Dollar Tree Desserts, Ranked Worst To Best

Dessert? In this economy? Sure, everyone loves dessert. After a fine, filling meal, having a good dessert at the end is like adding a top hat to a tuxedo: you might not really need it, but it sure is cool. And yet, who has the money to splurge on a tiramisu or a crème brûlée? These days, dessert seems like a luxury reserved for Mr. Monopoly and his fellow big wheels.

But there is a place where you can get dessert without breaking your piggy bank: Dollar Tree. Yes, hidden there among the stacks of remaindered self-help books and last month's holiday decorations, there's actually a whole world of dessert options you can get on the cheap. From cookies to ice cream to sweet treats galore, Dollar Tree can add just a little bit of light to your dark dinnertime, and it won't cost you more than a short stack of quarters.

Not all Dollar Tree desserts are created equal, though. With so many options to choose from, naturally some Dollar Tree desserts are better than others. So to help you make the most of your meal budget, we've sampled a wide array of desserts from Dollar Tree and ranked them from worst to best. Sorry, Mr. Monopoly. Today, dessert is once again for everyone.

The packaging for these treats says it all: these aren't just cookies, my friend, these are European Cookies. You know, they're continental. They have an air of old world sophistication. You can just imagine Percy Bysshe Shelley on an Italian veranda biting into one of these while composing an ode to shortbread. So romantic, this box.

Inside, though, is a weird, lemon-flavored shortbread that is closer to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" than anything worthy of poetry. Shortbread and lemon flavoring, it turns out, don't go together very well. Note the box doesn't say lemon, it says "Lemon Flavored." Indeed, the ingredients list "natural lemon flavor" but not actual lemon, begging the question: just where did this "natural" lemon flavoring come from, if not from a lemon?

Oddly, the flavoring seemed quite unnatural to me, which is why I had to do a double take at the box. It tasted more like someone had melted a lemon lollipop into their shortcake mix by accident. The flavoring was just odd, and at odds with the normal shortbread flavors; the two did not seem to be easy bedfellows. I'm normally a fan of shortbread, but these should have been left in Europe.

Lil' Dutch Maid Churro Creme Cookies deliver exactly what is promised on the package: classic churro flavor as only the Dutch can do it. Which, considering churros have nothing to do with The Netherlands, may explain why the churro flavoring in these churro cookies is almost completely absent.

Not to say these are bad cookies, per se. They are perfectly acceptable cream cookies. But calling them "churro" cookies suggests that you'll be getting that distinctive cinnamon twist. And while there is the barest hint of cinnamon, I could hardly detect it. A quick look at the ingredients explains why, as "cinnamon sugar," while present, is the tenth of eleven listed ingredients. So not exactly a major player in the flavor profile.

Ultimately, Lil' Dutch Maid Churro Creme Cookies are simply a failure of expectation. As a discount alternative to, say, Golden Oreos, these are perfectly acceptable. Throw a couple in your kid's lunch pail for school, maybe. But if you're expecting that rich churro flavor you want from a churro cookie, you'll be disappointed like I was.

The packaging for Bud's Best White Chocolate Chip Cookies emphasizes the tiny size of the cookies within, with blurbs reading "bite size" and "small cookie, big flavor." Indeed, the serving size for these miniature desserts is six cookies per serving, which makes them very good for portion control if you're watching your figure.

There are some downsides to the cookie, though. First, it's a hard cookie, which isn't everyone's cup of tea. Texturally, though, the problem is that the crunchiness of the cookie masks the snap of biting into the chips, making the cookie feel a bit one-note. So too with the flavor. I'm a fan of white chocolate (even though it's technically not chocolate at all) but as the cookie itself also features a robust chocolate flavor, the chips are again lost.

It's not a bad cookie by any means, and it's certainly satisfying to plonk a whole handful into your mouth at once, like some kind of voracious giant. But when you eat white chocolate chip cookies you want to experience the white chocolate chips, and here they might as well not even be present.

Dippin' Dots is, famously, the ice cream of the future. These little flash-frozen pellets bring molecular gastronomy into your mouth for a pleasant taste of what tomorrow's desserts might be like. At least, that's the idea.

The Dippin' Dots Ice Cream Sundaes dessert cups I got at Dollar Tree, however, were much more like the dessert of the past. The biggest issue is that it doesn't really embrace what makes Dippin' Dots unique. Indeed, it's constructed in a way that basically makes the Dippin' Dots themselves almost pointless. 

The Dots, you see, are at the bottom of the cup, mixed in with bits of cookie crumble and topped with a layer of vanilla ice cream that is shot through with tiny gobs of frozen chocolate sauce. By including the layer of regular ice cream with the Dippin' Dots, the flavor of the Dots is completely lost. Additionally, the unique texture that the Dots bring is also lost, masked by the crunch of the cookie crumble. The result is an okay frozen treat which you would probably never know even had Dots in it if you didn't read the package first. If you're not going to highlight the Dots in a Dippin' Dots dish, why even bother?

The Neapolitan wafer cookie was invented in Austria back in 1898. The original version used hazelnut spread in between the thin wafers, but these days you can get versions with all sorts of filling, including vanilla. Enter Bauducco Vanilla Wafers. A Brazilian company, Bauducco traces its origins back to 1948. Little could Bauducco have known that nearly eight decades later, the company's wafers would be sold at Dollar Trees across America.

If that all sounds a bit old-fashioned to you, well, you're bang on. If you want to experience the taste of the 1890s in your mouth, nothing will deliver as well as some Bauducco Vanilla Wafers. Generations of people around the globe have grown up eating wafers like these at their grandparents' houses. Chances are you know the flavor. Chances are you still have the actual aftertaste lingering in your mouth. I know I do.

They aren't bad. I would have liked a little more vanilla cream filling. But they feel old-fashioned because they are old-fashioned. While this was a pleasant trip down memory lane, it wasn't especially satisfying, except possibly as a way to honor my ancestors.

Oven Baked Fudge Mint Cookies are essentially Girl Scout Thin Mints with the serial numbers sanded off. If you've ever had Girl Scout Thin Mints — and we know you have, so don't try to fake it — then you already know what these taste like. And you've probably also experienced the sadness and shame after realizing you've just eaten an entire sleeve of cookies without realizing it. Real talk, they just aren't that satisfying.

That's the main drawback with the Oven Baked Fudge Mint Cookies as well. They have a nice crunch, and nice chocolate coating, and a nice minty flavor that lingers after you're done. They are also oddly addictive, as you just want to keep eating and eating them. But to what end? No matter how many I had, I just felt like maybe the next one in the sleeve would actually give me what I wanted from the cookie. Instead, while I enjoyed eating them in the moment, I was left afterward with the distinct feeling that maybe I would have been better off eating a more complete dessert, instead.

The classic Klondike Bar ad campaign asks, "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" While some people go to criminal lengths to get a Klondike Bar, it's actually really easy to get Klondike Bars if you want some. Just go to Dollar Tree, where I was able to get a half dozen of them for one crisp Abraham Lincoln. Why would anybody do weird things for Klondike Bars when you can just buy them for less than a buck each?

But while it might not be worth a prison sentence, eating a Klondike Bar is definitely worth your time. The concept is simple but elegant: a brick of ice cream coated in a hard chocolate shell. The magic happens when you crunch through that shell — after the nice snap of the crust, the chocolate then melts in your mouth, giving you two textures in one. And the chocolate taste contrasts nicely with the vanilla ice cream.

Beyond that, though, there is an element of diminishing returns. That's the problem with simple foods — every bite eats exactly the same. One Klondike Bar is the perfect dessert on a hot day. But once you've had it, there's really no need to go back for seconds.

Can't decide whether you want a cookie or ice cream for dessert? No worries. That's where the ice cream sandwich comes in. And there may be no better ice cream sandwich than an M&M Ice Cream Sandwich, which consists of two thin M&M cookies sandwiching a wedge of vanilla ice cream.

On their own, M&M cookies are a work of wonder. Replacing traditional chocolate chips with M&M's is a genius move, as it adds that crispy crunch when you bite through the candy shell coating on the M&M. Make it two of these M&M cookies and then throw in some ice cream? Friend, welcome to dreamland, as the slightly salty note of the cookie is a perfect contrast to the sweetness of the ice cream.

The only things holding this back from being even better are the fact that the cookie is very thin, and that the M&M's are very, very small. Because the M&M's are so tiny, while you still get the crunch, you do lose a lot of the chocolate flavor. The ice cream is good and plentiful enough to stand up to more cookie and bigger M&M's, so if the ratio is improved in the future, so too could this dessert's ranking.

Mochi is a type of snack developed in Japan that has been talking off stateside in recent years. Dessert mochi consist of balls of sweet rice dough with ice cream filling at the center. Even frozen, mochi maintains its softness, so simply letting them heat up for a couple of minutes at room temperature is enough prep time to make these a perfect after-dinner treat.

There are lots of different mochi flavors in the world, but at Dollar Tree, I had one option: My Mochi Strawberry Mochi Balls. The soft chewiness of the rice ball exterior was a pleasant compliment to the smooth strawberry ice cream inside. Flavorwise, the strawberry shone through, though at the expense of everything else. From a texture and mouthfeel perspective, My Mochi Strawberry Mochi Balls were a win, but from a flavor perspective, it was a bit one-note. Still, it was a nice change of pace dessert that was well worth waiting a couple of minutes for.

Nothing says refreshment like a slice of frozen key lime pie. At Dollar Tree, you can get just that, courtesy of Edwards. I paid $4 for a box that contained two individually wrapped slices; instructions on the side noted that while you can put it in your fridge to thaw for up to an hour if you want a softer texture to your pie, it's also acceptable to eat it right out of the freezer. That's exactly what I did, and I didn't regret the decision.

The pie filling was both sweet and tart, with that refreshing lime bite in the back of my throat. Even right out of the freezer, the texture wasn't too hard, providing a pleasant contrast to the thick and crumbly crust. That crust also had a nice taste that, along with the whipped cream dollops on top, gave the pie a nice range of contrasting flavor notes. I personally found the iciness of the pie out of the freezer to also be a nice complement to the freshness of the lime as well. Why wait an hour for dessert when it's just as good — or better — right now?

Ever wonder what the right way to eat an Oreo is? According to the company itself, the best way is to twist it open, eat the cream filling, and then dunk the cookie wafer in milk. That jibes with my own personal experience, which is that the cream filling is clearly the best part of an Oreo, while the cookie wafers are boring and need a lot of help from milk to become edible. Go ahead, come at me. I'm just speaking truth to power.

Why is this relevant? Because Redondo Crème Wafers Cookies and Crème take the Oreo concept to the next level. This is refined cookie science at its peak. Redondo Crème Wafers are thin tubes of light and flaky chocolate wafer filled with vanilla cream. Think of a crispy straw packed with vanilla, and you'll have the idea. The result is a cookie that combines the best part of the Oreo taste with a yummy wafer that's easy and fun to eat. Sure, there's no way to just eat the filling out of it like you do with an Oreo — but with Redondo Crème Wafers, you won't want to.

Edwards had two decadent frozen pies available at my Dollar Tree, so naturally, I had to sample both of them. And while the Key Lime Pie was excellent, it was pipped at the post by Edwards Chocolate Crème Pie, which had more complex flavors, while also clocking in at 50 fewer calories per slice (280 compared to 330).

This pie — which, like the key lime variety, can either be eaten right out of the freezer or thawed in the fridge for a half hour before consumption — pretty much has it all. The base is a thick, crumbly chocolate crust that adds terrific texture and taste to the dish. Above that is a cream cheese layer topped by a chocolate cream layer. And atop that, more dollops of whipped cream, covered with a chocolate drizzle.

The result is a slice of pie that provides a range of textural experiences and flavor profiles in each bite. With multiple notes in each forkful, I was never bored, and kept wanting to go back for more — until there was no more to go back to.

Wear loose fitting pants and queue up Netflix, because Talenti Gelato Layers isn't a dessert, so much as a life experience. This little plastic jar comes jam-packed with five layers of yummy goodness: sea salt caramel gelato on top, followed by chocolate cookie crumble, dulce de leche, vanilla gelato, and finally at the bottom, caramel truffles.

This is a dessert that's more than the sum of its parts. But adding up that sum will be tricky — unless you have a really big spoon. I was using a normal-sized spoon, and soon discovered that it was a major operation to try and dig through all five thick layers of dessert in order to get that one perfect bite that incorporates all of them at once.

What's nice is that each layer works fine on its own, but also in combination with any of the others. This allows for a huge variety of flavor pairings that you can experiment with and enjoy in your own way. Just be warned: at 330 calories for a single serving, this was tied for the most calories among any of the Dollar Tree desserts. And a single jar of Talenti Gelato Layers actually holds three servings, meaning if you eat it all in one go — which you will want to do — you'll be packing on nearly a thousand calories. Worth it!

In order to rank Dollar Tree desserts from worst to best, first, I had to get a slew of Dollar Tree desserts. Importantly, the selection of desserts at your local Dollar Tree may vary by region or locality, so not all of the desserts I sampled may be available to you. This list represents the variety of desserts available to me at my local Dollar Tree at the time of writing. As a result, it may not be inclusive of every possible dessert offered by every Dollar Tree.

I then tried every dessert and weighed them each against a checklist of criteria including taste, mouthfeel, texture, and nutrition. I scored each dessert in each category, then aggregated the results to produce a final score for each dessert which determined the ultimate rankings. While comparing ice cream to cookies is a bit like metaphorically comparing apples to oranges, by using this scientific approach I attempted to remove any personal biases from the process.