Brand new snacks can turn grocery shopping into a stressful experience. Whether you hit the market on foot or fill your cart virtually, once you start incorporating snacks into the grocery list your budget gets all f*cked up. That pain is felt even more when you decide to stray from the classics and reach for that delicious new treat.
Don’t get us wrong, we think change is good, a new food product is a potential game-changer in your culinary arsenal, but it hurts when you throw down your money on something that looked better than it ends up tasting. If you’ve ever had that one friend who always seems to be offering your random food when you come over, it’s not because you’re special, it’s because they’re just trying to clear up their fridge and shelf space.
Don’t be the person who gives away your snacks. Be the person who loves their snacks and let us help you by taking the Ls for you. We’ve been grabbing snacks for months in order to lead you to the best supermarket treats on store shelves. From new Goldfish crackers to something called a ‘pizza cupcake,’ here are our favorite new grocery products for your snacking pleasure.
Pizza Cupcake — The Margherita/Pepperoni
Price: $49.99 (Two Box Pack)
Why We Love It:
Introducing your new favorite snack, the Pizza Cupcake. This thing slaps, it’s flakey, buttery, chewy, and delicious. For a frozen pizza snack, the Pizza Cupcake’s cheese is remarkably flavorful — a bit nutty, sweet, and with a soft mouthfeel like fresh mozzarella, while the sauce is bright and tomato-forward like you want a simple pizza sauce to be. The box touts that the sauce is made from San Marzano tomatoes and you can definitely taste that sweetened tomato flavor characteristic of canned SMTs.
The cupcakes are baked fresh in Brooklyn and shipped to your door in temperature-controlled packaging in both a Margherita and pepperoni flavor. Just open up a cupcake, toss it in the oven or air fryer for 10 minutes and you’ve got the best-frozen pizza snack you’ll ever eat.
The Bottom Line:
It’s the evolution of the Hot Pocket and tastes better than the best leftover slice.
Goldfish Mega Bites
Price: $2.49
Why We Love It:
Pepperidge Farms’ Goldfish Mega Bites are supposed to be a sort of rebrand of the product for adults. How this is more appealing to adults is pretty puzzling though, because in an effort to age up the product, Pepperidge Farms decided to make the packaging louder and more colorful, made the Goldfish crackers bigger, added ‘Mega’ to the name and made them cheesier. Doesn’t exactly scream ‘adult’ to us, they should’ve given the Goldfish crackers weapons, on beer, then we would’ve known they were for us.
Why do these crackers need to be aged up? It’s nonsense, but at least the Mega Bites are good, and that’s all that matters. The cracker looks substantially bigger than a regular goldfish, it’s easily more than double the size, and the flavor is much sharper and less sweet, putting it more in line with a Cheez-It but not quite as intensely salty. In addition to a Sharp Cheddar flavor, the Mega Bites are also available in a Cheddar Jalapeno iteration which provides a nice pepper-y heat on the backend.
The Bottom Line:
An improvement over the OG Goldfish that offers a cheesier flavor that will appear to fans of the Cheez-It, while still offering that airy soft cracker texture of a Goldfish.
Pasolivo Olive Oil
Price: $47.95
Why We Love It:
Pasolivo makes easily some of the finest Extra Virgin Olive Oil on the market and right now their Tuscan blend is easily our go-to finishing and dipping EVOO. Made from olives handpicked from orchards and crushed within hours of being picked, retaining freshness and flavor, this gold medal-winning olive oil features a robust fresh grass flavor with a cracked black pepper finish.
The oil has this supple mouthwatering quality to it, elevating even the most basic market brand bread, and perfect for drizzling on a fresh spring mix. Once this stuff mixes with arugula, it’s a bouquet of peppery earthy flavors that add excitement to any dish without the need to actually cook.
The Bottom Line:
If you’re in need of a high-end quality olive oil to finish dishes or dip your expensive bakery bread in, Pasolivo is your best bet.
Cheez-It Puff’d
Price: $2.98
Why We Love It:
If you’ve ever had trouble choosing between Cheeto Puffs and Cheez-Its, the Cheez-It Puff’d is for you. It combines the sharp cheesy flavor of Cheez-Its with the dense crispiness of the Cheeto Puff, offering a cheesier, crunchier, and crispier experience than regular stock Cheez-Its. It’s the sort of snack that’s going to get stuck in every single crevice of your teeth, but if you love the Cheez-It flavor and want to soak your palate with it, this is the best way to do so.
The Puff’ds (weird to pluralize) are available in Cheddar, Scorchin Cheddar, and White Cheddar varieties. Our favorite of the bunch is the White Cheddar, easily!
The Bottom Line:
Cheez-Its if they were more like Cheeto Puffs.
Jeni’s Ice Cream — Salted Peanut Butter With Chocolate Flecks
Price: $12 (1 Pint)
Why We Love It:
This is hands down one of the best peanut butter-flavored ice creams currently on the market. Instead of being aggressively sweet like most peanut butter ice creams, Jeni’s is made using roasted ground peanuts, which gives this ice cream’s creamy base a subtler and more naturally nutty flavor that is complemented by slightly bitter and earthy dark chocolate flecks mixed throughout.
The Bottom Line:
Peanut butter and chocolate are a winning formula, but few ice creams nail it like Jeni’s. The natural and sweet peanut flavor and dark Belgian chocolate combo is rich and complex, without tasting too artificially sweetened.
Ubah Hot — Habanero Hot Yellow Tanzanite
Price: $60 (For Three Bottle Set)
Why We Love It:
Founded by model Ubah Hassan, who has appeared in ad campaigns for Ralph Lauren, Betsey Johnson, Gucci, and more, Ubah Hot is perfect for hot sauce fans that love simple, balanced, and flavor-packed sauces that focus on other notes aside from spice. Available in three varieties including Emerald (Serrano based), Ruby (Fresno based), and Tanzanite (Habanero based), the sauces are less about delivering intense doses of heat, and more about complementary flavors.
My favorite of the three, Tanzanite, which is also the hottest, pairs habanero peppers with yellow bell pepper, offering a sweet, peppery, and subtly citrus hot sauce that tastes remarkably fresh. It doesn’t deliver as much heat as I want out of it, but the flavor is undeniably tasty.
The Bottom Line:
Hot sauce for sauce lovers who want more than simple spice notes and heat.
Joe Coffee — Specialty Instant Coffee
Price:$18
Why We Love It:
Joe Coffee ranked pretty highly in our ranking of the best grocery store instant coffees, so we’re including it here in our snack roundup. The convenience of preparation aside, Joe Coffee’s The Daily blend offers sweet milk chocolate and caramel notes that taste great black, with a bit of cream, and with sugar. If you have a regular coffee spot it’s probably not going to replace your barista, but in a pinch it more than gets the job done.
The Bottom Line:
So good it’ll change any preconceived notions you have about how good instant coffee can taste. If you already like instant coffee, it’ll supply you with one of the best cups you’ve ever had.
Whipshots
Price: $5.99 (50ml bottle)
Why We Love It:
Cardi-B truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only do we appreciate the hours of music she’s given us, she’s also given us countless memorable interviews, jaw-dropping music videos, and now boozy-infused whipped cream. Cardi-B’s Whipshots combine thick and rich whipped cream with distilled vodka, offering a 10% ABV product that is perfect for topping decadent sundaes, slices of pie, body parts, and craft cocktails.
The Whipshots are available in caramel, mocha, and vanilla flavors, all of which do a pretty good job covering up what we’re going to guess is not the highest quality vodka out there. You can definitely taste the booze but the overwhelmingly dominant flavor here is sweetness. Our recommended pick from the trio is the vanilla, it tastes more like the flavors we expect from whipped cream, but if you’re making a homemade sundae, the flavored varieties might come in handy.
The Bottom Line:
Boozy whipped cream — it’s the sort of thing you don’t know you need until you’ve had it.
Van Leeuwen Walmart Collection
Price: $5.99 (per pint)
Why We Love It:
It’s a great time for ice cream lovers who shop at Walmart as Van Leeuwen has just entered a partnership with the store that brings seven of the brand’s flavors to the freezer aisle. For a limited time Walmart shoppers can pick up Van Leeuwin’s Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Planet Earth, Pizza, Hot Honey, Royal Wedding Cake, Bourbon Cherries Jubilee, and Wild Blueberry Shortcake.
Our personal favorites are the Royal Wedding Cake, which is like lemon sponge cake in ice cream form, the sweet Hot Honey, and the decadent Bourbon Cherries Jubilee. We’re also eaten the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and … well, no comment. Once we hit the summer the brand will roll out a new lineup of flavors that match the season, so If any of the above sound good, act fast before they are gone.
