Trader Joe's Pitted Amarena Cherries With Stems In Syrup

I had never heard of Amarena cherries before spotting this jar at Trader Joe's. I bought it anyway. They're cherries; they can't be bad.

And they're not. But the way they're presented here, you can't just sit down and eat a bowlful. (After all, life isn't just a bowl of cherries.) The syrup here is heavily sugared, turning the cherries into something akin to Maraschino cherries--preserved, essentially. They work as a garnish, but in no other way.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I just don't have any use for this kind of thing.

Trader Joe's Organic Super Fruit Fruit Spread

This is the best jam/jelly/preserves/spread I've ever had from Trader Joe's, and one of the best I've ever had from any source. Though the cherry is the most prominent, three of the four main fruit ingredients are readily identifiable (I haven't been able to make out the pomegranate component), which is not usually the case when these things get blended. It uses fruit juice concentrates as sweeteners, not sucrose. It's sweet, of course, but it doesn't taste sweetened, even though it is.


Will I buy it again? 

Definitely. I'm even adding it to my Top Ten list.

Trader Joe's Organic Reduced Sugar Cherry Preserves

This is excellent--as good as any cherry jam/preserves I've ever had. I would never know it's a "reduced sugar" variety without looking at the label.


Will I buy it again? 

I don't use cherry as much as strawberry and raspberry, but once in a while for a little change, sure.

Trader Joe's Golden Berry Blend

This makes for pretty good snacking material--as long as I don't think about the list of ingredients. Because if I do, I'm reminded that of the four fruits represented here, all except the raisins have been sweetened with added sugar. This is a fact that is not disclosed or even hinted at on the front of the package.

I love golden raisins, but I think I'd rather have them alone than mixed in with a bunch of sugared-up other dried fruits.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Pitted Dark Sweet Cherries

What you've got here is the cherries from Trader Joe's Very Cherry Berry Blend, but without the blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.

Another way to think of it is that it's the same kind of pitted dark sweet cherries that you usually find in a can with heavy syrup, but without the syrup. In fact, I think that's what I like most about it: the list of ingredients starts and ends with "dark sweet cherries." I always liked the canned cherries, but wasn't thrilled about the sugary syrup with which they were packed. Now I can do without it.

As with the various TJ's berry blends, these are frozen in such a way that they're not in one solid icy chunk. You can pour out what you want, let them thaw for 45 minutes or so, and eat. They're delicious. I encountered just one sour, off-tasting cherry in the whole bag. I found no pits and no stems.

Speaking of the stems, can we talk about that "serving suggestion" photograph on the package? It shows cherries with stems in them. How is that supposed to happen, when the package contains cherries from which the stems have been carefully removed? They're suggesting, apparently, that we buy cherry stems somewhere and insert them into the cherries before serving. Seriously weird.

But I'll forgive that weirdness on the bag because I like what's in it mucho mucho.


Will I buy it again? 

Many, many times, I expect.

Trader Joe's Cherry Cider

This is one of the worst offenders we have yet discovered, in terms of being what Nina so aptly calls "melted lollipops" juices. Or, better: "juices." Sickeningly sweet, only vaguely cherry-ish. Drinking it is worse than being thirsty.


Will I buy it again? 

Emphatically, no. And I hope you don't, either. Stop rewarding Trader Joe's for making such dreck, when they're perfectly capable of producing genuinely wonderful juice blends, like this one.

Trader Joe's dried cherries

Trader Joe's sells two different kinds of dried cherries. It seems logical and convenient to review them together.

I already had a bag of the Bing cherries in my cupboard, yet unopened, when my friend Dan in Minnesota emailed me with a tip to try the Montmorency cherries, which I had never even heard of before. So of course I did.

He was right: they're far superior to the Bing cherries. In fact, the Bings taste to me more like prunes than cherries. The Montmorencys (I stumble on the correct way to make that word a plural) are simultaneously more cherryful (it's a word because I say that it is), tarter, and sweeter than the Bings. There's just no comparison. I'm about halfway through both bags, but the only way I can make myself continue eating the Bing is to reward myself afterward with an equal portion of Montmorency.

Yes, the Montmorency have added sugar and the Bing do not, so it's not a fair comparison. But it's a lot of difference in flavor and not a lot of sugar.

Will I buy it again? 

Montmorency yes, Bing no.

Trader Joe's Cherry Pie Filling; Trader Joe's Pie Crusts; Trader Joe's Whipping Cream

Today we bring you not one, not two, but three product reviews in one post. This is the 23rd--and final--consecutive day of reviewing new products. 


I made a pie.

Now, that might not seem like much of a brag, but it is. You see, I've lived just over 55 years on this planet, and I could never have said that before last week.

To be sure, what I mean by "I made a pie" is that I bought pre-made pie crusts, and dumped in a jar of pre-made pie filling. Yet it remains true that I made a pie! 

The cherry pie filling is a brand-new product; see here for the company's description of it. Of course it would do no good to buy that alone, so I decided it was a golden opportunity to also try TJ's frozen pie crusts.

Let's start with the crusts. This foodie web site last year did a comparison of seven brands of frozen pie crusts, and TJ's was judged the best. All the others come pre-shaped. TJ's crusts come rolled up. You thaw them, unroll them, and place them in your own pie dish; you're not stuck using the disposable aluminum ones that come with the other brands.

And yes, I actually did have a decent Pyrex pie dish on hand, in which I occasionally make one of my favorite things, this rice and tuna pie (omitting the onion to avoid being poisoned by it, obviously).

As the comparison test notes, the downside of TJ's pan-less method of packaging is that the delicate crusts inevitably tear in several spots as you're putting them in place. You have to do a fair amount of mending of these tears.

The result, though, is something that genuinely could pass for made-from-scratch:

And here's how it looks right out of the oven:

The crusts taste great. I've always been one to leave uneaten the edge of the crust after all the filled part of my slice of pie is gone. I didn't here; it was good enough to eat even with no cherries left. Even more miraculous, the crust didn't go soggy after sitting unrefrigerated for the three days that it took me to finish it off. 

The filling: I liked the taste of both the cherries and the sauce well enough. Not the best I've ever had, but passable. However, it's not nearly thick enough. With the first piece of pie removed, the guts just completely gushed out. Admittedly, I had not let it cool enough. But even later, at true room temperature, it was just too runny. The last couple of slices of pie were sadly collapsed, with almost nothing left in them. I suppose if I had kept it in the refrigerator, that would have been less of a problem, but I think pie is better not chilled. Yes, I know I could keep it chilled, then zap each slice before eating. If I ever try this again, that's probably what I'll do. 

The whipping cream: I did not know what to expect. I was totally ignorant of the different kinds of cream available. I bought this only because my local TJ's had cleverly placed a bunch of the little boxes right next to the big display of jars of the cherry pie filling. I didn't really grasp that it would involve a lot of, you know, whipping. This was especially problematic because I don't own a mixer. Nina and I had to take turns going at it with a manual egg-beater. This is not ideal. Also not ideal: I had no powdered sugar with which to sweeten it. (How is a bachelor supposed to know these things?) 

So the whipping cream was kind of a fail. Had I understood what I was getting into, I would have just picked up some Cool Whip at another store instead. 

But all the little problems aside, allow me to reiterate: I made a pie! 

Will I buy it again? 

The crusts are good enough that I can't see myself ever attempting to make a pie without them. I liked the taste of the filling enough that I would give it a second chance, knowing that I'd have to make accommodations for its runniness. I'll pass on the whipping cream. 

Nina's View

Pie crust = very good.

Cherry pie filling = NOT very good. Too sweet, too soupy, not enough actual cherry flavor.

Whipping cream = nothing a little cream of tartar and some powdered sugar couldn't have rendered ideal. 

I will DEFINITELY use the pie crusts one of these days.

Trader Joe's Dark Morello Cherries In Light Syrup

I'm not what anybody would call an expert on cherries. I just know that I like them. I had never heard of morello cherries. But I've had a lot of home-canned cherries in my life, and never ran into any that I didn't love. I assumed that these would be pretty much the same.

I was wrong. These are extremely tart/sour--on the edge of being unpleasantly so. They are similar in flavor to the cherries found in canned cherry pie filling, but quite a bit more tart. They are not--repeat, NOT--sweet cherries.

I found that this quality made it hard to enjoy them. After half a dozen, I've had about all the tartness I can stand. If these were sweet cherries, I could guzzle them.

I gather from Wikipedia that morello cherries are one variety of sour cherries, Prunus cerasus. 


Will I buy it again? 

Sadly, no. Too sour for my taste. I'll stick with the lovely frozen cherries that TJ's sells.


Addendum 

A funny thing happened between the writing of the above and the publication of this post: I ate more of the cherries. And they were not as sour as my first impression of them had it.

In retrospect, it's clear to me what happened. I went at the first tasting expecting sweet cherries, so these seemed exceedingly sour. Then I had fixed in my mind that these were exceedingly sour cherries, and with that expectation, when I sat down a few days later to a second helping, I was surprised to find that they were sour, but not exceedingly sour. This is obviously the interplay of sensation with expectation.

I still don't like them enough to buy more. But I'm going to enjoy finishing off this jar of them. With my expectation more closely aligned with reality, it's easier to appreciate them for what they are.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Cherries

These are not the "cordial" kind of chocolate cherries, with some sweet liquid and a maraschino cherry inside. They're just partially dried sweet cherries with chocolate coating. The layer of chocolate is much, much thicker than one usually finds in chocolate-covered fruits. I didn't care for that aspect of them. I would like them better if the chocolate were just a couple of millimeters thick. The super-heavy coating meant that the dark chocolate completely dominated the flavor profile. Though I could notice the cherry texture easily, the cherry flavor was hard to find, which I found disappointing.


Will I buy it again? 

Not unless they reformulate the chocolate/cherry ratio.

Trader Joe's Chocolate Liqueur Cherries

This is just one of many, many sweets that Trader Joe's has on sale primarily intended as Christmas gifts. There are way more than I'll ever be able to review.

These are like other chocolate-covered cherries, except that the thickened liquid between the chocolate and the cherry is liqueur. The description of the manufacturing process on the box is a little hard to follow, but if I understood it correctly, the liqueur is somehow a byproduct of the cherries themselves.

I love chocolate-covered cherries, but these didn't do much for me. As with the Brandy Beans last year, I apparently have to be viscerally reminded once in a while that I really detest the taste of ethanol. (Slow learner.) That's the first flavor that hits me upon biting into one of these, and I just want it to be sweetness, not booziness.

However, mine is a distinctly minority view. I took the box to my weekly home poker game Monday. Five people tried them, and they were a hit all around. So there's that.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Dried Berry Medley

I have mixed opinions about this mix. The dried cherries are excellent--sweet and flavorful. I could eat them all day. The dried whole strawberries are a novel thing to me. They're pretty good, though they seem to lose a lot of their natural sweetness in the drying process. The blueberries are a disappointment. They're little blebs of slightly bitter chewiness with little to no blueberry flavor.

Still, on several occasions I found myself eating a lot more of this than I set out to do. I kept thinking, just a little more. Then a little more. And a little more after that. It was mainly the super-yummy cherries that kept me willing to eat the so-so strawberries and the sad blueberries to get to them.

I see that Trader Joe's sells bags of dried Bing cherries. I guess I'm going to have to try that next.

Will I buy it again? 

It depends. If the dried cherries alone are as good as the ones in this bag, then I think I would always choose that over this. But maybe they're different and not as good, in which case I may well come back for more of this medley.


Addendum 

This wasn't supposed to publish when it did. I meant to move it out of the queue to make room for the post about the gingerbread cookies, but apparently I forgot that step in the process. I didn't even notice that two posts went up at the same time until a couple of days later. Oh well. Might as well leave it now. I just add this note in case anybody wonders why a random day had two reviews instead of the usual one.

Trader Joe's cherry juice

I saw something in the Fearless Flyer about cherry juice, and decided that I should try it. But when I got to the store, I noticed that there were two different products. So what's one to do? Comparison test, of course!

Predictably, the "not from concentrate" version is more expensive than the "from concentrate" version--$4.99 versus $3.99. (Let's call these "NFC" and "FC" for short.) Encouragingly, neither label shows the products being loaded up with apple and grape juices, like most of the TJ's juice products. The FC label lists water and cherry juice concentrate--nothing more. The NFC label is even simpler: "Juice from ripe, whole red tart cherries."

Both bottles are 32 ounces, and the serving size for nutritional labeling purposes is 8 ounces for each. But Nina noticed that the carbohydrate and sugar content is significantly different. The NFC has 31g of carbs, of which 29 are from sugars, 0 from dietary fiber. The FC has 36g of carbs, of which 26 are from sugars and 1 from dietary fiber. I don't understand why any of these values would be different between the two versions. The NFC version also has more than four times as much sodium, a difference which also puzzles me.

Nina set up a blind taste test for me to see if I could identify which was which. I guessed wrong. In retrospect, I think I created a mental shortcut, without explicitly realizing it, that identified "better" as "NFC," based on our experience with TJ's orange juices.

I have now finished off both bottles, and my preference for the FC version remains clear and strong. It's much easier to enjoy. But it's not merely a matter of one being "more so" than the other. Rather, they're so different in their basic taste that Nina and I both suspected that they are made from completely different varieties of cherries.

The Fearless Flyer informs us:

Our 100% Cherry Juice, in the curvy bottle, is a blend of tart, sour, and sweet cherry juices from varieties such as Prunus Cerasus (tart), Prunus Acida (tart), Prunus Fructicosa (sour), and Prunus Avium (sweet). The different cherry varieties combine to make a juice that's easy to drink and loaded with antioxidants. With all this going for it, 100% Cherry Juice is a perennial favorite in our stores.

Trader Joe's 100% Cherry Juice comes to us from the Caucasus Mountains/Black Sea region of Georgia - the country that lies at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, not the state that lies in the heart of the southeastern United States. This area is home to some of the world's finest cherries - they're generally referred to as "sour" or "tart". We find the juice significantly sweeter than our Red Tart Cherry Juice. Unlike some cherry juices, this is a very easy juice to drink, with or without mixers. 

So the NFC is indeed derived from a different mix of cherry varieties. 

Regardless of the reason, I preferred its taste, it's cheaper, and it has less cloudy sediment settling down to the bottom of the glass. Therefore, I have no difficulty picking a winner here--and it's exactly the opposite of what I predicted going in. 

Will I buy it again? 

FC, yes. NFC, no. 

Nina's View

The not-from-concentrate 100% Red Tart tastes like an actual cherry, a specific cherry. It has that slightly earthy back-of-the-tongue furriness you get from eating a tart, fresh cherry. I would be very surprised if this was a blend of multiple types of cherry. It tastes singular. I liked it a lot.

The from-concentrate is orders of magnitude sweeter and more generic. I was very surprised to see more carbs from sugar in the NFC. It makes zero sense to me. It's extremely drinkable and I have no problem understanding why Bob prefers it. 

Trader Joe's Soy Creamy Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert--Cherry Chocolate Chip

As we have previously noted, Nina has been greatly reducing her consumption of milk products--and I'm not averse to substitutes if they are good ones.

This, my friends, is a good one.

I came to it naive; I had not heard or read anything about it. I just knew that I wanted to try another TJ's ice cream of some sort, and I thought this one looked promising.

When I tasted it, I could hardly believe it. This did say non-dairy, didn't it? I rechecked the label and the list of ingredients. Yep. Then how can it taste so good? How can it have the mouthfeel of real ice cream? I swear that if you fed this to me, telling me it was regular ice cream, there is not one thing about it that would tip me off that you were lying. Now, I wouldn't pit it against some of the super-premium ice creams that I have had in my life. But it's at least as good, and possibly better, than most non-premium ice cream. That that can be said of a soy-derived product is rather astonishing.

I wondered if maybe it was a lack of discriminating palate that made me easily duped, and others would see through the non-dairy ruse. Well, here's a bunch of reviews I found in the first two pages of Google results, some of them dating back to 2008, when it appears this product was first introduced. See for yourself:

Eating at Joe's blog: "I may never go back to dairy ice cream.... Vegan ice cream that [is] as good as the real thing."

San Jose Mercury News comparison test: "Except for the slight beany flavor of soy, this budget-priced dessert is a solid swap for standard ice cream."

A Soy Bean blog: "[I]t's been a LONG time since I've had Ben & Jerry's ice cream. But I do fondly remember the taste of their Cherry Garcia flavor, and this cherry chocolate chip knocks it out of the park!"

PETA Prime blog: "The cherry chocolate chip flavor starts with a yummy cherry base, not vanilla. It is so full of big pieces of cherries and chunks (not chips) of chocolate that you will feel like you are eating frozen chocolate-covered cherries. They definitely did not scrimp on this one--you practically have to chew this bowl of “nice” cream."

Kitchology blog: "Sweet, rich, and creamy, Trader Joe’s Soy Creamy Cherry Chocolate Chip had me from the first spoonful. The smoothness of the cream is perfectly complimented by the crunch of the chocolate chips and the chewiness of the cherries. In my opinion, this blows every other cherry-chocolate ice cream like dessert out of the water. Nothing can compare. Not even Ben and Jerry’s famous Cherry Garcia."

Diana Takes a Bite blog: "TJ's Soy Creamy Cherry Chocolate Chip "ice cream" is beyond compare. There is no contest -- it blows Ben & Jerry's [Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt] completely out of the bowl."

Son of a Vegan blog: "Let me start by saying it is absolutely heavenly, I swear I could hear arcs gloriously playing in the background while I was eating that "ice cream". It has chunks and chunks of cherries and a whole lot of chocolate chips so this "ice cream" is sure to please your sweet tooth."

Rookie Magazine: "Since going vegan in the late ’90s I have always been pretty content with my dairy-free ice cream options. But two summers ago, my dessert world was ROCKED when I came across this cute red-and-green container in the frozen section at Trader Joe’s—a quart of Soy Creamy Cherry Chocolate Chip. Cherries are my favorite fruit and chocolate is my favorite food period, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Reader, IT CHANGED MY VEGAN LIFE: sweet, smooth cherry-flavored cream, big chunks of real cherry, and plenty of chocolate chips. I started telling everyone I knew that it wasn’t just my favorite vegan ice cream, it was my favorite ice cream, period! My non-vegan husband even loves it, and when my ex-vegan friend came to stay with me after living in Asia for a few years, she had the same total mouth orgasm as I did. In fact, she practically wept when she could not figure out how to take a case of it back to China. Now I just get to eat twice as much and say it’s for Lindsay. That works for me and I encourage you to eat some for her, too."

So as you can see, I'm not just imagining things here. This stuff really works as ice cream, whether or not you're consciously choosing to avoid dairy. This is one case where you don't have to settle for something that isn't as good as the "real thing."

I'm just gonna go right ahead and plop it onto my Top Ten list.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes indeed.

Trader Joe's Organic Frosted Toaster Pastries--Cherry-Pomegranate

In the process of sampling Trader Joe's pumpkin-spice toaster pastries, I discovered the existence of a non-seasonal version in cherry-pomegranate. As I wrote then, "It took about three seconds for that to go onto my shopping list. Stay tuned."

I finished eating my first pair of them about ten minutes ago, and I can tell you that it took about the same three seconds for them to hit my Top Ten list. They are that good. They are simply the best toaster pastries I've ever had.

To be sure, I love both cherry and pomegranate enough that practically anything that combines them is going to go to my happy place. But even with that high expectation in place in advance, these exceeded it. They are the platonic ideal of a toaster pastry.

I'm not the only one who deems them exceptional.

What's Good at Trader Joe's:

[T]he filling tastes like real, actual fruit instead of glucosey/corn syrupy colored sugary gunk.... I had to talk Sandy out of eating a pack on a Sunday morning when we had a lot more time AND leftover carrot cake for a sweet breakfast treat. She said something silly about really really really really liking them, but I fail to remember what that was. 

Bake at 350:

From the outside, it looks like something out of a commercial -- but the taste actually lives up to its looks. The pastry and icing parts are very sweet (in a good way), and they are perfectly complemented by the fruitiness of the inside filling, which has an absolutely fantastic taste! I hardly ever eat toaster pastries/pop-tarts, but I think I may start to now! Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars. 

Go buy some right now. $2.49 for a box of six. (Quibble: TJ's claims a serving size of one pastry. Oh, please. Show me even one person who eats just one at a time.) 

Will I buy it again? 

I'm in love. How could I not? 

Trader Joe's Cherry Pie

Uh-oh, it's another of those pictures taken with my cell phone at the store. You know what that means.

The one time I bought this item was a couple of weeks before I decided to create this blog, which is why I didn't have one of my standard photos to go with this post. But even though it's been a while, I remember well how disappointed I was in the pie.

It was, as far as I could tell, indistinguishable from every other commercial grocery-store cherry pie out there. It was unremarkable in taste, stingy in its helping of cherries, and moderately soggy in the crust. Worst, it got moldy faster than I think is reasonable, forcing me to throw away the last quarter or so of it. (Complaining that the pie isn't very good and I had to throw some of it away because of spoilage is a lot like the old joke about the woman in a restaurant griping that the food is terrible, "and such small portions.")

Will I buy it again? 

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice? Not gonna happen.

Nina's View

This was so bad, I thought surely something must have gone wrong in the production of it. The crust and crumbly stuff on top were just awful. The filling was terrible.

Please understand that I LOVE cherry pie, and am willing to overlook all sorts of things to get the cherry goodness. This had no cherry goodness.

Unless it was just a bad edition. 

But if this was how this was intended to be: stay far, far away.