The Least Favorite Store-Bought Chocolate Cake We Sampled Was from Walmart

Who doesn’t love chocolate cake? We certainly do, which is why earlier this year, we put 11 store-bought chocolate cakes against each other in order to see which brand offers the best of the best. Even though we think that avoiding restaurant cakes and using expert tips to craft your own chocolatey concoction will have the most delicious outcome, sometimes you don’t have time to make a whole cake. Some of us just need a quick and easy prepackaged dessert after a long day of work, and that’s okay! The question is, which cake are you supposed to reach for at the store?

Unfortunately, Walmart’s Freshness Guaranteed Chocolate Cake came in last place, and it lacked any redeeming qualities to even be considered for a higher place. Let’s just say if the test’s categories were classes at school — flavor, cake, frosting, and overall — this cake would be bringing home a pretty pathetic report card. This cake was the lowest ranking at 1.5 out of 5 total points, not too far behind Pepperidge Farm’s Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake at 1.67.

A recurring issue for Walmart’s Freshness Guaranteed Chocolate Cake is its taste. Various customer reviews call the cake’s flavor similar to that of mold, chemicals, and medicine. One person even stated that their toddler couldn’t even stomach it, which says a lot since young children usually opt for soggy, hand-warmed Cheez-It crackers.

Many reviews also say that the cake is very dry, which is a stark difference in our assessment of the first place cake: Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Ganache Sheet Cake. Its 4.67 (out of 5) score is due to the dessert not only tasting fantastic, but also being appropriately moist, two things that the Walmart cake falls short of. After an examination of our review and the comments made by unhappy customers, it seems that Walmart’s Freshness Guaranteed Chocolate Cake is irredeemable. The brand’s best bet is to scrap the recipe entirely and go back to the drawing board, perhaps looking at the Trader Joe’s recipe as an example of a good prepackaged cake.