For Illustration Friday, subject is: double. Which is what you’ll become if you eat too many of these. My friend Candy (her real name) says the reason ice cream sundaes…
Category: <span>Donna Does Desserts</span>
Picture of homemade pie.
You would think that with a title of (take deep breath) Trader Joe’s Chocolate Pumpkin Pecan Praline Tart, how could they miss, right? Nice cheerful orange label with chocolate dots, attractive looking pie. But I won’t make you wait until the end of the review: thumbs down.
What is the difference between tart and pie? [Pause while I go over to Google.]? Okay, here:
A tart is made with a crust formed in a tart pan or a low, straight-walled pan with a removable bottom. A pie, similar to a tart, is baked in a pie pan that has sloping sides. Both a tart and a pie can have the crust prebaked and filled or baked with fruits, custards or chocolate.
Everything 2 agrees with that. Already, things are not quite right with this TJ dessert. This is definitely a pie, not a tart.
Anyway, it has a sweet crumbly crust. I love soft crusts! But it’s not real chocolate, and it doesn’t taste like chocolate, unless it’s the cheap drugstore kind. The filling has a slightly crunchy filling, of substance, but not chewy.
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For Illustration Friday, the subject was: “sugary.” I’ve always hated to follow directions, and the sound of this word sets my teeth on end, anyway. I’ve never liked powdered sugar on baked goods. But I do like jimmies! Out here they call them sprinkles. I prefer all chocolate.
I found a whole forum on jimmies, here.
Someone at school told me that jimmies is actually a ra-cial slur related to the Jim Crow laws (‘course, she was from Jersey)…anyone else heard this?
I hope not! I never heard that before. More comments ideas, below.
Yeah, I’ve heard that they’re sprinkles if they’re multi-colored, and jimmies if they’re chocolate, because it was slang for Jim Crow. And even if it’s not true, enough people around think it’s true, so I call them all sprinkles.
This is part of the original post. The cartoon and the rest of it are now on my chocolate blog. There was a sad obit in the LA Times this…
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“Chocolate happens, dear.”
you’ve got my full attention.
The Drawing
I’ve done cartoons on chocolate from the very beginning of my cartoon career, even before chocolate became acceptable and not shameful! So I had a nice little stash of them before I signed a contract for my book on chocolate, but once I added them up, it was only about 30 or 40. And I needed 120 cartoons for the book, which is a fat hardback! I always planned that the book wouldn’t be just candy – kind of dry – but would include any dessert that had chocolate as the main ingredient. Still, that meant a hell of a lot of new cartoons
This is one I did just for the book, but it turned out lovely. I like the simplicity of the solid black and white, with just enough detail to make it interesting. I love the little plants in the window to get the morning sun! And the cookbooks on the shelf behind her. Plus this was SO much fun, drawing little miniature versions of all these dark delicacies.
His expression is priceless! You know he really has no interest in the food, but he is tolerant, and realizes these will probably be at the dinner table for a while.
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Severe no for Trader Joe‘s Chocolate Chunk Cookies. The cookies are dry and the chocolate is not satisfying and tastes cheap. I’m Yankee thrifty, but I’m tempted to throw the rest out! Ingredients look fine (ie, no corn syrup, which I won’t eat anymore), and there’s a bit of honey, which will usually raise the rating, but not this time.
Perhaps not the most appetizing photo. From here.
Part of my bitterness is because they used to make a chocolate chunk cookie that was totally great, maybe 8 years ago. It was dense, hard, but not too hard, somewhat grainy, with good quality chocolate. (may have been Guittard’s.) All you needed was a couple to make the starving (or sad) feeling in your gut go away. ( I met a guy standing in line behind me once, buying only these cookies, and he told me he would eat the whole bag in one sitting. Ah, men, and their lucky, lucky metabolism.) A bag in the cupboard always made me feel happy. Grrr at TJ for always always dropping good food. I wrote a lyrical poem about Trader Joe’s in my other blog, here. It’s not very nice.
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Heads up, and it’s on sale right now at Gelson’s! I warn you, this is still very pricey, at an outrageous $4.99 a pint! Normal people shouldn’t have to pay…
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