Hostess Desserts

Update Review, 2024

When I visit my hometown, I sometimes raid my father's snack foods stash, which often has packaged snack cakes in it.  I didn't grow up in a house with Hostess products in it, and they still are fairly rare now, so I still find it novel to try them when I spot them.

Patriotic Cupcake.
(Seasonal)

"Set off the fireworks for limited edition HOSTESS red, white, and blue themed cakes. Star Spangled CupCakes take on a whole new look with fun blue icing and a red squiggle. The yellow cake is moist as ever with creamy filling."

"Celebrate the holiday with HOSTESS® Patriotic CupCakes, available for a limited time only. Popping with sprinkles, these perfect party cupcakes sparkle with colorful red, white and blue. Take a bite into the frosted yellow cake with creamy filling and prepare to LIVE YOUR MOSTESS."

For the 4th of July, Hostess had a special patriotic cupcake available.  I had tried the orange cupcake a year or so prior, and didn't really like it, but how could I resist the limited edition item and the festive topping?  It was attractive enough.

The hard blue icing and sprinkles were probably the best part.  They tasted like sugar, and nothing else, no specific flavor at all, but were fine.  The "creamy filling" tasted like, well, sugar as well, and Crisco or something.  There wasn't a lot of it, but I didn't really want there to be more.  And as for the cake itself ... 

Ingredients!?!

The cake was moist.  I'll give it that.  But wow it tasted like just a bunch of chemicals.  There was nothing fresh, nothing remotely homemade about it.  It too tasted very plain, again no real flavor, not vanilla, not even classic "yellow" cake flavor if you know what I mean.  It just tasted like chemicals, which, it turns out, it was.  The ingredient list was terrifyingly long.  There was no reason to eat this cake.

So, hard sugar topping, chemical moist plain cake, and Crisco cloying sweet filling.  The appeal of these was lost on me, clearly.  I pondered heating another one up and topping it with ice cream, but decided it really wasn't worth trying to jazz it up, I had plenty of other better items to dig into.  *+.

Hostess also makes Star Spangled Ding Dongs, and Red, White, and Blue Twinkies for the holiday.

Twinkie.

"You don’t need a description. This is why you’re here. The Original Golden Snack that’s been putting smiles on faces for generations."

"A ready-to-enjoy snack cake, Hostess Twinkies are famous for their golden, fluffy exterior and irresistible creamy filling. Each sweet bite delivers a burst of soft and creamy goodness. Great for lunches, sharing and snacking on the go. Soft and fluffy golden cakes. Delicious, creamy filling center."

This ... may have been my first Twinkie?! Or at least the only one I've had since I started taking photos of things, or reviewing food items.  I also have no memory of actually eating a Twinkie, so it may very well be true.  Either way, I don't feel like I've been missing out at all.

The Twinkie was pretty similar to the cupcake really: moist but plain and chemical tasting cake, Crisco sweet plain filling.  Again not tons of filling, but reasonable amount, and I didn't want more.  Besides being obviously very processed and fake tasting, it also was just a bit one-dimensional for me.  Imagine just having some jam in there or ... something?  It was fake and bo-ring.  Is this why people deep fry them? *.

Original Review, April 2022

Hostess.  As in, Hostess Cupcakes, probably *the* most well known packaged snack baked goods out there, and yet to me, a relatively unknown entity.  Twinkies, Zingers, Hohos, Snowballs, etc ... I know the names, sure, but none of them were really known to me.

Yes, really.  While other kids at school had lunch boxes complete with these things of wonder (or so I imagined), I always had homemade cookies, unless I was really lucky, and had managed to convince mom to get some Little Debbie Nutty Bars (which, as you may recall from my review a few years ago, still really are good!).  My dad was #teamDrakes (see old review), so when his treats were in stock, it was Devil Dogs.  And thus, Hostess products just never really found their way into my house, even though the cakes are obviously quite iconic.  

Snack Cakes

In adulthood, I finally tried the cupcakes, available in the signature chocolate version with white icing inside, or a similar "golden" version with gold-ish cake.  They also now come in a slew of more interesting varieties like birthday cake, lemon, and even "patriotic" (seasonal).

I finally tried one.

Orange.

"Known for curing appetites, rather than scurvy, these Orange flavored CupCakes will take your taste buds someplace sunny and 75."

Orange is not exactly the variety I would gravitate towards normally, since I'm not generally one for citrus desserts, but for some reason, on a day when I was craving buttercream and frosting and sweetness, these orange cakes jumped out.

The construction of the orange cakes is the same as the more common varieties: cake, white cream filling, hard (orange) frosting top, signature squiggle.

I took my first bite, and was blown away by the strong orange flavor.  There is no doubt whatsoever that these are orange flavored, as artificial as it may be.  Orange, orange, orange.  So strong.  If you like orange, well, these could be for you.

The icing on top was really quite hard.  I'm not sure what I expected, as it clearly isn't fluffy buttercream, but I still was surprised by how firm it was.  It was crazy sweet, the flavor a bit hard to explain, just, um, sweet?  I do not think there was orange flavor in it, despite the obvious orange color.  My craving for frosting was really not met by this topping, but it isn't trying to be frosting.

The cake itself was fairly moist, and quite dense, and wasn't awful, but certainly didn't taste fresh.  It however is where the orange flavor was, and I really did not care for that.  

Inside was a tiny amount of white frosting, quite sweet, and with no actual real flavor to it.  There wasn't enough to make up for the lack of fluffy frosting on top.

So overall, um, orange flavor dislikes aside, not really a cupcake in my mind, as it failed in the primary responsibility: frosting delivery vehicle!  Not something I'd pick up again.

**+.

Pies

There are many brands that make hand held "pies", but somehow in my mind, Hostess is *the* gold standard for these items.  Again though, not items I ever had growing up, but always had some jealousy towards.  They've been around ~forever, introduced in the 1970s.

If you are unfamiliar, these are fairly large "hand" pies, rectangular shaped, with crust all around.  The crust isn't like a traditional pie crust though, and is always glazed.  Inside is a fruit and, uh, goo filling.  Fillings range from fruity classics like apple and cherry, to harder to find varieties like blueberry or lemon.

Cherry Pie.

"Don’t leave these on the windowsill, because the neighbor kids will definitely get their hands on them. Individually wrapped and ready to eat, these pies are a family favorite."

The pies come in a cardboard box, really more of a sleeve than anything, with no inner wrapper.  They somehow have an impressive shelf life even without more protection.

And inside, just one, large pie.  My memory is that they used to have 2 smaller square pies inside?  Am I making that up?  Was that another brand?  Was that Drakes?

Cherry Pie: Inside.

Anyway, these "pies" are good for what they are.  The pie crust is hard to describe if you've never had it before - it is not real pie crust, it is not flaky, it is not buttery, but it is also nothing like a danish, nor a cookie, it just is its own thing.  And it is sweet, entirely covered in glaze.  Sorta like what you'd get if you had an item made up of just the outside of a glazed donut, no fluffy donut insides to it.  If that makes any sense.

The cherry pie filling leaves something to be desired if you expect to find actual cherries.  No, this is not even the quality level of canned cherry pie filling.  It is just goo.  Sweet, cherry flavored goo.  

So if you go into this expecting, um, a pie, or even a hand pie with real crust, and anything remotely resembling fruit, you'll be quite sad.  But if you know what you are getting into, it can be kinda satisfying, although clearly not remotely wholesome, and so full of preservatives.  When I went to write this up, I found someone else describe them as "basically hard glazed donut crusts filled with artificial fruit flavored gel", which I think is shockingly accurate.

Interestingly, the box says you can warm them up in the microwave, something I certainly never remember seeing anyone do.  I tried it, but didn't find it added anything to it, and actually, just left it a bit soggy, and unevenly heated.  Boo, microwaves.

I do think it could be better warmed more appropriately (e.g. toaster oven) and served a la mode?  But if you were eating a whole pie, the ice cream addition would be a bit much, as these things clock in 430 calories in the pie alone.

***, and strangely satisfying, but not something I'd seek out unless I was really craving another.