Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Ice Cream Review

Trader Joe’s goes all out this time of year with the Pumpkin pie flavored foods. Really what you are tasting is the pumpkin pie spices, not pumpkin. While pumpkin has a unique flavor, it’s like potatoes, you really have to try hard to taste it. That’s why there are so many pumpkin pie SPICE flavored foods. It’s to give that pumpkin some flavor.

The only thing that I’ve tasted so far that was purely pumpkin from Trader Joe’s was the Pumpkin soup and that was pretty bland but easy to make. This Trader Joe’s  Pumpkin Ice Cream should really be called Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream because that is really what you are getting here. The pumpkin pie spice melange that we know and love around the holidays. As Trader Joe’s says on their website “nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and a hint of cloves” This ice cream is no exception either!

I love pumpkin pie! Ask my wife and kids, when it comes to Thanksgiving, I eat a ton of this stuff! I do not eat a lot of ice cream though. Which is probably why you don’t see a lot of ice cream reviews here. My kids and Becky eat a ton of it so there is always an ample supply in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I like ice cream enough, I just don’t have a super strong sweet tooth for whatever reason, so I am not craving things like ice cream. So when this showed up in the freezer at Trader Joe’s, I thought why not? The kids will either love it or hate but I know I can get Becky to eat it if they don’t.

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Ice Cream has been around for many years. It comes and goes like many other seasonal things. I expect it to be gone by the end of the year until next October when we start the holiday cycle again. If you like this Pumpkin Ice Cream then you should stock up on it for the rest of the year.

Everything is orange in this container. The background color is orange and the ice cream is bright orange. Very much like a ripe pumpkin!

Like I said before, pumpkin is great for you but has a subtle flavor and it’s highly unlikely you can taste actual pumpkin if the pumpkin pie spices are added. First thing when I opened the container, I noticed the very bright orange color and I know that it was not coming from the pumpkin then I read the ingredients, and sure enough, there was annatto in the ice cream.

Annatto is a food coloring derived from Achiote and is common in food that needs an orange or yellow color like American cheese. No problem, but I knew the color wasn’t coming from pumpkins!

So how did the ice cream taste? I actually liked it quite a bit. Scooping it out was a bit easier than the Trader Joe’s Vanilla that we usually get, because for some reason Pumpkin Ice Cream is softer but that’s fine with me.

The ice cream itself had a nice pumpkin pie spice mix. I thought it had a nice pumpkin pie spice flavor going on, but it was just a tiny bit too much for me. Maybe if I drizzled it with Chocolate it would be better.

Final Verdict Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Ice Cream

In fact, ice cream and pumpkin pie filling are pretty much the same things. Eggs, Milk, Pumpkin, and Spices are just in different amounts so it really does taste like a frozen Pumpkin Pie. Even my kids like it and they usually turn their noses up at anything different like this.

I am going to give this Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Ice Cream 8 bells!