5 Store-Bought Coffee Cakes Ranked Worst To Best

As an avid home baker, one of the questions I get asked most frequently is what my favorite thing to bake is. While show-stopping layer cakes, homey apple pies that rival bakery versions, and my fan-favorite miso chocolate chunk cookies are up there, my favorite of them all might just be coffee cake. As a kid, I remember having a life-changing crumb cake at the (pre-gentrified) Muddy Waters Cafe in New London, Connecticut. A standard slice must have weighed close to a pound, and it had an almost 50/50 ratio of dense crumb topping to vanilla cake. It was a dessert that was acceptable to eat before 10 a.m., and I have spent many years of my life trying to recreate that absolutely heavenly slice. 

That said, making coffee cake is a labor of love. Not only do you have to nail the perfect vanilla cake base, but you also have to find the perfect topping consistency (personally, I prefer a coarse, heavy, stick-to-your-ribs crumble rather than a dust). It can take a lot of trial and error, but luckily, there is a much simpler alternative: store-bought crumb cakes. These treats take many forms, from the cheap snack cakes you'd find at a gas station to towering, Bundt-shaped spectacles topped with nuts.

As with any store-bought bake, the quality varies drastically, which is precisely why I wanted to see if there was a crumb cake out there that could rival my homemade recipe (or even better, my long-lost Muddy Waters slice). So, I purchased all the crumb cakes I could find at local grocery stores, tasted them, and ranked them based on flavor and texture.

I'm not a sweets person, and maybe that's why I really disliked Hostess' coffee cakes so much. I thought I would be charmed by them; at first, they boasted a delectable, bakery-worthy aroma and a soft, easy-to-break consistency. However, I looked closer and saw that there really wasn't a streusel topping, only a layer of cinnamon and white sugar on top, which had been pressed into the cake rather than left in sizable chunks. I was appalled that it was trying to pass itself off as a coffee cake.

These individually-wrapped snack cakes, in short, taste like all other Hostess products. They have that weird snack-cake flavor that seems to be uniform across the brand's products. This one was just extra sweet with a little bit of sugar. I reckon it was about twice as sugary as the other snack cakes, which may be why its cake is so soft and fluffy. Instead of opting for the iconic streusel topping, Hostess adds ribbons of cinnamon sugar to the inside of its cake. I don't think it really matters, since I can't tell whether the cloyingness comes from the cake, the cinnamon-sugar topping, or the swirls. Regardless, I think they all compound, creating a treat that makes you feel like you need a glass of water after the first bite. 

Now, the cake's texture is excellent, but without a bold, buttery cinnamon-sugar flavor, it's basically a boring (yet pillowy) birthday cake. I wouldn't buy it again, even if I were in the market for a cheap, mass-produced snack cake. 

Drake's were a staple in my house growing up — though it wasn't the coffee cakes that graced my shelves. Instead, it was the Devil Dogs, Ring Dings, and other chocolatey treats. Maybe my family bought these coffee cakes once, but they sure weren't popular. And based on my tasting of them all these years later, I can see why.

When I pulled these individual snack cakes out of the box, I could tell that they looked a little worse for wear. They were about the size of a standard cupcake, but were only half-risen, which caused all the streusel topping to collect on one side of the cake and not the other. This skewed the ratio of topping to cake. I elected to bite down on the compressed side, which revealed a very unique texture. The cake was very dry and lacked the homemade, properly risen feel of any good cake. This one was compacted and dense — and warranted dipping into a cup of hot coffee. It also tasted strongly of vegetable shortening and something very dry and almost flour-y. I was left with a slimy feeling on the roof of my mouth. 

The streusel's texture was marginally better here than the cake that ranked above it. There were sizable chunks of streusel that were the perfect balance of gritty and squishy. However, the vegetable shortening flavor was even worse here than in the cakey base, and I missed out on any fresh, cinnamony notes. Luckily, it wasn't as sweet as Hostess' abomination, but I still wouldn't go out of my way to buy a box.

Although Entenmann's cake is marketed as being a crumb cake — not a coffee cake — I would say that its similar structure warrants its spot on this list. Visually, this cake looks very different from the other crumb cakes I sampled for this ranking. The streusel chunks on top of the cake are sizable, pepper every corner, and are dusted with sugar. Actually, I take that back — it's definitely flour. I don't really know what purpose the flour serves here besides making the cake look a little more homemade. 

Heed my warning on this one, folks: Cut and eat it over a sink. The streusel pieces are hard and not at all connected to the cake underneath, so they go absolutely everywhere when you try to bite into it. The ratio of topping to cake is pretty average for a store-bought crumb cake (which is more than can be said for some of the other selections on this list), but I can't say that the streusel was good. It lacked any sort of buttery flavor, and it had a dry and crumbly mouthfeel, rather than a topping that fused with the soft cake underneath it. I may have been more sympathetic to it if it hadn't left me coated in streusel afterward.

While I appreciated the restrained sweetness here (Hostess could learn a thing or two from it), there was not enough butteriness or punchy cinnamon flavor to really convince me it was homemade. You're better off making your own coffee cake — it would probably be less messy, too. 

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that Walmart's bakery has some great products, as well as those that aren't worth buying. I hadn't sampled its individual serving-sized coffee cake slice before, and I didn't know what to expect based on its appearance and aroma alone. Traditionally, coffee cake has copious amounts of balled, buttery topping perched on top. This slice, instead, looked like it had been sandwiched between other heavier items, as the cinnamon streusel topping was completely pressed down into the soft, yellow cake underneath. There was a stripe of cinnamon sugar a couple inches below that streusel layer, though there was no other color or ribboning besides that, which was unfortunate. The ratio of crumb topping to cake was also pretty abysmal, though it smelled fresh and cinnamony. 

I draw many similarities between the yellow cake base and Walmart's pound cake that I tried for a previous tasting — so much so that I think it's just the same cake mix repurposed for yet another use. I get the need to be thrifty, though, and the yellow cake isn't supposed to be the star here anyway — all that attention should be on the streusel instead. But even the streusel fell flat. The dominant note of the bite was vanilla — coming from the cake base, which was oddly sticky. There is some grittiness from the brown sugar in the streusel, and while the cinnamon was pretty fresh, I missed any sort of buttery or textural component in this slice. It's just a vanilla cake moonlighting as something breakfast-worthy. While it tasted slightly more homemade than the selections ranked below it, it's still not good enough to add to your cart.

Did I want to put the outrageously expensive Original Boston coffee cake with walnuts first in this ranking? No, not at all. Seriously, who wants to pay $11 for something that they can make better at home? But it was clear that when compared to other store-bought options, this one sailed far above its competition. 

This cake, which I bought from Stop & Shop, was the only one baked in a Bundt pan. I had two options for it: a marbled chocolate version (which is just for looks, let's be honest) and this cinnamon walnut one. My main gripe with this cake, aside from its price, is the walnuts. The ones left on top of the cake were a little too toasted for my liking, while the ones added to the streusel were left nearly whole, which caused the cake to literally burst at the seams. 

But, everything else about this cake was leaps and bounds better than the other offerings on this list. While there was very little streusel on top of the cake (it was more of a gritty topping than whole pieces), it still imparted the buttery, brown-sugar notes I had been so desperately looking for. The cake leans sweet — a little too sweet for my liking, considering that there is sugar both in the topping and the brown sugar-walnut ribbon — but if you paired it with a strong black coffee, you may not notice it as much. The cake's consistency is fluffy yet structurally sound and accompanied by more than enough vanilla undertones. It's a solid seven out of 10, and though I could make a way better cake myself, it would do in a pinch. 

I sampled each of these coffee cakes on the day I purchased them to ensure they were at their freshest. I ate them all at room temperature (though, some of my top picks would probably taste better heated up and enjoyed alongside a warm cup of coffee).

As I snacked, I considered the overall texture and flavor of each cake. I bake coffee cake on the regular (not to mention, a pretty darn good one at that), so I was looking for a store-bought coffee cake that rivaled the plushness, flavor, and consistency I was used to. Coffee cake is composed of two primary components — the cakey base and the topping — meaning both had to taste good solo and when eaten as a complete bite. The cake should have a balanced sweetness with notes of vanilla and complement the spicy, sweet, and buttery topping. I also prefer coffee cakes that have ample brown sugar swirls in them, as they break up the monotony of the cake. The topping, meanwhile, should be brimming with cinnamon and butteriness, and have a texture that sets it apart from the vanilla cake underneath. 

Although none of the cakes on this list beat my homemade recipe, my top pick boasts a decent consistency and, overall, balanced flavor. Though it was quite expensive, especially compared to the cheap, gas station snack food nature of some of the others on this list, I did not consider price in the same way as flavor and consistency.