Today we wade back into the mysterious world of pumpkin-flavored treats. Specifically, we’re trying out Pepperidge Farm’s Pumpkin Cheesecake cookies. (Don’t worry; we will get to pumpkin-flavored beer before the month is out.)

Pepperidge Farm seems to have a real cachet among cookie lovers. It’s true that their cookies are unusually flavorful and rich, which is reflected in the fat and calorie count. (For example, just one of these cookies will deliver 13% of your daily required fat.) (I’ll also note here that loyal reader David W suggests that my scoring rubric should include calories per serving. This is a good idea that I will consider for next time.)

Anyway, today’s is another treat that isn’t distinctly marketed as a Halloween product, but rather evokes the general theme of fall. But given the explicit mention of pumpkin, I figure it qualifies for this project. So, with no further ado, on to the review.

1. Packaging. In keeping with the fall theme, the package is decorated with autumn leaves, and orange highlights are used to highlight the term “soft baked.” This is perfectly fine for an autumn-themed treat. But this blog wants to see at least some acknowledgement of Halloween. Like would a simple, uncarved pumpkin be too much to ask? Now, to be fair, there is a pumpkin on the side panel, where the key ingredients (“real pumpkin, brown sugar, cage-free eggs”) are mentioned. So I’ll give it a point.

2. Appearance of the Treat. Pepperidge Farm really knows how to dress up a cookie. Like their Chessmen cookies, or their Mint Milanos, or their Brussels. These are all works of art.

…And then there’ the Pumpkin Cheesecake cookie.

I understand the appeal of “soft baked,” but this cookie has all the character and appeal of a flat tire. The moist, not-quite-baked surface of this cookie adhered to its neighbor in the bag, and took a bit along with it on the way out. The whole cookie sags under its own weight as you raise it to your mouth. And what’s with these mystery chunks erupting here and there from the soft dough? They look like macadamia nuts, but there’s no mention of them in the ingredients list (see below). Are they accidental? Are they an amalgam of the other ingredients? Are they pumpkin nodules? Overall, this does not do a lot for me. No points.

3. Taste. The most I can say for these it that they’re inoffensive. But so are freshly-laundered socks, and I wouldn’t eat them for a Halloween treat. These cookies have a distinct pumpkin flavor on the finish, but you notice it only after working through some bland, doughy chewing. The truth is, these are a disappointment. Your mouth and stomach register that you’ve just consumed a lot of fat, but your taste buds are left wondering what all the fuss is about. They’re the soft-baked version of hard tack. 1 point.

4. Value. You get 8 cookies of approximately 1 ounce each for $3.89. That works out to about 50 cents per cookie (or twice the cost of a Pop-Tart). But the larger consideration here is that you wouldn’t really want to eat these, so they really aren’t a value at any price. No points.

Steve’s Sweetoberfest Score: 2 out of 12 points, which makes it a disappointing TRICK.

In November 1921, right here in Los Angeles, Charles Alexander See opened a candy shop whose products were made according to recipes from his elderly mother, Mary Wiseman See. As most of you know, See’s became a beloved and profitable candy company known throughout the land. My own grandmother, Dorothy Miller, loved See’s candies and always had them on hand at her home. And my great grandmother, Julia Burley, bore a striking resemblance to the mirthless Mary See herself.

So it seemed obvious that I should include a See’s product among the candies that I review this month. And so it was that I drove over to a See’s shop not far from the original store and purchased a See’s Marshmallow Jack O-Lantern.

1. Packaging. Once again, we’ve got a cellophane wrapper that allows you to see the candy before you decide on whether to buy it. I always count that as a plus. Then, they’ve decorated the package with white bats bearing grins suggesting the deleterious effects of rabies. It’s reasonably Halloween-y. 2 points.
2. Appearance of the Treat. Well now. The shape isn’t especially evocative of a pumpkin. It’s more like a circle with a slight bump on the top. The chocolate coating appears to have been applied with a butter knife, with no effort to mimic the vertical lines of a real pumpkin.

And then there’s the orange icing, which seems to have been hurriedly applied by Lucy and Ethyl while working at LA’s See’s candy factory. (The famous episode of I Love Lucy was actually filmed there.) The eyes and nose, which presumably were meant to be triangles, are barely recognizable as such. The mouth is just a quick squiggle, looking for all the world like Mr. Furley’s EKG graph when he mistakenly things Jack made a pass at him. And there are a few random orange spots marring the face like a bad case of acne. I can’t in good conscience condone such sloppy work. No points.

3. Taste. Here’s the opportunity for See’s to redeem itself. See’s is known for quality candy, with fresh ingredients and recipes that have stood the test of time.

The first thing that struck me upon biting into the candy was the satisfying crack of the chocolate coating. This was good, thick chocolate, unlike that ersatz stuff used by Russell Stover. See’s milk chocolate is reliably rich and smooth and satisfying, like a cup of good, hot cocoa on a cold morning.

The second notable thing about eating this treat is that the marshmallow filling is light and tasty — notably better than the Russell Stovers version. Combined, this was a very satisfying treat. I’ll give it 3 points.

4. Value. This pumpkin set me back $3.75, which at 2 ounces seems pretty steep, even for quality candy. You wouldn’t be inclined to hand these out willy-nilly to the little rugrats darkening your doorstep on Halloween. And you wouldn’t even be inclined to eat more than one or two of these yourself for the whole Halloween season. To put it bluntly, these are not a good value. They’re not a ripoff, but they’re not a bargain either. 1 point.

Steve’s Sweetoberfest Score: 6 out of 12 points, which we call a TREAK. Maybe you could buy yourself one, just to see what all the fuss is about. But don’t make a habit out of it.

When I was a lad, around the time I was Jonesing for homemade popcorn balls, I took to building plastic models of the Universal Studios monsters. A company called Aurora was selling the 1/8 scale model kits, which I thought were the bees knees (a phrase that I think was popular around my time, wasn’t it?) I first built The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel Mare, which, truth be told, was not actually featured in any Universal movie. In fact, it wasn’t even related to any recognizable story. It was just an idea from the creative minds at Aurora. But no matter. I thought it was cool: A skeleton shackled to a dungeon wall, with rats and random bones strewn about the floor. What more could a young boy in the 1960s want?

After building that kit, I moved on to the ones that really were featured in Universal’s movies: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Phantom of the Opera, The Mummy. This last one was not my favorite horror character; Boris Karloff as The Mummy didn’t really do anything other than stumble around really slowly (an observation made years ago by Bill Cosby). He just didn’t seem to have the elan of the other monsters. But I built the kit anyway, just to complete the collection.

I mention all this because today I was faced with a choice of several sugar cookie options: A ghost, a jack o-lantern, a pseudo-Frankenstein, or a mummy. I chose the latter for two reasons: (1) it looked whimsical, and (2) it appeared to have more frosting than the other cookies.

So let’s get down to the scoring!

1. Packaging. There’s really nothing to this packaging. It’s mainly just clear cellophane, what allows you to see exactly what your buying. From an artistic perspective, this is not impressive. But from from a transparency (ha!) perspective, it’s aces. (I think that was another phrase from my bygone era, no?) The package does acknowledge that it’s made by Deco Cookies (headquartered in the Mexican city of Huixquilucan, which must have a phenomenally high Scrabble value), and highlights the slogan “baking you happy.” I’ll give it 2 points for the transparency, which is welcome in this era of subterfuge and Fake News.

2. Appearance of the Treat. Is this cookie adorable, or what???

I’ll admit I’m a sucker for frosted sugar cookies, with their bright visual appeal and their simple, uncomplicated flavor. This particular cookie was well-executed: the eyes remind me of Cookie Monster, and the way that they peer out through bandages is fun and whimsical. The bandages (or whatever you call a mummy’s wrappings) are cleverly represented with white frosting ribbons. The overall appearance is at once clever and humorous and appetizing. I would be a schmuck to give it anything less than 3 points.

3. Taste. A frosted sugar cookie is a pretty simple confection to create. And when done right, it offers the perfect combination of a slightly chewy, melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookie base and a coating of sweet, satisfying frosting that’s, well, the frosting on the cake, if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor. The folks at Deco Cookies evidently slept through that part of Baking 101. Instead of a soft cookie that yields to your teeth while releasing a fresh-baked taste of sweet vanilla with a hint of salt, this cookie reminded me of Zweiback toast. What’s more, my molars were in definite danger of enamel damage as they worked their way through the plaster-like consistency of this monstrosity (ha!). You can see from the photo below how, when I tried to slice it, the cookie crumbled like a saltine cracker. The dissonance between the expectations raised by this adorable cookie, and the experience of chipping away at it with my incisors, was heart-rending. Zero points.

4. Value. My local grocery store charged me $1.99 for this putative treat. For another quarter or two you could get a truly wonderful, satisfying cookie of at least the same size from your local bakery. I don’t consider this to be a good value. 1 point.

Steve’s Sweetoberfest Score: 6 out of 12 points, which is neither fish nor fowl, so we call it a TREAK.

(For all you young ‘uns confused about the title, click here.)

When I was trick-or-treating, back in the Pleistocene era, some households were still offering homemade treats to the kids who came to their door. This was obviously before mass hysteria gripped the nation and parents freaked out about the introduction of razor blades or drugs into Halloween treats. It was also before basic germ theory was widely understood, and no one seemed to worry about unhygienic handling of foodstuffs.

Anyway, I fondly remember the time when the old lady in a house at the corner of Lewiston and Kennewick smiled and dropped a homemade popcorn ball, wrapped in waxed paper, into the orange plastic pumpkin I was carrying. I didn’t think much of it in the moment; in fact, I may have dismissed her as a cheapskate unwilling to pay money for real, factory-produced candy bars. And yet, when I got home and eventually ate the homemade treat, I experienced bliss like I’d never experienced it before. It was about the size of a small cantaloupe, and tasted at once buttery and sweet and salty, simultaneously gooey and crunchy. The fact that it was homemade, I finally decided, made it more authentic than the mass-produced, overhyped Bit-O-Honeys (Bits-O-Honey?) and Chicks-O-Stick. I couldn’t wait until the next Halloween, when I’d go back and get another one. Alas, after waiting 364 days, no one answered the doorbell on Halloween night. Rumor had it the woman had the poor manners to die before I was able to secure another popcorn ball.

So imagine my excitement when, yesterday evening, a mysterious package addressed to “Treat Man” arrived at the door, and it turned out to contain popcorn balls. The package was revealed to be sent by my daughter-in-law Katelyn, God bless her. The popcorn balls, alas, were not homemade, but rather were produced by some mysterious company based in Utah called Kathy Kaye Foods. I was eager to see how these stacked up against the homemade versions from my youth.

1. Packaging. Well, it’s not hand-wrapped in waxed paper, but it’s a reasonably interesting package. Kathy Kaye, unlike Willy Wonka, had the presence of mind to use the standard monster font for the lettering. The silhouette of kids trick-or treating is a little unusual, and not especially spooky, but at least it’s evocative of Halloween. Below is a better view of the package, without the pesky popcorn ball itself in the way:

I was inclined to give it 2 points, but then I was especially impressed that they’re willing to prominently feature the actual popcorn ball itself through the clear cellophane (unlike Reese’s and others, which give an exaggerated, prettied-up illustration on the wrapper). Add to that the inspired bats on the package, and I’ll give it three points.

2. Appearance of the Treat. It’s perfectly spherical, which is a shape that evaded the old lady on Lewiston. All you really see is popcorn; there’s no evidence of corn syrup and the other gooey ingredients that transform popcorn into a popcorn ball. It’s totally acceptable, but unremarkable. 2 points.

3. Taste. Let’s get down to brass tacks: This is NOT a Lewiston popcorn ball. It’s not gooey, it’s not chewy. It’s sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. It reminds me of the pink popcorn bricks that I used to get at the circus or at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. As a substitute for the Old Lady’s popcorn balls, this was a disappointment.

And yet. I always liked the pink popcorn bricks. Actually, this popcorn ball is reminiscent of kettle corn. It’s sweet and salty, and not all that filling. After finishing one popcorn ball (1 ounce, and 110 calories), I was ready to open a second. Only the intervention of my wife, who wields the word “muffin top” like a cudgel, stopped me from opening a second package. These are, in a word, tasty. I give them 2 points, mainly out of respect to the Unknown Lady of Lewiston.

4. Value. I’m told my bag of 12 popcorn balls cost $5.99. That works out to about 50 cents each. That’s a lot of fun for four bits. I give it 3 points.

Steve’s Sweetober Fest Score: 10 out of 12 points, which qualifies as a major TREAT. This is the new front-runner!