Popular Tastykake Products, Ranked Worst To First

If you grew up on the East Coast, chances are you've eaten a Tastykake product or two. While the brand was founded in Pennsylvania and once had fairly limited distribution, it's now available all along the East Coast and in much of the southern United States, including Texas. Betty White once sold Tastykakes on television, and Philadelphians consider it to be a local treasure.

While the company's bestselling item, the Peanut Butter Kandy Kake, gets a lot of attention (and for a good reason — the company bakes around 500,000 per day!), the brand makes not only its signature Kandy Kakes and Krimpets but also mini pies, cupcakes, donuts, pastries, and a host of other delicious, pre-packaged baked goods. Ranking these iconic snack foods is hard because none of them are strictly speaking bad. There's not a single Tastykake product we wouldn't happily eat, but some of them are better than others. Here are 16 popular items, ranked worst to first. 

Tastykake has a lot of iconic items in its lineup, but although the company makes two different Cookie Bars — chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin — as well as two flavors of fruit and yogurt bars that are basically Nutrigrain dupes, no one goes to the store hunting for a Tastykake cookie bar. That being said, there's no reason to turn one down, either.

Out of the four bar varieties, the chocolate chip cookie is the best of the bunch, but it still lands near the bottom of our list. They fall apart very easily, are decidedly under-baked, and taste primarily like brown sugar and chocolate chips. The chocolate chip cookie bar lacks the tender crumb of other Tastykake products and has an aftertaste of ambiguous artificial flavoring that sets this product apart from the rest of the line — but not in a good way. The vast majority of the brand's other packaged snacks are better than the Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars, but if you for some reason must have a Tastykake bar, this is the one to get. 

Honey Buns are the kind of thing that people tend to either love or hate. They're sticky, gooey, and extremely sweet. Tastykake makes three versions of this classic gas station breakfast item, including the Glazed Honey Bun, the Iced Honey Bun, and the less common Boston Creme Honey Bun. Let's start with the Glazed Honey Bun, which ranks pretty low on our list primarily because of its extremely one-note flavor profile.

The Glazed Honey Bun tastes like exactly one thing: melted sugar. This is not always a bad thing. It's a great accompaniment, for example, to a cup of over-extracted black coffee. The interior of the Tastykake Honey Bun in any of its three iterations is fluffy, buttery, and sweet. Warmed up slightly in microwave or oven, the Glazed Honey Bun becomes even more palatable as the glaze melts into the pastry. However, eaten straight from the package, it can have a slimy quality.

Tastykake products are best when there's some degree of contrast in the item, and while the brand's Chocolate Cupcakes are delicious, they lack that contrast that would take them to the next level. For lovers of pure chocolate decadence, however, these are a pretty solid bet. The cupcake is delicate, light, and moist, with an open crumb texture and a flavor profile reminiscent of devil's food cake. 

The frosting is somewhere between frosting and ganache, applied in a thin, flexible layer, almost like a slice of cheese. Perhaps because the focus here is on the chocolate, these manage to stay out of too-sweet territory and achieve a nice depth of flavor, but it is a bit one-note. Tastykake sells its chocolate cupcakes in individual packs of three or a family-sized box with six packs of two cupcakes. If you're a chocolate-on-chocolate type of person, get the box. You won't regret it. 

We've said what we had to say about the Glazed Honey Bun being more or less a too-sweet mess. The Iced Honey Bun, however, is a different story altogether. Somehow, the application of a thick layer of frosty white vanilla icing offsets the sticky sweetness of the bun itself, making it feel more balanced. The contrast of the vanilla brings out the honey flavors of the syrupy bun, and the textural contrast between slightly hardened frosting and fluffy pastry makes this treat a delight to eat.

This one is better eaten either slightly chilled in the refrigerator or straight out of the package since the frosting doesn't take particularly well to heating. Weighing in at five ounces, it's also a pretty sizeable pastry, so you can eat one of these for breakfast and not feel hungry an hour later. While it isn't our absolute favorite Tastykake product, it's an all-around good choice.

Tastykake Coconut Juniors are very good, but Koffee Kake Juniors are the undisputed best of the bunch. The base of the Koffee Kake Junior is a dense, buttery yellow cake that's reminiscent of a homestyle pound cake. It has a good amount of loft, but it isn't quite light — this is a more serious cake, meant to stand up to a strong cup of coffee.

The topping offers a buttery flavor in the form of little cylindrical pieces of crumb that are almost like a cinnamon-flavored sprinkle but with a softer mouthfeel that has give rather than chew. Take a bite, and the whole thing melts into your mouth. It tastes like the kind of thing your grandma might make, in the best way. Each cake is only two and a half ounces, and they're sold either individually or in a box of six, so you'll probably want to spring for the box.

The individual hand pies that Tastykake makes are some of the most under-appreciated hits of its product line. The company makess a ton of flavors, including all the classic fruits like blueberry and cherry, and you can find both glazed and baked varieties. The Baked Coconut Creme Pie, though, is something else. This is probably the least sweet item on our list, which is one of the things we love about it. The pie crust is spot-on: It tastes like an all-butter crust but has the tender flaky qualities of something made with a combination of butter and shortening.

In fact, this pie tastes like something that would come out of the kitchen of a grandmother who has spent most of her life racking up state fair blue ribbons. The coconut filling is velvety, thick, and full of flavor, but again, not too sweet! There is actually a sort of almost-umami quality to the whole treat that sets it apart from its peers. 

A unique and delicious part of Tastykake's "Other Cakes" category, along with the aforementioned Chocolate Bells, Creme Filled Snowballs are truly a unique and creative delight. We start again with that Chocolate Bell base that's been turned upside down. Instead of doubling down on the chocolate, however, the Creme Filled Snowball is wrapped in a thick layer of marshmallow — not marshmallow creme but actual marshmallow. 

That outer layer of marshmallow is then rolled in toasted coconut that is, inexplicably, dyed pink. It creates a striking visual contrast that appeals to children and nostalgic adults alike, and the texture is unlike any other snack cake in the Tastykake family. It's chewy, light, and creamy all at once, with just the slightest hint of crispiness from the toasted coconut coating. It combines flavors of deep chocolate, vanilla, marshmallow, and coconut, making this arguably the most sophisticated treat the brand offers. 

Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes are a totally unique treat, and they are the most popular item in the Tastykake family for a very good reason. We start with perfect discs of yellow sponge cake, which tastes like the same stuff that forms the base of the equally perfect Butterscotch Krimpet. That gets topped with a thick layer of peanut butter, which is at once salty and creamy and has a pleasantly toothsome bite to it.

Unlike the peanut butter in a Reese's peanut butter cup, this isn't fortified with a ton of sugar — it actually tastes like roasted nuts more than anything else. The whole thing is then coated in a semisweet chocolate shell that's thinner on the bottom and thicker on top. These things are delicious eaten straight from the package and magical when frozen. There are few things in life more satisfying than smacking the top of a Peanut Butter Kandy Kake with a spoon and watching the chocolate shell shatter. A more perfect snack cake does not exist.