Trader Joe's Graham Cracker Squares

During these coldest days of winter, certain rooms in our house remain a bit chilly even with the furnace on, so I dusted off our trusty Buddy Heater from our full-time RVing days. We always have a few small propane tanks on hand in case of a power outage, so I put one on the Buddy and fired it up to raise the temp in our office a few degrees.

Then it occurred to me that using the propane-generated flame simply for heat might be a bit wasteful. I mean, it's not exactly a wood fire at a campsite, but there's easily enough heat there to toast a marshmallow, or at least to get it nice and gooey on the inside. Fortunately we had marshmallows stashed away in the pantry...and right next to them a chocolate bar.

"Man, if only we had graham crackers, we could make s'mores right in the office," I thought to myself. The beautiful wifey reminded me that not only did we have graham crackers, but we had Trader Joe's Graham Cracker Squares in our "maybe to be reviewed" section. Sweet.

If we're talking actual graham crackers and not cutesy little animal-shaped graham cookies, I think the only ones I've ever had were the traditional Nabisco or Kellogg's brand or maybe a generic store-brand imitation. There's nothing wrong with regular graham crackers, especially if you're using them for s'mores. They have little perforation lines so you can snap them in half or in quarters. They're pretty flat, slightly honey sweet, and crunchy.

But Trader Joe's offering is significantly puffier. They're not soft, they're still crunchy, but they're a little more three-dimensional. They come in perfect s'more-optimized squares—hence the name Graham Cracker Squares. Taste-wise, they're pretty much what you'd expect. No tricks. No gimmicks. No reinvention of the wheel here.

Taste-wise, there's not much of a difference between TJ's squares and traditional Honey Maid or what have you, but I like the format of these a little more. Traditional graham crackers might get three and a half stars from me and four from Sonia, so we'll go half a star higher for these.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.