Review: Trader Joe's 2025 Fall Lineup Features (Almost) Nothing But Hits

Each and every year, when the weather gets chilly, as the sun sets earlier and earlier, we look forward to one thing: Trader Joe's fall items. Okay, sure, there are plenty of things to look forward to when fall rolls around, but any avid Trader Joe's shopper knows that the seasonal turn brings on a treasure trove of new and returning items at the store. Many of these items will be pumpkin-spiced, but Trader Joe's is also notoriously good at touching on other fall-adjacent flavor profiles, like apple, butternut squash, and hot for the 2025 season, maple.

As both a fan of Trader Joe's and a fan of all things fall, I decided to put the store's new fall 2025 items to the taste test. I did the same thing with Trader Joe's fall 2024 items, highlighting some real successes like the pumpkin spice mini sheet cake and the savory squash pastry bites. This year brings about a new onslaught of fresh fall items, including a new flavor of egg bites, a maple-flavored cold foam creamer, and even an apple pie spread. I'm going to share my candid thoughts about each of the eight new fall items, so that the next time you hit up a Trader Joe's, you'll know which fall items should stay on the shelves and which should go into your cart immediately. 

Though it's not exactly novel to incorporate sweet ingredients into sourdough bread, it's something that I personally haven't dabbled with much. On its own, sourdough is mostly neutral with those all-important sour notes, so naturally, I can see how it might pair well with the warm, sweet, and somewhat tart flavors of apple. My only concern going into this bread was that it would go completely overboard with the sweetness, compromising any sourdough flavor integrity by loading it up with sugar to the point that the bread itself was unrecognizable. If you also have a similar concern, then I can happily assure you that cloying sweetness is not an issue with this bread. 

Even just after taking a single bite, I could tell that the bread definitely retained that distinct sourdough taste. The apples certainly did add a level of complexity to the bread, along with a touch of sweetness and some tart notes, too. I couldn't really taste much cinnamon, and that's my biggest qualm here. Overall, however, this is some tasty stuff, and I could see a simple slice of this apple cinnamon sourdough bread toasted with a little bit of butter being a real winner for fall mornings to come.

When I initially went to my nearest Trader Joe's to pick up all of the fall items, I went during the evening, and the salted maple cold foam creamer was the one item that was already sold out for the day. The kind TJ's employee informed me that I'd have better luck coming in the morning for this item, because apparently, it's one of the hottest new fall items and it's selling out quickly. After returning the next morning and finally sampling the product myself, I can safely say that I understand what the hype is about.

There are plenty of cold foam creamers out there, and as someone who's tried quite a few of them, this one is absolutely the best I've ever had. First of all, the texture alone is perfectly creamy, dreamy, and absolutely everything that a cold foam should be — not too liquidy, but not so thick that it's basically just whipped cream. The salted maple flavor is what truly solidified this as such a winning product, though. I'm a huge fan of any and all things maple-flavored, so it's not exactly a huge surprise that I enjoyed the flavor of this creamer. But Trader Joe's simply nailed that delectably rich, sweet, almost caramel-like maple flavor. The salted aspect of the flavor also worked really well, balancing the sweetness of the maple without tasting too overtly salty. I simply cannot wait to top off my iced coffee with this cold foam creamer for weeks (if not months) to come.

Trader Joe's has essentially mastered the art of putting out a good spread, be it the ever-popular pumpkin butter or one of the many Trader Joe's jams and fruit spreads. Joining the repertoire for the fall 2025 season is apple pie spread, a sweet and spiced spread that, at the very least, came with strong potential to upgrade a slice of toast. Admittedly, this was one of my lesser-anticipated items, not because I dislike apples or apple pie, but because I was concerned that this stuff would simply be too sweet (and this is coming from someone with a major sweet tooth).

While there's no denying that the apple pie spread is, indeed, exceptionally sweet, I don't necessarily think that the sweetness is too much. I actually found the spread to be nicely balanced, with plenty of cinnamon flavor there to back up the apples. This stuff really did taste like apple pie filling in a jar, and once I got the brilliant (or perhaps completely obvious) idea to spread some of it onto a slice of the apple cinnamon sourdough, I could see the full potential of this product. So, yes, this apple pie spread is delicious on its own, but I can confirm that it's also good on bread. I can imagine that it'd be just as good dolloped onto yogurt, pancakes, or waffles.

There are many, many highlights on this list, but there are also a couple of products that I felt more lukewarm about. Unfortunately, one such product was the new pumpkin spice espresso martini, which I'd argue is my least favorite out of all the products on this list. I'd previously tried Trader Joe's plain bottled espresso martini and compared it to a homemade one, and while I didn't absolutely hate TJ's take on the cocktail, it simply couldn't compare to homemade. And, alas, history has repeated itself with the store's seasonal pumpkin spice espresso martini.

My biggest gripe with this product is that it didn't much taste like either pumpkin spice or an espresso martini. At first sip, I was overwhelmed with the taste of ginger, which isn't all too surprising considering that most pumpkin pie spice blends are going to include it. Weirdly enough, there just wasn't enough sweetness to balance that intense spice flavor, nor was there necessarily any strong coffee flavor, either. There was definitely a distinct booziness to the drink, but if booziness and spice are all the drink has going for it, I'm not sure I'd consider that a success. I did start to warm up to the cocktail the more I sipped on it, but if I'm being honest, this just isn't a product I'd buy again.

Remember how I mentioned that maple was the hot flavor for the fall 2025 season? Trader Joe's is at it yet again, this time with its maple brown butter-flavored almonds. Unless you're someone who avidly seeks out snackable nuts when you shop at Trader Joe's, then you might easily miss that this product even exists. However, while these maple almonds may seem forgettable, I was actually thoroughly impressed by just how good they tasted.

I can't sit here and say that this TJ's maple-flavored product impressed me quite as much as the maple cold foam, but hey, these little snacks still managed to pack some nice, rich maple flavor. That buttery-maple coating was nice and thick around each almond, too, ensuring that each and every bite was wrapped up in as much sweet, rich, maple-y goodness as possible. If I have one gripe, it's that I wouldn't exactly say that the coating tasted like brown butter — though, to be fair, it can be hard to tell since brown butter tastes somewhat nutty, but these already tasted nutty because they're, well, nuts. Ultimately, I did enjoy the flavor that these almonds had to offer, though I can't necessarily say it's a product that I was so wowed by that I'd buy it again.

Many of us are familiar with those much-anticipated Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies that hit stores every fall, and now, Pillsbury's got some competition. Trader Joe's has debuted its own take on those classic little sugar cookies, and much like the Pillsbury ones, the TJ's version comes with ready-to-bake, pre-shaped sugar cookie dough. Notably, the cookies don't actually have any pumpkin flavor, but rather, they just have a classic sugar cookie flavor with a cute little pumpkin design in the center of each cookie.

Right off the bat, I appreciated how easy it was to bake these sugar cookies. The dough was not only already portioned out, but each portion size was already rounded and just about identical in size, which made baking that much more of a breeze. Flavor-wise, I can't exactly say that these cookies blew me away (they are, after all, just sugar cookies), but there was certainly nothing wrong with them, either. If anything, I thought these cookies could have tasted a little sweeter, but I can see their more subdued sweetness being a big win for some people. The texture of the cookies was pretty spot-on — soft in the middle, slightly crispy on the outside, just the way you'd hope a sugar cookie would bake up. What you see is exactly what you get with this product, in the best way possible.

Though we may have Starbucks to thank for helping make egg bites such a popular breakfast item, I'd argue that we can thank Trader Joe's for keeping that momentum going. In the past, TJ's has offered egg bite flavors like Unexpected Cheddar cheese & turkey sausage or cheese, spinach, & kale. And now, brand new for fall 2025, a harvest vegetable hash egg white bites flavor has entered the arena.

As someone who is generally a fan of egg bites but admittedly doesn't seek them out super often, I was excited to try this flavor. The name "harvest vegetable hash" didn't necessarily provide an inkling as to how these would taste (other than having vegetables), so I was pleasantly surprised to find that these really did have a distinctly autumnal feel to them. The flavor sort of reminded me of Thanksgiving stuffing, mostly because I was picking up some notes of dried herbs, namely rosemary and sage. The vegetable inclusions also stuck to the fall theme by way of sweet potatoes and butternut squash, which certainly didn't taste bad, but were perhaps a bit bland. 

Ultimately, I'd say that these were some tasty — if perhaps slightly boring — egg bites. Considering that this is the only new fall item that's savory rather than sweet, however, I appreciated the flavor break and would recommend these to anyone who is a big fan of TJ's other egg bite flavors.

Rounding out Trader Joe's new fall 2025 products is the one that I enjoyed most of all: The maple leaf ice cream sandwiches. I was anticipating these bad boys from the second I heard about them, because again, I'm a big maple fan. The thought of a maple ice cream sandwich almost seemed too delicious to be true, and the fact that both the cookies and ice cream would be maple-flavored? I couldn't possibly imagine such deliciousness. Well, I'm happy to report that these ice cream sandwiches were just as good as I'd hoped, if not better. 

It's true that both the ice cream and cookies have a maple flavor, so each and every bite is going to be chock-full of that rich, almost buttery-sweet flavor profile. The cookies were soft and easy to bite through without being mushy, and the ice cream was perfectly creamy with that perfect dose of maple flavor. Although it is hard to be unbiased as a maple lover, I truly don't think that these ice cream sandwiches overdo the maple flavor, but rather just touch on it perfectly. I'm already thinking of ways I can clear enough freezer space to hoard boxes of these ice cream sandwiches, so yes, it's safe to say that I highly recommend these frozen treats to all the fellow maple lovers out there — and I'd deem it the best of the best from Trader Joe's new fall lineup.