Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Cookie Butter Filled Elephant Dung Espresso Beans

We sh...err, kid, you not.

I mean, talk about taking a real crapshoot with a product. It's not the first time that Big Joe has gambled big and sent us a product to sample and grade before hitting the markets...athough those salmon muffins didn't work due to spontaneous human combustion concerns, and that people food product last year just didn't get enough people's tails wagging, apparently. Not every product can create a splash.

Well, here's one that really pushes it to a new extreme: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Speculoos Cookie Butter Filled Elephant Dung Espresso Beans. Read it over again.

Yes.

That's right.

Elephant. Dung.

Okay, okay, okay. Don't poop yourself out over this. Relax. And allow us to drop these info nuggets on you.

Coffee beans and elephant dung are an actual thing. It's called Black Ivory Coffee, which, according to this article, is the world's most expensive coffee at north of $70 a cup. Apparently, the pachydermal digestive process sweetens the natural bitterness of coffee through some type of fermentation process that heightens the natural sugars within the bean itself. Interesting. And apparently pretty tasty.

That's all well and good, you say, but those coffee beans get cleaned up before making their way to the roaster. This is something else entirely. Well, we're trusting this isn't a load of bull, but we've heard that apparently there was an incident one day at the elephant reservation/coffee plantation that involved a cookie butter tanker being stampeded, overturned, and emptied by a herd of hangry over-caffeinated mastodons. The result? A day long bingefest on cookie butter, with only an occasional coffee break. Or, as we would probably call it, heaven. Now, when the time came to collect the passed coffee beans, one of the workers noticed that there was a very distinct aroma that was not the usual brand wafting around. It smelled...speculoosy. Even...gulp...deliciously speculoosy. He then had the brilliant insight that whatever goes in would be exactly what came out, and if the elephants had had only coffee beans and cookie butter, well...Out of the most daring taste test of all time, we now have these pootie pellets, only covered with dark chocolate to literally help sugarcoat the whole experience.

So, how does it taste?

Tastes like the bomb. You have good, kinda fruity, sweet coffee beans. There's the cookie butter, um, "filling" that tastes a lot like cookie butter, just a tad earthier and nuttier. And the dark chocolate helps bind it all together and serves as a remarkably convincing textural deceiver. There's no exact explanation for it all - just dare yourself and plop one in. You'll be well relieved afterwards, trust me.

Despite my initial hesitation, I'm glad I've decided to endure the manure and give these bowel-y bonbons a try. I mean, now we have definitive proof that cookie butter will make anything taste good. Next time someone tells me to go eat poop, well, I've got my go-to poo-poo. Literally. A five. Sandy, although she likes them, still can't quite get over the whole concept, and can give them nothing more than a solid number 2.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Speculoos Cookie Butter Filled Elephant Dung Espresso Beans: 7 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Raw Shelled Hemp Seed

How many substances are there in the world you can eat, wear, and smoke? Not many, that's for sure. But hemp is one of them. As of the time I wrote this post, I've done exactly two out of the three. That's right, I've never smoked weed. Not that I'm judging you if you have. But I used to wear a hemp necklace made by a friend, because I liked the hippie look...and just recently, I started eating a bag of hemp seed from TJ's. To be fair, I think the smokin' kind of hemp comes from a different variety of cannabis plant, but still, that's one multi-talented weed.

At $5.49 per package, it's not cheap. You could probably buy an ounce or two of the smokable stuff for that price. Well, not quite...but still these hemp hearts are pricey little devils. We probably wouldn't have checked them out if it weren't for the fact that they were Spotted on Shelves last week and our ever-present desire to please our loyal readers. Russ, Sandy, Sonia, and I would try anything for you guys. If you don't believe us, just stay tuned for even more outrageous products this week.

But back to the hemp seed. It's nutty. Tastes like other seeds I've had...unsalted sunflower, in particular, but perhaps a bit more planty—a bit more "green," if you will. The texture is softer than a normal seed. It's almost like a cross between a sprout and a seed. And they're very, very tiny—about the size of an average bread crumb. Holding a handful, they kind of feel like silky, supple grains of sand.

The back of the packaging suggests eating them with yogurt. I tried that, but I wasn't particularly enthused with the outcome. The subtle nutty flavor was overpowered by the fruit flavor in the yogurt, and the combination of textures just didn't work for me. If you think you'd ever want to put sunflower

seeds in your yogurt, then maybe it's worth trying with hemp seeds, but I personally would stick to salads and hummus and more savory foods when it comes to mixing in hemp hearts.

They're healthy little buggers, with boatloads of omega 6 and protein in each serving, but be warned, they're chock full of fat, too. I'm pretty sure it's "good fat," and as one reader pointed out, carbs tend to make people fat more than fat itself does. They're very natural, with only one single solitary ingredient: raw shelled hemp seed. All in all, not a bad investment for adventurous eaters and health nuts. Have some floss on stand-by, because they do get stuck between one's teeth quite readily.

3 from me. 3.5 from Sonia.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Chocolate Coconut Cream Cupcakes

After my review earlier this week of bacon-ated popcorn, a commenter asked me if I were fat. I gotta admit, the question made me pause for a minute to try and figure out what the motive was behind the question. Jest? Semi-anonymous Internet mockery? Something else? Meh, I answered honestly and straightforwardly: Nope. Well, my BMI says I am, slightly, but since August I've dropped sixty (as in six-zero) pounds by following a mostly Paleo diet, watching portions (usually - the bacon popcorn did not count!), and running every other morning (I'm training to run two legs of the Pittsburgh marathon relay in early May - anywhere from nine to twelve miles - at this time last year I could run/walk maybe a mile before wanting to pass out!). Feels so good to have found something that works for me after being of the chunky variety pretty much my entire existence thus far - my other health barometers besides weight are looking much, much better, too.

After some reflection and a polite exchange, I get where the question came from, though: We review a lot of junky food on this here blog. It probably gives the impression that I/we eat a lot of crap. The reason we do so is simple: a review on some healthyish juice, for example, will take all day to get the same number of hits that a review on whatever new-fangled cookie butter concoction* will get in a good hour. Supply and demand. While there's a lot of passion and love behind what we do, there's also a business side here.

All that to justify another junk item: Trader Joe's Chocolate Coconut Cream Cupcakes. We got these the other week, the same night as our ill-fated gamble sushi excursion. Perhaps in addition to being our allotted one treat for a week to string out over several desserts, I bought them as motivation to muster through whatever part of my dinner I could.

Well, they're decent. I wouldn't say great. But not bad. The real highlight of these cupcakes is the frosting and filling - I mean, go figure, right? On top there's a thick double layer of fudgy chocolate, with a little squirt of coconut cream, topped off with a chocolate covered almond. Imagine crossbreeding a Mounds bar with an Almond Joy, and that's pretty close to what we got going on here. Thick, rich, sugary and delicious. Texturally there wasn't too much of the typical coconut feel - indeed, pretty creamy.

And as you can see by the photo up above, in the middle of the cupcake there's a reservoir of even more coconut cream. Similar in taste but not consistency with the stuff on the summit, it's a good little touch, albeit a little ho-hum. I don't think that's the filling's fault, but rather the actual cake part. The cake itself is an average chocolate example at best - I think I've made better from a box mix. It's just kinda dull and dry and it mutes most bites instead of framing and balancing well.

Still, everything but the cupcake part of the cupcake was pretty tasty. They're not tempting enough to make me want to break my diet by any stretch, but the cupcakes did serve as a nice little cheat a few times - usually I split one with my daughter. At $3.99 for the set of the four, they're a decent enough value, I guess, but not astounding. Sandy liked the frosting and all a little more than me, giving these guys a four overall, while I counter with a three.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Chocolate Coconut Cream Cupcakes: 7 out of 10 Golden Spoons
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* Keep tuned for an exciting product announcement coming next week - can't say anything more than that right now!