Nestle Tollhouse Pumpkin Spice Chips, reviewed

Pumpkin spice is the flavor of fall, so I wasn’t surprised to see that Nestle released some limited edition TollHouse Pumpkin Spice Baking Chips this season as a neat way to spice up your holiday baking. I assumed that flavors like cinnamon, ginger and cloves would be highlighted in these chips, so I was surprised to get a whif of freshly baked pumpkin pie when I opened the bag. I expected the chips to taste like the spices used in pumpkin pie spice, but instead they taste almost exactly like pumpkin pie! You can easily pick out the buttery, nutty flavor of roasted pumpkin, along with generous dashes of cinnamon. The spices are actually relatively subtle in these and they finish with notes of vanilla and pumpkin.

The chips are quite sweet, just like the white vanilla baking chips that the brand sells year-round, but they balance that sweetness with a lot of other flavors that kept me coming back to that bag again and again. It’s a completely unique flavor profile that really is perfect for fall baking. You can mix these into just about any baked good to give them a pumpkin spice flavor, and they pair well with canned pumpkin, oatmeal and chocolate. Since they’re sweet, they’re also easily substituted into baked goods that use vanilla or white chocolate baking chips, and I recommend starting by substituting the white chocolate chips in my Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip cookies for your first baking project with them.