Pumpkin Pastries Perfect for Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving being November’s biggest holiday, it’s no surprise that pumpkin is the flavor of the month at Napoleon’s Bakery. Thus, the bakery is featuring desserts and pastries that infuse the fall flavor.

Among these delicacies are Pumpkin Chiffon Pie ($9.75), Pumpkin Crunch Pie ($9.75), Pumpkin Delite Cake ($13.95; no sugar added), Pumpkin Pie made with Equal Sweetener ($9.95), a Pumpkin Cake Donut ($1.10) and traditional Pumpkin Pie ($8.25). While the traditional Pumpkin Pie is offered daily, the bakery’s other pumpkin pastries are popular among customers, according to Jan Tsukazaki, general manager of Food Solutions International, which includes Napoleon’s Bakery.

“The Pumpkin Crunch Pie has a crunch topping that includes walnuts, butter, sugar and flour; it’s nice and rich,” she says. “Our Pumpkin Chiffon Pie is a chilled pie and it’s very light, but it has that same pumpkin and spice flavor that you get from normal pumpkin pie.”

The newest addition to the pumpkin-flavored desserts this year is the Pumpkin Cake Donut.

“It’s a cake doughnut that’s on the light side,” Tsukazaki says. “It has those spices — cinnamon, cloves and ginger — that give pumpkin pie that good flavor. We roll it around in powdered sugar so it looks like a white doughnut, but it’s really pumpkin inside.”

Tsukazaki explains that desserts with less or no sugar also are available, such as the Pumpkin Pie with Equal Sweetener and the Pumpkin Delite Cake.

“The Pumpkin Pie made with Equal Sweetener is a baked pie, but it has a whipped cream topping and we don’t use any sugar in the crust,” she explains. “For people who have restrictions on sugar intake, that’s a good choice. We also have a Pumpkin Delite Cake that’s a sugar-free or no-added-sugar cake … it’s moist and delicious, so it’s another alternative for those who can’t have any sugar.”

While traditional Pumpkin Pie reigns as the bakery’s most popular pumpkin-flavored dessert, Tsukazaki says that the sales of no-added-sugar or sugar-free pies have increased.

“Although that’s — plain, regular pumpkin pie — always the most popular during Thanksgiving, there’s a percentage of people watching their sugar intake because of diabetes who appreciate the choice (of having no-added-sugar or sugar-free pies),” Tsukazaki says. “So it (sugar-free pies) might not be for the whole family, but the whole family can still eat it because it tastes good. The main thing is that it still tastes normal, so we’ve seen sales (of these pies) increase.”

All these pumpkin-flavored pastries are available during Napoleon’s Bakery’s hours of operation at its Oahu locations only. Exceptions are the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie and the Pumpkin Cake Donut, which are the only items available at the Napoleon’s Bakery Kahului, Maui, location. Prices for the pastries are slightly higher at the Napoleon’s Bakery locations at Ala Moana, Pearlridge and Kahului.

If customers are not crazy about the flavor of pumpkin, Napoleon’s Bakery offers a variety of cakes and pies. Among the bakery’s regular assortment are Custard Pie ($8.25), Chantilly Cake ($16.50) and Dobash Cake ($11.95).

“Custard Pie also is popular for Thanksgiving,” Tsukazaki says. “Most families will buy one of each — one custard pie and one pumpkin pie. Dobash is our top seller and is everybody’s favorite. For the Chantilly Cake, we cook the Chantilly icing from scratch with good butter, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla — real quality ingredients.”

With the rise of supermarkets that offer 12-inch pies for reasonable prices, Tsukazaki says that Napoleon’s Bakery sticks with its original recipes and continues to provide customers with signature, homemade-type delicacies. The main Napoleon’s Bakery on Oahu, located in Waipio, bakes all the pastries fresh daily then sends them out to the bakery locations islandwide.

“We make that traditional pumpkin pie like your mom would have made at home,” Tsukazaki says. “We haven’t changed our recipe since the day we opened in 1983.

“We’re like that small, family bakery, except we have a lot of locations. It’s a lot of recipes from scratch and a lot of handwork — not all done by machines.”

Napoleon’s Bakery