The '90s Snack That Belongs At Your Throwback Dinner Party

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Unlike the many 1990s snacks you forgot ever existed, we bet that Dunkaroos are still living rent-free in your mind. For millennials, few joys in adult life have ever measured up to our excitement when we saw that Mom packed these cookie dunkers in our lunchbox. Little Debbies Cosmic Brownies were invented at roughly the same time, but they weren't as fun as Dunkaroos, thanks to the interactive element. There was something playful and inherently appealing about Dunkaroos, which encouraged — nay, demanded! — that you play with your food.

Dunkaroos were born in 1990, and disappeared from shelves in 2012, breaking the hearts of Gen Y babies from coast to coast. The original snacks featured a cool kangaroo mascot and varying combinations of cookies, which were meant to be dunked or scoop up vanilla sprinkle, chocolate, or strawberry frosting. In 2020, however, General Mills brought Dunkaroos back. You can even buy them on Amazon. Nowadays, you can munch Dunkaroos combos featuring chocolate cookies with double chocolate frosting, vanilla cookies with vanilla sprinkle frosting, or Cinnamon Toast Crunch cookies with Cinnadust frosting. A rep for the company told the New York Times that the formula is exactly the same, but, if your grown-up palate doesn't relish the taste of HFCS and palm oil just like it did 30 years ago, don't fret. There's a simple, effortless way to make your own high-quality Dunkaroos, just in time for a nostalgic dinner party with your 40-something besties.

We mean, you could buy out a ton of packaged Dunkaroos and put them in a bowl on your dinner table, but grown-up tastes demand grown-up desserts. At their root, Dunkaroos are just shortbread cookies and frosting, both of which are dead simple to produce. Shortbread takes a handful of ingredients that you already have in your pantry, and requires no more fancy prep than rolling out and cutting into dunkable strips. No preservatives, no artificial flavors. We've been over the best ways to upgrade canned frosting, and you can definitely use some Betty Crocker for your homemade dunks, but a simple buttercream frosting is, again, just a few components and a whir through your stand mixer away. Plus, you can customize the flavoring and color at will.

We're getting carried away imagining the possibilities of homemade Dunkaroos — cookies and cream (with Oreo crumbles in the frosting), pumpkin spice for autumn, green frosting with a generous sprinkle of matcha, or even lavender buttercream for tea party Dunkaroos! For that matter, shortbread cookies can also be flavored extensively. How about a Dunkaroo buffet at your next shindig with a variety of cookies and frostings on a bar? The sky's the limit, and both yourself and your friends are guaranteed to totally love this moment of reconnection with your inner children.