Since it’s that time of year and the trend for the last few years is to “pumpkin spice it up” everything, you’re bound to walk into your grocery store, bakery, coffee shop and see tons of stuff with pumpkin spice flavor – maybe even stuff you didn’t know could be made into pumpkin spice flavor. I thought it would be fun if post about what we’ve tried and what our thoughts are about it. Of course, we welcome dissenting opinions too, so feel free to defend your favorite pumpkin spiced foods and beverages.
Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s – not worthy
First bad sign was someone left this in the office kitchen as ‘free’, so I should have known.
More a puffed rice consistency than a Cheerio like consistency. Pumpkin spice tastes “sprayed on” if you will. Too sweet and artificial tasting.
Twinings Pumpkin Spice Chai Tea Bags – not worthy
How can you mess up a nice warming flavor like pumpkin spice and tea? Well you can, and pretty badly. This stuff was so bad, I had to do the" drop it in the lunch room and leave it for coworkers". This makes the TJ Pumpkin O’s taste all natural. By far one of the most artificial tasting of all pumpkin spice goods I’ve had.
Dunkin (fka Dunkin’ Donuts) has pumpkin donuts and other pumpkin flavored beverages. Didn’t sample the drinks, but big thumbs up for pumpkin donuts and pumpkin munchkins! They were delicious and couldn’t stop myself from having 2 or 3, or 6.
I would disagree I’ve been “waiting for” it, but I didn’t realize flavored oil sprays were a thing! I know infused oils for dipping is, but this sounds…interesting…leery eyes
I’m glad that Peet’s Coffee is also giving the nod to apple. For me, apples and cinnamon are THE September/October flavors and they seem to get short shrift these days.
McCormick’s sells an apple pie spice blend, as well as a pumpkin pie spice blend. It’s a nice product.
I really dislike the Starbucks apple spice latte . I do like mulled apple cider, and apple pie, but not combined with milk and espresso.
I get a few halfsweet Pumpkin Spice Lattes each year.
I’m a sucker for new products, but I don’t like the Pumpkin Spice flavour profile enough to buy the pumpkin spice creamer, Oreos, Cheerios, Wensleydale, gouda and so on.
I had a sample of the PSL last week at a Starbucks in Las Vegas - I had never tried one before. And I never will again. The sweetness was overwhelming. Maybe the half sweet would be tolerable? But ugh. I also thought the spices were too strong and fake tasting. I will say my sample was lukewarm, which might have contributed to the off flavors (or maybe heat covers them up, LOL).
The Swedish coffee shop basically adds a couple shakes of Scrappy’s cardamom bitters to a regular latte, hot or iced. Garnished with a mint leaf. Sweetener or sugar optional. I had a bottle of Scrappy’s, to do this at home, and the bottle lasted about 2 years. I’m currently using a glug of French Cardamom syrup.
I like the Scrappy’s Cardamom Bitters a little more.
The Egyptian restaurant adds some honey to their cardamom latte.
I’m so glad someone revived this (but I wasn’t ready in August, when this stuff first starts popping up). I would totally go for pumpkin (or punpkin…?) spice natas! Those sound amazing.
