Holiday Party Punch. Tom McCorkle/photo; Gina Nistico/food styling, for The Washington Post Pumpkin spice has become a punchline, which I don’t think is very fair to pumpkins. Just because something becomes preposterously popular doesn’t mean it stops tasting good, and pumpkins – like most foods – never asked to get roped into a popularity contest.
All they wanted to do was be delicious while delivering loads of vitamin A. And here we all are, making jokes at their expense just because they happen to deliver those things with a glut of warm, cozy, highly marketable vibes. To add insult to injury, most products that have given pumpkin its now-ridiculous reputation – the lattes, the dog treats, the SPAM – don’t even contain any actual pumpkin! It’s all spice-based smoke and mirrors! Cinnamon is the one everyone should be making jokes about! Even if you’re an unabashed PSL lover (which, good for you – never let society shame you away from the things you love!), you’ve likely never truly known what pumpkin tastes like in a beverage.
And that’s a shame. In the Caribbean, they’ve been using it as an ingredient in drinks for generations. “We normally use pumpkin in traditional punches,” says Trevor Luke, an award-winning bartender from Kingston, Jamaica.
“We boil or roast it until soft, then put it in a blender with other ingredients, like milks, sodas, stout or rum. Then we add some kind of sweetener, and maybe some local seasonings like nutmeg.” N.