Pumpkin Cookie Mix Challenge Pillsbury vs Betty Crocker

I decided to do a taste test of these seasonal offerings from Pillsbury and Betty Crocker. They both add a stick of butter and an egg to the package mix and make three dozen two-inch cookies. Betty calls her cookies pumpkin spice, and they do appear a little darker in color. The first ingredient on the Pillsbury box is sugar. Wow! more sugar than flour. Betty at least has flour first, but its followed by sugar, brown sugar and then corn syrup. Pillsbury lists pumpkin as the last product before the "less than 2%" ingredients and after partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Betty lists pumpkin between dextrose (is that another sugar?) and baking soda. So there really isn't a whole lot of pumpkin in either one of them.

My dedicated taste testers at Discovery Creative took their work seriously. Unable to help themselves they also critiqued the packaging, with Pillsbury winning that contest. After a long day (actually it took less than an hour), 24 taste testers decided it was a tie. 12 for one and 12 for the other. Some felt I should be the tie breaker and asked me which one I liked better. But I didn't like either one so it was a tie for me too.