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Remember in the good ol’ days when the Cola Wars had Pepsi and Coke doing blind taste tests across America to determine who ultimately was the king of the Cola hill? Would it be Coke or Pepsi that was the taste of the next generation? This weekend the question on inquiring minds was, “Which canned Pumpkin would reign supreme? — Trader Joe’s Organic or ‘America’s Favorite Pumpkin’ Libby’s?”
Using the Pumpkin Cake recipe from Everyday Food (mostly because it was handy and because it only required a 9″ baking pan), I made round two of the bout, with this week’s challenger, Libby’s. Out of the can, Libby’s was altogether a different texture – smoother with seemingly higher water content. It seemed certain that the cake would be doomed to take longer to bake than it’s organic counterpart had been. And although the ingredient list on the can claims only pumpkin, the Libby’s has 4g of sugar – the same as the Trader Joe’s version, although it seemed sweeter. I can only guess that it’s due to the variety of pumpkin used.
The two challengers seemed evenly matched in the mixing process and baked up nearly the same color. The Libby’s version took the same 45 minutes to bake (surprising since every pumpkin pie I’ve ever made with Libby’s takes an eon to bake.) The crumb/density seemed about even.
So whose cake reigned supreme? The two-person panel in this house went unanimous with Libby’s. While we ate 3/4 of the Trader Joe’s version over the course of the week (ok, yeah, so it’s a little unfair to compare a week old cake to a freshly baked one), there was a familiarity to the Libby’s pumpkin flavor given that we’ve had Libby’s pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving in my life time. Was the difference between the two discernable? Well, I maintain that the Trader Joe’s version had a squash-ier, less sweet taste both from the can and in the final product. But would I be able to pass the Pumpkin Challenge in a blind taste test? I’m not so sure.