Fall Foods Reviews: Pillsbury Perfectly Pumpkin Cookie Mix and Nestle Toll House Break & Bake Cookies

Continuing the trend of seasonal food reviews, I'm offering up two today, but only one is pumpkin. So, I had to change the article series name from "Pumpkin Mania" to "Fall Foods". Because calling it Pumpkin Mania and reviewing sugar cookies just messes up my train of thought completely!

 

Both of our Fall Foods are of the "do it yourself" variety - meaning they are not completely prepared and are not take out, so there's some aspects of cooking involved. 

First up, is Pillsbury's Perfectly Pumpkin Cookie Mix.  This is a super easy, three ingredient mix that you can have into the oven within minutes. Simply add the contents of the mix package, one egg, and one stick of butter, softened. Mix well, then bake for about 10 minutes. And voila! You should have cookies. As noted on the box, the depicted frosting is NOT included.

Don't these look delicious???

Last year, I had picked up an awesome pumpkin spice cookie mix, but I couldn't remember who it was made by and I had hoped this was it. It's not. Definitely not. The awesome looking cookies you see here, completed, have one fatal flaw.

They are hard. as. rocks.

I should have seen this coming. The mixture really needs more moisture. Maybe a bit of applesauce or a touch of oil added would have helped. I've tried this recipe twice. The first time, I apparently hadn't softened the butter enough, and the lack of any significant wet ingredients made it difficult to turn the mix into dough. It was very, very dry. The second time, I melted the butter accidentally, and it made the dough sticky and runny.  Both times, immediately out of the oven and still warm, they were chewy and delicious. But, as soon as they cooled, they became hard and crumbly.

Now, don't get me wrong - even hard and crumbly, these are delicious dunked into a cup of chai tea or coffee. But you might break a tooth trying to eat them as-is. I give full points for flavor, these have the exact flavor I would want in a pumpkin cookie during the fall, and they do go beautifully with warm beverages or some milk. But I really wanted a soft, chewy molasses-type cookie. Also, the box states "makes 3 dozen cookies". Yeah, sure. Maybe if you were making cookies for the Pillsbury Doughboy and you make them in tiny little 1" bite size. Realistically, I got about 18 cookies out of the mix.

Overall, 3/5 stars. 

Next up, Nestle Toll House "Break & Bake" Halloween Creatures cookies. 

I'll be honest, I wasn't even optimistic about these. I bought them because the kiddo asked for them and they were on sale. This is the least amount of work you can do and actually say you "baked" something.

The package includes 24 cookies, in "8 different Halloween Creature designs". They're a basic sugar cookie and nothing too fancy. I really am not impressed with the designs on them. You have to tear the cookies that are vaguely cut out from the excess dough, and in the process, the cookie designs get very distorted. You can see the rough edges from pulling away the extra dough. And I was not investing the time to nicely trim them out with a knife. Not for $2 cookies. Also, the graphics leave a strange texture on the top of the cookie that I just do not enjoy at all. 

 Baking to a golden brown as directed doesn't do much for the sugar images either.  But really the biggest crime is that they don't have any flavor. My son eagerly scarfed a bunch down as soon as they came out of the oven but that was mostly as a novelty - he wanted to bite the heads off the cartoony designs. Since then, the rest have sat, untouched. No one wants to eat these cookies!

Overall score: 2/5.