Pumpkin Passion

Yogurt? This is the first year that I’ve found pumpkin pie flavored yogurt. Pumpkin stuff that I can have for breakfast is always a welcome surprise.

Name: Archer Farms Pumpkin Pie Yogurt
Purchased At: Target
Price: about $1.00
Availability: Seasonal

The Archer Farms yogurt was fairly benign. It had a tacky sticky texture that was slightly unsettling and the flavor was extremely sour. The pumpkin pie flavor was there but the tacky texture and sour tang overpowered any yummy pumpkin taste.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Name: Lucerne Pumpkin Pie Yogurt
Purchased At: Vons Grocery Store
Price: about $1.00
Availability: Seasonal

The Lucerne yogurt was much better. This is your basic yogurt, slight tang and creamy texture. I enjoyed it. The pumpkin taste wasn’t overpowered and could therefore shine through.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Pie Bars
Purchased At: Creative Cakery
Price: I forgot but it doesn’t matter because you should buy them at any price!
Availability: Seasonal

I can describe the pumpkin bars from Creative Cakery in 2 words, “THE BOMB!” Kick your pumpkin-pie-making granny out of the kitchen NOW and head over to Creative Cakery to get these instead. They are soo freaking yummy.

I went in for a one-biter tray to take over to a friend’s house (Hi Annie) and saw the sign for the pumpkin bars. Joy of all joys! Creative Cakery had something pumpkin! Woot! Woot! Everything I’ve ever tried from this place has been delicious. However, it looked fairly boring so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Creative Cakery is small shop with just a few steps from the door to the counter. This is a buy-here-but-take-it-home-to-enjoy kinda place. While we were purchasing our items a woman was standing around eating a pumpkin bar right out of the plastic carton. She said that she couldn’t wait until she got home to eat it. She couldn’t stop raving about it and stuffing it into her mouth.

One this particular day I’d made quite a few pumpkin purchases which were mostly mediocre. I left this one uneaten until the next day. It was love at first bite! The pumpkin was perfect. It was very similar to a good pumpkin pie. The texture was creamy and the spices weren’t overpowering…just the way a good pumpkin pie should taste.

What really pushed this into the superb category was the crust. It was a gramcracker crust with lots of crushed walnuts. Clearly it was made with mass amounts of salted butter but the salty flavor worked really well. The saltiness of the crust blended perfectly with the sweetness of the pumpkin pie as did the crunchy with the creamy.

It was a really well thought out recipe. Kudos to Creative Cakery!!!

Rating: +5 out of 5

To all the many small privately-owed cupcake store owners who are out there making a pumpkin-flavored cupcake this holiday season, I have a few words for you:

“PUMPKIN CUPCAKES ARE NOT CARROT CAKE CUPCAKES WITHOUT THE CARROTS, RAISINS AND WALNUTS!” Seriously people!

I just don’t get why it is so freakin’ difficult to make a decent pumpkin cupcake? There are some excellent pumpkin cakes, loafs, and muffins that cupcake store owners could find inspiration from and improve their mediocre ode to the fall holiday season.

I think the biggest problem is the cream cheese frosting they insist on using. Pumpkin does not have a strong flavor, even with the pumpkin spices it’s a fairly delicate flavor. The cream cheese frosting has that sour/tangy flavor that is just too overpowering for pumpkin cupcakes. Carrot cake can take a tangy frosting like cream cheese because of the chunks of nuts, raisins, and pieces of carrot. Cream cheese doesn’t overpower carrot cake but it certainly does to pumpkin.

Keep it simple people. Why not put a light whipped cream frosting, which would improve the taste and be somewhat more reminiscent of pumpkin pie. Give it a try cupcake store owners!

Since no pumpkin cupcakes have been particularly noteworthy, they’ve gone unblogged until now. Here are your 3 reviews in 1 blog posting–quick and dirty:

Name: Pumpkin Cupcake
Purchased At: Cake & Art
on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood
Price: $3.25
Availability: Seasonal

I found this place by accident on a search for some pumpkin frozen yogurt that was never found. At first I ordered their pumpkin cream cheese cookie but they were out and when I asked if they had anything else pumpkin he said that there were some pumpkin cupcakes in the back just waiting to be decorated. We continued the search for pumpkin frozen yogurt and then came back a few minutes later to find the pumpkin cupcake all freshly decorated.

The picture of the cupcake is not so great but then again the cupcake was not so great. The cake didn’t taste like pumpkin. I kept expecting to bite into a raisin or walnut. Yes, they played into the whole “let them eat carrot cake but without the carrots, raisins or walnuts,” which included the cream cheese frosting. Even without the frosting, the cake didn’t taste much like pumpkin.

The best thing about this cupcake was that it had a whipped cream filling…kinda like a dingdong does. If only they had used that filling for the frosting it might have saved this mediocre cupcake.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Cupcake
Purchased At: Bristol Farms
Price: I forget
Availability: Seasonal

While buying deli-sliced chicken at Bristol Farms, I overheard a couple of women talking about the pumpkin cupcakes. The woman behind the counter said the frosting was SOO AMAZING. The woman at the cash register said that the frosting was SOOO AMAZING. I started to get worried that no one was commenting on the cake.

This was one of the best pumpkin cupcakes I’ve ever had…but that’s not saying much. The cake was too light on any pumpkin flavor but it was a moist and yummy cake. The frosting was really good. It was a cream cheese frosting but it wasn’t too strong. I love the chocolate leaf on top, very fall festive.

This is the only one I would purchase again.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Cupcake/ Pumpkin Seed Cupcake
Purchased At: Yummy Cupcakes in Santa Monica
Price: $2.50
Availability: Year Round…I think

Ugh! I didn’t like it. When I first checked out their website I could swear they called it a “pumpkin cupcake” but when I got to the store they were calling it a “pumpkin seed” cupcake.

The only difference between this pumpkin seed cupcake and a plain vanilla cupcake was a little bit of nutmeg and some pumpkin seeds mixed into the cake. The frosting was really sour because of the cream cheese, so much so that it upset my stomach. Having the seeds in the cake was a little disconcerting when you bit down on one…it was chew smooth, smooth, chew, smooth , smooth, crunch.

Their other cupcakes were so great that I’m not sure why this one was so off. During November they have a pumpkin pie cupcake described as “pumpkin cupcake centered with fresh whipped cream, topped with pumpkin cream cheese.” It sounds good…maybe I can get there before they go out of season.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Don’t forget the pumpkin cupcake at Sprinkles reviewed here.

***If anyone has had a really good pumpkin cupcake PLEASE let me know where, especially if it’s in California.

Name: Pumpkin Spice Latte
Purchased At: Starbucks
Price: $4.25 (grande)
Availability: Seasonal

How awesomely amazing is that picture?!?! You didn’t think I was going to say “How awesomely amazing is Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte” did you? Uh Oh! If you did you may not like this review. I’ve procrastinated this blog post for WAY too long and now that I’m not in the mood to rave over the pumpkin treats I found over the weekend, I guess I’ll get this over with:

Starbucks has a Pumpkin Spice Latte yeah, they do. Hmm, I don’t have much to say about it. I think it’s alright. The taste is a little funky and the color is a strange yellow/orangey color. When they bring back the PSL in September I purchase a couple and enjoy them but soon go back to my regular soy latte. I’m not 100% sure that my dissatisfaction with the drink is due to the sticky sweetness of it or that I like my lattes unsweetened.

I know that this blog will be heresy to some. I have friends (Hi Alli!) who go completely gaga over this stuff and, according to the “Starbucks Gossip” blog, was partially responsible for an 11% increase in sales a few years back but I’m just not thrilled with it. There’s definitely a pumpkin flavor to it but the taste is just indescribably off. The Chicago Tribune was also not overly happy with the flavor, giving it a “C” rating in their pumpkin spice coffee tasting.

So to those of you that enjoy it, keep on loving it! I’ll just make my own pumpkin spice by sprinkling a good amount of cinnamon and nutmeg on top of a regular latte.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Something I can get enthused about is DBTabasco’s “Pumpkin Latte Art” photoset over at Flickr. Through his generous usage of a creative commons license is how I got the photo featured above. Check it out.

Name: PumpkinPalooza
Purchased At: Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge
Price: $7.00 admission fee
Availability: Year Round for the gardens/Seasonal for the Palooza

On Saturday I visited Descanso Gardens’ for their PumpkinPalooza Festival. With a name like PumpkinPalooza I had some high expectations. The festival was described as a fanciful pumpkin celebration with a costume parade, hay rides, an antique farm tractor display, pumpkin people, and an enchanted railroad.

The gardens were beautiful to walk around and view. There were plenty of off-the-beaten paths to hike and view the fall foliage. In Los Angeles you’ve got to seek out trees with beautiful fall colored leaves because they’re difficult to come by.

One section of the gardens looked like a scene straight out of “Sleepy Hallow.” We had to run through it just to make sure the headless horseman wasn’t chasing after us. Then we came to a site of mini looking headstones…freaky. Most of the gardens, however, were of the typical rose, lilac, Japanese garden variety

The pumpkin festivities were located in the main lawn area loaded down with pumpkins stacked in clusters and the obligatory gigantic pumpkin. The “pumpkin people search” was extremely disappointing. There were TWO pumpkin people in the center of the main lawn, which is not a “search.” There was a costume parade and some pumpkinish crafts but these were for kids under the age of 6. The festival was overrun with the young ones but they mostly stayed in the central and rose garden areas of the park.

The PumpkinPalooza Palace was SOOO not a palace. It was a room in the food court area with a few crafts, cookies, cakes, and toys but few were of the pumpkin variety. However, the gift shop did have a good variety of pumpkin trinkets.

The best exhibit was the antique farm tractor display. The vintage tractors were interesting and surely a RARE sight for all the L.A./Pasadena kids. Admit it, who doesn’t love to look at a shiny green John Deere tractor?

My absolute favorite part of the whole day was probably the food. For the festival they had an outdoor barbecue for grilling hamburgers and hotdogs. I haven’t had a barbequed hotdog in so long that I’d forgotten what a taste of heaven those things are…yummy. Mini pumpkin treats were available for dessert for $1.50 each–one was a pumpkin pie and the other a pumpkin brulee. They were both only two-bites big but were delicious. The pumpkin pie had excellent flavor as did the brulee; the only difference between the two was a deep creaminess to the brulee.

In sum, it was a good day and I’m glad that I went but it was not a true celebration of the pumpkin…it was more of a fall/Halloween festival.

PumpkinPalooza Rating: 3 out of 5
Pumpkin Pie Rating: 5 out of 5
Pumpkin Brulee Rating: 5 out of 5

We had a pumpkin decorating contest at work yesterday and this one was mine:

I never said that I have a LOVE of decorating pumpkins ;0)