#1. Pepperidge Farm Pumpkin Spice Milanos

And so it begins! Pumpkin-spotting season lasts from approximately late August (in really impatient markets) through December. With the exception of beer (for reasons to be described subsequently), all pumpkin-flavored (real and artificial) products are up for grabs.  I am exempting pumpkin-flavored beer not because it isn't a noble category but because there are too many varieties, the majority of which are available only by the expensive six-pack. 

After all, money doesn't grow on trees. And neither do pumpkins for that matter.

Milano is not my favorite cookie in Pepperidge Farm's international city collection by a long shot. That honor goes to crispy, buttery Brussels. The regular Milano, I find, to have radically disproportionate ratio of cookie to chocolate filling. The resulting taste is all wafer and no cocoa. 

Oh, how droll.

I wondered, however, if the addition of another fragrant layer of pumpkin cream atop the milk chocolate stratum would correct this  imbalance, or at least, liven up the flavor. 

Nope. Not when the pumpkin filling is itself bland.

Pumpkin Fail, Pepperidge Farm.