Let’s take a moment to appreciate the sheer range of chocolate, shall we? Beyond the classic milk and dark chocolates (which already present an extraordinarily wide variety of expressions between them), there’s a whole world of fantastically flavored white chocolate out there, too. By making use of the creaminess of cocoa butter as a base, chocolatiers the world over have been able to explore flavor profiles ranging from mild and mellow to big and bold. One such example of such wizardry is Trader Joe’s Blonde Bar. It’s made for us by a third-generation, bean-to-bar confectioner in Italy, who flavors their white chocolate with rich, lightly salty caramel to achieve its beautifully Blonde hue, and mixes in bits of crumbled-up sugar cookies to provide pleasant pops of crispiness as you eat.

Our panel tasted through twenty-five iterations before agreeing on the final version of Trader Joe’s Blonde Bar, because we knew we needed to get it just right. With one taste, we know that you’ll agree that it was well worth it. Each and every bite is creamy, sweet, and silky-textured, with nice little bits of cookie to engage the palate throughout. It can be enjoyed, by the square, entirely on its own, it can serve as the star of a wine-and-chocolate tasting, and it truly excels when paired with a bold-flavored coffee drink or creamy milk tea.