Pumpkin Spice Oreo

 

Product circa: Post-2020 seasonally

They actually have a pumpkin flavor along with the requisite spices!  With that said, they are nothing special... in the bottom half of pumpkin spice-flavored junk food.

M&M's Pumpkin Spice

Kudos to M&M's for all of their new limited time flavors that they're testing.  In addition to past years' White Chocolate Candy Corn, we have this Pumpkin Spice to add to this autumn's repertoire, and I even just picked up a new edition for this coming Christmas season!

I'm not really sure what they were thinking when they made these.  Chocolate is such an overwhelming flavor that I feared it would drown any "pumpkin spice", and I was mostly right.  Whether these actually have any pumpkin flavor in them, it's undetectable.  If you try hard, you end up detecting some hints of pumpkin pie spice flavors: mostly allspice, with maybe a bit of nutmeg and cinnamon.  It's pleasant, but barely there, and these candies end up tasting almost identical to the original.

In all fairness, allspice is such a seldom-used ingredient in American cuisine that when an average American tastes it, they might think of pumpkin.

M&M's probably doesn't want to overuse their white chocolate variety as a base for other flavors, but milk chocolate really doesn't sing well with much else.  One thing they did get right: these candies are slightly larger, like most of the ephemeral M&M's varieties.  The larger size increases the amount of chocolate in each candy, thereby decreasing the proportion of candy shell, and it makes it better.  Click here for more discussion of how changing proportions can make a snack even better than the original.


M&M's Pumpkin Spice:- Good

Original M&M's(for comparison):- Good

Pop-Tarts Frosted Pumpkin Pie

Pop-Tarts adds to their autumn/winter seasonals with Pumpkin Pie.  This variety has been issued for a year or two now and it's worth picking up when you see it.

When you open the plastic, there's an immediate aroma of canned pumpkin.  Very nice.  The frosting is speckled with familiar autumn colors.

After a bite or two, flavors that you fully expect begin to come through.  Pumpkin hits you first, then brown sugar, with perhaps a bit of vanilla, nutmeg and allspice following faintly behind.  The sweetness is barely there, just enough to cover any bitterness from the spices.  The maltiness from the pumpkin and the restrained sweetness make for an almost savory experience.

Toasting the pastries brings out more sweetness than before, but still lower than what you would expect from Pop-Tarts.  The spices also manage to be more pronounced when warmed.  It's a different experience when warmed versus cold, but it's hard for me to recommend one over the other.

I usually eat my Pop-Tarts with a cup of unsweetened tea or coffee nearby so that I can counter each saccharine bite with a bitter counterpoint.  This method has made me realize why sweet pastries are a must for a traditional British tea time, with a beverage's bitterness cutting through a snack's sweetness that can sometimes linger a bit too long.  No such strategy is requires with Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts.  The experience is in a refreshing balance that isn't over-sweetened and, as it often is, causes me to recommend this product heartily.


Pop-Tarts Pumpkin Pie: - Great

Original Pop-Tarts(Strawberry, for comparison): - Good

Jello Seasonal Release Instant Puddings

The 2012 posts are going to continue for a bit... there's a backlog of Ephemeral Noms!

For several years now, Jello has issued several special flavors of instant pudding for the autumn/holiday season.  These are most (if not all) of them.

Candy Cane - My distaste for peppermint notwithstanding, this stuff just isn't that good.  The sweetness of the pudding does poorly in balancing out the onslaught of mint/menthol, which is so strong that you can feel it in your nasal passages, not unlike horseradish or wasabi.  It's like the Jello company ground up a bunch of candy canes straight into this mix... even the chalkiness is present.

Pumpkin Spice - The aroma is of earthy cinnamon as you dig into this stuff.  The flavors here are a valiant try: cinnamon, nutmeg, perhaps allspice, and sweet pumpkin.  What the hell... do they dry pumpkin flesh and grind the stuff into this mix?  The flavors are pleasant, but the sweetness needs to be amped in order for them to really sing.

Gingerbread - This one is a hit.  Rich and deep spices assault the tongue in harmony: ginger, clove, allspice, cinnamon, molasses.  It's quite sweet, and it delivers the rest of the complex flavors perfectly.  I could eat this stuff until I got sick.


Jello Candy Cane Pudding: - Passable
Jello Pumpkin Spice Pudding: - Good
Jello Gingerbread Pudding: - Great
Original Jello Vanilla Pudding(for comparison): - Good