Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer Revisited

It’s that time of year when warm days fade into cool. Colors turn orange, Brown, and red. And pumpkin spice everything can be found just about everywhere. It’s great if you like pumpkin spice! And may be tiring if you don’t. 

There are more pumpkin-spice-flavored products than ever — it’s invading practically everything edible (and some not so edible)! To name just a few, there are M&Ms, cake mix, potato chips, breakfast cereal, Greek yogurt, and Oreo cookies! (The Chobani pumpkin spice Greek yogurt is surprisingly good.) 

As WordPress Writing 101’s Day 16 Assignment is to “Search your stats for a post idea” this is a perfect time to revisit my Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer review from 2013. I’ve noticed those search terms popping up in my stats again lately. 

That review is here:

Pumpkin spice coffee creamer review from 2013. 

I love actual pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread and so does my daughter. We also like the spice in other things but it depends on what and on the spice blend itself. I can get sick of it. No thank you to pumpkin spice steak for example. Or maybe yes? Hmm, I might actually try that.

This year I’m revisiting two supermarket coffee creamers and adding two new ones. 

• International Delight: Pumpkin Pie Spice 
• Coffee-mate: Pumpkin Spice
• Target’s Market Pantry brand: Pumpkin Pie Coffee Creamer 
• Coffee-mate’s Natural Bliss: Pumpkin Spice 

The last two are new to the party. Good news — gone are the hydrogenated oils and fats of previous years’ coffee creamers! This is great if you watch the types of fat you ingest, and you should. Also gone is the corn-syrup sweetener. All four of these sweeten with actual sugar. (There are sugar-free versions of many of these too.) 

Three of them have the same 35 calories per serving with 15 of those calories from fat. The Target MP version has only 30 calories per serving with only 10 calories from fat.

International Delight: Pumpkin Pie Spice

Pumpkin spice is usually a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and ginger. My review from 2013 stated that International Delight’s offering was heavy on the ginger so that their Pumpkin Pie Spice coffee creamer tasted more like ginger bread. While I can still taste the ginger in their mix, this year’s seems somewhat less gingery and more balanced. I like this one overall. It isn’t as strongly spiced as Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice. It’s fairly good when poured directly into coffee or tea and I don’t feel like I have to doctor it much if at all. I’m not too sick of it by the time I get to the bottom of my cup. The oil in it is palm oil which makes it nicely creamy but not too oily and filmy on my tongue. This is tied for first place as far as I’m concerned. Dave likes this one second best.

Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer

This one HAD partially-hydrogenated oils in its 2013 offering. I’m happy to say that the 2015 version no-longer lists hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils in the ingredients. It has what I consider to be the most classic pumpkin-pie flavor of all of them. When I taste it, that’s exactly what I taste — pumpkin pie spice. As it was in 2013, this is still the heaviest on the spice flavor! It is so strong that I can’t put much of it into my coffee or tea without making it too spicy.  That’s easy to fix though — if you want really creamy coffee that isn’t as spicy just add some extra plain or vanilla creamer or even real milk or cream. It’s nice if you want to add flavor while keeping your beverage light on the sweet creaminess. A little dab will do ya! The strong spice is also good if you want to experiment with mixing flavors like pumpkin spice with caramel. It really holds up. So it has advantages and disadvantages. The texture of it is a typical coffee creamer effect. This is also tied for first place as far as I’m concerned. This is third in Dave’s opinion. It’s too spicy to him.

Target’s Market Pantry brand: Pumpkin Pie Coffee Creamer

I was happy to see this as an option this year, but I’m not that crazy about it. While lowest in calories and fat, it is the thickest creamer of all. The spice flavor isn’t bad. It’s slightly heavy on the ginger, but a pretty good blend. The problem is that it’s almost  cloyingly sweet and my tongue feels a coated after a cup. It’s weird that it’s so thick yet lowest in fat, so there must be something in it to give it more body. This backfires. I’m ready to be done by the time I get to the bottom of my cup (or even sooner). If you like really sweet, thick creamers, lighter on the spice flavor then you might really like this one though. The oil in it is sunflower oil which is actually a good thing so I wish I liked it more. This one is tied for second or last for me. Dave, who doesn’t like incense or scented candles, likes this one the best!

Coffee-mate’s Natural Bliss: Pumpkin Spice

I was excited about this one because the ingredients are so simple and awesome: nonfat milk, heavy cream, sugar, and natural flavor. That’s it! The blend itself isn’t bad, but it comes off little hodgepodge and maybe a bit heavy on the ginger and nutmeg. Not so much nutmeg that it tastes like eggnog though. It has more of a fresh-ginger taste as opposed to the others which seem like more of a dried-ground-ginger taste. Maybe that’s what bothers me. I like fresh ginger but that’s not what’s normally found in pumpkin pies. This one has a strange aftertaste too. I like it okay but I definitely don’t love it. This one is tied for second or least favorite for me. It is last on Dave’s list.

This year’s Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte is supposed to contain actual pumpkin flavor! I haven’t tried it yet. (I’ll have to fix that soon.) In previous years it was just a creamy spiced drink topped with whipped cream and chock-full-o calories. You can purchase an entire bottle of supermarket coffee creamer for the same price as one sweet beverage from Starbucks. While the Starbucks version was very yummy in the past, I still like the convenient budget- friendly option of a flavored coffee creamer for home.

There you have it, supermarket coffee creamer offerings for 2015! These are found with the other refrigerated coffee creamers in many grocery stores. Some even have special holiday-creamer displays. They’re a fun, seasonal offering for coffee, tea, or even flavoring plain milk and grown-up beverages. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer

I’m normally more of a tea drinker, but there are times I really enjoy coffee. And this is the time of year for Pumpkin Spice Lattes! One of many reasons to enjoy autumn. Starbucks and other coffee shops have offered a version of this yummy drink for years. Until recently I’d been, pretty much, oblivious to pumpkin spice flavored coffee creamers. I made some of my own pumpkin spice lattes at home by sprinkling pumpkin pie spice into my coffee along with some sweetener and milk. This works OK, but my proportions are inconsistent and the spices always leave a sludge at the bottom of my cup. I am not fond of sludge even if it’s tasty sludge. So while shopping last week, the Pumpkin Spice Nondairy coffee creamers caught my eye. And now I’ve tried both of the major offerings so I though I’d write a little review.

International Delight Pumpkin Pie Spice, Seasonal Edition, Gourmet Coffee Creamer
This was yummy, but not as strongly spicy as I was expecting. I can taste a good bit of nutmeg which skews the flavor a bit into the eggnog range. I love eggnog, but it isn’t what I normally look for in a pumpkin pie spice. I wanted more cinnamon, ginger, and clove or allspice in the flavor combo to really live the pumpkin pie experience. This one contains palm oil which I generally prefer over anything hydrogenated, so that’s a plus. But to be fair, this creamer contains casein which is a dairy product. So while it’s found in the nondairy creamer section of the store, it isn’t truly nondairy. I’m ok with that part, but if you’re dairy free you might want something else.

Nestlé Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice
This had much more of a pumpkin spice flavor. Possibly a little heavy on the ginger. I could even see how it might have too much spice for a few folks to whom I’d say, “use less if it’s too strong.” But the pumpkin pie spice flavor is there along with the expected sweetness and creaminess of a flavored, nondairy creamer. It was pretty darn yummy. The downside is that it contains hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated oils, and I don’t like that part. I can get over it for the occasional once-in-a-while treat, but would pick something else for a year-round coffee creamer.

Both pumpkin options were basically yummy, added flavor, sweetness, and creaminess to my coffee. Neither one left a spicy sludge at the bottom of my cup. Yay! But both still reminded me of coffee creamer product — not bad, but it might get to me after a while. The consistency of
International Delight Pumpkin Spice was a bit more “natural” than the Coffe-mate if I had to choose. Yet the Coffee-mate had more of a pumpkin pie spice flavor. Both options cost way less per serving than venturing out to Starbucks for a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Overall, will buy again.