Cookie Shaped Pumpkin

Happy Halloween Friends!  I do hope you are all out trick-or-treating in your rocking costumes.  We decided that it was time for me to hang up the chicken suit, and retire from trick-or-treating.  This does bum me out quit a bit.  I have always looked at trick-or-treating as a giant game.  A chance to visit as many homes as possible and collect the most, and best, candy.  I have gone by myself for the past few years, and power walked myself into a sweat.  I always arrive back home with a pillowcase full of some rocking loot.  Plus, it is an extra workout.  But, this year, I am just at home.  So, in recognition of Halloween, let’s talk Halloween Treats.  And, what better a treat to discuss than a Cookie Shaped Pumpkin.

Mommy was in Tampa for a few days last week/weekend and arrived home in the evening on Saturday.  With her she brought some Panera Cookies.  To be exact, they were the Cookie Shaped Pumpkin cookies.  These appeared to be sugar cookies with a frosting of a jack-o-lantern face.  They have been advertising these for a while but, on my couple of visits there during this fall, I have not picked one up.  I have mixed feelings about Panera and find myself visiting in odd spells.  But, since the cookie was brought to me, it was only right to try it.  I waited until Sunday but then, it was time to eat.

I managed to drop the bag that I had the cookies in when I got it out of the pantry so, I broke the cookies into a few pieces.  I proceeded to break off a smaller piece to try and found the cookie to be very hard.  Well, the cookie itself was semi-hard and the frosting was very hard.  While I wasn’t expecting that divine frosting on top of the Publix Sugar Cookies, I was expecting it to be a bit softer.  The hardest pieces of the frosting were the facial pieces of the pumpkin.  I placed the first piece in my mouth and began to chew.

Wow – this did so not taste like a sugar cookie.  I found the flavor of the cookie to be much more along the lines of vanilla with, perhaps, a slight tint of lemon.  I was expecting this to be pure sugar cookie and, it totally wasn’t.  And, this wasn’t really a good thing.  The flavor of the cookie just left a lot to be desired and a strange after taste lingered on my palate.  As for the taste of the frosting – it was very sweet & very fruity.  I don’t know if I can say it reminded me of one fruit in particular but, the flavor of fruit was surely on my mind.  I prefer frostings that either are pale in flavor or are sugary.  And, this one was definitely neither.

Even though I found myself not really loving the cookie, I did proceed to eat the entire thing.  Bite after bite, I found myself asking my inner food beast, why are we eating this?  It wasn’t a bad cookie but, it was a cookie I would never need to eat again.  Panera could have stayed basic and just made this a normal sugar cookie with some fluffy frosting.  However, they opted to go along their strange route whatsoever…which really don’t surprise me coming from a restaurant with no ‘normal’ salad dressings.

Don’t go out of your way to try this Cookie Shaped Pumpkin.  Rather, I suggest for you to continue your trick-or-treating marathon.  Then, once you arrive home, lay out all of your candy on the table.  Proceed to organize it and make a lovely line of it all.  Then, take a photo of it and count it.  Doing this will bring you great pleasure.  And, just so you know, you won’t be eating most of this candy.  Rather, it will sit in a bowl on the bottom shelf of the food pantry as you pick through it, slowly but surely.  By the time the Easter Bunny comes along, you will have just enough to leave him.

Happy Halloween Everyone.