While the world stopped in their tracks to watch last week's total solar eclipse, the Obamas moved their eldest daughter into Harvard. Very smart. And my friend Gracie and I tried this gluten free cheese pizza instead of burning our retinas. If I squint real hard, that sauce on the side looks like a crescent. And if I close them completely, I might believe this is a real pizza.
What can I say. The internet loves cauliflower pizza. Especially Trader Joe's cauliflower pizza. Low carb, gluten free convenience, at a great price. Yes, I know Amazon is slashing Whole Paycheck prices to half paycheck - but I like many other cult followers will always remain loyal to our dear old Joe. $4.99 for a cauliflower pizza with cheese. It's hard to beat y'all.
There are plenty of Pinterest recipes for making your own cauliflower pizza crust. But that involves work. And Trader Joe's actually has a cauliflower pizza crust that you can customize with toppings of your choice. But that also involves work. Here, they've provided the basic canvas - sauce and cheese - for whatever else you want to put on top. I should also say, Trader Joe's pizzas in general run on the smaller side. It's almost as big as a typical pizza in Taiwan (which would be utterly shocking for us Americans). And as a small Asian person with a voracious appetite for snacks but not so much for meals, I could totally eat this entire thing myself. Just sayin.
One of the big issues that various people on the internet pointed out with the cauliflower crust TJ's has already is that the crust doesn't really crisp up. In fact, if you bake it according to package directions, the crust comes out pale and soft. Kinda like what happens to the average person as they couch potato all winter and don't move or get any sun. We seem to have attempted to solve that issue accidentally by over-baking it - 20 minutes instead of the recommended 12. It still didn't really get crispy like a thin-crust pizza, but it didn't fall apart. Yay?
Tastewise - it's very meh. The toppings were fine but at the end of the day, if you gave this to me in a blind taste test, I would say this is a mediocre frozen pizza with a lackluster crust. It's not bad to the point of cardboard. The crust itself doesn't have much cauliflower taste to it anymore, which doesn't bother me one way or the other. It's like having pasta that is a minute shy of al dente and is still undercooked in the center - except in the case here, the crust IS cooked through. So would I rather have it like that - a bit dry and can hold up to light toppings but runs a few steps away from cardboard - or too soft like a bendy, soft pita? I don't know.
I think so much of the hype around this product is partly because of the low-carb gluten-free craze, which has thrust cauliflower, the once neglected, less popular sibling of broccoli, into the spotlight for its time to shine. Now, if I were truly allergic to gluten and could never ever have any regular pizza for any other reason (but were somehow okay with eating dairy) - yes, I think this pizza might be a godsend. But even then, I would have this pizza and wonder why the world loves pizza so much when THIS particular pizza is so....meh. And if you happen to be attracted to cauliflower pizza for perhaps the idea that you can eat pizza and lose weight - eh...I'd rather eat other healthy but tastier foods (much to A's dismay, I'd recommend cauliflower rice before I'd recommend this) and have a real pizza every now and then. Real life trumps fake life y'all.
TL;DR: Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Cauliflower Cheese Pizza. All hype for a very meh pizza-like pizza. 5 out of 10.
Just tried the cauliflower crust that you can customize with your own toppings. I was disappointed with the lack of crispy texture despite following the special instructions perfectly and also blasting it in the broiler a couple of times. Oh well. Back to regular pizza.
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