Trader Joe’s Iced Pumpkin Scone Cookies

These pumpkin scone cookies are cakes. That’s confusing. Why must we live in such a complex world?

You never know what to expect when you pick up a new Trader Joe’s pumpkin product. Sometimes the pumpkin is overwhelming, other times the pumpkin is more of a vague suggestion. Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Scone Cookies fall into the former camp – very satisfactory, soft cookies with a very strong pumpkin taste.

When it comes to scones, it’s difficult to know exactly what you’re signing up for. I’ve had soft scones and hard cones, sweet scones and salty scones, pretty round scones and massive, bumpy scones. These scones fall into the first category on all accounts – soft, sweet and small. In fact, they’re not really much like a typical scone at all. It looks like Trader Joe’s tried to head this off by sticking “cookie” on the end of the product title, although they could have just as well put “mini cake” or “petit four”.

Each one of Trader Joe’s 16 Iced Pumpkin Scone Cookies are absolutely light and delicate – dainty, soft rounds of cake glazed with a light brown icing that sparkles subtly. In taste, they’re very much like lightly glazed, molasses cookies. In fact, looking at the ingredient list, they share many of the ingredients with a typical molasses cookie.

Where they differ, is the tremendous pumpkin taste packed in each little bite. I remember being shocked by the concentrated flavor in Trader Joe’s citrus-packed Key Lime Tea Cakes. While these aren’t quite that intense, they’re close.  TJ’s has clearly gone to great lengths to ensure each bite is permeated with not just redolent pumpkin spices, but also rich, pumpkin puree. As a result, just one of these little cookies goes a long ways. Each little nibble is packed with plenty of pumpkin flavor, and they’re soft enough and sweet enough to make the nibble experience quite pleasant.

They would certainly go very well with tea, or other hot, seasonal beverage, and look very well sitting on the plate. At only 120 calories per 2 cookies, they aren’t all that bad for you either – assuming you could stop yourself at two…

Trader Joe’s releases hundreds of new pumpking products every year, it feels like. But with these pumpkin-flavored scone cookies, they’ve succeed in coming up with the perfect seasonal snack. I wouldn’t necessarily stock my larder with them year round, but they manage to so nicely encapsulate something of the autumn feeling, that I’ll be looking forward to seeing them again next year.

The Breakdown

Would I Recommend Them: Yes, these are very snackable, little seasonal treats.

Would I Buy Them Again: Sure, I’ll pick some up again next year.

Final Synopsis: Pumpkin packed little molasses cookies.