Kashi’s Pumpkin Pie Bars
Posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Name: Kashi’s TLC Fruit & Grain Bars in Pumpkin Pie
Purchased At: Target
Price: $5ish
Availability: Year Round
Finding pumpkin products on the shelf of my supermarket in the month of May is always a little strange but nice. This was true of Kashi’s TLC Fruit & Grain Bars in Pumpkin Pie. I wasn’t that surprised to find them in Spring because Kashi also has a year-round TLC Crunchy Granola Bars in Pumpkin Spice Flax (omg, how many names can a company give one granola bar), which I like but think the pumpkin flavor was nearly nonexistent—it seems like more than a stretch to call them “pumpkin spice.”
This previous experience squelched my excitement to try the TLC Fruit & Grain Bars in Pumpkin Pie but I figured I give them a shot. After all, pumpkin products in May are slim pickings. The wife tried them first and gave it a poor verbal review. She thought the top layer was a strange texture and the flavor was all wrong. I was subsequently even less excited and left them in the cupboard for weeks before a search for garbanzo beans turned them up again.
Begrudgingly I ate one at my desk at work in a moment of 3 o’clock hunger. After all, it’s a healthy snack back with only 120 calories but they’re so not worth it. Yuck!
From the picture on the box you can see that these bars are in two layers. The first is a dry oat layer and the second is a spongeier layer-of-mystery with pecans on top. I have no idea what the mystery layer is about. It’s somewhere in texture between a very firm jell-o and a nonsticky caramel but tastes similar to licking a cinnamon stick. The picture on the box also shows a generous amount of pecans on the top layer of the bar. In reality there’s only about 5 small pieces of pecans stuck into the top layer.
I’m beginning to think that Kashi considers “pumpkin” to be synonymous with cinnamon. I checked to see if there possibly some pumpkin seeds in the bar. I’ll forgive a product that tastes nothing like pumpkin if it includes pumpkin seed–the seeds don’t have a very distinctive flavor. The check turned up actual pumpkin puree and dried pumpkin but both were down towards the bottom of the ingredient list.
Rating: I give it a 1 out of 5. However, I will finish off the box so they must not be entirely disgusting.
I actually really like these. I can’t eat them day after day after day, because they are really rich. But they are a nice, sweet treat. I also really love the Pumpkin Spice crunchy granola bars but agree that they aren’t so much pumpkin-y as just…spice-y
I finally tried one this morning and blech, I didn’t like it all. I thought the top layer was sickeningly sweet, but in an artificial way and not pumpkin-y at all. The pumpkin flax ones were just kinda blah but weren’t yucky like these ones. Did you try that dark chocolate coconut one yet? I haven’t, but that one is next on my list. Kashi is so hit and miss.
I did try the dark chocolate and coconut one and enjoyed it. I LOVED the other one you gave me. I think it was a blueberry one?
It was a Blackberry Graham cereal bar, that one is my favorite. I found it at Target.