It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Wait, no, that’s next month. Or, double wait, considering 2020, is any time this year wonderful? Sure, there is always a chance for some late inning, last month rally to resuscitate the expanding black maw things have been as a few positives have recently occurred (cough, cough!). But taken as a whole, seems best to play a wait and see once it is all over before deciding if this year becomes a fully forgettable twelve months or just eleven. Till then, I’ve got pumpkin! We haven’t hit Thanksgiving yet and pumpkin is still a fall squash to get us through until gingerbread and peppermint month descends upon us (even though we know it already has and we are just ignoring it for now so we can try and survive the current COVID Thanksgiving madness).

Each year seems we are inundated with pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice, pumpkin pie spice themed food and like many, I just succumb to the madness because why not and I actually do like the pumpkin and the spice. Trader Joe’s sort of made it easy to come across the stuff and I’ve relished the opportunity to cover it all in depth. I think I’m at the point now where I have tried so much of it, I actually go out in search of new items I haven’t already tried. What can I say, it’s a hobby. Though this year I kept my foraging limited and decided not to overwhelm folks or my taste buds or multiple posts with the stuff. Could have, but didn’t. I’m also keeping it on the sweet side as each of this years selections is mostly dessert focused.

I say that as my first bite comes by way of a suggestion from Ms. O and our old friends at Trader Joe’s who seem to make a game out of “how many things can we squeeze some pumpkin into.” Since she recommended this I took it on good faith to try them.

The packaging pic says it all. It’s Trader Joe’s pretzel slims covered in a pumpkin spiced infused yogurt coating then topped with crushed pumpkin spiced pumpkin seeds. Is that enough pumpkin for you?

Pretzel slims (thin pretzels) are something they do year round but seasonally they cover them with stuff to match the holiday, like chocolate peppermint in December. They have the whole salty sweet taste which is right in my wheelhouse and pumpkin spice does come through, though I will say I get more cinnamon and a touch of nutmeg the most. The yogurt coating is kind o like some sort of white chocolate thing, meaning overtly sweet. The crushed pumpkin seeds are a bit too small, random and sparingly applied here to really get any kind of texture or flavor from them. Feels like it might have been better to either make bigger chunks or leave them whole and mixed into the yogurt instead of just crushing them on top after the fact. Ms. O gave them the thumbs up with her only criticism there aren’t enough in the six ounce bag for the roughly $3 price tag. Once you start eating them you can’t stop and suddenly the bag is empty. I can’t say that was my experience as I felt a few went a long way considering how much spice was on them and it can become a bit cloying if you have much of it, particularly with the sweet yogurt coating. While they deliver on the spice I’m not quite as enthusiastic about them as Ms. O, but if you like the whole chocolate covered pretzel kind of thing, they’d be worth a try.

Oh Dunkin’ Donuts, they’ve also been on the pumpkin spice train for a few years themselves. I think people like their coffee with the pumpkin, but I don’t do coffee—so don’t care! But a donut, yep, down for that. A deep fried cake donut covered in a sugar glaze. Props to them for including all the spices and pumpkin puree in the mix. Well go on then Dunkin’ you got me and I’m buying this donut since you specialize in donuts this donut should be a great donut! Enough donuts for you?

It isn’t exactly as cake like as expected. Not old fashioned but not quite yeasted light glazed either, kind of somewhere in-between. The inside is appropriately orange and the spice of it all, if not the pumpkin does truly come through and the glaze outside gives a nice sweetness to all that cinnamon and stuff. Though one bite in and it is as dry as my dating life! Ba-dum-dum! I’ll be here all week! Seriously though, like three days in the desert dry. The inside was so dry, the glaze created a kind of shell on the outside that came right off and quite tasty on its own. As a whole, or, more specifically, as a donut with a hole from a supposed donut maker, I’m underwhelmed at the utmost. Maybe they did it so you would get and have it with coffee kind of like a biscotti, which I also dislike. Who wants a dry crumbly cookie and who wants a dry crumbly donut. That is really a rhetorical question because if you answer isn’t “not me “ then I can no longer help you.

Well now this is special. Another donut place doing some pumpkin thing but in a glazed fried pie way, this has to be promising. Krispy Kreme originated in the South in Winston-Salem, NC and fried hand pies are kind of a thing there so it seemed like a win win to try. One bite in and and who boy this is some sugary sweetness going on. Your tooth will ached and you will definitely hit a sugar crash shortly after. Much has to do with the thick, crusty sugar glaze on the outside. The inside filling is also sweet and quite ample.

It is rare you find something mass produced like this which has as much filling as you can see above. Lots of pumpkin puree and spices just oozing out of it. You can see the small brown spots of spices. What the problem becomes is the shell is quite thick and super bready. Add in all the sugar in the filling and on the outside then pumpkin spice of it all kind of gets lost in all the bread and sugar. One of the points of pumpkin in a dessert is that is offers an alternative to super sweet treats and is supposed to give more of a balance, alas, this does not. A shame really as if they cut the sugar back even just 30% and the outer shell 10% it could be kind of spot on. As is, even for me this was a sugar bomb in every bite. Try at your own diabetic risk.

This is different. I do so love a whoopie pie and one with pumpkin? How could I refuse! Yes, another rhetorical question. You can see the ingredient list above and spices and pumpkin are in it and listed near the top at least so we will just ignore all those other “things” also listed on the label. The cake does have that lovely spice flavor and is just moist enough though with an underlying hint of dry. It is also quite sticky on the outside but neither of these are enough to deter me from eating more of it. The filling is a buttercream one which surprisingly overly sweet like that glazed pie was.

It was nice but I think we can all see from above why I was not 100% sold on this—not enough filling or even dispersion of said filling. It doesn’t even go to the edges for whoopie sakes! Really, did you not make enough? Are you saving it for something else? More rhetorical questions! Granted, while I personally would enjoy a heaping helping of filling you could have at least spread this out to try and guarantee some in each bite, which is the way it should be. As is, you don’t always get that and parts are just the cake itself, which is fine, but it works so much better with the buttercream. It is why I’ll give this a thumbs up with a caveat that you may not get the filling you need and be stuck with bites of sticky cake. Not the worst thing but certainly not the best it could be.

A mixed bag of mass produced pumpkin product for sure but when you are making things by the thousands for general audiences sometimes quality of consistency can be varying or in most of these, overly sweet because American tastes veer towards sweet these days, at least upon initial bites. It kind of goes back to that old Coke vs. Pepsi battle thing (remember those?). Pepsi always seemed to beat Coke in the taste tests but the tests were of small amounts which stood out for Pepsi as they tasted sweeter but if you did a full can taste test you’d get different results once people got the full on normal amount. Kind of like these pumpkin things, a bite here and there are fine, a whole one is whole other matter. Though as stated, a little more buttercream and I really cold have swooned over the whoopie pie.

Will these keep me from trying more pumpkin spice and pie flavored things? Funny, that really is kind of rhetorical too because I’m always down for pumpkin. I already know going in they are not all going to be winners but it doesn’t deter me from the search. One of these fall days one of these is gonna hit all the pumpkin and spice notes I’m looking for and then I will just orange glow up like a jack-o-lantern and really get my pumpkin on.

(Small note, still working on some big changes, most likely in the new year. And yes, I have noticed much of my food the past couple months is shades of brown. Stress eating and fall will do that to a person. I am getting my veggies in case you were worrying/wondering!)