Precisely what we need once Easter has passed and all the candy that we haven't devoured or the bunny hasn't doled out is now on clearance - another sweet treat review!!! Wilfred Brimley, just send me the box, stat, I'm gonna get me a case of the diabeetus any day now.
Yeah, a lot of fuss gets made this time of the year about Easter candy, like the peanut butter eggs (oh goodness), the jelly beans, the candy eggs, the chocolate bunnies. For me, and I know I'm weird and about to gross out 90% of you, but black jelly beans - those are where it's at. My absolute favorite. Aside from maybe Cadbury Creme Eggs. And anything Reese's-related.
But ever hear anything about Passover treats? No? Me neither. I guess in the name of equal opportunity sweet-samplin', when Sandy and I spotted the Trader Joe's Chocolate Coconut Macaroons with the "Kosher for Passover" label stamped right up top, we just had to try.
To get this out of the way right now, check this handy visual guide to distinguish between macarons and macaroons. These, with the double-o diphthong, are of the coconuttier non-sandwich variety. Or at least they're supposed to be. Honestly, you could tell me they were a special edition Entenmann's concoction, and I would have believed you, because it's pretty much exactly what they taste like. Whereas almost every other macaroon I've ever had were chockfull of chewy coconut, these aren't. Instead these macaroons, while definitely having coconut flavor (and a good dash of citrusy orange peel, too), the overriding texture and taste is just super dense cake-y stuff. I don't really understand how that works, seeing as "shredded coconut" is the number one ingredient. I could understand if it were almond or coconut flour, because of the density, but honestly, there just wasn't that much shredded coconut in ours. Great, now I'm questioning my sanity. The chocolate coating tastes and feels just like the gas station packaged donut variety too - not bad, but nothing too terribly special either.
Anyways, Sandy and I weren't saddened to pick the macaroons up for the $3.99 they set us back. But a repeat purchase just isn't too likely. After I sampled two of them, I more than had my fill. The remaining ones slowly trickled away the next couple days and when I saw the empty container in the trash, I wasn't bitter. If you need some macaroons for a Passover partaking, or if you just have a good hankerin' for some, go to your local bakery instead - clear advantage even considering the "convenience cost" as well as potentially higher actual cost. Some things are okay to do halfway, others aren't. Speaking of halfway....
Bottom line: Trader Joe's Chocolate Coconut Macaroons: 5 out of 10 Golden Spoons.
I mean, talk about taking a real crapshoot with a product. It's not the first time that Big Joe has gambled big and sent us a product to sample and grade before hitting the markets...athough those salmon muffins didn't work due to spontaneous human combustion concerns, and that people food product last year just didn't get enough people's tails wagging, apparently. Not every product can create a splash.
Well, here's one that really pushes it to a new extreme: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Speculoos Cookie Butter Filled Elephant Dung Espresso Beans. Read it over again.
Yes.
That's right.
Elephant. Dung.
Okay, okay, okay. Don't poop yourself out over this. Relax. And allow us to drop these info nuggets on you.
Coffee beans and elephant dung are an actual thing. It's called Black Ivory Coffee, which, according to this article, is the world's most expensive coffee at north of $70 a cup. Apparently, the pachydermal digestive process sweetens the natural bitterness of coffee through some type of fermentation process that heightens the natural sugars within the bean itself. Interesting. And apparently pretty tasty.
That's all well and good, you say, but those coffee beans get cleaned up before making their way to the roaster. This is something else entirely. Well, we're trusting this isn't a load of bull, but we've heard that apparently there was an incident one day at the elephant reservation/coffee plantation that involved a cookie butter tanker being stampeded, overturned, and emptied by a herd of hangry over-caffeinated mastodons. The result? A day long bingefest on cookie butter, with only an occasional coffee break. Or, as we would probably call it, heaven. Now, when the time came to collect the passed coffee beans, one of the workers noticed that there was a very distinct aroma that was not the usual brand wafting around. It smelled...speculoosy. Even...gulp...deliciously speculoosy. He then had the brilliant insight that whatever goes in would be exactly what came out, and if the elephants had had only coffee beans and cookie butter, well...Out of the most daring taste test of all time, we now have these pootie pellets, only covered with dark chocolate to literally help sugarcoat the whole experience.
So, how does it taste?
Tastes like the bomb. You have good, kinda fruity, sweet coffee beans. There's the cookie butter, um, "filling" that tastes a lot like cookie butter, just a tad earthier and nuttier. And the dark chocolate helps bind it all together and serves as a remarkably convincing textural deceiver. There's no exact explanation for it all - just dare yourself and plop one in. You'll be well relieved afterwards, trust me.
Despite my initial hesitation, I'm glad I've decided to endure the manure and give these bowel-y bonbons a try. I mean, now we have definitive proof that cookie butter will make anything taste good. Next time someone tells me to go eat poop, well, I've got my go-to poo-poo. Literally. A five. Sandy, although she likes them, still can't quite get over the whole concept, and can give them nothing more than a solid number 2.
Bottom line: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Speculoos Cookie Butter Filled Elephant Dung Espresso Beans: 7 out of 10 Golden Spoons
How many substances are there in the world you can eat, wear, and smoke? Not many, that's for sure. But hemp is one of them. As of the time I wrote this post, I've done exactly two out of the three. That's right, I've never smoked weed. Not that I'm judging you if you have. But I used to wear a hemp necklace made by a friend, because I liked the hippie look...and just recently, I started eating a bag of hemp seed from TJ's. To be fair, I think the smokin' kind of hemp comes from a different variety of cannabis plant, but still, that's one multi-talented weed.
At $5.49 per package, it's not cheap. You could probably buy an ounce or two of the smokable stuff for that price. Well, not quite...but still these hemp hearts are pricey little devils. We probably wouldn't have checked them out if it weren't for the fact that they were Spotted on Shelves last week and our ever-present desire to please our loyal readers. Russ, Sandy, Sonia, and I would try anything for you guys. If you don't believe us, just stay tuned for even more outrageous products this week.
But back to the hemp seed. It's nutty. Tastes like other seeds I've had...unsalted sunflower, in particular, but perhaps a bit more planty—a bit more "green," if you will. The texture is softer than a normal seed. It's almost like a cross between a sprout and a seed. And they're very, very tiny—about the size of an average bread crumb. Holding a handful, they kind of feel like silky, supple grains of sand.
The back of the packaging suggests eating them with yogurt. I tried that, but I wasn't particularly enthused with the outcome. The subtle nutty flavor was overpowered by the fruit flavor in the yogurt, and the combination of textures just didn't work for me. If you think you'd ever want to put sunflower
seeds in your yogurt, then maybe it's worth trying with hemp seeds, but I personally would stick to salads and hummus and more savory foods when it comes to mixing in hemp hearts.
They're healthy little buggers, with boatloads of omega 6 and protein in each serving, but be warned, they're chock full of fat, too. I'm pretty sure it's "good fat," and as one reader pointed out, carbs tend to make people fat more than fat itself does. They're very natural, with only one single solitary ingredient: raw shelled hemp seed. All in all, not a bad investment for adventurous eaters and health nuts. Have some floss on stand-by, because they do get stuck between one's teeth quite readily.
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