The time for fall-flavored food and drinks is here. Some maple cinnamon here. Some salted caramel there. But most importantly, pumpkin spice everywhere. Twinkies. Kombucha. Cereal. Tea. Marshmallows. There are loads of otherwise perfectly delicious beverages and snacks that have been doused with this controversial flavoring, which made us curious, and also feel like it was important to taste test these pumpkin-y treats to get in the spirit of fall. Oh, how wrong we were.
It turns out the staff at DGO are not big fans of pumpkin spice, so we ate and drank a bunch of pumpkin-spiced crap for this story, which turned us “not fans” into sheer haters of everything pumpkin spicy. We hope you enjoy our torture, or at least learn what to eat and what to steer away from if you actually like this junk, because now our office is going to smell like pumpkin spice for all eternity. Here’s what we went through.
Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte
Amanda: I was really thrown off by the spice on the first sip. I mostly stick to coffee drinks that are pretty bitter or have a good balance of bitter and sweet, so when I tried this, the instantaneous spice taste weirded me out. It got less sharp the more I drank it, but I’m not sure I like spice-flavoring the beverage I rely on to get through literally everything in my life. It was also very sugary, which I don’t enjoy, so I don’t think I could drink a lot of it. I guess the best thing I can equate it to is eggnog. I would never seek it out on my own but if someone offered it to me and I felt like I needed to be polite I could choke it down.
Angelica: Amanda, don’t you ever compare delicious eggnog to this junk. This junk was JUNK, and eggnog is holiday nectar of the gods. Anywho, this was a big nope for me. I poured a glass one morning after I realized no one had refilled the water purifier in the fridge, and in my thirsty haste, made the mistake of taking a HUGE mouthful. I nearly died and went to pumpkin spice hell. Why would you drink this? Especially cold? Keep it away from me, forever and ever amen.
Grands! Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls
Amanda: Out of all the items we taste tested, I was most apprehensive about this one but surprisingly, it was not the strongest of all the items we tasted in terms of pumpkin spice flavor levels. In my opinion, anyway. However, I would just rather have had a regular old cinnamon roll. Why you gotta mess with what’s already perfect? I want neither pumpkin nor spice, other than cinnamon, on my holy, frosted breakfast rolls. I’d say the butter we drowned these in made everything infinitely better.
Angelica: Okay, so these weren’t awful-awful. I like cinnamon rolls, and (don’t tell Amanda) I quietly life-hacked them by dousing the entire pan of cinnamon rolls in butter after removing them from the oven, and THEN I put the gross pumpkin spice frosting on them. They were not supposed to taste like butter with a hint of pumpkin spice, but they did. The butter masked the grossness, and ultimately, these were fine. I don’t know why you have to ruin good cinnamon rolls with the aftertaste of pumpkin spice, but on a scale of 1-5, these were a solid 3. Edible.
Halo Top Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream
Amanda: Ice cream is pretty damn hard to screw up, so I can’t say that I hated this. However, given the option of purchasing mint moose tracks with chocolate chunks (which I did right after) I wouldn’t pick this flavor again. Somehow, it seemed sweeter than regular ice cream so, again, I couldn’t bring myself to eat much of it. As the name implies, it had a bit of a bite to it in the first taste, which I was not a fan of. I don’t want spice in my ice cream, please and thank you. Only chocolate chunks, peanut butter, and waffle cone chunks. The more bites I took, the less jolting the favor was, but I still feel strongly that ice cream shouldn’t have spice. Fight me.
Angelica: I will not try this. Not in a box, not with a fox, not with a Becky here or there, not with a Becky anywhere. It looks HORRIBLE. The taste I have no opinion on, as I will not try this, Sam I Am.
Noosa Pumpkin yogurt
Amanda: OK, so this technically wasn’t pumpkin SPICE but it was still pumpkin flavored and it was still gross. It took us both a long time to gather the courage to try this one and we probably shouldn’t have tried it in the morning when our gag reflexes seem to be at their strongest. This goop looked GNARLY. I had the dirty job of mixing the yogurt in with the pumpkin flavor crap, which was somehow worse than eating it. The initial flavor was rather mellow, but you could still tell that the pumpkin spice was there. Unfortunately, not unlike a Sunday morning hangover where you think you’re in the clear when you first wake up, this shit only got worse with the aftertaste: a slow burn. Watching Angelica’s face as she taste tested this made my life though, so I’d say I came out even. Her reaction: “This has to be a joke. I can’t believe how many people taste tested this before it got to the shelves!”
Angelica: This was a trap. A flat out trap. I LOVE Noosa. Especially honey Noosa. I did not love this. I did not even like this. I took the TINIEST of bites, and at first, it was like, not hateful? But then it hit me. The flavor. It was like licking a cheap pumpkin candle. And it just grew and grew on my taste buds until I cried fake tears. Why is this trash so spicy and so…horrible?! Please do not eat it. In fact: THROW IT IN THE TRASH IF YOU SEE IT.
Philadelphia Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese on a pumpkin spice bagel
Amanda: This one was, shall we say, a little much. I have no one to blame but myself, however, since I was the one who insisted that since we had pumpkin spice cream cheese we obviously needed to put it on pumpkin spice bagels. Upon opening the cream cheese packet, I was somehow more disgusted than I was with the yogurt-stirring. It was ORANGE, you guys. I realize that I’m eating pumpkin-flavored things but cream cheese should NEVER be orange. Ugh. This combo was much too sweet and, I will defend all things dairy until the day I die, but somehow the cream cheese made me more nauseous than dairy usually does.
Angelica: This tasted like a stale donut dipped in too much pumpkin spice frosting. Why anyone would eat this, I do not know. I like bagels. But, I do not like pumpkin spice bagels, I have learned from this. I would rather eat this disgusting pumpkin spice cream cheese on an everything bagel than a pumpkin spice bagel, no lie. I’d eat it on an onion bagel before I’d put another piece of a pumpkin spice bagel in my mouth. These have got to be a joke. A crappy, mean-spirited joke.
