Trader Joe's Cinnamon Coffee Cake

I decided to pick up a Trader Joe's Cinnamon Coffee Cake after an early afternoon trip to the store. The woman covering the sample section of the store had mentioned they were sampling the cake this morning and that it was delicious. She mentioned that it was made with sour cream, which intrigued me because sour cream in desserts typically makes them exceptionally moist.

 

Bringing the cake home and cutting it up, I was a little surprised with how crunchy/hard the outside of the cake was. It was caked in sugar, which after baking formed a somewhat hard/crunchy crust all along the exterior and top of the cake due to the sugar carmelizing. The texture of the coffee cake itself was moist ... which actually was my favorite part (admittedly I threw out some of my exterior of my cake because I liked the center the best). It is sweet, somewhat overly if you get a big bite of the crunchy/crumbled sugar over the cake.  Considering I'm a huge cinnamon lover I didn't find it to be cinnamony enough for me.

 

Overall, I found the coffee cake to be rather mediocre and kind of boring. I had a moment of "This isn't even worth it..." during eating it.  After the one piece I had, I did not go back for seconds and ended up offering it out to guests to have with coffee when they came over to visit.

A serving, 1/8th is 200 calories or 5 points plus values.

Trader Joe’s Pulled Chicken Breast

Over the course of the past year, I have been trying out different packaged pulled chicken meals. I like a slightly sweet yet smoky barbecue sauce with my pulled chicken.  I had high hopes for this Trader Joe’s Pulled Chicken Breast with Rib Meat in Smoky BBQ Sauce.

A serving size is 1/3 of the package – 151grams.  Its 140 calories for the serving and only 3 points plus values which I felt was impressive.  What really sold me was the “smoky BBQ sauce” so I decided to take a gamble and pick up a package.  I heated it through for lunch one afternoon, piled my serving onto a Trader Joe’s multigrain slim and paired it with a cut up microwave cooked potato for “fries.”

At first it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t delicious.  It was smoky but also somewhat sweet. It was a simple meal – rather mediocre and not rave worthy.  I finished my serving, put the rest away and the next day I heated the remainder through to make a sandwich for my boyfriend and I.  Well, I bit into a piece of what I call grizzle.  You know that hard, “plastic” type cartilage that you can sometimes find in chicken?  Well … let me just say, I have texture issues and the moment I bit into that, I was done. I was no longer hungry, I was repulsed and my sandwich went into the garbage.

I’m starting to believe my quest to find A++ style pulled chicken, that’s not bad points plus wise, is not going to happen unless I just make it myself.

QUESTION:

Have you tried the Trader Joe’s pulled chicken?