Trader Joe's Dried Sweetened Hibiscus Flowers

This is a new and unusual Trader Joe's product. I've never seen any kind of flowers for sale as a foodstuff, as far as I can recall.

You can see what they look like in the second photo above. Nina combined some of them with fresh raspberries and some of TJ's excellent Classic Lemon Bars. They look distinctly...alien.

The little bit I know about what hibiscus tastes like I learned from a few previous Trader Joe's products. Even after eating a few of these dried hibiscus flowers last night, I still can't call to mind what they taste like, in the same way I can with the raspberries or the lemon bar. But at least now I recognize it, and when I was chewing on the flowers, I thought, "Oh yeah, I do remember having that before."

They're overly sweetened, so my impression was simultaneously the memory of hibiscus and a rather overwhelming amount of sugar. It would have been a better and more interesting experience if they had cut that back by half.

They have a pleasantly chewy texture, similar to that of several other dried fruits.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I had been looking for this on the shelves since learning of its existence several weeks ago, but Nina spotted it before I did. I'm glad I tried it, and I'd probably finish off the bag if it were in my house, but I didn't like these dried flowers enough to get a second bag.