Trader Joe's Chocolate Peanut Butter Light Ice Cream

This is just so-so ice cream, not especially rich or creamy. Then there's the additional problem that peanut butter just isn't a good flavor to put in ice cream. This would be better as plain chocolate.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Soft Baked Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Admittedly, these never had much of a chance of going on my favored list, because I have yet to encounter any product that successfully marries chocolate and peanut butter. If you ask me, these are two flavors that just don't quite work together, much as food manufacturers try to make them. (I do realize that mine is a minority position on this point.)

But I discovered that my lack of enthusiasm for these new cookies wasn't just me when Nina took a bite of one, scrunched up her face, and said, "Oh, those are not good."

It's not just that chocolate and peanut butter together are bad. It's that these cookies use bad chocolate and bad peanut butter.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I powered my way through two cookies, hoping against hope that they would somehow grow on me. Didn't happen. Nina ate half of one before giving up. The remainder went back to the store for a refund.

Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Blondies

Frozen treats, with no baking or other heating needed--just thaw either at room temperature or in the refrigerator.

I'm not a fan. The peanut butter to strawberry ratio is much too high. They need at least double the strawberry filling to set this right.

Nina liked them a lot: the variety of textures in every bite, the mix of salt and sweet (but not too sweet). But she agreed that they'd be better with more strawberry.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Organic Dark Chocolate PB&J Minis

I had a weird experience with these candies. I first tried them after dinner with Nina, and felt thoroughly meh about them. A week passed, and I ate the last three as part of a late-night snack alone, and quite liked them. I have some theories about these two different reactions, but they're all about my internal state of mind and have nothing to do with the product, so I'll spare you.

I've never cared for anything combining chocolate and peanut butter. And on first tasting, I thought, "Yep, more of that wrongness." But on second trial, I instead got a stronger sense of the raspberry filling, which oddly seemed to sort of buffer the clash between the chocolate and peanut butter--like The Dude's rug tying the room together in "The Big Lebowski." This completely surprised me.

Nina didn't like these. She thought the components weren't well-balanced, and the chocolate tasted cheap. She also noticed the strange portion numbers in the labeling: 3 pieces to a portion, 8 in the bag, contents "about 2 1/2" servings. So why not put 9 in the bag to make a whole number of servings? Well, Trader Joe's, what have you got to say for yourself on this excellent question?


Will I buy it again? 

No. Even on my more favorable second impression, they don't rise anywhere close to the level of favorite chocolates.

Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Cartwheel Cookies

Two bites into one of these, Nina said, "I declare these to be awful."

She is not wrong.

First, every single one of them was badly broken. They're unusually brittle, and they shatter, leaving crumbs everywhere.

Second, they're supposed to be peanut butter cookies, with more peanut butter in the filling. But the cookie part has zero peanut butter flavor; they seem to be just grossly over-sweetened sugar cookies.

Third, the peanut butter filling doesn't seem like real peanut butter. Though it does taste like peanuts, it's kind of dry and stiff. The box calls it "creamy." This is a lie.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I powered through 2/3 of the box over the course of a few nights, hoping against hope that my perception of them would improve. It didn't, and I threw the rest away.

For a perspective so different that it's hard to believe we ate the same product, see this from the good people at the "What's Good at Trader Joe's" blog.

Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Pretzels

Following the #TraderJoes hashtag on Twitter, I of course see what brand-new products catch people's attention. But I also see which older ones people express their undying love for--and this is one of the most frequent in that category. So I finally tried it.

I can't join the chorus of fans. The milk chocolate is nice, but the pretzel is just a thin shell between the chocolate and the peanut butter. And the peanut butter is, well, solidified, not creamy. I assume they have to sort of desiccate it in some way to keep its oils from soggifying the pretzel, but the result is that there's nothing "butter" about it.


Will I buy it again? 

No. Did not like.

Trader Joe's Premium Peanut Butter Roundels

It took me a while of munching on these to figure out what the center filling reminded me of, but when it hit, it seemed perfectly obvious: It's just like unbaked peanut-butter cookie dough, in appearance, taste, and texture.

The outside is a mix of dark and milk chocolate. Half of the "roundels" have a dark chocolate base with milk chocolate drizzled on top; the other half switch that around. The difference in overall taste between the two varieties is just what you'd expect.

I'm not sure whether to classify these as cookies or candy. The center being like cookie dough suggests "cookie," but there's no baking involved, so maybe they're more on the "candy" side. I attached both labels to this blog post to cover my bases.

As with many chocolate products coming out in the last three months of the year at Trader Joe's, I don't know if these are intended to be seasonal or permanent (or at least as "permanent" as anything at TJ's ever is).


Will I buy it again? 

No. I enjoyed them, but not enough for a revisit.

Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Protein Granola

This is one of the many, many items that I have purchased solely because they show up on the new-product shelf at Trader Joe's, and writing this blog means trying virtually anything there (except for things I know I'll hate, which I don't bother with).

It turned out to be one of those occasional pleasant surprises--a thing I like without having expected to. It's a great mix of crunchy and chewy, sweet and salty. I'm not a granola guy, so I haven't tried more than a few varieties in my life, but this is easily the best I've ever had.

My only complaint is that, while the clusters are easy to pick up and pop in your mouth, probably a third of the bag was just crumbs. There's no easy way to eat those.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes. On the days that Nina comes over to my place for dinner, I typically don't eat breakfast or lunch, but I need a little sumpin' to tide me over, and this is pretty much an ideal filler. I think it's going to be a snack I'll always keep on hand.


Addendum, October 31, 2017 

I have eaten two more bags of this, and now have three more in my cupboard. It has quickly become one of my all-time favorite snacks. I'm elevating it to Top Ten status.

Trader Joe's Mini Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

I am usually not a fan of the blend of chocolate and peanut butter. But I passed by the shelves of candy at TJ's the other day, and just had a sudden impulse to buy these.

They're pretty good, compared to other such things I've tried. I think that's probably because the tiny size means that there's a higher surface area:volume ratio, which translates to a higher chocolate:peanut butter ratio. The peanut butter is also appropriately salty, making it taste, I dunno, crisper or sharper, in nice contrast to the mellow milk chocolate.


Will I buy it again? 

No. There are many, many chocolate candies I like a lot better. But I'm not sorry I yielded to the urge to toss it in my basket just this once.

Trader Joe's Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I have never been keen on putting chocolate chips in peanut butter cookies--or in anything else with peanuts or peanut butter, for that matter. In the 1970s Reese's TV ads--"You got chocolate in my peanut butter!" "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!"--I always thought both complainants had a valid gripe, and they should not make up in the end. I realize that I'm in a minority here, but peanut butter and chocolate do not make a good match. On this point I will not yield.

But I decided to give these cookies a try anyway. They are surprisingly good peanut butter cookies--by far the thickest I've ever seen. I prefer peanut butter cookies to be made with creamy peanut butter rather than chunky, but I can overlook this flaw.

If you are a weirdo who actually likes peanut butter and chocolate together, well, these should suit you well. For me, I enjoy the cookies right up until a chunk of chocolate gets into a bite. Then it's like hearing a wrong note in a nice Mozart sonata.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's PB&J Bars

I went to a friend's table-games night this week, and took along this box of bars to share and to get some varied opinions. Four other guests tried them with me.

The majority opinion: "They're kind of weird," in both taste and texture. One said they're too sweet. One said the peanut butter seems almost non-existent. On the plus side, one said that they're not great, but would probably be welcomed by those with limited choices in the granola-bar category because of issues with gluten.

My observations: 1. Compared to the actual product, the box photo looks like they injected about ten times the amount of jelly. 2. Far and away the most prominent component is the oat shell, which is the least tasty, least interesting part. 3. I thought the peanut butter and jelly parts were balanced about right with each other, but both needed serious beefing up in relation to the oat shell. 4. They're kind of weird.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Creamy Unsalted Peanut Butter

This is the first peanut butter I've bought from Trader Joe's. (I reviewed the no-stir peanut butter first, because it was a brand-new product, but I was already deep into this jar when I did that.) I've heard people rave about some of TJ's peanut butters, but I couldn't remember exactly which ones they said they loved. So I kind of picked one at random.

It was an unfortunate choice.

First, this is one that you have to stir up every time you use it, because the oil separates out. That's annoying. But it wouldn't be a dealbreaker if the peanut butter were amazing. It's not.

I had never had unsalted peanut butter before--really didn't even know that there was such a thing. Closely related to that fact, I had never noticed the role that salt plays in the overall taste of peanut butter. Now I know: it's crucial.

I wouldn't call this stuff inedible. I've had it a few times, and I plan to finish the jar. But I find it unpalatable on its own. I have to put extra honey or jam on a sandwich with it to compensate for the peanut butter being less flavorful than a lifetime of experience has taught me to expect.

If I had a health condition that required me to drastically cut back on my sodium intake, I'm sure I'd be happy to have this product available. But I don't. And the absence of salt is not a minor impingement on the flavor--it's a wholesale change for the worse. I'm not ready to give it up.


Will I buy it again? 

No way. The double-whammy of having the tedium of stirring up the jar, plus the absence of salt, make this a one-time experiment I won't repeat.

Trader Joe's Creamy No Stir Peanut Butter Spread

This is a brand-new item at Trader Joe's. I had not even heard of it until last week, when I spotted it on the new-stuff shelf at my local store. There is a similar chunky-style version, which I won't be reviewing, because they're essentially identical, and I prefer creamy to chunky.

I believe that all of TJ's peanut butters prior to this have required stirring to redistribute the oil before each use. As the name implies, this one does not. You'd think that that means they must be using some sort of emulsifying agent--but you'd be wrong. Nothing in the ingredients list except peanuts, oil, sugar, and salt. How do they accomplish this? Black magic, I reckon.

For as long as I can remember, my preferred peanut butter has been Jif. The classic one, not the reduced-fat crap they try to foist on the public these days. I happened to have an jar at home ("happened" is probably misleading there, since I virtually always have a jar of Jif in the cupboard), so I was able to taste them side by side.

I was amazed: They're very, very similar--much more similar than when in the past I have compared Jif to Skippy or other brands.

Two differences stood out after a bit of back and forth. First, TJ's is a little grainier, a bit less smooth than Jif--but I would never have noticed this if I weren't trying them at the same time. In a sandwich, I would never pick out that difference. It's a non-issue for me.

Second, TJ's tastes saltier. This is the more prominent difference. But, amazingly, when I checked the labels, it turns out that TJ's has less sodium than Jif--125 mg versus 140 mg in a 32-gram serving. This puzzled me. I went back for another taste, and got the same result--TJ's is saltier. How? My best guess is that the salt granules are less thoroughly dissolved. When I pay attention, I can feel little bursts of saltiness dissolve on my tongue. In other words, I think TJ's tastes saltier because the salt granules have a chance to hit the taste buds more separated from the rest of the ingredients than is the case for Jif.

Sugar, fat, and protein content are, for all practical purposes, identical to Jif.

The TJ's is $1.99 for 16 ounces. Jif at my local Wal-Mart is $2.48 for the same amount. Bargain!

If you're wondering why this is "peanut butter spread" and not just "peanut butter," well, so am I. My first guess was that there is some federal labeling standard for "peanut butter" that this doesn't comply with, so they had to call it a "spread." I was only interested enough to invest about 5 minutes of investigation. I found this history of the FDA's standards for peanut butter. It seems that to be "peanut butter," the product must have a minimum peanut content of 90%--i.e., a maximum of 10% other ingredients. The TJ's label claims that it's 90% peanuts. So my guess is that they're right at that minimum, and decided to add the word "spread" to cover themselves legally in the event that some randomly sampled jar is tested and falls a wee bit short. That could trigger recalls, bad publicity, lawsuits, regulatory fines, etc., so TJ's decided to just add a word to the product name and avoid the problem. This is pure speculation on my part. As they say, don't quote me on that.


Will I buy it again? 

Definitely. I like it every bit as much as the one I've been regularly using for several decades. It's not often I can say that about a food product. I don't think I need to replace Jif as my first choice. They're equal for me, so I'll just buy whichever I come across first when I'm in need. Because of the price advantage and because I make many more trips to TJ's than to other stores, it's likely that this will become, by default, my new staple.


Addendum 

Trader Joe's has now posted a description of the product, here.