Wegmans Bakery Items Ranked From Worst To Best

With stale croissants, hard cookies, and day-old cake slices galore, your average grocery store bakery is a place of tasty-enough mediocrity. Not so fast, says Wegmans, a brand that despite having only 110 odd stores has long been a consumer favorite. We, explains Wegmans, motioning to Walmart and Shoprite with jazz fingers, are different — at least that's what we imagine the store saying if it were a real person. The best part is that our fictional personification of Wegmans isn't lying. While the regional chain is known for quality products, many fans agree Wegmans' bakery items stand high above the rest. With that being said, if Wegmans baked goods' iron is truly tested, which of these tasty treats would come out on top?

Some may call us crazy for going on this mission of sorting through a bunch of delicious, high-quality baked goods and deciding which is most worth binging in a single sitting. But we at Mashed have never been afraid of eating food. After carefully curating a list of the best baked goods Wegmans has to offer based on fan approval and store recommendations, we ranked 13 of Wegmans' most adored bakery products. Noting their prices (which vary by location and are accurate as of September 2023), we ranked these treats based on the presence of their advertised ingredients, freshness, and overall flavor. From worst to first, here's what happened after we put Wegmans' best baked goods to the taste test.

If you're a diehard Wegmans baked goods enthusiast or heck, even just a frequent Wegmans shopper, you know about the grocer's famed Under the Tuscan Sun garlic bread. Described as "some of the world's greatest bread," by one eager Instagram user and "savory toasty goodness" by another, this bread is indeed fresh and doughy with a great crunchy crust. But it's still our pick for the worst Wegmans bakery item among those that we tried.

Don't be upset — or do — we know the truth is often painful. Because while this bread is, in fact, good, it's also pretending to be something it's not. There is nothing remotely garlic-tasting about Under the Tuscan Sun garlic bread. Maybe it's because the baked good gets its taste from garlic oil rather than garlic butter, but it does not even have a remote garlic aftertaste or flavor. So this Wegmans bakery favorite left us looking disappointedly at what's really just a couple of slices of fancy-sounding white bread. Costing $3.50 for a half loaf and $6 for a full one, we seriously think Wegmans' fanbase has gaslighted itself into believing this baked good is an outstanding treat worthy of endless praise and rave reviews.

Among Wegmans' glorious baked goods, fans report its doughnuts are some of the freshest and finest. But out of all of its plentiful doughnut selection, Wegmans recommends shoppers snag the glazed cinnamon swirl variety. And who are we to challenge the great and powerful grocer?

Costing $5 for four sizable sweets, according to Wegmans, these baked goods are essentially the love children of spice-packed cinnamon rolls and sweet glazed classic doughnuts — which is apparent in these treats' unique structure. The glazed cinnamon swirl doughnuts are built like swirly-twirly cinnamon rolls down to their glaze-packed center. These snacks also have a visible sprinkle of cinnamon baked throughout their layers. But while the doughnuts look like a cinnamon roll and smell like a cinnamon roll, tragically, they don't taste like one.

Let's be clear here: These doughnuts are so fresh and perfectly textured that they could bring a tear to your eye. The glaze is plentiful without being overwhelming and delightfully sweet-tasting. However, the cinnamon flavor is incredibly minimal. So while the glazed cinnamon swirl doughnuts are a treat for your mouth, they just taste like really good glazed donuts. Yes, they have more of their advertised flavor than the Tuscan bread, but until they start taking after both their parents, the glazed cinnamon swirl doughnuts will continue to be one of Wegmans' lower ranked baked goods.

Another one of the Wegmans-chosen (aka it's a store-recommended product), the mini orange cranberry scones sound like the kind of fanciful snack you'd enjoy with the queen (or would have enjoyed with her, God save and all that). As their name suggests, these scones are allegedly packed with orange puree and cranberries. Wegmans also reports these mini treats are "moist" and "fluffy."

But these scones aren't just incredibly soft and springy. They also have a great taste. The orange flavor provides just enough tang to the vanilla base to give it some pizazz, making them the perfect not-too-sweet treat. However, for all their virtues, these orange cranberry scones have a serious fault: their cranberries. Much like the glazed cinnamon swirl doughnuts, these scones do have tiny pieces of cranberry in them. However, they are so small you can barely taste them.

There is enough cranberry flavor for these scones to beat out our second worst choice, but not enough for them to move up any higher on our list. Still, priced at $5 for a pack filled with 4.5 servings, we'd say these mini orange cranberry scones are worth the buy if you're looking to host a low-cost afternoon tea party.

In the words of one Trip Advisor reviewer, fans of Wegmans generally report the grocer's muffins are "to die for." So of course, we had to check out these deadly baked goods for ourselves. We opted for the peach variety, because, once again, Wegmans recommends it.

As soon as you open up a package of these muffins, you'll see each one has bits of baked-in peach bleeding through the top. Then, you'll be hit with the smell of fresh fruit. And when you bite into a serving of these rather large sweets, your mouth will be greeted by a wonderful vanilla-tanged-by-peach flavor. While these muffins don't have a chocolate drizzle topping them off like Wegmans chocolate chip version of the baked treat, they do have a crunchy sugar upper coat that adds to the product's texture and taste. Though honestly, half of what makes these muffins so good is how insanely fresh and moist they are.

So why then are the peach muffins so far down the list? Well, while there are clearly small pieces of peach spread throughout the muffin (that are, to their credit, bigger than the cranberries in the mini orange cranberry scone), they aren't big enough to make a major taste difference. At $7.29 for a four-pack of peach muffins, we're on the verge of sending them to a reform camp for troubled teens because they are wasting their potential.

A verified best-seller, Wegmans' chocolate croissants aren't your run of the mill pain au chocolats. First of all, these baked goods are topped with a light drizzle of chocolate icing. Secondly (and most tastily), rather than being filled with melted chocolate, these croissants have two candy bars hiding inside of their flaky layers. Yes, full-fledged, dark chocolate candy. And this tastes as amazing as it sounds.

The chocolate bars are filled with quality cocoa flavor, and when combined with the flaky, buttery taste of the croissant, we find ourselves in flavor heaven. However, despite this absolutely delicious flavor combo, the chocolate bars are thin and aren't in every bite of the croissant. And the chocolate drizzle doesn't compensate for the chocolate flavor you should be getting in the places the bars don't reach. This especially ruined our flavor experience because the croissant we had, while flavorful, was stale. So, yeah, eating chunks of a somewhat chocolate, stale croissant? Not great.

They are offered for individual sale for $2.50 or in a two-pack for $5. All of the chocolate croissant's ingredients are more present than any of the pastries on this list so far. However, for its hit-or-miss flavor and its less-than-fresh quality, the chocolate croissant is still in the bottom rung of the Wegmans treats we tried.

Bagels are another beloved Wegmans bakery category, and while the grocer sells plenty of appetizing flavors ranging from classic sesame to the more unusual jalapeno variety, we chose the plain one. Because if a store can't make a plain bagel taste good, we know its more intensive flavored baked goods aren't going to be any better.

The Wegmans website claims its bagels are made "New York style" – aka its crust is supposed to be hard while the inside is supposed to be chewy. When we tried these bagels, we remembered that Wegmans (having opened its first store in New York state) is truly a native New Yorker.

Fresh-tasting and -smelling as well as generously sized, our plain bagel had a beautiful browned bottom and a hard exterior. But it was our bagel's doughy insides that really did it for us. The layers of interior dough were a treat to chew on. Priced at $1.29 for a single bagel and $7.75 for a six-pack, these bagels, though plain, came out on top of the baked goods before them in our ranking because they are both fresh and everything their description promises them to be. However, their taste, while beautiful in its simplicity, couldn't outdo the flavors of our next picks.

Among Wegmans famed bread selection, the organic rosemary sourdough bread is another celebrity. It's a best-selling product often touted by customers as a must-buy. While some may claim this bread was kissed by an angel, what actually makes it so good is that it's filled to the brim with rosemary, olive oil, and sea salt. And unlike the Tuscan bread, the organic rosemary sourdough does not disappoint.

As with most of Wegmans products, the loaf itself is fresh and has a chewy interior and a toasted crust. However, while it's visibly filled with chunks of its titular herb, this sourdough bread's rosemary pieces are not just there for aesthetic Insta photos. When you bite into a slice, you can vividly taste the herbs, and the rosemary gives the bread an endearing, earthy flavor. We like to think of it as almost like the matcha tea of the bread world. And aside from the rosemary, the oil and salt are also dutifully present, blending together to create a great, subtle flavor.

At $3.50 a half loaf and $6 for a full one, the organic rosemary sourdough bread is full of the flavor it promises, has a lot of "wow" factor for its taste, and is deliciously fresh. From this point forward, every baked good we rank has met all these criteria, with flavor alone separating them from the rest. 

While some of the items on our list have been pseudo-celebrities, Wegmans mini chocolate chip cookies (yes the mini version, not the full-sized ones) earn biblical proportions of worship. There are countless copycat recipes for these cookies online. If a news article is talking about must-eat snacks at Wegmans, these baked goods will be on the list. Needless to say, when we finally got a package of them in our hands, we were ready to test their tasty powers.

And we found that these cookies, unlike the Tuscan bread (no, we will not stop being bitter about that), are worth the hype.

You know the taste of freshly cooled break and bake cookies? Soft and perfectly textured? That's what Wegmans mini chocolate chip cookies are like. From the second we picked up and felt the softness of these mean lil' dudes, we knew we were in for a treat. Aside from their consistency, Wegmans mini chocolate chip cookies are also full of great, mall-cookie-level flavor (if you know, you know) and have an excellent amount of chocolate chips. Costing $5 for 15 servings (two cookies per serving) or $7 for 31 servings, these mini chocolate chip cookies are delicious (and all their ingredients are present and easily tastable). But they didn't knock us so far off our feet in terms of quality or intensity like the next items on our list.

If you are wondering if there is anything Wegmans can't bake, the answer is no. And our next bakery category to eat through (and rank) is cake. Our first of two entries from the cake crew is another Wegmans treat with cult status: the two-tiered strawberry shortcake.

Made with fresh strawberries that you can smell, this cake tastes like fairy food. Its angel cake base is incredibly fluffy and lightly sweet, so it acts as the perfect medium for a whipped cream (which is spread on top of the cake and in between its two layers) that is equally and refreshingly bouncy. The strawberries, however, are what really set this cake off. The fruit's high-quality, sugared taste adds an extra layer of sweetness to the cake's overall flavor — something we want more of. But here's why this cake, which is absolutely exquisite in its lightness and has that oomph the chocolate chip cookies didn't, is not higher on the list.

While the strawberries were there in all their juicy glory, they were only on top of the cake, so their flavor was prone to getting lost in the angel cake and whipped cream. Our thought is that if Wegmans were to take a page from bakeries like Kroger and layer their cake's middle with extra strawberries, this baked good would better live up to its name. Still, at $5.50 a slice and $17 per 25-ounce cake, you're getting a bargain for Wegmans strawberry shortcake's bakery-quality taste.

Yes, Wegmans dares to make cannolis. And yes, the grocer's mini chocolate cannolis are some of the finest pieces of pastry you'll ever have the honor of putting in your mouth.

True to their name, these cannolis are absolutely drenched in dark chocolate. Aside from being coated with a thick outer chocolate shell, the dark chocolate is also layered on the inside of the shell. However, as serious as the chocolate content is (as it should be), we all know a chocolate cannoli is only as good as its filling. And, boy, what a baked good.

Wegmans' take on this famous Italian pastry features a wonderfully crunchy shell filled with exquisitely creamy and light ricotta. So the chocolate isn't doing all the heavy taste lifting. It's working with the filling to create a snack akin to a gourmet cookie. With all elements teaming up to bring your mouth a great flavor (unlike the strawberry shortcake's ingredients), the only downfall of these cannolis (which cost $6 for a pack of four), is that the chocolate on this refrigerated snack may melt on your fingers. Still, for all of the deliciousness of these cannolis, our top three treats are full of such flavor intensity that they blew our hair back.

The apple fritter is not one we've seen uplifted in the wider Wegmans community. However, not only is it a store choice product, but one Reddit user also claims that these baked goods are so delicious that they incorporate one into their diet every day. We could get on board with that meal plan. Wegmans has turned your run-of-the-mill fried doughnuts into a luxury treat.

Insanely fresh, moist, and soft, these fried doughnuts are filled with intense apple and cinnamon flavor. Their glaze is also to die for and balances out the other ingredients with the perfect amount of sweet. What makes these doughnuts so phenomenal, however, is that beautiful chunks of fresh apple are spread throughout their layers — you can taste the fruit's distinctive warmth and freshness, which makes these baked goods powerfully scrumptious. 

In fact, the apple fritters were one of the first baked goods we tried from Wegmans. As we went through each new item, our mind kept wandering back to how delicious these snacks were. At $5.79 for four large fritters, we weren't sure any Wegmans baked good could outdo this one. Then we met our second- and first-place winners.

No. 2 marks a treat that for the first time in a long time had us in a flavor stupor from the moment it hit our tongue. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the fan-adored lemon crumb bar. 

After regrouping from our initial taste test, here's what we expertly deduced. Composed of lemon cream on top of a cookie crust, these lemon crumb bars have a flavor that is best described as a bright tart lemon tang that fades into a sweet, creamy taste. These bars are luxuriously smooth, like the final, delicious evolution of a lemon meringue pie. Half of the top is sprinkled in snow sugar, and the other half is topped with a kind of shortbread crumble. We cut into both sides and found the sugar added an extra oomph of sweet while the cookie crumbs provided an interestingly gritty texture. However, we wished the cookie crumbs were more firm. As they stand now, they don't add as much crunch as they should and could.

If you're complaining that we had a similar problem with the ingredients in the strawberry shortcake, which didn't make it near as far on our list, we hear you. But we also want to make you realize just how insane the flavor of the Wegmans $5.50 per two-pack lemon crumb bar is — a flavor that almost carried it all the way to the top. 

The lemon crumb bar put us in a flavor trance, but the Wegmans ultimate chocolate cake had us so lost in flavor that without the proper ability to articulate how we were feeling, we were close to throwing things.

Priced at $5.50 for a slice, $12 for a mini 15-ounce cake, and $24 for a 48-ounce cake, the ultimate chocolate cake is the grocer's best-selling flavor. It is hands-down the best piece of chocolate cake we've ever had. It is best described as a rush of insane chocolate intensity. But it's not so chocolatey that you're overwhelmed by the one-notedness of its flavor. In fact, despite being composed of chocolate on chocolate, this treat has impressive taste dimension. The cake does this by slathering milk chocolate icing (Wegmans calls it ultimate chocolate icing for the record, but it has a lighter chocolate flavor) on top of and between two layers of dark chocolate cake. The frosting is decadent and plentiful, adding an extra facet of flavor and texture to the baked good. And to top it all off, this cake is heart-meltingly moist. Never before have we had the pleasure of a cake melting in our mouth so effortlessly.

The ultimate chocolate cake has all of its ingredients present, no flavor faults, the potential to put the cast of "Cake Boss" out of a job, and altered the way we think about one-flavored cakes. It is, by far, the best baked good Wegmans bakery has to offer.