Trader Joe’s Boozy Macaroons Review

It’s holiday season here in the United States and Trader Joe’s rolls out the seasonal items like there is no tomorrow. Christmas starts in mid November and goes until January. In that time you’ll find most of Trader Joe’s has switched over to holiday food and among the best sellers at Trader Joe’s are the treats like macarons.

I have loved macarons from the time I spent in France until now, they are always a treat if you can find well made ones. 

The other big seller this time of year is the booze! So, it’s only natural that Trader Joe’s would mash two of our favorite things together, little French cookies and booze into one product and call it Trader Joe’s Boozy Macarons!

For all you macaron lovers you’ll be happy to hear that these are made in France. What better place to get them from?

If you look at the festive box, you’ll see that there are three types of macarons, Cointreau, Brandy XO, and Rum.

The colors associated with them look this way:

• Orange = Cointreau
• Purple = Brandy XO
• Brown = Rum

These colors make sense if you think about it because Cointreau is a brand name for a French orange liqueur, hence the orange color.

The purple color is for Brandy because Brandy is a hard liquor derived from wine which is from grapes and grapes can be purple.

The brown color is for Rum and Rum is brown and that’s it!

I won’t go into too much history of macarons (sometimes called Macaroons here in the USA), but suffice it to say that they are basically a French cookie sandwich. Two halves of French Meringue with some flavoring and color and then the filling which is usually ganache, jam, or some type of nut paste.

How do these Boozy Macarons Taste?

Let’s start with the Rum flavored ones. The rum flavored ones are light brown with a dark interior. There is a light colored cream between the two halves. When you bite into them a hard exterior gives way to a softness of the cookie and then the cream in the middle that I think contains the boozy rum. You can taste the alcohol a bit but it’s fleeting. Clearly a Rum flavor to them.

The Brandy XO (XO means Extra Old) ones are chocolate flavored and also have a cream in the middle. The cookies are clearly chocolate flavored and these have the most subtle flavor of the three. I did not get nearly the same little kick of booze with these and the brandy flavor is almost too subtle to taste but I did like the chocolate flavor of them.

The last, and most flavorful, of the bunch is the Cointreau flavored. The crispy, crunchy thin orange colored crust gives way to a darker orange interior with a chocolate colored cream in the middle. If you’ve ever had Cointreau before, it is immediately obvious when you bite into them. These are the most flavorful and my favorites by far. 

As you can see from the pictures, you get four of each so 12 total. At $5.99 for 12 is a pretty good deal.

Final Verdict

Trader Joe’s Boozy Macarons is a seasonal item that will only be around for a couple of months during November and December. If you want a fun snack to give out after dinner, these might make for a perfect treat! Personally, I liked the Brandy ones the least as they seemed to have the least amount of boozy flavor. They were chocolate flavored which I like. The Rum ones had a good hit of Rum flavor and were my 2nd favorite ones. The most favorite macarons were the Cointreau with a prominent orange liqueur flavor which I really liked!