10 Store-Bought Chocolate-Covered Fruits, Ranked

Chocolate-covered fruits are one of life's little luxuries. There's just something about the combination of rich, decadent chocolate and bright, juicy fruit that makes your taste buds do a happy dance. And the good news is that enjoying this beloved treat doesn't require a lot of effort–or a special occasion. Sure, huddling around a fondue pot is fun from time to time, and receiving an Edible Arrangement is always a sweet surprise. But for everyday indulgence, there's also store-bought chocolate-coated fruits.

Grocery store freezer aisles are packed with ready-to-eat chocolatey fruits, tucked right in next to the ice cream, pies, and other frozen novelties. You'll find fruits of all kinds — strawberries, bananas, pineapple chunks, cherries, mangos, and more — dipped in milk, dark, or white chocolate. Multiple brands fill the shelves, from recognizable names like TruFru and Hershey's to private-label store brands.

They're all enticing based on the pictures on the front, but which ones are actually worth keeping on hand in your freezer? To find out, I picked up 10 different frozen bags and boxes from a variety of brands, covering a range of fruits and chocolate types. I ranked them based on sweetness, texture, and freshness — something that's difficult to achieve in a frozen fruit product, but an element that can completely make or break the entire taste experience. Here's how each treat stacked up, from my least favorite picks to the ones I would gladly indulge in over and over again.

TruFru is a top brand in the world of frozen chocolate-dipped fruits. Its blue bags are probably the image your brain conjures up when the topic is broached. At least, that's what happens in my mind anyway. It's sold at a long list of major grocery stores and covers all its fruity bases with bushels of chocolatey berries, bananas, pineapple, and cherries. For the sake of the taste test, I stuck to two prominent flavors, including a bag of strawberries in white and dark chocolate, and these bananas dressed in peanut butter and dark chocolate.

For a brand with such a large presence in this space, I expected more from these banana slices. I'm not sure if the peanut butter or the chocolate coating is the culprit, but they come off incredibly dry. I found myself craving a glass of cold milk after eating only one of the frozen medallions. I can also appreciate the subtle bitterness of dark chocolate (I openly embrace chocolate of all kinds), though here the flavor of the semi-sweet cocoa shell was rather intense — even with the small addition of white chocolate in the recipe, presumably included to balance it out.

The bananas hold their shape and taste good, thanks to the brand's commitment to picking them ripe and freezing them at the peak of freshness. Still, that wasn't enough to offset the dryness and bitterness that surrounds them.

It comes as no shock that Hershey's, one of the world's largest chocolatiers, carves out its own spot in this taste test. It cloaks everything else in its trade secret chocolate; so why not frozen fruit too? I found several Hershey-inspired bags in my nearest Giant Eagle freezer aisle and ended up liking the frozen chocolate-covered banana slices least of all.

With a decent amount of moisture from the fruit and a higher level of overall flavor, they are an improvement over the TruFru bananas. I also appreciated the somewhat secretive layer of caramel hiding between the Hershey's milk chocolate and the banana slices, which gave the pieces more of a Twix or Snickers-like finish (yes, I know those are Mars bars, not Hershey's bars, but you get the gist). The banana slices are where things start to go south. They're extra tart, starchy, and lean a bit too far into mushy territory for my liking. This is a risk you take every time you decide to indulge in a frozen banana product, and Hershey's failed to stay on the right side of the texture line. Even with a hefty amount of chocolate and caramel, the fruit refuses to be masked, leaving this pick pretty low in the rankings.

I couldn't dig up much information on it, but I have to assume KroFro is short for Kroger frozen, just as FroYo is short for frozen yogurt. It's a private label line found at the supermarket chain, and from what I can tell, it contains only frozen chocolate-covered fruits. It doesn't simply stick to your classic strawberries and bananas, either. It throws in a few more picks like sweet cherries and mangos, which I couldn't throw into my cart fast enough.

The thought of the cherries, in particular, brought me back to the succulent chocolate-covered cherries sold at the chocolate shop famous in my hometown called Esther Price (Midwesterners likely know what I'm talking about). I had visions of the same indulgent experience of plump fruit clad in glossy, decadent chocolate, but what tumbled out of the bag was far from it. 

The milk chocolate was actually quite scrumptious and smooth — surprisingly not that far off from true chocolate shop chocolate. It was the sweet cherries that soured the bites. Inside the thick cocoa layer, they appeared more like black cherries and emitted a purplish juice. They weren't very sweet, yet they weren't bright, tart, or rich either. They had hardly any flavor at all, almost as though they were picked too early or out of season. Even if these aren't quite a bowl of cherries, I'd still take them over TruFru's dry bananas or the mush-prone Hershey's bites any day.

If you want to find the best deal on chocolate-coated frozen fruit, go to Aldi. This seems to be the theme with any kind of grocery product you can think of. The discount store carries two different kinds of chocolate-enrobed fruits under its Season's Choice brand, and each box comes at a cost of only $2.55 a pop. Granted, they're only about ⅔ the size of other brands, but you're still getting a major cost savings per ounce and a quality product. The strawberries, in particular, punch above their price point.

The berries are rather petite (which explains their low count of 70 calories per 5-piece serving), yet they offer enough flavor. It's a classic frozen strawberry taste — not nearly as sweet or juicy as fresh, but perfectly passable for an item plucked from a freezer chest. As a blend of pure cocoa, coconut oil, cocoa butter, full cream milk powder, and vanilla, the chocolate is rich with the right texture. In a thinner layer, it crackles like the chocolate exterior of an ice cream bar.

For the cost, this product is a steal. It may not offer the biggest berry or hand down the most indulgent bite, but that doesn't mean it's not a great one to have tucked in your freezer for all those times you need a satisfying sweet treat.

Peanut butter and banana make sense. It's a pairing as old as time. Strawberries and chocolate are another match made in dessert heaven. But peanut butter, chocolate, and strawberries? It's not a combo I've seen all too often — though Reese's makes me question why not. The brand's strawberry slices (yes, slices, not whole strawberries) covered in Reese's peanut butter and chocolate are interesting yet tasty — even more so than the similar berry pick from Aldi.

The sweet milk chocolate leads the taste experience and bolsters the natural sweetness of the strawberries. It melts in your mouth and settles into a lush creaminess. Honestly, the brand could have stopped there with just chocolate and berry, but then it really wouldn't be a Reese's product, would it? The addition of the peanut butter adds a layer of complexity to the taste that surprisingly works really well, saddled up next to the strawberries. It creates a completely different kind of treat that has my stamp of approval.

My only qualms are that I wish those strawberry slices had been full strawberries, so you can enjoy a bit more of that deep-seated juiciness. In addition, I would have liked a smidge more peanut butter. It's such a small amount that you can't really even tell it's coated Reese's candy. It tastes like any old peanut butter rather than the salty and candy-fied cream of a peanut butter mixed up by the Hershey's company.

Diana's Bananas is something of an overnight sensation that sprang up during the 1984 Taste of Chicago Festival. After one taste of the chocolatey bananas, sweet tooths were hooked, and now it's a national brand. You'll find Diana hanging out in plenty of grocery store freezer aisles. I found her at Target.

The bananas come straight from farms in Ecuador, and the chocolate recipe is the brainchild of expert Chicago-based chocolatiers. The brand is debatably most well-known for its chocolate-covered bananas on a stick — a genius way to keep your fingers free from a chocolatey mess. But I happened to scrounge up a box of its dark chocolate banana bites instead. Diana's doesn't muddy the waters by throwing in a layer of peanut butter. It lets the fruit and chocolate do all the talking, and it works out in its favor. The bites come out of the box looking frosty, and you can immediately tell they're made with care. They offer a freshness that other brands lack and a level of ripeness that's difficult to achieve in a frozen product. The chocolate complements them well with a medium thickness and flavor that doesn't lean too bitter.

If you're looking for a quality, no-frills pick, this is it. I could see Diana and me being great friends. Yet there are a few other brands I found to be equal quality and a smidge more crave-worthy.

TruFru redeems itself with its frozen strawberries. The brand actually carries multiple chocolatey versions of the berries, each one concealed in not one, but two different blankets of chocolate. It's pretty unfair to all the other brands if you think about it. You can choose from either white chocolate paired with milk chocolate or white chocolate paired with dark chocolate. I went with the former and was not disappointed.

These are significantly larger than Aldi's strawberries and the Reese's strawberry slices. And once I got over the strange shapes of the pieces — one even looked like a chocolate-covered orange slice — I was free to delight in the delicious flavor. Despite the insanely thick sheet of chocolate (that's the double dose at work), they taste lighter than other brands. You get the sweet butteriness of white chocolate coupled with the smooth and mild cocoa-infused flavors of milk chocolate, yet it never feels excessively rich. The strawberries are also better. Even though they still have that frozen edge to them, they don't taste freezer-burnt or flavorless.

This is a solid overall choice that won't steer you wrong. I am also itching to give the brand's chocolate-wrapped raspberries a taste. I've heard those are its best treats yet. And I'm simultaneously intrigued by its piña colada pineapples in white chocolate and coconut. Sounds like a tropical vacation that I would like to book a ticket to.

Okay, forget the TruFru berries. These are the best frozen strawberries I tried. I thought they would be the creme de la creme from the moment I set my eyes on them in the freezer aisle, and I was correct. They're pretty dang good.

Hershey's hits us right in the nostalgia with these strawberries. Kids who grew up in the '90s may remember the confectioner's cookies and cream bars tucked into their lunch boxes and trick-or-treat buckets after they were officially released in 1995. Personally, I've always found them to be elite compared to other chocolate bars. And that same great taste is as prevalent as ever in this bag. Your taste buds are still hit with those milky, vanilla-laced notes from the white chocolate, and despite being frozen, you still get a light crunch from the dark chocolate cookie pieces. They're not Oreo bits, to be clear (that fact would have been plastered on the packaging). However, they are very similar.

All together, it's like a frozen milkshake, just in chewable form. The strawberries are the teensiest bit icy and lean more neutral than sugary sweet, but that fact doesn't weaken the overall experience. They're still plenty succulent and make for a great vessel for the chocolate, cookie-studded glaze. With nostalgia on its side, this product wound up as one of my absolute favorites.

There's just something about frozen mango. I've always found that it maintains its flavor far more successfully than other fruits throughout the freezing process. While picks like peach slices or pineapple chunks tend to lose their luster, mango continues to shine bright. I often find myself picking out the orange cubes from frozen tropical fruit medleys and forgoing the rest.

This second bag from KroFro continues to solidify my point. Even though they're not the most picture-perfect bites — arriving on my plate looking dirty and disheveled — they're filled with some of the best-tasting fruit. Each one is remarkably sweet and has that soft and juicy texture mangoes are prized for. When they've had a chance to thaw out for a few minutes, they could almost pass for fresh mango. It's this freshness that pulls it above the Hershey's cookies and cream blasted strawberries and so many other brands.

And we haven't even mentioned the chocolate yet. Milk or white chocolate would have worked as well. But I like the choice of dark chocolate here. The flavor chemistry is impressive. The bittersweet, earthy profile of the chocolate is softened by the sweet, honeyed notes of mango. At the same time, the snap of the chocolate layer balances out the creaminess of the fruit underneath. It has that sweet synergy that's only beaten by one other frozen chocolate-covered fruit contender.

You already know no other brand can compete with the price of Aldi's chocolatey frozen fruits. And after tasting them, I'm convinced none can beat the flavor of its banana slices either. They ended up as my all-time favorite, and I had several friends who couldn't stop munching on them as well.

The chocolate used is actually a dark chocolate compound, so technically it's not "real" dark chocolate. But you wouldn't be able to tell that from the flavor. It tastes as pure as ever, and in a fine shell layer, it delivers a satisfying crunch with every bite that gives way to the banana center. With minimal browning and no mush, the fruit also holds up its end of the bargain. It tastes as fresh as it did in Diana's Bananas — perfectly ripe and well-preserved.

The best part, though, is undeniably the peanut butter spread between the banana and chocolate. It's mixed with a white chocolate compound, so it has an extra dose of vanilla creaminess, and instead of drying out the entire treat (as it did in the TruFru bag), it makes it even more decadent. They're a little salty, a little sweet, a tiny bit bitter, and packed with all the right textures. At a cost of $2.55 a bag, I'm tempted to go bananas and pick up 10 on my next grocery run.

There are more frozen chocolate-covered fruit options out there than I originally thought. I knew TruFru dominated the market with its endless fruity flavors, but there are plenty of other brands that deliver a similar product — sometimes even a better one. I rounded up all 10 of these picks from nearby grocery stores like Giant Eagle, Target, Kroger, and Aldi. When I got them home, I let them thaw a touch (to save my teeth) and then started tasting them all.

What I noticed first in a chocolate-covered treat is the texture. Based on the thickness of the chocolate, you want a pleasant crackle or even a sturdy crunch from the outer layer. Either was fine with me, and most of the fruits seemed to deliver on this front. Then, on the inside, I want a fruit slice or chunk that maintains its form and juiciness without becoming mushy.

As for taste, I looked for a smooth richness from the chocolate with nothing that leaned too bitter. For the fruit, it needed to taste as fresh and ripe as possible, with a bright flavor and natural sweetness. Then it all needed to come together beautifully into one blissful bite. I was okay with products that were solely fruit and chocolate, but in many cases, I also enjoyed another secret ingredient layer of peanut butter or caramel. When done right, these additions elevated the experience and, in the case of the Aldi banana bites, sent them straight to my first-place spot.