Trader Joe's English Ale Cheddar Cheese with Mustard

Wait...what? How is the vernal equinox now upon us? 2016 just started!

On the plus side, that means it's almost April and with it comes baseball season.

On the other...that means the demise of Trader Joe's English Ale Cheddar Cheese with Mustard is on deck. So, ya better step up to the plate soon so take a swing at TJ's spotlight cheese of the month.

Enough of the cheesy baseball puns. This cheddar is downright delish. Made with a splash or two of Old Speckled Hen and a dash or three of mustard spices, this otherwise fairly mild, creamy cheddar packs a lot of earthy goodness into every bite. It's sophisticated enough that I wanted to eat each cube pinkie-out style, yet accessible to the point that my kids would devour the whole chunk "Summer of George" style if I'd let them. The cheddar paired well with our Irish bangers the other week, but made great snacking/lunch-munching aside some turkey or pretzels. And yes, it did make me consider drinking a beer, just perhaps not Old Speckled Hen because I'm not my mom.

Sold in various size chunks at $8.99 a pound. Get it while you can.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's English Ale Cheddar Cheese with Mustard: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Cookie Butter Puppy-Chow

Editor's note: Here's another guest post from my talented, witty, extremely attractive, and all around awesome wife. Yes, I outkicked my coverage. Anyways, here's a simple recipe using all TJ's ingredients for one heckuva great snack! Addictive. 

One of our favorite stories here is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. M likes to read it fairly often. If you aren't familiar, it's about giving a mouse a cookie and all the things that will happen if you do (he'll want some milk, a napkin, a hair cut...it goes on and on, until he asks for another cookie.) We'll, if you give a preschooler a snack, she'll ask for some milk to go with it. And if she asks for milk to go with it, she'll probably have to go to the bathroom while you're trying to get two kids through a grocery store at nap time. When she gets done with the bathroom, she will notice the papers lining the hallway and ask what they are. When she learns that they're recipes, she'll ask if she can make something. When you find something that she would actually have a chance of eating, you will have to go back through the grocery store to gather all the ingredients. Once you have all the ingredients, you will go home for lunch. After eating lunch, the preschooler will ask for a glass of milk, and chances are, she will want a snack to go with it...

...And that is how we ended up making Cookie Butter Buddies (or puppy-chow.) I don't know if your Trader Joe's has recipes hanging up by the restrooms, but ours has a ton, and there are a lot of good looking things to make! We picked this recipe because it was something fairly simple and kid friendly and approved.

 

• 1 cup TJ's Speculoos Cookie Butter
• 1/4 cup TJ's Unsalted Butter
• 1 package TJ's Mini Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
• 1 box Puffins Cereal (Original, Cinnamon or Peanut Butter)
• 1-2 cups TJ's Organic Powdered Sugar (seasonal)
• 1/2 cup TJ's Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops

Mmm, doesn't that look good?

First, melt about 8 tablespoons of butter (I chose Kerrygold because I love it, and would pretty much eat it if it were socially acceptable to walk around eating sticks of butter), the cup of cookie butter, I didn't actually measure this though, I just scooped out about half a jar, and the box of Milk Chocolate Mini Peanut Butter Cups, together in the microwave, in about 30 second intervals, until melted all together. In a large bowl, dump out the box of Puffins (M chose peanut butter, but I bet the cinnamon would taste great!) and pour on the chocolate mixture. Stir to coat. This was probably M's favorite part..."Stir! Stir! Stir!" she happily chanted while mixing it all up, leaving me for the "expert touch."

Add in about 2 cups of powdered sugar. I started with one cup, and added from there, until your cereal is coated.

Wimbly's dinner...our our dessert?

Spread it onto baking sheets so that it can cool and harden a bit. It looked so much like dog food when I did this, that it was easy to see where it gets the name puppy-chow.

Once it's set you can put it back into a bowl or into a large ziplock bag, add more powdered sugar, and stir or shake to cover it all. Add in a handful of the chocolate covered sunflower seeds and you've got a cookiebuttery, crunchy, tasty, and very, very, sweet treat.

The consensus at our how was that it was pretty good, except from M, who wanted some random left over Christmas candy instead. We ended up sending a little over half into Russ's work and kept a bowl here, which we ended up taking it to church to share because it was still too much. All and all? It was a super simple, quick snack, very kid friendly, and could probably be adapted to be nut free (you could probably leave out the pb cups and use a different kind of Puffin and just use chocolate and cookie butter to make it nut free)

So, our first cooking with a TJ's recipe gets 8 Golden Spoons.

Oh yeah, if you eat this, you'll probably want a glass of milk to go with it...

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Crispy Crunchy Ginger Chunk Cookies

A long time ago, Sonia and I checked out the chocolate chip equivalent of these and were fairly impressed. The cookie base is pretty much the same animal here. It's crispy and crunchy, as the name would imply. I do prefer soft cookies, but as crispy cookies go, these are top-shelf. I'm sure it's much more difficult to make a gluten-free soft cookie, anyway.

Flavor-wise, there's a nice sweet butteriness to the cookie. If you're taking modest bites, not every bite has a chunk of ginger, but the ones that do have a lot of ginger. Sonia wishes it were more evenly distributed. I totally agree. I'd prefer ginger bits to ginger chunks—which, incidentally, have nothing to do with fat redheads. Also, never ever Google "fat redheads."

The zesty, spicy zing of the ginger isn't quite as potent as that of some other products we've seen in the past, such as the Ginger, Almond & Cashew Cereal, but it's still strong enough to get your attention. In this instance, though, we both think the ginger flavor blends pretty well with the rice flour base.

As the front of the packaging suggests, there is a supple "melt in your mouth" quality about these baked goodies that's very pleasant for the gluten-sensitive and non-gluten-sensitive alike. As far as scores go, it looks like another four stars from Sonia and another three and a half stars from me.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.