There are certain things I don't ever really want Trader Joe's to come out with: banana flavored horseradish sauce, caramel baba ghanoush, hot dog ice cream, any kind of kale-based dessert, or elephant dung espresso beans, just for a few examples. I might have added chocolate hummus to that list if we had not, in fact, purchased it on our last TJ's run.
But purchase it we did, despite both Sonia and I initially reacting with disgust. Could a combination that odd possibly be good? Sure, anything's possible. I was kinda hoping that it would be just one of those marketing snafus—you know something that doesn't necessarily sound good, but actually is good—not unlike purple yam ice cream, I guess.
Somebody tweeted about this product last week. Of course, I can't find the tweet now, but it said something to the effect of "The chocolate hummus is great. It tastes like brownie dough." Sounded promising. I was thinking, "Well if that's the case, then why didn't they just call it 'vegan brownie dough dip' or something moderately enticing instead of chocolate hummus...?" Then they could just let us discover that it's made with garbanzo beans after we've had a strawberry or two dipped in it and we've already fallen in love with it. Everybody wins.
Dessert hummus just didn't sound appealing to me, but I absolutely love chick peas, hummus, and I don't have any major problems with chocolate, either. So we dove right in. Aaaand at first bite, I tasted chocolate...and hummus. Just in case the first bite was a fluke, I took a second. Again, chocolate....and hummus. They didn't call it "brownie dough dip" because it's chocolate hummus. It is hummus...that's chocolate flavored. And there's just not quite enough chocolate flavor to drown out the garbanzo-y hummus flavor, which, again, I love...just not when it's mixed with chocolate. It's truly very close to the unappetizing flavor I imagined in my mind when I first heard the phrase "chocolate hummus." It's a darker, cocoa-ish chocolate flavor that's not very sweet, but still characteristically very chocolatey, and in my opinion, doesn't blend very well with the earthy, legumey goodness of chick peas.
Everybody knows strawberries and chocolate go great together. Would you ever add hummus to your chocolate strawberries? Did it ever occur to anyone to mix Gone Berry Crazy with hummus? If your answer to either of those questions is "yes," then go ahead and try this stuff. You might love it. I, however, did not.
Even the texture is identical to traditional hummus. There's a fair amount of grittiness to it. I wasn't a huge fan of the way it mixed with fruit. Strawberries, raspberries. Neither worked perfectly in my opinion. I tried it with pita bread, just because, you know...hummus and pita, right? Wrong. I almost wanted to try it with pita and peanut butter and see if that worked, but we didn't have pb on hand, and I had kinda noped out by that point anyway.
Could it ever replace Nutella or Cocoa Almond Spread? Not in our household. Not that we have Nutella much anyway, but I'd never put this stuff on par with the classic hazelnut spread for any dessert-ish applications.
Sonia? She couldn't make up her mind. The only word she could utter after I demanded she share her impression of the product was "weird." "I dunno. It's weird, it's weird," she kept repeating, as if stunned by the audacity to even create such an enigmatic commodity. If it were up to this guy, the tub would go back for a no-hassle refund. Sonia wants to give it another chance, suggesting that she'll eat it plain, one spoonful at a time, although, even as she says it, it's obvious she's turned off by the notion.
Three stars from Sonia. Two from me.
Bottom line: 5 out of 10.
