Ranking Every McDonald’s Dessert

Through the years, McDonald’s desserts come and go. Gone are the hard, crunchy McDonaldland cookies that, in the very old days, came in a cardboard box with every Happy Meal. Times changed, and they began to be packaged in plastic — and then were dropped from Happy Meals altogether when McDonald’s shifted to a “healthier” kid’s meal in 2004. Other desserts we miss are the cinnamon donuts (available in the 1990s) and, of course, the fried apple pie. The current baked one is good (and we’ll talk about it later), but it’s not the same thing as that original crispy fried dessert with its sweet, gooey interior.

There are many other discontinued McDonald’s desserts that people miss, but what can you find on the menu today when you need a sweet treat? We rounded up every dessert from cookies to pies to ice cream and ranked them from worst to best. Although we have to admit, even the desserts ranked towards the worse side of the list can really hit the spot when you have that certain craving. Of course, it’s all subjective, and perhaps you disagree. Read on for our ranking of McDonald’s sweets.

We begin with the worst of the bunch, but we’d like to make it clear that there isn’t a dessert on this list we’d turn our noses up at. Although there are some clear winners, none of McDonald’s desserts are what we’d consider bad. However, someone has to come in last, and at McDonald’s, that is the M&M McFlurry. McDonald’s M&M McFlurry is made with its signature soft-serve ice cream mixed with mini M&Ms. 

The problem here is not the McFlurry concept, but the mix-in of M&Ms. Other M&M ice cream treats, like Dairy Queen’s Blizzard, are made with crushed M&Ms. On the other hand, McDonald’s McFlurry uses whole pieces of candy. Even though the candies are mini, they are still too big to mix well with the ice cream. There are also a lot of them. And when they freeze in the ice cream, they grow hard. Overall, it makes for a strange texture. We also found most of our M&Ms were at the top of the cup without the same amount in the bottom, making for an off-balance dessert. Finally, when the candies melt, they turn grey, reminding us of a child’s play dough when all the colors have been thoroughly mixed together.

If you’re looking for a rich, creamy, chocolatey shake, then you’ll need to look elsewhere than McDonald’s. As you can see from the image, the chocolate milkshake is not a deep, dark chocolate. It’s very light in color. It’s also very light in taste. It’s hard to discern much of a chocolate flavor from the shake, but unfortunately, there is a bit of a chemical flavor.

McDonald’s chocolate shake is made with vanilla reduced-fat soft-serve ice cream and chocolate syrup, topped with whipped cream. Digging deeper, although the chocolate syrup is made with cocoa, it’s fifth on the ingredients list. Perhaps it’s not enough chocolate to provide much flavor. The whipped cream, while tasty, didn’t hold up to the short drive home from McDonald’s, but was deflated by the time we sampled our shake. While the soft-serve ice cream is delicious in other dessert items, it doesn’t do the job here of crafting a thick and creamy milkshake.

While not bad, the hot caramel sundae isn’t as good as we expected it to be. Our high expectations likely came from our previous experience with the hot fudge sundae. (Keep reading for details.) Unfortunately, the hot caramel sauce doesn’t compare to McDonald’s hot fudge sauce. The caramel sundae is a simple dessert, made with a cup of soft-serve vanilla ice cream and topped with hot caramel sauce. We found the caramel sauce to be somewhat flavorless. Upon checking the ingredients, it’s made with not only corn syrup, but also high fructose corn syrup. 

Caramel sauce is typically made with sugar, water, butter, and cream. McDonald’s caramel sauce doesn’t contain cream, although it does have butter and milk. For whatever reason, the result is missing the complex flavors you get from a high-quality caramel sauce. While the caramel sundae isn’t bad, we can’t see any reason to order it when the hot fudge sundae exists.

McDonald’s vanilla shake is made with vanilla reduced-fat soft-serve ice cream and vanilla syrup. Unlike the chocolate syrup, the vanilla version has a much stronger flavor, giving this shake a flavor advantage over the chocolate version. Although the vanilla flavoring here is superior to the chocolate shake, it’s still much too sweet to make you think you are drinking anything but imitation vanilla. It’s probably because corn syrup is the first ingredient in the vanilla syrup.

While this shake gets points for nostalgia and reminds us of our childhood, it still had the same deflating whipped cream problem. It was thick, but could still be drunk with a straw. The yellowish tint to the shake is a nice touch, making us think of French vanilla ice cream, although it didn’t taste of French vanilla. Overall, it’s a decent shake, and while not the best, it’s not the worst and could easily cure any craving for a fast food shake.

McDonald’s strawberry shake is the clear winner of all of the shake flavors. First of all, it’s a pretty shade of pink, which contrasts nicely with the bright white whipped cream topping. In addition to an appealing color, the shake has a bright strawberry flavor which stands far above the other shake flavors. On a check of the ingredients, you can see that the delicious strawberry flavor comes from actual strawberries. 

The vanilla soft-serve ice cream is mixed with strawberry syrup. The strawberry syrup contains real strawberries and a strawberry puree. It’s the real fruit that gives this a fresh and genuine flavor. It’s so delicious, we didn’t even mind that the whipped cream was deflated. The shake itself isn’t overly thick but is easy to drink through a straw. It’s not a very heavy or creamy shake, but it will hit the spot if you’re looking for a lighter, sweet treat. And when we say lighter, we mean in texture; this shake is still high in calories.

Count yourself lucky if the strawberry and crème pie appears at your local McDonald’s. This elusive dessert seems to come and go at random and isn’t always found at all locations. Currently, at our location, there are two pies offered, the baked apple pie and the strawberry and crème pie. Like the strawberry shake, the list of ingredients in the pie does show actual strawberries. However, there are also a lot of other ingredients, including a lot of sugar.

While this pie may be too sweet for some tastes, we found it was the perfect amount of sweetness for a fast-food dessert. The pie comes warmed, and the crust is flaky and buttery. Inside that flaky crust is a strawberry filling that is similar to preserves or jam. Running alongside the strawberry filling is a white, creamy filling. The creme is meant to be vanilla-flavored, but the strawberry flavor overpowers it, and it’s hard to discern any vanilla. However, this isn’t a bad thing. Overall, the sweetness of the filling mixed with the crispy, buttery crust works perfectly together. It’s especially good warm. 

It’s hard to beat a warm, soft, chocolate chip cookie, and McDonald’s does this dessert well. Although you can buy them individually, the better deal is the 13-cookie tote. These are best consumed warm, and we recommend popping them for 10 to 15 seconds in the microwave if you are eating them later on. We know McDonald’s employees aren’t baking up batches of fresh chocolate chip cookies daily, and these are instead shipped to the store and warmed before serving. However, when they are warm, they taste almost identical to freshly made cookies. 

These soft-baked and chewy cookies are way above the quality of many other fast-food chocolate chip cookies, which are typically hard and crunchy. If you find yourself eating one of these after they have cooled, you won’t think the same of them. The key to the deliciousness, and the trick to making us feel like it’s a homemade cookie, is in the warming.

While we are sorry these are no longer fried, the baked apple pie is still one of the best desserts on McDonald’s menu. The apple pie first appeared on menus in the 1960s alongside a simple menu of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Filet-o-Fish, french fries, and shakes. They were an instant hit. Similar to apple turnovers, they were filled with a sweet apple filling, and the flaky, buttery crust was fried to a golden perfection. 

Then the 1990s came, and with it a health craze; McDonald’s stopped frying their pies, and started baking them instead. In today’s version, the interior tastes similar to the fried version, but the outside is a lattice-baked crust. It’s still very good. The crust is buttery and flaky. When the pie is warmed, much like the cookies, it brings out an entirely new dimension of flavor. Although ranked as one of the best desserts on the menu, we can’t help feeling a twinge of sadness every time we eat one knowing we’ll never get that fried goodness again.

The Oreo McFlurry is, hands down, the best McFlurry on the menu. Unlike the M&M McFlurry, where the M&M’s are whole and don’t really work with the texture, crushed Oreos are perfectly suited to be combined with McDonald’s soft serve vanilla ice cream. The dessert is simple. It’s just ice cream mixed with crushed cookie pieces, but the result is perfection. 

Although we found the cookie pieces to be disproportionately on top of our McFlurry rather than mixed throughout, it’s not hard to mix them around as you eat. If you like McDonald’s soft serve ice cream and you also like Oreo cookies, this is a winning combination. We also found the pieces of Oreo cookies to be fresh and crunchy with a great taste and texture. The crunchy Oreos make a great texture in every bite of the light and airy soft-serve ice cream. If you like soft serve and you like Oreo cookies, you can’t go wrong with this one.

It’s possible the vanilla cone found its way to nearly the top of the list from nostalgia alone, but if you’re looking for a simple, vanilla, soft-serve treat, McDonald’s delivers a consistently good choice. It’s a simple dessert, just vanilla soft-serve ice cream piled high in a crispy cone. It has no fancy toppings or mix-ins, nor does it need them. The ice cream itself is a perfect white, the texture is smooth, and the flavor is sugary, sweet, and vanilla. A soft serve ice cream is churned to incorporate around 50 to 60% of air to make it light and fluffy. Although we don’t know exactly how much air is whipped into McDonald’s ice cream, it provides the perfect fluffy texture you look for in a soft serve.

The only complaint we have is that this ice cream melts very quickly. You have to eat this the minute it’s served, and even then, you’re likely going to end up with a dripping mess. But this isn’t a true complaint and just means you need to eat it quickly. Overall, this is a satisfying sweet treat perfect for a summer day that reminds us of simpler times.

Finally, we come to number one. Although some may argue a true sundae needs more toppings than simply hot fudge sauce, we disagree. There is a time and place for a sundae piled high with whipped cream, nuts, and sprinkles. But there is also a time for a simple vanilla soft-serve ice cream topped with a creamy, hot fudge sauce. McDonald’s hot fudge sundae has been around for decades, first hitting the menus in 1978. When it was first offered, it came in a cute little glass cup, which you can find today for sale on resale sites such as eBay. 

Unfortunately, McDonald’s stopped serving its sundaes in glass many years ago, and today it comes in a plastic cup. Other than that, the hot fudge sundae seems relatively unchanged through the years. The ice cream is McDonald’s delicious vanilla soft serve, and the hot fudge sauce is thick and rich. Each bite is a reminder of childhood. Though it was hard to choose the very best dessert, it was the mix of the hot fudge with the cold ice cream that brought this menu item to first place.

When rating fast food desserts, it’s necessary to use a different methodology than you might for high-end gourmet bakery items. Fast food is convenient and meant to satisfy a craving. Rather than complex flavors, when you head through that drive-through lane, you are looking for consistency and familiarity. To find the very best dessert at McDonald’s, we sampled every dessert on the menu (with the exception of limited-time offerings like the Shamrock Shake).

Overall, I considered the taste, texture, and overall quality of each dessert. I tasted each dessert myself and also used input from my teenage daughter. After all, who better to review a fast food menu than a teenager? Even though it’s fast food, it’s still perfectly fine to expect a great taste free of artificial flavors. Desserts with hints of artificial taste were marked down, while fresher-tasting items were ranked higher.