Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger Snaps

If you’re anything like my mother, you think the best part of the holiday season is the influx of gingerbread cookies taking over supermarket shelves everywhere. Sweet, spicy, golden brown and delicious, these addictive crispy bites go quickly at our house. And while I was never a huge fan of this style of cookie myself, I have found something of a revelation in Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger Snaps. These cookies have definitely made a convert out of me, and now I can’t get enough either.

Pros: These Triple Ginger Snaps are so named because they contain ginger in three forms: fresh, ground, and candied, and you can taste all three in every delicious morsel.

• The bite of fresh ginger leaps assertively onto your palate and tingles on your tongue for a brief moment before giving way to…
• The warm, delicately spiced flavor of the ground ginger, a taste that just screams “holidays”
• The chewy, crystalline nuggets of candied ginger are a sweet burst of extra ginger flavor
• All of this ginger is enveloped in a dark brown cookie that is at once light and crispy and rich and buttery

Nutrition Information: According to the packaging, a recommended serving size is 6 cookies which, if you’re like me, simply does not suffice. However, six cookies will only set you back 140 calories and 5 grams of fat, so you don’t have to feel too guilty about indulging in more. The cookies, which are about the size of a half-dollar coin, contain no high fructose corn syrup; they are made instead with brown sugar and molasses, so if you are one of those “anti-corn byproducts” consumers, this is a treat you can still feel good about. Trader Joe’s also makes its Triple Ginger Snaps without any preservatives. That’s right, everything on the ingredients list is something you could find in your own pantry (no potassium benzoate found here).

At the store, a 14-ounce plastic tub of these Triple Ginger Snaps sells for only a few dollars, but it has all the great taste of more “gourmet” cookies you find at other grocery stores for much higher prices.

Cons: If there is a downside to these delightful cookies, it is that you can only find them at Trader Joe’s stores. And since they are made the natural way (i.e., without preservatives) they have a shorter shelf-life than your run-of-the-mill supermarket cookies. But when cookies taste as good as these Triple Ginger Snaps, eating them fast enough shouldn’t be a problem.