Trader Joe’s Speculoos Crunchy Cookie Butter {Foodee}

Yay, it’s Friday again! Today’s Filipino Food Friday post is technically not a Filipino food, but it is currently popular in the Philippines, so it can still count! LOL!

When my friend Chi came to Singapore for a vacation last week, she excitedly informed me and Gelle that she had a special pasalubong (present from a trip) for us from the Philippines. “Have you heard of Speculoos cookie butter? It’s super popular here now! I bought some for you!”

I had actually never heard of it, but my interest got piqued, so I started researching about it and found out that it’s all the rage in Manila now, so much so that it’s constantly out of stock in stores.

Trader Joe’s Speculoos cookie butter is like peanut butter but instead of tasting like peanuts, it tastes like Speculoos cookies. Makes sense? The jar describes it as thus: “a deliciously unusual spread reminiscent of gingerbread and made with crushed biscuits.” Interested yet?

Gelle and I met Chi in Starbucks and Chi was so excited for me to taste it (Gelle had already tried it because another friend of hers also gave her the same thing as pasalubong) that she suggested I buy a pastry which I could slather with it. I decided to buy a toasty cheese bagel for this purpose.

Before I took my first bite, I asked, “Are you sure this isn’t just overly hyped and that it’s really good?” with my signature skeptical raised eyebrow. Chi and Gelle assured me that it really was, and when I took my first bite, I said, “Wow!!! So delicious!!!” with bulging eyes that they couldn’t help but laugh at me. “I should have taken a picture of your reaction!” Chi chortled.

Later that night I bought a loaf of my favorite Gardenia sweet corn bread and made myself a cookie butter sandwich for dinner.

And had the same thing for breakfast the next morning.

Then one day while I was at the fruit stand, I saw a banana and thought, hey, why not? And this happened:

And you know what? This was my most favorite partner to cookie butter so far!

But when I had finished the banana I liked the cookie butter so much that I kept on eating it straight out of the jar. A colleague caught me doing so and laughed at me in incredulity.

And that’s when I realized how best to eat cookie butter – by itself, just like ube jam, peanut butter and Nutella! Yes I’m actually a huge fan of eating bread spreads  straight out of the jar. Call me Joe Black!* 😀

And fittingly, like Joe Black, I still prefer peanut butter above all.

Speculoos cookie butter comes in two variants – original and crunchy. Chi says the crunchy version is better, so I chose that, because Gelle already has both variants. However they say that both their husbands prefer the plain version. Maybe this is a Mars and Venus thing? I don’t know. I like the crunchy one, though, the crunchy bits are real cookies, so additional yummyness! 😀

UPDATE: To all Singapore-based folks who want to know where to buy Speculoos Cookie Butter in Singapore, please click on below link.

{Read about the Lotus Speculoos Cookie Butter with Chocolate}

*Joe Black – In the movie Meet Joe Black, Death becomes human and asks to be introduced to the finer things in human life. One of them turned out to be the joy of eating peanut butter out of a jar.