Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookie Butter

And Mantou Joe turns one! If my blog were a baby, it would be taking its first steps now and eating solid food. I'm a proud mama! Of this blog! And of my beautiful kitchen aid mixer named Choo Sarang! But not of any actual babies, okay? :P

It's October, which means it's my favorite month and the month of the great pumpkin assault. The Fearless Flyer landed in my mailbox. I was aghast to see 24 pages of mostly pumpkin products. For some people, it's Christmas two months early. For me, I prefer to stand about three feet away and poke it with a stick until I know it's safe to approach. 

Such is the case here. I haven't seen a moderately appealing new speculoos product in a while. I'm wondering why they didn't name this pumpkin pie spice speculoos, but everyone knows it IS speculoos. 

The color actually made me shudder a little. The lightening in my house makes this appear even more orange. I understand they were going for a more instagram filtered pumpkin look with that caramel coloring, but was that really necessary? The orange and green packaging already screams pumpkin! You can stop trying so hard! 

"All you have to do is taste it to understand!" See, TJ's is using the speculoos buzzword to sell itself. And it's people like me who buy into it! 

Definitely not vegan. Definitely not healthy. And actually not bad. Worth the $3.69 price tag? Debatable. But I think that's the same as the regular speculoos cookie butter, more or less. 

With this lighting, it could pass for peanut butter. It smells like pumpkin spice but it has more of a gingerbread flavor profile, which is expected considering their pumpkin spice mix of ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Also, I don't remember cookie bits in the original, but the smooth cookie butter with a subtle cookie crunch is a winning combination in my book. This was better than expected, mostly because it hasn't departed too far from the original. Sweet, warm, cinnamon-y, and not too overwhelming. 

A is not a pumpkin spice fan. Or a gingerbread fan for that matter. I'll leave his rating out of this one. I'm pretty much left to my own devices to finish this jar.  This is exactly what was missing from those pumpkin waffles. I slathered these over the pretty much failed apple cider donuts seen above. Turns out you should fry donuts when Food Network says so. Otherwise they need to be dunked into pumpkin pie spice cookie butter to be salvaged. That might not be a bad thing. 

I should say, because of my indifference to pumpkin pie spice, I probably wouldn't be completely inclined to buy this again, but I wouldn't oppose it either. Now all they have to do is make a pumpkin spice speculoos ice cream. That sounds like a wonderful Trader Joe's marriage. 

TL;DR: Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookie Butter. Pretty good, especially if you love pumpkin spice. I prefer the original. A realistic 6 out of 10.