Hostess Vs Little Debbie: Which Company Makes The Best Snacks?

Hostess is so back. It was a bit touch-and-go there for a while. Surely, you remember the packaged snack brand's meltdown in 2012? It's best known as the "Death of the Twinkie" era that sent the country into a cream-filled panic. The brand has returned to shelves and is back to battling it out with its closest competitor: Little Debbie. This is the rivalry we've gathered to speak about today. 

Childhood wouldn't have been the same without swirled Ho Hos or Hostess CupCakes. But we can't forget another face that often popped up in our lunchboxes: the face of Little Debbie. Debbie is not only little but also much younger than the Hostess brand. While Hostess got its start in 1919, Little Debbie didn't show signs of life until the 1930s, and wasn't officially born until 1960. Even in its shorter tenure, Debbie has managed to gain some serious brand loyalty thanks to its sugar-coated recipes. Between Cosmic Brownies, Fudge Rounds, and Nutty Buddies, there are some star-studded snacks on that lineup.

These sweet treat juggernauts have co-existed for decades, each presenting unique classics. However, neither has ever shied away from some healthy competition. You may have noticed that Little Debbie Swiss Rolls look a lot like Ho Hos, and both dabble in honey buns. There's some obvious overlap, and it's time to taste these sneaky doppelgangers side-by-side to see which comes out on top. What will it be? Hostess' century-old snacks or Little Debbie's sugar-packed delicacies?

Evidently, Little Debbie and her Swiss Rolls go back even further than Hostess and its Ho Hos. Swiss Rolls were introduced in 1964, and Ho Hos not until 1970. Whether it's the more memorable name of Hostess' product or the Mandela Effect at work again, I thought Ho Hos were the original in this scenario.

No matter what brand it's operating under or what name it has assumed, though, a Swiss roll remains relatively the same. It's a sponge cake spread with filling and rolled into a log. Know that it also doesn't come from Switzerland (ignore the Alpine imagery on the Little Debbie box that tries to convince you otherwise).

Little Debbie Swiss Rolls are just as I remember them: extra sweet. The white cream in the middle is to blame, as the chocolate sponge cake that surrounds it is rather neutral. Then you have the hardened chocolatey shell that tastes like it's been buddied up next to that plastic for years. I used to peel off every bit of this coating as a kid, leaving the log barren and sad, without a jacket to cover up its parched and crumbly insides. And I have to say, even now as an adult, I got more enjoyment out of declothing my twin-wrapped rolls than from actually eating them.

If I were to judge these two brands based solely on naming conventions, I'd have to give the edge to Hostess. I mean, think about it. Between Zingers, Ding Dongs, and Twinkies, they have that two-syllable formula down pat, creating products that are fun to say but also impossible to ever forget. And one of their best just might be Ho Hos. Some people say the name is simply a shortened version of the brand name Hostess. Others believe it was a seasonal play that took a riff on Santa's most famous line, "Ho ho ho." Either way, it's become iconic, and it just fits so well with the product.

Little Debbie's Swiss Rolls may have Ho Hos beat in terms of outside appearances — smoother and plumper. But the taste contest goes to Hostess. A darker chocolate swathes the roll, clinging more naturally to the moist cake underneath and sharing the same taste as a rich Entenmann's chocolate frosted donut. Inside, the filling is more like the cream from the middle of an Oreo than an ultra-sweet icing. Altogether, it's more cohesive, in terms of both flavor and build. I don't think I could peel the layers off this one if I tried, and to be honest, I don't have the desire to strip it down. It's perfectly fine as is.

Little Debbie could have at least opted for a different icing design when it poached Hostess' signature CupCake idea. The DNA strand loops are a dead giveaway that imitation was the name of the game. I was determined to look at these snack cakes objectively, though. And Little Debbie gives us a great blueprint to follow by spelling out the anatomy of its cupcakes, layer by layer, on the front of the box.

Up first, the "fantastically fluffy" cake base. Personally, I would have gone with "decidedly dense." It also leans dry rather than moist. Next is the "scrumptiously soft icing." This is also debatable. Both the chocolate layer and white ringlets harden into somewhat of a jarred Betty Crocker frosting paste. Last is the "cupcake-y" core ... or, lack thereof. I kept asking myself, "How many bites does it take to reach the cream center?" Apparently, it's more than two, and once you reach it, it's then gone in a flash. The fluff is scarce and whipped to the point that you can hardly taste it at all under the weighty chocolate.

Did you know that Hostess CupCakes are America's oldest snack cakes? They've been around since 1919, and even after over 100 years, they haven't gone stale. The cream-filled chocolate cakes are a cloying kind of treat. But they just have an inexplicable charm that can't be replicated — though we know Little Debbie's tried its darnedest.

The cake portion itself is richer, squishier, and all-around more flavorful. The frosting crown is admittedly similar to Little Debbie's. The white loops are stiff and more of a decoration than a taste enhancer, in my opinion. The chocolate frosting also has the same gummy texture, but it's fudgier here, like a solidified glob of brownie batter. The most significant improvement, though, is found at this treat's core: its cream filling. First off, it's much more abundant than Little Debbie's micro-sampling. One bite and I had already reached the sweet stuff. Landing somewhere between a sticky marshmallow fluff and a smooth buttercream, it's bouncy and sweet yet not too sweet, allowing it to complement its chocolatey cave.

I'm not trying to imply that the Hostess CupCakes are the pinnacle of packaged baked goods. They're a treat I could have once every few years, and I'd be perfectly content. But I think they'll always have a place on grocery shelves, where they can continue to quietly outperform challengers.

I don't know anyone who could resist a honey bun. Little Debbie takes a break from the chocolate (though not the sugar) to present us with these glazed-donut-like spirals. And they're the kind of portable delicacy that taunts me at the gas station — not the big honey buns that are smothered in white icing, but the classics.

As tempting as they may sound and look, though, the taste is more good than great. Think about a Krispy Kreme honey bun. Now, take away that fresh-off-the-conveyor-belt appeal. I like the gooey, yellow cake-like texture and the all-around light icing that melts in your mouth with each taste. I was expecting more of a dominant honeyed flavor, but I couldn't detect the honey taste at all. It's just a swirl of yeast, sugar, and a sprinkling of cinnamon.

I would like to get my hands on the Little Debbie Honey Bun ice cream, though. Apparently, the brand has turned a slew of its most notable snacks into spoonable pints. The idea of teaming up a sticky honey bun with a creamy scoop of vanilla is the bee's knees.

The HoneyBun doesn't even crack Hostess' core lineup of money-making treats. So, honey, tell me why this bun still eclipses the iteration from Little Debbie. I'm not just referring to its size either. As a single-serve, individually-wrapped product, it's nearly twice the size of Little Debbie's Honey Bun. Bigger doesn't always mean better (I've often found quite the opposite to be true). But in this case, the larger bun also happened to dominate when it came to taste.

This is more like a twisted glazed confection you would find at your local mom-and-pop donut shop. It's sticky-sweet with less of a glaze and more of a sugar coating that soaks into the chewy yeast dough. Landing between fluffy and dense with soft flavor notes of honey and cinnamon, you really couldn't ask for much more from a donut that comes straight from a plastic sleeve.

I will introduce you to a game-changing modification, though: warming it up. If you take the time to give it a quick spin in the microwave — careful not to turn it into a drippy mess — you'll be rewarded with an ooier, gooier, more indulgent version of the Hostess bun.

Disclaimer: The Hostess Powdered Donettes have long been one of my family's favorites. It was a good day when I woke up to one of those white and blue bags on the breakfast table — a joy that I carried with me for the rest of the day in the form of powdered sugar dust still lingering on my shirt. For this reason, I prioritized trying the Little Debbie mini donuts first to give them a fair shot. Too bad they still didn't impress me, even with comparisons out of the picture.

These donuts have a coarse, cake-like texture that's crumbly and more airy than dense. Whether they were a touch stale or just naturally more dry, it's not a consistency I was happy with. The strangest part about them, though, is the lemony taste that permeates each bite-sized ring. I'm not sure where it comes from (I don't see any mentions of lemon or citrus on the ingredient list) or why it's there. It detracts from the enjoyability, and it's something that even a hearty dusting of powdered sugar couldn't mask.

Hostess follows essentially the same formula as Little Debbie for its famed powdered Donettes. With the same size and shape, yellow cake in the middle, and plenty of powdered sugar on the exterior, I probably couldn't tell one from the other. That is, until I tasted them.

Hostess just does mini donuts better. My memory didn't fail me. Each one is supple and moist to the point that they almost disintegrate in your mouth. Fresh would be a good way to describe it. As for flavor, there's no lemon tang here (thank goodness!). Instead, they benefit from a natural vanilla undertone that's only made better by the blanket of sweet, superfine sugar on the fringes.

It's safe to say that my loyalty to the Hostess Powered Donettes remains strong. They're sugar-swathed nostalgia, and a pick that immediately takes me on a trip back in time. There's more where that came from, too. The brand's Frosted, Crunch, and Old Fashioned Donettes are also worth a try.

Here's where we go a little wild (pun intended). There are only so many apples-to-apples comparisons when it comes to these two baked good behemoths. There's surprisingly less crossover than I would have expected. So now, we turn to a few treats that are worthy of a mention and share some similarities, but aren't exact clones of one another, starting with Little Debbie Zebra Cakes vs. Hostess Ding Dongs.

Like Ding Dongs, Zebra Cakes are snack cakes filled with cream and covered in icing, a mini version of a striped icebox cake. However, they focus on vanilla cake and white icing rather than chocolate cake and chocolate icing. A Zebra Cake also has fudge stripes (hence the zebra name). But, in my opinion, it hasn't necessarily earned them. Like the cream from the brand's Swiss Rolls, this one is very sweet. Even smooshed between two layers of deflated cake, it comes across saccharine and hijacks the entire taste experience. I think the white chocolate outer coating is also to blame for making this snack one of the most artificial-tasting of the bunch.

For anyone who's a Zebra Cake stalwart, I do apologize. But I can't fully endorse this hexagonal treat–herd mentality won't work on me for this one.

Ding dong, it's Hostess, serving up a redundant treat. On top of Ho Hos and the longstanding CupCakes, I find Ding Dongs to be a bit unnecessary. They are essentially the same components — chocolate cake, chocolate icing, and a cream filling — reconfigured into a new format. And honesty, this hockey puck shape is the least appealing of the three.

The same kind of dark chocolate that coats the rolls and cupcakes is also found here. Additionally, the cream is identical. It's that thick, fluff-like substance that doesn't overdo it with the sugar. Where the Ding Dong goes awry is its proportions. Cream isn't swirled throughout as it is in the Ho Hos, and the dollop in the middle isn't as big as the one you'll find inside a CupCake. This leaves far too much chocolate at the helm, so it turns out too uniform and too rich, with a lack of texture variance.

Does it outshine the Zebra Cake? Perhaps, mostly thanks to a lack of artificiality and treacly sweetness. However, neither snack seems to be a particularly high point for the brands.

It's a bit of a stretch to pit Hostess Twinkies against the Strawberry Shortcake Rolls from Little Debbie. Both stand in a league of their own. But hey, their similar tube-like structures and cream-filled centers were enough to warrant a duel — albeit a weak one (I mostly just couldn't fathom leaving Twinkies out of the tasting, so I finagled a match). What I discovered, though, is that the shortcake rolls may just be my least favorite Little Debbie snack.

The cream and strawberry coulis filling is actually better than expected. Some of the acidity from the berry blend helps to offset the stark sweetness of the cream, so they swirl together to form a pleasantly sweet yet tart filling. The fruit taste is more fake than fresh, but that's to be expected from a packaged bakery item. The shortcake wrapping sabotages the rolls, which taste like a fusion of the casing on a Fig Newton and a hunk of cardboard. It easily falls apart and dissolves into a strange graininess on your tongue. If you ask me, Debbie missed the mark on this one. But let's see if Hostess Twinkies fared any better. 

Between the lore that they never go bad and that scene in "WALL-E" where the cockroach uses one of the cakes as a bed, I've never developed a strong fondness for Twinkies. There's no doubt they are squishy, fun, and iconic. I think they have more pop culture references than any other treat I can think of. They just don't have that sense of sentimentality for me, and without it, they boil down to a so-so snack.

The golden sponge cake is vanilla-flavored, soft, and fluffy, yet it also has a bit of a chew to it. If you think about the edges or bottom of a full-sized sponge or angel food cake, those areas are a bit tougher than the rest. And, on a Twinkie, that's the case throughout the entire mini loaf. I do appreciate the amount of cream. The three holes on the bottom indicate that three separate globs were piped into the cake, so it's spread evenly throughout. It's once again the same kind of cream found in the Ding Dongs, CupCakes, and Ho Hos that is sticky to the touch and tastes like marshmallows.

I find them to be sweet, yet not too sweet. And I would take their oily, springy texture and creamy filling over a Little Debbie shortcake roll any day. At the same time, though, I view them as more of a snack relic than anything else — a pick better fit for a museum than my cupboard.

I did not mean for this taste test to turn into a Little Debbie roast session. I really didn't. I have a lot of respect for the brand and even swear by some of its alternative goodies like Cosmic Brownies and Pecan Spinwheels. When it came to this snack-to-snack face-off, though, Hostess bested the little lady at every turn.

Ding Dongs aside, Hostess has an impressive way with its chocolatey products. It manages to maintain moistness in the cake, plenty of flavor in the icing, and that cream ... I'd take this kind of marshmallow fluff dupe over a sugary whipped cream any day. This trusty formula elevated Ho Hos above Swiss Rolls and CupCakes above Little Debbie's cupcake attempt. Hostess HoneyBuns and powdered donuts also proved their freshness and appeal.

I'd say if you have a big sweet tooth, something like Little Debbie's Swiss Rolls or Zebra Cakes may be right up your alley. There are also a few Hostess items I could leave, like the legendary Twinkies (sorry, not sorry). However, all things considered, when it comes to the treats shared by these two packaged snack brands, Hostess clearly has the mostess.