Little Debbie Cloud Cakes (Brian Zak)
Mrs. Freshley’s Dreamies Creme-Filled Cakes (Brian Zak)
Blue Bird Bakeries Bingles (Brian Zak)
Weight Watchers Golden Sponge Cake (Brian Zak)
Tastykake Krimpets (
)
When news broke in November that Hostess was bankrupt, people all over the country rushed to stock up on the famous brand’s most cherished treat: the venerable Twinkie. Soon stocks were depleted and now the only place one can find the original and best cream-filled snack cake is on eBay. But with prices rising on the online marketplace, a savvy snacker might turn their attention to alternatives in order to get their sugary fix.
Here you will find five “faux Twinkies” reviewed based on three criteria — texture, flavor and authenticity — as well as each confections’ calorie count and cost per cake.
Cloud Cakes
Texture: 2
Flavor: 2
Authenticity: 4
Final score: 8
Would you buy it again? Yes
Calories per cake: 150
Price per cake: $.30
Review: The cream-filling is too tangy and the texture of the cake is neither light nor moist, which makes the Cloud Cake a bit off in almost every way possible. Where Twinkies were a sweet, vanilla flavored cake, Cloud Cakes are tangy white cake flavor. Where Twinkies had a deliciously whip creamy center, Cloud Cakes have an almost sour buttermilk center. And where Twinkies left your mouth feeling satisfied, the Cloud Cake left our taster wanting more. But Cloud Cakes have one thing going for them: they look like Twinkies, they are packaged like Twinkies and by all accounts they are trying to be Twinkies. So they have that going for them, which is nice.
Dreamies
Texture: 1
Flavor: 3
Authenticity: 2
Final score: 6
Would you buy it again? No
Calories per cake: 130
Price per cake: $.50
Review: Gooey, greasy and grainy seem like characteristics that couldn’t possibly happen in one cake and yet Dreamies accomplished the impossible. They glistened with grease while nestled in their package and stuck to their wrapper when being extracted, these cakes had very little going for them other than flavor. With the right cream to cake ratio and non-cloyingly sweet vanilla flavor, if you closed your eyes you could convince yourself that a Dreamie was just a very bad Twinkie. If you could get the Dreamie to your mouth that is. Our test cakes fell apart under their own weight in the short journey from the plate to our tester’s mouth and and were so gooey that they stuck to the top of the taster’s mouth like plaster.
Bingles
Texture: 5
Flavor: 4
Authenticity: 4
Final score: 14
Would you buy it again? Yes
Calories per cake: 140
Price per cake: $.33
Review: Now this is more like it. Moist and packed with sweet vanilla goodness, Bingles were an immediate hit with our taste tester. Finding the perfect balance between cream and cake, these snack cakes were the closest thing to a Twinkie you’re likely to find. The only downside of the Bingle is that, where the Twinkie is light and fluffy, the Bingle is dense and moist. But those qualities aren’t exactly a bad thing where you’re talking about cream-filled cake.
Weight Watchers
Texture: 0
Flavor: 2
Authenticity: 2
Final score: 4
Would you buy it again? No
Calories per cake: 90
Price per cake: $1.00
Review: With its low-calorie count proudly displayed on its box, it’d be natural to conclude that Weight Watchers have created a healthy version of a faux Twinkie. There’s only one problem: each Weight Watchers cake is almost half the size of its competition — a Bingle, for example, weighs 1.4 oz per cake while the Weight Watcher cake weighs .9 oz. So the calories you save are just from a smaller portion size, which is completely besides the point when it comes to a sweet snack time treat like the Twinkie. Given that the calories saved from eating the Weight Watcher cake are largely a myth, and the fact that the product has the texture of raw sugar and a flavor that could only be described as generic vanilla it is easy to see why these cakes tied for the worst score in our test.
Tastykake Krimpets
Texture:2
Flavor: 2
Authenticity: 0
Final score: 4
Would you buy it again? No
Calories per cake: 120
Price per cake: $.50
Review: Tastykake Krimpets were at a disadvantage from the get-go because at the most fundamental level they are not like Twinkies — instead of a creamy center they are a solid mini-pound cake with frosting on top. That said, when Twinkies ruled the snack cake landscape, Krimpets had a fervent cult following that made them the go-to alternative. Unfortunately, the Krimpets we tried were dry and mealy and there just wasn’t enough frosting to make up for the lack of a cream filling.