Trader Joe's Apple Blossoms

I haven't tried a Trader Joe's dessert in a while, and I love anything similar to apple pie. Apple blossoms -- sometimes called apple purses -- seem to have become all the rage last year at places like Starbucks and certain chain restaurants (TGI McFunsters, anyone?) and I have been known to order them.

Trader Joe's Apple Blossom is a pie dough pastry pouch stuffed with apple filling and topped with cinnamon crumble. They can be microwaved or baked. I opted to bake.

Each little blossom is slightly smaller in diameter than your average coffee mug. The dough has a glossy sheen, and the cinnamon glaze melted into a gooey lake while baking. The dough is good -- soft, and just a little crusty. You won't mistake it for homemade, but it is damned good for frozen.



The apple filling is generous -- it's not bursting out of the crust, but there is not exactly extra room for more. The apples are perfectly cooked, but still have a little tooth to them. It is a sweet filling, and the cinnamon, while not enough to really heat things up, adds just the right amount of spice.



This is one of the best frozen baked desserts out there. As stated, I don't think you could pass them off as home made, but they're so good I doubt anyone would care.



PURCHASED FROM:
Trader Joe's

Dreyer's/Edy's Apple Pie (Limited Edition)

Summer may be over. The big three summer holidays have come and gone, but we still have apple pie to remind us of those days at the BBQ and meals with our friends. And Dreyer's/Edy's has a new limited edition flavor -- and you may have guessed by now that it's Apple Pie flavored. If you didn't...um, not sure how you missed it.



Apple Pie, while not one of the "Fun Flavors," is another of Dreyer's products that is a "frozen dairy dessert" rather than actual ice cream. I have to say I hate this trend of non-ice cream products being somewhat disguised as ice cream. But I do give Dreyer's props for not claiming that the dessert is something it's not. Granted, it does involve reading, and if you are not seriously into ice cream you may not catch that there is even a difference.

Gigi's rant aside, let's talk about the Apple Pie.



Apple Pie is an apple-cinnamon base flavor that has chunks of pie crust and bits of apple pie filling mixed through out. The apple flavor is the type of apple flavor that you'd expect from flavored oatmeals or Metamucil fiber biscuits (What?! Gigi is getting old, people). It's fake apple flavoring at best (or at its best, depending on your point of view). The cinnamon is faint and not spicy. It's there, and that's about all that can be said about it. It's not bad, it's just not exciting.



The bits of apple pie filling are roughly Chiclet-sized and taste like canned apple pie filling. Very sweet, and in heavy syrup. The chunks of pie crust are pretty big and in ample quantity, but there's nothing about them that makes real pie crust so good. It's not flaky. It's not slightly salty. It's not graham cracker.

Texture-wise, like the Fun Flavors, it's very smooth. But since it doesn't have a very high fat content, it's not very rich or creamy. All in all, it's not a bad flavor, even with everything said. It's just not a very good one. Again, I could see kids loving it because it's super sweet. But it just didn't rock my world.


PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

Ben & Jerry's Key Lime Pie Ice Cream: Limited Edition

Dear Ben & Jerry:

Why, oh WHY, do you never consult me before launching one of your limited edition products? You guys really missed a golden opportunity with this one.

I know you love to do special flavors that pair a celebrity with their pet charity, such as Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road," which helps support Aids research. Stephan Colbert's "Americone Dream," which helps give aid to the disadvantaged. Dave Matthews' flavor, which helps cure the munchies.

And what do we have here? A Key Lime flavored ice cream! Where do Key Limes come from? Well, the Florida Keys. And who is the favorite son of the Florida Keys? Why, Jimmy Buffet, of course! And one of Jimmy's favorite charities is Save The Manatee. Think of how cool this could have been...you could have had the same flavor and called it "Jimmy Buffett's "Oh The Humanatee!"

Look how awesome the pint art could have been!



But NOOOOOOOO, you guys went with boring old "Key Lime Pie," of which, so far as I know, none of the proceeds go to either manatees or Jimmy Buffett. (Though it may actually help with the munchies, so at least some good has come out of it). For shame, Ben and Jerry! For shame!

(By the way, should this flavor be re-marketed that way, you boys had better remember: either me or the manatees get the money... What?! Don't look at me like that! The manatees WANT me to have some money. I'm the one who thought of the manatees in the first place! The manatees think I deserve a new Mazda 3... OK, a used Mazda 3...hell, I'll settle for something with working air conditioning.)

Regardless, I do love the thought of this flavor. Key Lime Pie is a lime-flavored ice cream base, with meringue swirls and bits of pie crust. Seriously, NOTHING bad could possibly come of that! I can't think of ever having seen a lime ice cream before -- lime sherbets and sorbets for sure -- but there aren't a lot of citrus flavored ice creams out there.



The base lime ice cream is very, very, very mild. It's more like the idea of what lime ice cream should taste like, rather than an ice cream that is strongly flavored with lime. There are patches in the ice cream that are like little super-concentrated pockets of lime flavor. That's not particularly good, but it's not bad either. I can't see the manatees feeling more passionate about the lime than I did.



The strongest flavor by far is the meringue tufts that float through the ice cream like happy little clouds. If cereal marshmallows had a fluffy texture, they would taste like the meringue in this ice cream. Ben & Jerry, if you're still reading, how's about we cut out the middleman and just do a meringue ice cream, because that was an awesomely good part.

The little bits of pie crust are soft and taste like fresh graham cracker. I was surprised that there is not more of the crust (and in larger chunks), as they were a really tasty addition. In fact, I think manatees are sad that they don't often get to taste pie crust.

I wish the lime had been stronger, the crust more plentiful, and that I could have an entire pint just of the meringue. But even with all that said (and my brilliant tie-in aside), I still have to rate this pretty high. It's not Mission To Marzipan, but it is darn good.

(I also have to give a special shout out to Chris, who did the graphics -- actually, he does most of my graphics -- for the "Oh The Humanatee" pint. You go to 11!)



PURCHASED FROM:
Vons Supermarket

WalMart Old Fashioned Blueberry Pie

When I think of pie, WalMart is not exactly the first name that comes to mind.
Actually, on serious thought, it's not even in the top twenty names that come to mind. But my dad started buying these little blueberry pies and was raving about them. They remind him of little individual pies that were sold when he was a kid. (It was probably nostalgic for him, because they'd just invented fire and the world was going all crazy with convenience foods.)

Anyway...

Each four ounce pie comes in its own cute little tin.



The crust appears on the lighter side in terms of color (it appears deeper in color in the picture than it did in real life). The edges have a bit of golden brown, but if this had come out of my oven I would have put it back in. If I was less lazy, I suppose I could have warmed it in my oven. (Microwaving is out, since the pie is in an actual metal pan and my microwave is the old cheesy kind that would spark.) Besides, I also think it's important to try the product "as is" first, because that is how most people will actually eat it. Only after that can I get as crazy as I want.



The top layer of crust is thin, and is flaky in the most minimal sense of the word. It's not so much the whole crust that's flaky, just the absolute top layer-- it's kinda like crust dandruff. It's bland, not buttery. Not even sweet like a Hostess pie. It's not that it's bad. It's that it's only about as good as you would expect WalMart pie crust to be.



As for the filling: it's a deep and vivid shade of Royal Purple- kinda like if Barney was liquefied in a freak accident. (Accident? Heh!) It's very, very sweet. Think of a pretty standard blueberry jam with about 100 extra tablespoons of sugar. There are little dry shriveled bits that at some point in their lifetime may have been blueberries. But now they're like some sort of raisin of the damned.

As bad as that all sounds, in the end they are no worse (but sadly, no better) than your average supermarket pie. Do I get why my Father likes them so much?-- no, but he's old and maybe some of those taste buds have died off.

Can I still be grounded at my age? That comment may have earned it.




PURCHASED FROM:
WalMart*

Sara Lee Cherry Pie

Grab yourself a dancing midget and a damn fine cup o' coffee and let's have some cherry pie
Once again showing my age here... As a kid I always wanted to try cherry pie. My parents in some sort of parental wisdom wouldn't let me have it. They decided that I wouldn't like it because it was sour, I think the truth was they didn't like it because it was sour and they decided I would feel the same. So my cherry pie lust went unfulfilled.

Cut to a few years later and as a teenager the show "Twin Peaks" premired. Yes, much like the rest of the country I was caught up in finding out who killed Laura Palmer (and in an embarresing moment of fandom somewhere I even have a copy of "The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer") but one of the things that caught my eye besides a rather hot Kyle McLachlan was the pie. They ate pie every episode- always cherry. That was it I had to try some! And so I did... and then I remembered that I didn't really like pie and I promptly forgot about it for the next 10 years or so (ok, now I feel really old)

Since then I have decided that pie isn't so bad. And while my parent's my still prefer they're pies sweet I prefer tart. Cherry has become one of my favorites.

The Sara Lee cherry pie is one of the best easy options for pie.
The crust is light and flaky. There is just enough salt to keep it from being both too buttery and too bland.
The cherries are juicy and almost sour, I say almost because I would prefer they be a little less sweetned, but for mass produced filling it is close enough. I like it warm with vanilla ice cream (because ice cream makes everything better).

I wish I had time to bake my own pie from scratch but since I don't this will hit the spot.

PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

Hostess Chocolate Pudding Pie

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have an almost unnatural love for those little hostess fruit pies you find at gas stations & Kwik-E- Mart stores. There is just something about that glazed sugary crust and the gooey “fruit” fillings inside that I cannot resist. It’s like the food version of Hugh Jackman.


Anyway… when I saw the chocolate pudding version I had to snap it up!- C’mon! it’s the sugary crust AND chocolate pudding!. Sadly like most Hugh Jackman movies the outside of the package looked so much better then it’s contents (I still have not forgiven Hugh for “Someone Like You”- If I had been Ashley Judd and Hugh was walking about my apartment half naked for what seemed like 90% of the time you would not have found me whining and crying for about 99% of the time!)

Movie reviews aside (should I start adding movie reviews btw?) let’s talk about the pie.
The crust is still the best part. Sugary, as flaky as pocket pie crust can get, and just plain good. It’s the filling that is pure evil.

Oh it looks like chocolate, it sort of smells like chocolate but I don’t know where they got the taste from!
For obvious reasons I went in knowing that the filling would have to be a thicker pudding type filling rather then say the texture and consistency of a normal pudding cup. So when the filling was thick and sort of frosting like I was ok with that.
It’s the taste that killed me. The best way to describe it to you is to tell you to imagine the chocolate filling or frosting that is used on Pop Tarts- good so far right? (truth be told I like chocolate Pop Tarts) then add in the vilest envelope glue you have ever had. And THEN toss in some oily mocklate. And let me tell you folks the after taste lingers. I even thought maybe I got a bad one. Maybe it had just been sitting too long so I tried another one. Oh nooooo that apparently is how they are meant to taste.

Hostess WHY?! Why did you take something that could have been so good and make it so bad?


PURCHASED FROM:
2 Truck stops along I-40 in different states.

Little Debbie Cherry Pie

Fruity Pies- so good they should be there own food group.

My favorite of the convenience fruit pies has long been the Hostess lines. I hadn't even known Little Debbie had their own version until I was browsing through CVS- and you know that meant I had to try them!

I picked up the Cherry version (because who doesn't love cherry pie?)
The pastry is heavily glazed an is thicker then the Hostess version. It sort of reminded me of grocery store bakery pie crust, if you are a pie of that then I am sure u would love it.

The filling is generous but is very, very sweet. There were little bits of cherry buried deep in the goo but they seemed to have no flavor of their own.

I feel safe to say that I will be sticking to the Hostess version.

PURCHASED FROM:
CVS