type of application.

She also made French toast which worked far better than I imagined it would. You don't really think of apple cinnamon going with eggs necessarily, but the whole concoction was surprisingly delicious, with or without maple syrup. I was just fine toasting a slice or two, adding butter, and munching on them the old-fashioned way, too. Of course, it's quite convenient that they're already sliced. Some sourdough you have to cut yourself.

It's about five bucks for just over a pound of bread, found with the baked goods. Product of Canada. Sonia would buy again. She gives Trader Joe's Sliced Apple Cinnamon Sourdough Bread eight and a half out of ten stars. Put me down for seven and a half on this one.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Tangerine Vanilla Sparkling Water

My parents always had Perrier water on hand for some reason. It only came in glass bottles back then as far as I know. They let me try it as a youngster, and I actually loved it. It was hard to go back to traditional flat water after getting used to Perrier. I remember my old babysitter-slash-adopted grandmother Minnie used to call it "Pierre water." Bless her heart.

For years, I was a soda freak. I drank more Dr. Pepper than water as a teenager. Then I switched to diet sodas as a young adult. In my thirties, I started drinking these flavored sparkling waters in a can. I'm a pretty big fan of all the sparkling waters: Bubly, La Croix, Polar, Waterloo, you name it—and my favorite right now is Topo Chico. So good.

We've reviewed a bunch of these flavors of Trader Joe's sparkling water. See: Green Apple, Winter Sangria, and Cranberry Clementine. And of course, we looked at their old school lemon and lime mineral waters back in the day. This one's not bad, but I do have to say it's my least favorite of Trader Joe's flavors so far.

The tangerine taste isn't nearly potent enough. It's there, but it's very faint. You can taste vanilla, but it's such a strange vanilla. As much as I love vanilla flavor, it doesn't really lend itself to water. It needs a bit of creaminess or sweetness to work. Citrus flavors like tangerine make excellent additives to water, sparkling or otherwise, but this one simply doesn't have enough of it.

$3.49 for 8 cans. Kosher. Zero calories. I'd buy any of the other flavors I've tried again before this one. Still, I'm sure some folks will enjoy it just fine. Sonia and I will both go with seven out of ten on Trader Joe's Tangerine Vanilla Sparkling Water.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Apizza Gouda Cheese

If you do an internet search for "apizza gouda" this product is the only thing that comes up. Not sure why we're adding an "a" to the beginning of the word "pizza" because this is essentially just pizza-flavored cheese. Maybe it's there for searchability purposes? Trader Joe's offering pops up if you search for "pizza gouda," but so do many other products and recipes.

At any rate, we paid $5.85 for our wedge of cheese. It's about 13 bucks a pound. Not a bad value, considering it's imported from the Netherlands. You'd think it's Italian, right? Nope. It's Dutch. The striking color and unique name has raised more than a few eyebrows over the past month or two. I know we're not the first ones to review it, but if you read on, I'm sure you'll feel enlightened.

Tasting the cheese straight out of the plastic wrapper, I must admit I wasn't impressed. It was very tomatoey. The spices were quite potent, too. I tasted oregano, garlic, and a faint bit of vinegar. The gouda flavor didn't shine through the veggies and seasonings as much as I would have liked it to.

So we decided to experiment. The beautiful wifey made a grilled cheese sandwich first. Wow. What a difference. When placed on bread, the apizza cheese emulated the flavor of pizza. Imagine that. Nothing but a bit of butter for grilling, some nice thick slices of sourdough, and this apizza gouda, melted, made an outstanding snack. I didn't even whine about not having soup. If I eat grilled cheese, I almost always want soup. In this case, I just inhaled the sandwich with reckless abandon. What kind of soup would go with it? Your guess is as good as mine. Tomato, I suppose.

Then we tried some quesadillas. Not bad. I preferred the grilled cheese since the bread is much thicker than our tiny corn tortillas. Sonia, on the other hand, liked the quesadillas better. She is Mexican, after all.

Finally, we made some flatbread pizzas. We used Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Lavash Flatbread as the base and topped it with this cheese, canned white meat chicken, olives, spinach, and onions. Sonia added a little pesto to hers. We both agreed that one was the best of all. The apizza gouda served as both the tomato sauce and the cheese and all the flavors blended together beautifully. For pictures of the pizzas, simply click on that review of the lavash flatbread or watch the video embedded below.

It's not a great standalone cheese in my humble opinion, but there's a lot you can do with it. Sonia gives Trader Joe's Apizza Gouda eight out of ten stars. I'm torn. It's interesting enough, but it's just so weird and funky unless you heat it up and add it to something else...I'll be nice and give it seven and a half stars.

Bottom line: 7.75 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Lavash Flatbread

Nate's Notes: Penned by former contributor Russ, this review was originally posted March 29, 2011. This product disappeared for some time circa 2016 and then reappeared recently. The packaging is slightly different, they've added "Whole Wheat" to the title, and unsurprisingly the price has increased. It's still a great product and Sonia and I don't have much to add or subtract from the original article, so we've simply updated the pictures and bumped the post for our 2025 audience. Take note the original publishing was 329 and it's being re-posted on 923. Spooky.

Am I wrong, but there's something to be said for good, cheap carbs, right?

Probably the most famous cheap carb is the beloved Ramen noodle package. Well, "beloved" might be a stretch, but it's a pretty universal experience for college kids to subsist on them for long stretches of time. I certainly was one of them. My sophomore year, I sincerely doubt I went a day without a meal that involved either Ramen or leftover pizza from the dinner shift at Papa John's. It certainly helped that they were 10 for a buck at the local grocery shop. Some nights I'd eat two packages, other nights I'd mix in some frozen veggies and maybe make a piece of chicken. But man, all the Ramen ... I don't know how I didn't die from malnutrition. Once I was really, truly, ineffably sick of them, my grandmother came to the rescue and sent me a Ramen noodle cookbook. I had no idea about all the different possible uses for Ramen ... all the different stir-fries and noodle-based dishes, and even things like salads and pizza (using the noodles as a crust). That kept me going on them throughout the rest of my college years until I could finally routinely afford better starchy goods, like shells and cheese.

flatbread pizza with chicken, spinach, onions, and apizza gouda

Anyways, I love me some carbs. I could never be a legit vegetarian because I like meat waaay too much, and Dr. Atkins and I would never be dietary BFFs because he'd be slapping bagels out of my hands way too often. And the more ways I can use a single form of carb (like the Ramen noodles) the better.

That's why I like Trader Joe's Lavash so much. It's a pretty simple product, it's just a legal-document sized ( 9.5 x 13) rectangle of rather plain baked dough. But, like the package says, this is some fairly versatile stuff, and there's a lot of it. The first time Sandy and I broke it out, we used it as a crust for a thin crust basil pesto pizza. It was good enough that we've used it a couple more times as a crust since then. When baked, it gets really crispy and crackery when the sides and corners get browned and curled up. I'd definitely recommend if using it for a pizza, let it bake for a little while longer than you'd figure otherwise as the middle can get a little sogged down with sauce, etc, but rebounds nicely if given the proper oven lovin' time. 

But that's not the only good use of the lavash. I've made a breakfast wrap or two with it, and it held up with the eggs and cheese well. Sandy's taken it to work a couple times and used it like a tortilla with some rice and beans, and reported satisfactory results. The great thing is, there's six of them in a package ($2.19 for 6 in 2011—$2.99 for 4 in 2025) so there's plenty of it with which to experiment. I'd imagine they'd be pretty good cut and baked to munch on like a pita chip, or maybe even buttered, sugared, and cinnamoned, then cut into strips and baked for a dessert. Or maybe make some garlic breadsticks out of them in a similar fashion ... the possibilities may be endless.

The form of the lavash is pretty pliable, too. We tend to keep bread in the fridge to extend the shelf life some. I just wolfed down the last two-week old half-sheet remnant a few minutes ago, and it was as soft, floury, and flexible as the first time we used it. I could literally bend it any which way, and it wasn't stiffened enough to crack or break. Yet, it easily rips in a straight-enough line if you ask it to. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed overall.

Sandy gives it a 4.5 overall. "Mmm ... carbs ... it's good and it works. Not much else to be said," she says. Considering that I find myself craving a lavash-crust pizza once or twice a week, I'm inclined to be in the same ballpark. Part of me wishes it had a bit more flavor, like some sesame or poppy seeds mixed in (that's pretty common in Middle Eastern countries, from where this was inspired), but its plainness lends itself better to the overall versatility to use it to make it part of something of your own creation. Sounds like a 4.5 to me as well.

Bottom line: 9 out of 10 Golden Spoons.

Trader Joe's Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Frosting

Last year we looked at some Danish pastries that made cardamom the star of the spice show. I wasn't particularly smitten with those, but Sonia liked them pretty well. I simply prefer good old American cinnamon buns.

And you might expect this product to be exactly that: a classic Cinnabon-esque dessert treat. However, this too is an actual product of Denmark. I'm not sure how that works. Baked fresh in Copenhagen? And then...teleported to Trader Joe's all over the USA?

This product is almost like if you split the difference between the above-mentioned Brown Sugar Cardamom Buns and your classic American cinnamon bun. I could have sworn I tasted cardamom or clove in ours, but there's nothing like that listed in the ingredients. It's just molasses, brown sugar, and cinnamon in terms of spices and sweeteners.

There's a tartness to these buns that's atypical of most cinnamon buns I've tried. It's unexpected but not entirely unwelcome. I see "citrus fiber" and "cheese culture" in the ingredients. It could be either of those elements providing the tang.

All things considered, though, these treats are sweet, bready, and indulgent. They're much better when warmed up for a spell. I was worried they'd dry out in the oven, so we nuked ours for 12 seconds the first time. They were even better when zapped for about 20 seconds. The cream cheese frosting—arguably the best part of the product—melts and dribbles all over the buns and wakes up a lot of the pastry's more subtle flavors.

As decent and unique as these baked goods are, I think both Sonia and I would opt for other fall treats before picking up this product again. I'll throw out seven out of ten stars for Trader Joe's Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Frosting. The beautiful wifey will go with eight out of ten.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Pumpkin Loaf

In the tradition of other great Trader Joe's brand loaves, here we have the long-awaited, coveted pumpkin loaf. We've seen Pancake Bread, Banana Bread, and Gingerbread Loaf in very similar packages throughout the years. Without further loafing around, let's take a look at the product at hand.

It's got those typical pumpkin spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and clove. It's a nice, dense, bready treat. Our specimen was a tad dry—a full day before the "best by" date on the sticker—but certainly not to the point of inedibility.

The crystallized "spiced sugar topping" is a nice touch. It's slightly crunchy and adds some interesting texture. The rest of the loaf is much softer, but it's also very crumbly—to the point where placing a slice in a regular toaster is pretty much out of the question. A toaster oven, on the other hand, is a great option for warming.

We found heating the slices greatly helped wake up all the flavors and allowed butter and other toppings to melt into the product and help offset any dryness. Even 12-15 seconds in the microwave did the trick.

We tried the loaf topped with the recently-reviewed Apple Pie Spread, and it was absolutely delicious that way if you want something ridiculously sweet and indulgent. Plain butter or plain cream cheese worked just fine, too.

Compared to Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice Mini Sheet Cake, Sonia and I both found this offering wanting just a tad. It can be fixed up quite nicely, but it's not as good on its own. $4.99 for the eight serving loaf, found in the baked goods section. Probably would opt for other pumpkin treats before repurchasing this one. Seven out of ten stars from me for Trader Joe's Pumpkin Loaf. The beautiful wifey will go with seven and a half.

Bottom line: 7.25 out of 10.