Walmart Bakery Again … Seriously?: Yep.

Should I Have Been That Surprised When It Didn’t Even Taste Remotely Like Pumpkin?: Nope.

Anything to Say for Yourself, Young Man???: For what it’s worth, the cream filling actually tasted a little better than others I’ve tried in the past, but … I know … this site isn’t called Love Me Some Cream Filling or anything…

Learn to Follow Directions: I’m actually surprised that this one turned out as well as it did because I kind of forgot to melt the butter first and then tried to make up for it by scooping out the unmixable remains and just heating those, to no avail … so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I first opened the oven door after making these things…

Actually Lives Up to Its Name!: It’s sad when I’ve become cynical to the point where I’m impressed when a pumpkin product actually tastes like pumpkin around here, but true to its name, these little treats most definitely did taste just like pumpkin pie – consistency, flavor, the whole nine yards! I also rather enjoyed the “gingerbread crust,” as it added a unique sweetness that you don’t normally see combined with pumpkin, but it actually quite nice this time of year with the rest of the holiday spirit.

Shopper’s Tip: Even if you’re not really in the mood for pumpkin now, pick up a box and throw it in the pantry while you continue onward with your regularly scheduled cookie crusade! Come April when you’ve finally run out of Christmas cookies, you won’t be able to find a trace of these things at Walmart anymore and you’ll be glad that you stowed away a little pumpkin fun to help those April showers pass…

My Wife, Still Awesome: Life has been a little crazy and hectic for me lately and I’ve been sitting on a bunch of stuff to bake since mid-October, so the other night my wife decided to be extra cool and bake these cookies up as a surprise to me for dessert! Extra bonus points because she doesn’t actually care much for pumpkin herself…

The Taste: Moist, chewy, delicious, and the cream cheese frosting was a nice touch … but the pumpkin spice wasn’t nearly what I was hoping for and certainly would never hold a candle to these little beauties! Not terrible, mind you, and good in a jiff when you’ve only got 30 minutes and don’t feel like breaking out the can opener, but certainly not a shining beacon of pumpkin-inity, either.

The Quantity: P.S. What size cookies do they actually expect you to be baking when they put “Makes 3 dozen cookies” on the side of the bag??? Ok, so I guess from the picture it does actually cite 2 inches, but that’s like barely any cookie at all! Other than Oreos, what 2-inch cookies have you ever actually enjoyed eating?

Credentials: I mean, seriously – with a doctorate in crackers, this guy has got to know what he’s talking about, right?!

Undue Enthusiasm: Ok, so I was pretty excited about this particular find, admittedly mostly just because I thought that the name sounded awesome, however unfortunately in hindsight after having tasted the results of what I can only imagine were many long and grueling years of graduate work, in reality I found them kind of dull and uninspired, and if I were Doctor Kracker I’d maybe think about finding another line of work like heart surgery or psychiatry or something that isn’t necessarily cracker-centric.

Untapped Market?: For what it’s worth, my dog liked them, but then again, she also has a voracious appetite for shoes…

Also Known As…: The Three-Dollar Pumpkin Pie

Admission: So truth be told, this particular post is actually the pumpkin counterpart to a humor column that I posted earlier today poking fun at Black Friday and the expectation of quality for something that you’re literally paying $3 for. When I saw this in the store, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself wondering just what a three-dollar pumpkin pie actually tastes like…

The Verdict: Much like I wouldn’t trust the three dollar waffle maker to not burn my kitchen down shortly after its inaugural breakfast commenced, if my choices were A) serve this $3 pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, or B) don’t serve pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, being the pumpkin aficionado that I am, the only answer I could possibly bring myself to would actually be … C) pick up a box of Jell-O pumpkin pudding and a graham cracker shell instead and make something myself because this one was just … bleeech.

The top has this creepy, sort of skin over the top that reminded me of crappily made pudding, the innards are somewhat tolerable, although it took several bites to get past the aftertaste of the skin, and the “crust” … well, as you can see in the picture, there actually really wasn’t much of a crust at all because it was either barely present or broken off long before I ever even got it out of the box.

Also, the crust on the bottom of the pie was surprisingly dry, which I found odd considering it was covered by an inch and a half of pumpkin.

It just wasn’t a good pie, ok?!

Money may not be able to buy happiness, but at least it can buy you a better pumpkin pie than this bargain basement blunder…

First and Foremost…: Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Introduction: As you might expect, this was one of several pumpkin desserts on the dinner menu this holiday season at my house, and the only one that actually required assembly, in fact! It actually wasn’t too bad at all, though – aside from the actual baking (which I’ll get to in a minute…), the assembly process took a matter of minutes and even a child could’ve done it, really.  You can see from the picture that I did omit the almond topping because nobody in my house actually likes almonds, but the rest was pretty much by the book…

I Hate Convection Ovens: I mentioned earlier this year that we had moved into a house that has a convection oven instead of a traditional one, and now that I’ve had plenty of time to experiment with it, I can safely say 7 months later that I absolutely hate the thing. The majority of my pans don’t work in it because they need to be able to spin and anything rectangular can’t, which limits me to a small number of square and circle 9×9 pans at best, and a pizza pan that has become my de facto cookie sheet.  I fear the weekend when we have to bake Christmas cookies because it’s going to take forever…

But anyways, I tried using my old, rectangular 13×9 pan for this … basically because I forgot about the limitations until after I had put it in the oven … and by the time I was done, I had cooked it for nearly twice as long as the recipe recommends, including physically turning the pan around when one side was starting to burn while the other was still raw.  And maybe there are other convection ovens that don’t require turntables and as a result are awesomely efficient baking machines, but this one sucks and it’ll be the first thing I throw out the window if the house that we eventually buy happens to have one installed!

</rant>

So Anyways…: Nonetheless, despite my baking mishaps, the end result of this pumpkin/caramel/cream cheese thing actually tasted pretty good.  I was a little unsure of what to expect from the frosting because it seemed like there was a ton of it, but the flavors blended really well with the caramel and pumpkin cake – like what I would hope that one of those pumpkin roll thingys would taste like.

P.S.: My wife noticed after I had started baking that there’s also an alternate recipe on the side of the box to instead create a pumpkin roll rather than the cake that you see above, and so while I may not be picking up another box to try it anytime soon, a little birdie did inform me that her Mom – well famous for enabling my pumpkin habit thus far – may very well mix this up when we come to visit around Christmastime, so stay tuned for more of that to come shortly…

Potential Slogans:

• “Dry and a little tasteless, just like Grandpa’s jokes…”
• “Cobbler?  Wait – aren’t cobblers are normally moist and delicious???  Can somebody look up the definition of cobbler before we print these damn labels?!”
• “It doesn’t taste very good, but at least it’s cheap.”

Bleh: Yeah, so as you might’ve guessed – I wasn’t really very impressed with this substitution for Walmart’s traditional crappy pumpkin baked goods.  I pretty much picked it up thinking that because it has somewhat of a unique name, that there was a small possibility that it might be different … but I was wrong!

Final Verdict: Unless that’s your own grandpa there on the packaging and you’re trying to avoid hurting his feelings or something, it’s probably best just to steer clear of this one altogether…

Quick Post: A pretty basic candle, really – nice fragrance, but not particularly strong unless you stick your nose right down inside the candle, which I don’t suggest that you do! Still, a good, reliable candle for ambiance around the house if you happen to live with people who might not necessarily be quite as in love with pumpkin as you are…

Wow: I don’t want to get you too excited or anything, but this is probably the best pumpkin spread that I’ve ever had.  Sweet, but not too sweet – so far I’ve found it as a great way to add a bit of fall to just about any meal, including my ham and egg specialty like you see above!

The Experience: I eat a lot of bagels with cream cheese in the mornings for breakfast, so it was nice to find an alternative spread that brings something completely different to the table.  The aroma is great – full-flavor, without beating you over the head with it the moment you take the top off the container, and the taste itself was very sweet and smooth, and left me wishing that I had been a little more liberal when I had been spreading this stuff across my toast…

The Purchase: It kind of caught me off guard because this is the first year I’ve seen it, but so far I’ve found it exclusively at Walmart in their dairy case right alongside all of the other Country Crock varieties.  Whereas Target tends to put several of their pumpkin dairy products on display in one area (cream cheese, coffee creamers, etc…), I’ve really only ever seen Walmart do so with their baking items, so keep your eyes peeled and remain ever vigilant!  And for godsakes, if you happen across any, be sure to pick up a tub or three while you can – they’ve not really that big anyways, and mine says it will be good until June 2012 … despite already being almost half gone, so you do the math!

Quick Review: Thick and smooth, but not overwhelmingly pumpkin.  It’s definitely in there, unlike some other recent reviews, however the flavor wasn’t nearly as awesome and delicious as the pumpkin milk that I discovered through divine intervention earlier this year at Target.

True, it’s a tough act to follow, but hey – we’re looking for the best of the best of the best here!