A Mix for Baking: Pumpkin Pie Spice

 

Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States. It is a time to be thankful for the year's harvest and other blessings. It's a party with family and friends who came from far away. A big part of Thanksgiving gatherings is the meal, which usually includes roast turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, beans, squash, corn, cranberry sauce, bread, cakes, pies, and other sweets.

Always, pumpkin pie near me is one of the desserts. In North America, pumpkins are easy to find in the fall. In October, when the harvest starts in earnest, these big orange and yellow squashes are a natural part of the meal. Many people don't bake pies on a regular basis, but during Thanksgiving, many of us do. Instead of buying all of the spices you need to make a pumpkin pie separately, you can use pumpkin pie spice instead. Pumpkin pie spice is also used to add flavor to pumpkin bread, pumpkin spiced cookies, pumpkin rolls, and spiced coffee.

Pumpkin pie spice was made for bakers who didn't want to keep a lot of different spices on hand just for making pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie spice is made up of four to six spices, so buying and storing just one container is cheaper and easier if the spices aren't used often in other dishes.

Several brands that are sold in stores were looked at to find out what spices were in each blend. Other spice mixes don't have as consistent ingredients from brand to brand. Here are the ingredients in the order that they appear on the label, which is from most to least.

Pumpkin Pie Spices That Can Be Bought

Brand 1 has cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger.

Brand 2 has cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice.

Brand 3 has cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice.

Brand 4 has cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger.

Brand 5 has cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and mace.

Brand 7 has cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves

It is safe to say that cinnamon makes up most of pumpkin pie spice. Cinnamon is listed as the first ingredient in seven of the seven spice blends that were looked at, which means that it is the ingredient that is used the most. Either ginger or cloves are the second most used spice. Most of the time, ginger is the second ingredient, but six of the seven brands use cloves at least sometimes. Nutmeg is in all of these spice mixes, and oddly enough, it's always in the third spot. Five of the seven brands have allspice. Mace was the only other spice included, and it was only in Brand 5, which was the only brand that had it.