Name: Little Debbie Birthday Cakes
Made in: USA probably
Bought in: USA
Weight: 352g

I don’t think Little Debbie is very famous this side of the pond, but think of it as Mr Kipling’s American daughter. Her cakes aren’t so much Exceedingly Good as Exceedingly Mediocre. But that’s not such a good tagline.

The first thing to note is that these are just called Birthday Cakes. They should, in theory, be the ultimate peak of this website. Unfortunately the taste is… bland. They don’t really taste of anything other than sugar. The centre filling is surprisingly similar to the one in Hostess Cupcakes, and there is egg white in the ingredients so it could again even be meringue. But it doesn’t have quite the same cloying sweetness of the cupcakes.

The sprinkles are weird little hard discs – clearly some sort of sugary thing, but they’re nothing interesting or special. There’s also rarely very many of them – only one in the box I received had more than a couple of dozen, but doesn’t appear here due to being squished on its transatlantic trip.

The white outside is… slightly creamy. It’s like the stuff you get on the coated Oreo’s but much much thinner. As in it’s not really chocolate but just sort of oily and white. The bottom is not coated fully, but a little bit of the coating ends up on there as oily patches.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a vague taste of vanilla. The colours are nice and bright. But I can’t get past the coating. It’s just a little too thin and oily for them to really be a nice treat. If they made it a little thicker and a little more solid, then they might be perfect birthday cakes. But without that they’re just not quite good enough.

This is the sort of birthday party where you knew the person meant well, but it was just faintly disappointing. None of it really tastes of anything. The cake is just bland dry sponge. There is a bit of vanilla there but not enough. This is a birthday cake modelled after George Clooney’s recent acting roles – completely phoned in.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️
Cake-o-meter: 🎂🎂🎂