7 Best And 6 Worst Aldi Baked Goods

In my estimation, the bakery is one of the least appreciated sections of a grocery store. Although it can be stuffed with great pastries, I've often rejected grocery store-bought pastries. Recently, however, I've started to change my mind. In fact, I've fallen in love with some of these items (especially you, Costco bakery). But the big question remains: Would baked goods from a grocery store without an actual bakery be any good? I put Aldi (the cheapest grocery store in the United States) to the test to find the answer.

In the end, there are several great baked goods and six you can skip. I tasted each one, considering flavor and texture in equal measure. In the case of texture, I was looking for items that accurately and pleasantly reflected whatever baked good I was sampling. For taste, I wanted these treats to be enjoyable to eat — they simply had to taste good.

Across the country, in most grocery stores, you'll find batches of cookies similar to these for birthdays and holiday celebrations. While I've typically bought these cookies from stores like Walmart and Target, it's not surprising to see them at Aldi too. I was skeptical as to whether they would hold up to other brands of similar cookies I've tried, but I was very pleasantly surprised.

Since these were the first Aldi treat I sampled, the store started off on a strong note. They were super soft cookies, and tasted nearly identical to others in this category from other brands and stores. In fact, they may have been a small amount softer than other cookies, which made them better in my opinion. The best part of these cookies was how easy they are to eat and enjoy. The frosting also tasted a little sweeter compared to others — and that's fantastic news for my taste buds.

To make these an even more desirable item to bring into classrooms, right on the outside of the package, you'll find a label identifying the cookies as an item made in a nut-free facility. Therefore, it's a packaged good ideal for holiday parties or birthday celebrations in schools.

I am obsessed with cinnamon rolls, but I'm also a little picky when it comes to these breakfast pastries. Generally, I look for frosted, sweet, soft, squishy goodness. There should be an abundance of moisture with plenty of frosting to offer a sweet bite — but I don't want the bite to be overly gooey and nearly soggy. Thankfully, these cinnamon rolls don't come close to soggy, but they're far from moist.

I enjoyed that the frosting was thoroughly coating the top of the cinnamon rolls, and these were extremely sweet, but they suffered from being far too dry. Looking at the frosting, I might have imagined them to be super moist, but they felt more like biting into a dried-out sponge than a cinnamon roll. The best cinnamon rolls are ones that have layers that all taste as good as the middle (the TikTok hack that makes canned cinnamon rolls gooier is a great way to achieve this), and that wasn't happening here. Admittedly, prepackaged goodies will always have a distinct disadvantage, but based on the experience I had with other pastry sweets, I expected much better. Though the flavor was enjoyable, I wouldn't choose these again simply because their texture was so disappointing.

Some cookie types do a marvelous job explaining what is in a cookie based on the name. With a name like "kitchen sink," you may be a little curious what is actually in the cookie. Taking it literally, there should be bits of stainless steel, but in this case, the cookie is made of a bunch of different snack ingredients, owing to the idea that it's just about everything but the kitchen sink, as the idiom goes.

Aldi's variety of kitchen sink cookies are a peanut butter cookie with chocolate, pretzels, coconut, and even white baking bits to add some difference in color. All together, the cookie was sweet and just a little salty. Although I wished it were a little softer, I wondered if it was would it lose its structural integrity and crumble. I found that these were ultra tasty, crave-worthy, and definitely more homemade tasting than I was expecting from a packaged box of cookies. Nicely done on the kitchen sink cookies, Aldi! 

While the kitchen sink cookies felt like a reasonable texture for the cookie, the chocolate chunk cookies were too dry and suffered from similar issues as the cinnamon rolls. In a chocolate chip cookie, I'm looking for a cookie that's moist and doesn't feel dry. Although I can't necessarily expect a freshly baked flavor here, there should have been some moisture, and that's the biggest reason these chocolate chip cookies didn't turn out right.

All told, I just wanted them to be softer. Although the flavor was pretty good, the moisture was really what dragged down the experience here. To be considered the best treats, both of these elements need to be aligned, and when one is significantly lacking, it can't reasonably be called the best. That said, I was impressed with the number of chocolate chunks adorning the cookie. Unlike chocolate chips, they provided a much thicker bite. This also isn't the type of cookie that has a multi-chocolate flavor to it. That too would have improved the overall experience.

My unpopular opinion is that oatmeal raisin cookies are actually good. So, when I saw oatmeal cranberry cookies at Aldi, I was interested. Looking at them, it's obvious the cranberries are dried rather than fresh, like you often see in something like a blueberry muffin. In this way, the cranberries acted like raisins which made these oatmeal cranberry cookies a spin on the classic oatmeal raisin cookie.

Although they were a little harder than I would like them to be, they were still soft enough to be passable as an oatmeal cookie. The cranberries weren't quite as plump as you expect a raisin to be inside of an oatmeal raisin cookie, but again, they were a delightful tang and just chewy enough that they sufficed for the situation. I found the flavor to be the star of the show, resulting in an overall very tasty cookie. Those who enjoy oatmeal raisin cookies, but sometimes wish the raisins didn't play such a significant role will enjoy these a lot. Overall, it's a fun spin on the oatmeal raisin since the cranberries are Craisins.

All of the muffins from Aldi were quite moist, so in this way, they absolutely nailed the texture. However, muffins need to be more than just moist. In the case of the chocolate chip muffins, as long as you got a bite with chips in it, the muffin was tasty. However, the area between the chocolate chips, and the muffin parts themselves were not as enjoyable.

These are the definition of a basic chocolate chip muffin. It's never going to be something that you're longing for, and I struggled to imagine it becoming anyone's favorite of the pastry collection. Therefore, I simply couldn't call them one of the best offerings that Aldi has, even if they are passable as a muffin. If I were looking for muffins, and these were my only choice at Aldi, there's very little chance I would pick them up again. The simplicity was their downfall — far too boring.

The banana nut muffins, however, were exceptional. I originally intended to try the banana nut loaf too, but seeing as it was sold out at my store, I had to settle for the banana nut muffins all on their own. While the chocolate chip muffins did absolutely nothing to stand out, the banana nut muffins were so good, you may just stop making homemade banana nut bread.

One of the most important parts of banana bread is the texture has to be spot on. There should be an enjoyable texture without feeling gooey like a squashed banana. And the nuttiness should come from a nutty topping or integrated throughout. In the case of these banana nut muffins, you get little bits of walnut on top that finish off the bite perfectly. I was so impressed with the flavor of these banana muffins and found they tasted as good as any homemade banana bread I've ever had, if not even better in some instances. These would be an absolute treat split in half, warmed up in the microwave for 30 seconds, and with a little butter on top of each half. If you're looking for a perfect breakfast muffin, ignore the others at Aldi and just go for these.

The blueberry muffins suffered in many ways, the same as the chocolate chip. There are plenty of blueberries within the muffin itself, but they're missing one of the most key elements of a blueberry muffin: plump blueberries. There's nothing more satisfying when it comes to a muffin than biting into one to reveal baked-in fruit, and these left that experience entirely off the table.

Like the banana nut and chocolate chip, the absent plump blueberry texture and flavor made these rather forgettable — they were missing some of the key components. I also found this type of muffin is much better suited to more of a streusel topping than the topping from Aldi. If these blueberry muffins had plumper blueberries and a more significant topping, they might be one of the best options at Aldi.

In the great debate of pie versus cake, I've always been more of a pie fan. I preferred pie over cake even on my birthday growing up — I found it to be far more enjoyable. Often, my biggest issue with cake is the frosting overpowers anything going on with the actual cake, and the majority of the flavor comes not from the cake itself, but what's on top of it. This wasn't particularly enjoyable, so my guess was that the Aldi triple chocolate cream cake wouldn't be anything I would enjoy. I was mistaken.

I found this chocolate cake to not only be moist and decadent, but also have an excellent flavor. It was sufficiently chocolatey to satisfy the chocolate lover's sweet tooth while also having a creaminess to it that's hard to ignore. For a packaged cake, I was very impressed with the overall texture as well as flavor. This doesn't taste like something you would get from Aldi or any grocery store. Instead, it reminded me of my favorite cakes I enjoyed from the teacher breakroom during the years I spent teaching reading and writing. If you like chocolate cake, don't skip this one.

I love a dessert disguising itself as a breakfast pastry. It's like the world giving you the go-ahead to eat cake for breakfast, and I eagerly approached each of the Danishes I got from Aldi. Unfortunately, I found that most of the time, these Danishes were a letdown.

The raspberry strip Danish appeared to be moist and fruity. The frosting looked to be sufficient, and it seemed like it was going to be an enjoyable bite. However, the raspberry flavor strip was so minimal, most of my bite was simply pastry, and the only problem with that was that the pastry itself was on the dry side — like, really dry. I enjoyed how much the raspberry strip tasted like real fruit, but the moisture was a big problem here, and not something I would return to. If you absolutely insist that your pastries must be the right texture, you'll probably want to skip the raspberry Danish too, even if it looks like it's going to be absolutely delicious.

In general, I find that fruit-flavored items make for better pastries, so I anticipated the cheese strip Danish to be one I wouldn't particularly enjoy. Again, I was wrong. Of all the three Danishes I sampled, the cheese was easily the best.

I found the flavoring to be only slightly sweet, but it had a soft and moist feel to it. This was definitely the most enjoyable texture of the three, and I liked that it was something of a cream cheese flavor rather than a sharp cheese. I didn't know what to expect, but the sweetness was a delight. I guessed the cheese was the reason the texture was so much more enjoyable — and I could have imagined grabbing these cheese Danishes, and a few packs of banana nut muffins to make for a delicious breakfast pastry spread.

Strawberry tends to be one of my favorite fruit flavors, so I figured the combination of strawberry with cheese would be an absolute winner. While the flavor may have been spot on, the texture was, again, an issue.

The cheese Danish had enough moisture from the cheese to feel soft and enjoyable, replacing one of those stripes of cheese with strawberry made for a half dry Danish. It wasn't as dry as the raspberry, but it was dry enough to impact the overall enjoyment of the pastry. In general, I preferred the fruit flavor of the raspberry, which surprised me. The strawberry flavor Danish tasted too fake, and it just didn't go well with the cheese like I hoped it would. If you must do a fruit Danish, go for the raspberry over the strawberry cheese Danish — but the best Danish of the three is the plain cheese one. My recommendation is to add fruit jam on top of the cheese Danish or even a helping of sliced fruit to add a fresh flavor.

When I worked at Starbucks, each of my family members developed a favorite offering. My boyfriend, now husband, fell in love with the iced lemon loaf. I frequently brought it home for him, and whenever we got Starbucks, it was a favorite treat to pick up. For a long time, I've been looking for something similar, and in this Aldi version, I sure got close. The biggest difference between the lemon slice of cake from Aldi and Starbucks was that this Aldi version didn't have icing. Admittedly, that's one of the best parts of the Starbucks version, so I prefer that one over Aldi's, but the lemon cake itself was nearly identical.

As tasty as the cake was, I wondered if I could reassemble this cake, and add a glaze on top to create that extra flavor. If you can get past the absence of the glaze, this could easily become a favorite. I've never had a lemon loaf get closer, and it's a perfectly moist bite, just like Starbucks. In fact, it might have been even softer. One thing is for sure: This is a product you'll want to buy when shopping at Aldi.

After gathering a range of baked goods from Aldi, I sampled each over the course of about a week. In general, my impressions were based on flavor and texture. In each instance, the pastry needed to have an ideal texture for the specific type of baked good in mind. 

To consider it a best option, texture and flavor had to be on point. That is, the ones that were tasty and enjoyable to eat were some of the best, and those that were more boring or less enjoyable were among the worst.