We Tried Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Flan

Of the grocery stores in the United States there’s no one quite doing the fall season like Trader Joe’s. Every aisle is laced with seasonal fun, and there’s a themed treat for everyone’s taste. For the more elegant and refined of us, they even sell ready-made flan. You can pretty much always find it in there refrigerated sections, but, in celebration of the fall season, they of course had to release a perfectly pumpkin flavored rendition of this dessert as well. 

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Flan is a simple and delicious custard dessert that, when done well, is one of life’s greatest pleasures. But is this pumpkin version going to be any good? We knew we were going to have to let you all in on the inside scoop of this flan. So, without further ado, let’s talk about the pros (and cons) of this newest Trader Joe’s dessert.

Our Thoughts

Pros – Like any good flan these are nice and delightfully custardy. The creamy and luscious egg flavor really comes through. But it also makes the texture wonderfully pleasant (for the most part). And, contrary to my expectations, these were surprisingly not excessively sweet or artificially pumpkin flavored.

Cons — It’s not that these were actually bad or unpleasant to eat, but there are a lot of characteristics about it that didn’t fulfill expectations. For starters, where the top of the flan was very tender, the side that becomes the bottom when you flip it out (and was previously the most exposed to air until that point) is disappointingly rubbery. And honestly, that’s something we can look past pretty easily considering we don’t even know when these are made in relation to when we’re cracking them open and eating them. For anything with an egg component, it would make sense that it loses hydration when exposed to air it will become a bit rubbery. 

What they could have done better that was actually preventable is through making the flavor of the caramel and pumpkin spice stronger. The caramel didn’t really have much of that distinct to burnt sugar flavor, and instead it was just a sweet brown liquid as far as we could tell. And the pumpkin, again, wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t strong enough to really be distinct and identifiable beyond just being a lightly spiced flan. 

Final Verdict

Overall, these were far from gross or bad tasting. But we also can’t go out of our way to recommend these on account of their significant shortcomings. We surely won’t be purchasing them again, but the ones that we did so happen to have in front of us we were happy to finish.