Bake Shop Pumpkin Sliced Loaf Cake

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Fall means pumpkin bread in my household. I don’t have anything against pumpkin pie, but I like pumpkin bread the best because it has all the flavor of pumpkin pie without the mushy texture.

I have a tried and true pumpkin bread recipe I’ve been making for years using Aldi canned pumpkin. It makes three loaves, and it freezes well, so I usually keep a loaf out for my family to enjoy and then freeze the other loaves to bring out when we have guests or when we have a craving for something sweet later. It’s perfect when sliced and topped with a dollop of whipped cream (either homemade or store-bought). While we typically eat it for dessert, I’ve also served it for brunch, and my family likes to pack slices (sans whipped cream) for school or work lunches.

This fall, I spotted a pumpkin sliced loaf cake among the autumn goodies at Aldi. While it’s marketed as a cake, it looks a lot like my sliced pumpkin bread. Honestly, there’s probably not much difference between pumpkin bread and a pumpkin loaf cake, except that a loaf cake might have a slightly less dense consistency. They’re both going to have a lot of sugar and be considered a dessert.

I bought a package of the pumpkin loaf cake to try at home.

The Bake Shop Pumpkin Sliced Loaf Cake is a Seasonal Item. That means Aldi will stock it for longer than an Aldi Find, but it’s not available all year round. This is a product that shows up at Aldi during the fall season, and it gets restocked a few times, but once fall is done, it will be gone until the next year. Aldi does not offer online ordering for products not currently in stock at your local store. When this is in stock, you’ll find it in the baked goods aisle among the bread, donuts, and pastries.

The pumpkin sliced loaf cake cost $3.45 for a 13.3-ounce package at the time of publication. That comes out to about 26 cents per ounce. With eight 1-slice servings per container, that’s about 86 cents per serving.

I found an iced sliced pumpkin loaf cake with eight servings at Target selling for $5.99 for 14.1 ounces, or 42 cents per ounce, at the time of publication. That means the Aldi cake is a pretty good deal.

If you’re looking out for allergens, the Aldi cake contains wheat, eggs, and soy. It may contain milk and tree nuts. The package does bear a kosher seal.

Ingredients include sugar, pumpkin, enriched wheat flour, eggs, soybean oil, water, modified food starch, salt, baking powder, spices (why they don’t specify what spices is a puzzler), potassium sorbate (a preservative), and soy lecithin.

It’s not surprising that this contains some preservatives and processed ingredients. If you want something with more whole, clean ingredients, you may prefer making your own pumpkin bread from scratch.

Nutrition information and ingredients, part one. (Click to enlarge.)

A one-slice (47-gram) serving has 150 calories, 5 grams of total fat (6% DV), 1 gram of saturated fat (5% DV), 20 mg of cholesterol (7% DV), 180 mg of sodium (8% DV), 23 grams of total carbohydrates (8% DV), 1 gram of dietary fiber (4% DV), 15 grams of total sugars, 14 grams of added sugars (28% DV), and 2 grams of protein.

Nutrition information and ingredients, part two. (Click to enlarge.)

So how does this taste? It’s not as good as my homemade pumpkin bread, but it is quite good. So good, in fact, that it didn’t last more than a couple of days in my house. My family enjoyed this as a snack, and some people packed it in their lunches. It is moist and flavorful, full of notes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves that I associate with pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie. While we ate this plain, it would also be good with a spoonful of whipped cream on top. The slices are a little on the small side, but that’s all right if all you want is a little taste of something sweet.

I think this would freeze well (a lot of Aldi baked goods are shipped frozen anyway, to prolong shelf life), so if you wanted to stock up while Aldi carries this during the fall months, you certainly could.

The Verdict:

The Bake Shop Pumpkin Sliced Loaf Cake is sold in the baked goods aisle at Aldi. It features eight slices of moist, soft pumpkin cake and has all the classic flavors of fall. It’s like pumpkin pie in cake form. This is nice served on its own or with a dollop of whipped cream. While we like homemade pumpkin cake and pumpkin bread best, this is a pretty good and convenient alternative.