In case you didn't know, last Thursday was the first official day of fall (in America), and it hit NJ like a ton of bricks! Friday night I was driving home from work in a tank top with the windows down in 90 degree weather, and two days later I need to put a hoodie on to drive into work in the morning! I love all things spooky, Halloween-related, and pumpkin, but it's all happening too fast. It's not just the weather either, grocery stores have switched gears and we're now experiencing Pumpk-ageddon 2016.
Anything and everything pumpkin is lining the shelves and limited edition summer flavors are no where to be found. One of the brands that has really run head-first into fall flavors is Hostess. They've released a bunch of Halloween themed items and THREE different Twinkie flavors for the fall. I figured there's no use denying it, summer is over, so I grabbed a box of pumpkin spiced Twinkies to join in with the rest of the basic food bloggers, so grab you're sweaters and let's see if this fall flavor is worthy of replacing my beloved summer Ghostbusters boxes.
The Twinkie flavors that are available this fall are Pumpkin Spice (a seasonal re-release), Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake (new this year), and Chocolate Scream Twinkies (a Halloween re-branding). Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake is the newest edition to the Twinkies line-up and it seems like a cop-out to me. It looks like their normal Pumpkin Spiced Twinkie with that white chocolate waxy coating I'm not a fan of. I usually don't like cheesecake flavored things, so I opted for the "original" version this fall.
I am not a huge fan of this box's design, the new bold logo is great, and very modern, but the typefaces seem really default-looking to me, and then we've got the flat Twinkie the Kid mascot next to a photo realistic pie slice? It all feels slapped together to me. The background is colorful and modern, matching the logos, but the rest of the branding feels like an after thought.
I flipped the box over to look at the nutritional information and...
Has this always been there? With the old joke about Twinkies being able to survive nuclear war and zombie apocalypses and everything...I find this to be really funny. (Especially since it's bolded on the box.)
Genetic engineering aside, how do these taste? I opened up a package and it looks like your normal ol' Twinkie on the surface, but looks can be deceiving.
I took a bite, and it's surprisingly pretty good! It still doesn't hold a candle to my beloved banana Twinkie, but it's much better than I was expecting. The cake is the normal yellow sponge-base, so all the spiced flavoring is hidden inside the creme filling.
The filling is light, and slightly waxy as usual, but it has a pleasant cinnamon-heavy flavor that is fall friendly without being overpowering. It works really nicely with the moist cake, but it really didn't taste like pumpkin spice to me. It was more like a cinnamon Twinkie. Pumpkin spice blends use cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and a hint of ginger, and here all I could really taste was a moderate dose of cinnamon (with maybe a tiny bit of ginger in there as well).
Pumpkin Spice Twinkies are better than I thought they'd be, but they're more cinnamon-y than anything else, so on the pumpkin scale this would be a 5 out of 10. It's not very pumpkin-y at all, BUT it IS yummy and very enjoyable. I'd definitely recommend giving this seasonal flavor a try, just doesn't expect a lot of pumpkin-bang for your buck.
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
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Twinkies haven't been the same since they changed the formula they use to make them. I feel sad for the old Hostess company. They made a terrific product. Too bad it ended up costing them the business. I'll give these a try if I can though. I'm a sucker for Twinkies.
ReplyDeleteIf you have any extra left then hear me out. I know this sounds bizarre and like a terrible combination, but there's something magical about slicing these twinkies down long-wise and using them as a bun for Oscar Meyer wieners (or any other smaller hot dog that would fit). VERY good. Sweet and salty taken to another level, possibly the future of chicken and waffles. Pumpkin spice twinkie dogs need to be the next big time, seriously, try it.
ReplyDeleteYou are a food-mash-up genius! Seriously, I was curious so I tried it out tonight when I got home from work and it's sooo yummy. I'm going to write a new blog post about your combination and give you a shout-out. Why is this so good?!
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