Dedicated displays of pumpkin spice flavored items in Target, Harris Teeter, and Walmart highlight all the options to fulfill your every pumpkin spice dream. I’ve noticed many of these products seem targeted toward children. I encountered pumpkin spice Pop-Tarts, Twinkies, breakfast cereals and candies, because apparently it’s never too soon to teach your children how to be basic.
Taste Test
So do these products have what it takes to be crave worthy? Could one standout surpass the PSL? I tasted a variety to see how they stack up to the original. Although the PSL has a cult following, it’s not my favorite. It’s pretty and the aroma pleasing, but it leaves me with a pumpkin aftertaste I’m not fond of.
Cereals
With way too many cereals to choose from (because I try not to waste food and if it comes into the house someone has to eat it) I tried two of the most common, Pumpkin Spice Cheerios and Pumpkin Spice Special K. Also available for your morning dining pleasure are Pumpkin Spice Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini Wheats and Life cereal as well as a plethora of granolas and oat meal mixes.
Pumpkin Spice Cheerios are similar to regular Cheerios but each one is covered in a delicate glaze of pumpkin spice. The flavor is not overpowering and it’s good in milk and as a dry snack.
Pumpkin Spice Special K boasts “nutmeg, allspice, ginger and cinnamon clusters.” The overall flavor is good but I definitely taste the spice more than the pumpkin. Also if you bite directly into a cluster it has an oddly chalky consistency.
Sweets
A grandmother’s purse can be a wonderful and mysterious place. It seems to have everything in it: band aids, tissues, safety pins, a flask, and if you’re really lucky, candy still in the wrapper.
Enter Werther’s Original Pumpkin Spice Caramels (also available in Caramel Apple) because senior citizens need pumpkin spice too.
These candies taste like caramel but not so much pumpkin spice. This one might be a pass for the die hard fan. Alternatively, the most explosive pumpkin spice flavor I found was in this product.
I thought these could be amazing, I mean, it’s a Twinkie after all. However, the pumpkin spice flavor was so overwhelming I sent the rest of them off to work with my husband. People will eat anything left in the break room.
There’s more to fall than Pumpkin Spice, Really!
Certainly pumpkin spice is not the only autumnal delight for your palate. Needing a change, especially after those Twinkies, I found some other interesting products.
Apple Pie Oreos seemed intriguing but my expectations were low. OMG, these were amazing. The graham flavored cookie and the apple filling taste just like a crunchy apple pie! Alone or with vanilla ice cream, these are fantastic. Yes, they come in pumpkin spice too, but broaden your horizons people.
Maple seems to have an autumn vibe (even though maple trees are tapped in February and March). Bones Coffee, Boca Java, CoffeeAM, Christopher Bean, and Barissimo all offer maple bacon coffee. I’m pretty much down for any coffee (except that one where the monkeys eat the beans then poop them out before they’re roasted). I tried the Barissimo brand since I found it at my local Aldi.
This coffee smells great but I didn’t find the taste to be particularly maple-bacony. It was a pleasant enough breakfast coffee but there was one weird side effect with continued consumption. There is no polite way to say it. After a few days of drinking this coffee, I was peeing maple. I wonder if that’s what it’s like to be Canadian?
The Craze Continues
Every year there are more and more pumpkin spice options and a variety of other fall flavors to entice and satisfy every palate. Coming in 2019, pumpkin spice lube. That’s a joke, I think.
Apparently the UK is already jumping into Christmas flavors with Cinnamon Coke and pine flavored potato chips. Christmas Tree Chips? That’s one export the Brits can keep.
