With early Saturday morning soccer games looming, we had to
pick up a quick and easy to prepare breakfast. I had quick breads on my mind as
I enjoy making them in the fall as they make the kitchen smell awesome; and
they also seem heartier than firing up a pop tart or toaster strudel. In addition, the kids were burned out on
cereal and oatmeal from the school week. Our Friday night of shopping at Wal-Mart
revealed Krusteaz pumpkin spice muffin mix. I enjoy a good homemade
muffin/quick bread mix, but did not want to take the time late on a Friday to
look up recipes. I was also uncertain if I would have all the baking essentials
to make the old school muffins. A quick
bread boxed mix seemed like the quick and convenient way to satisfy the quick
bread craving before the big games commenced on Saturday.
The Krusteaz package directions were pretty simple. I
prepared the contents to be baked as a quick bread instead of muffins. I have
come to the conclusion that muffins seems to dry out quicker than baking the
batter in a small bread pan. The mixing of ingredients only took a few minutes
and I placed the batter in a shallow eight inch pan. The baking time was
approximately fifty minutes at 350 degrees.
First and foremost, the baked bread did one heck of a job
making my home smell good. The baking did a better job than any pumpkin or apple
spice Glade freshener plug in. As far as physical appearance, the finished loaf
of quick bread had a lighter color than those pumpkin breads that contained
canned or real pumpkin fruit. The density of the bread was also much lighter
than traditional pumpkin breads (made from canned pumpkin).
Our breakfast tasting was met with mixed results. The pumpkin
quick bread came off tasty but seemed more to look and taste likes a light and
airy spongy spice cake. I shouldn’t be overly critical of the flavor as pumpkin
really does not maintain its own true taste, but is merely a compilation of a
bunch of spices. It would have been much easier to accept the spice cake flavor
as “pumpkin” if only the bread had carried forth that dense pumpkin finish that
appeared to be lacking.
The price of this fifteen ounce box of Krusteaz pumpkin
muffin mix was a mere $2.12, purchased at Wal-Mart. The price seemed somewhat
reasonable for a light breakfast for our crew. The eight inch loaf allowed the five
of us to have two decent sized slices. No one was overly hungry this early on a
Saturday morning so the quantity proved to be enough for our group. I think if
we would have had a later breakfast or even one more individual at that table,
the quantity would have been insufficient for our group.
Overall, I rank this an average product at best. I will most
likely not purchase this muffin mix again. I will actually take the time to
make bread or muffins the “old fashioned way” using the Libby’s pumpkin filling
and pudding mix and make extra to freeze for later dates.
