A few weeks ago, Pillsbury announced that three new Toaster Donuts frozen pastries were coming to a freezer aisle near you. As a fan of all things toaster and donut, I knew this was something I’m uniquely qualified to cover for you good people. How do these fit within the hallowed halls of Pillsbury Toaster Strudels? Read on for the reveal.
- Frosted Toaster Donut
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Pros: All three Toaster Donut varieties proudly boast of their “new donut texture”—and they’re right. This is a sweet, flaky pastry worth differentiating from the Toaster Strudels we know and love. The icing included here is identical to stuff found in the standard Toaster Strudel packets—no Mega Icing here.
Cons: Smarter people than me realized from the packaging that Toaster Donuts aren’t actually filled with anything, but it was still a shock to find out these are just uniform pastries with packets of icing. Call me crazy, but there are plenty of filled donuts to emulate using the classic Toaster Strudel format. The flavor and texture is good, don’t get me wrong, but the fact there’s no jelly-filled equivalent here is baffling (especially considering two of these flavors are exactly the same—save for a forgettable packet of sprinkles).
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
- Rainbow Sprinkle Toaster Donut
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Pros: This is materially the exact same as the Frosted variant, so… it tastes good! I was planning on talking about how the strawberry icing was bland and super dark compared to the box art. But the icing isn’t actually strawberry. It was in fact only writing the header of this section that made me realize the icing is just pink for no reason!
Cons: I had a whole mini-rant here written out about how this isn’t living up to my Simpsons donut fantasies because of a lack of sprinkles, but then I saw a picture on Instagram that revealed this actually does come with sprinkles. Sure enough, I rush downstairs to find a single packet of sprinkles at the very bottom of the box. One packet of sprinkles for six pastries? D’oh. I frantically sent an email asking to extend the deadline, cooked another pastry, sprinkled on roughly 1/6th of the jimmies, and… it tasted the same. Thanks for the extension, Justine; it was definitely worth it.
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
- Boston Creme Toaster Donut
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Pros: Boston Creme is my backup when jelly-filled isn’t available, so I had the highest hopes for this one. The chocolate icing and cream filling (yay, filling!) certainly stand out from the other two (identical!) flavors, but I wasn’t totally sold on the Boston cream-iness of it all. I’d need a set of calipers to confirm, but I think this has less filling than a standard Toaster Strudel. That said, it’s my favorite of the three, for sure.
Cons: So, it turns out this entire concept is barely new. Pillsbury had a “Donut Shop” subline of Toaster Strudels as recently as 2019. Yes, the donut pastry texture is an improvement on those earlier versions, but why not use that pastry to do something interesting? Pillsbury, let’s scrap that “Frosted” SKU and bring in a jelly—I hear y’all do excellent work with raspberry.
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
New Toaster Donut!
Rating:
7/10
Sporks
New Toaster Donut!
Rating:
6/10
Sporks
New Toaster Donut!
Rating:
7.5/10
Sporks
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!