Fun game, take a sip of your fall drink each time we say “pumpkin spice”.
This time of the year brings about the cult of pumpkin spice lovers. Anything that can be pumpkin spice flavored, will be pumpkin spice flavored. We took it upon ourselves to fulfill our duty as autumn admirers and fall food connoisseurs.
Up first, we have pumpkin spice yogurt. Yuck. Stevia and an absence of genuine pumpkin spice flavor. Not only was the lack of pumpkin spice disappointing, but the general texture of the yogurt made it worse.
After the yogurt, we moved on to pumpkin spice fudge strips to cleanse our palette, which proved ineffective. These graham cracker-esqe cookies had no notes of pumpkin spice, just a strange vanilla bean flavor. While they were addictive for the graham cracker lover, it was by no means pumpkin spice.
Our saving grace, the pumpkin spice ice cream sandwich. Creamy, smooth, and perfectly balanced flavoring of pumpkin spice. Every bite sent us deeper into a pumpkin spice-induced coma. It was the best thing we had eaten that day, in terms of pumpkin-flavored things.
The ice cream sandwich had us in high hopes for the pumpkin spice mochi, hoping that maybe ice cream would be the best but unfortunately, our hopes got PUNCHED IN THE FACE. The mochi was the worst thing ever. Too much cornstarch. An obscene amount of cornstarch. A strong taste of hairspray accompanied tears in our eyes.
Lastly, we tried the pumpkin spice oatmeal. This should be forbidden. The texture was on par with gulag mush. I felt like my Lithuanian ancestors standing in line for some weird lukewarm soup that left me hungry. We needed to add pumpkin spice to the pumpkin spice oatmeal! If I have to add the flavor of the oatmeal to the food it should taste like, we have an issue.
A recurring issue with these pumpkin spice flavored things is the lack of actual flavoring in the food. There will never be a perfect balance between too much and too little, which is very unfortunate for all pumpkin spice lovers. Thankfully Starbucks has the perfect ratio of pumpkin spice to coffee, so maybe pumpkin spice lattes should be the only pumpkin spice thing to exist.
