After casting my vote in this thread, I’ve decided to give the East Coasters a chance. Back in the day, I always felt that Drake’s Cakes were far superior to Hostess. The chocolate was darker and richer, the cream filling was much smoother, and, well, just better. Unfortunately, they’re damn near impossible to find out here.
Some of my favorites:
Ring Dings–You can keep your King Dons, or Ding Dongs, or whatever. The original is still the best. “Ring Ding, Ring Ding, we’re gonna get a Ring Ding!”–just says it all. How many of us remember the big box, filled with foil-wrapped delights, one after another…Jeebus, I want one so bad right now!
Funny Bones–Don’t know if they’re still made, but what a concept! Chocolate coated chocolate cake filled with peanut butter flavored cream! Not for everyday, but sometimes you just gotta have one.
Yodels–Ho-hos and Little Debbie Swiss Rolls (yech) pale in comparison to the experience that is the Yodel.
Any other Drake-heads out there? And any clues as to Western US availability would put this East Coast expatriate eternally in your debt!
But real East Coasters will chime in and say TastyKake is the only choice. Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes; Butterscoth Krimpets; chocolate cupcakes with chocolate filling… <drool>
I grew up on the East Coast and, let me tell you, TastyKake were almost as bad as Little Debbie’s. (No, that’s hyperbole. Nothing is as bad as Little Debbie’s. You might as well spoon granulated sugar and random chemicals into your mouth.)
As a reporter in Indianapolis years ago, I covered a murder case involving a snack cake. A guy killed his brother because the brother stole his Little Debbie treat.
“Little Debbie - so good it’s worth killing for.” :dubious:
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of Drake’s cakes. I must say I’m impressed they know how to use an apostrophe correctly.
You can order them here, but that website does not appear to be affiliated with the company.
A friend at work had a Ding Dong in his lunch the other day. I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia, but I noted that I would never eat one now because I know they probably taste like shit, and I’d hate to have one more childhood memory raped by my snotty, refined, adult tastes. (No offense to Drake’s fans, but those products look like shit, too.) I’m sure kids love them all still, but as an adult there’s no way I’d still like them.
Devil dogs are the best food ever made on the planet. Ever. There can be no other.
Imagine my delight when I saw them on a grocery shelf here in SOUTH south FL. I squeed out loud in the aisle and tore the box open in the car before I left the parking lot. Devil dogs. Oh, how I love thee.
Devil Dogs are awesome. But add me to the ‘TastyKakes is King’ list. Butterscotch Krimpets and Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes are at the top of the snack cake world in my book.
I’m not big on TastyKake snack cakes, but they make a superior pie. I’m especially fond of the TastyKlair, a pie with vanilla custard filling and chocolate topping on the crust.
In Latin American markets, you can pick up Marinela brand snacks. The Gansitos and Pinguinos are especially good.
I lived in Pennsylvania until I was 6. There we had TastyKake. From there we moved to NewYork, and TastyKake was not widely available. Maybe the Drakes muscled them out of the metro area. I consoder myself a “real East Coaster” and think of Drakes first.
Yodels, when they were bigger than a roll of dimes, covered in real chocolate, and individually wrapped in foil were my favorite, and is the standard to which I compare all other snack cakes (and I consume far more in the category than a middleaged lady should). Sadly, the plastic twinpacked yodelettes of today don’t even come close.
May I ask how old you are? I ask because there is a noticable decline in quality in TastyKakes, much as there is in Drakes. I mentioned the PA to NY move above. About 5 years ago I moved from NY to Maryland and was filled with a wave of nostalgia when I saw the TastyKake rack in the store. I bought a box of butterscotch krimpets, which had been a favorite, and was woefully disappointed. If that had been my first TastyKake experience I’d agree with you that TastyKake is bad. To me the fact that they used to be wonderful and are now bad is far, far worse.
And, I don’t know what they’re geographic range is but I just picked up a box of Mrs. Freshly’s. It was an impulse buy at Walgreen’s. It was similar in price to Little Debbies so I expected it to be similar in quality. I don’t have words to describe the badness. As I expressed in a previous thread about cand corn, if a food is bad I’ll typically eat it, thinking all the while that I won’t buy it again. It has to be truly awful for me to throw it out. These things (besides not looking ANYTHING like the photo on the package) were inedible.
Thirty years ago I might have said “This” myself. Undeterred by my Krimpet disappointment I did buy a box of Kandy Kakes and became sad. the coating is “chocolatey”, the cake is dry - dry - dry, and the peanutbutter is very thin. Sad.
I remember Yodels individually wrapped in foil too! The very best of the best to me. I would bite the hard corners of chocolate off first, then try to eat the rest of the icing, leaving the delicious cake and filling for last… I’d unroll them sometimes - other times I’d eat them “as is”.
I hate Little Debbie (the snack of choice here in the South, it seems).
When I visited my children in Delaware this summer, I bought a box of every Drake cake available in the store. I treated myself to one per day and left the rest for my grandson.
As a California girl I never heard of Drake’s Cakes 'til I moved to Rhode Island in 1983. It was love at first bite. I was tremendously fond of Devil Dogs and Yankee Doodles (chocolate cream filled cupcakes with no icing), but my absolute favorites were Sunny Doodles (yellow cream-filled cupcakes). I’ve missed them ever since I left Rhode Island in 1985.
57, so I’m talking about when they were “top” quality. They had this slimy icing that always stuck to the plastic* and really weren’t all that good. Flavors were too weak – bland chocolate for people who don’t like chocolate.
Admittedly, they’re better than Little Debbies – but that’s setting the bar pretty damn low.
*The main drawback to Hostess cupcakes, but it was only a problem with them on hot days or if you mashed them up. TastyKakes would stick – leaving half the icing – on below zero days.
Drake’s. And TasteeCakes, why choose if you don’t have to? I’m on the West Coast and miss them both. It just seems like a no-brainer that if you have a chocolate cake filled with luscious “kreme” and coated in “chocolate” that it must be wrapped in tinfoil. I was at a baby shower a few weeks ago and the hostess makes a habit of ordering boxes of Ring Dings from back east - I was in heaven!