11 Limited-Edition Cracker Barrel Menu Items We Wish We Could Eat Year-Round

Cracker Barrel may keep a deep menu of regular items in heavy rotation, but it seems like there's always room for inventive limited-edition dishes to make welcome appearances. These usually show up as some of the best seasonal themed creations from Cracker Barrel, with flavors that come and go as quickly as the weather changes. While it's exciting to watch and wait for the next batch of short-timers to join the restaurant's regular ranks, there's always a chance you'll get attached to a special selection that never makes a reappearance — no matter how much fans may clamor for another run. But sometimes, you'll fall head over heels for a featured item that keeps a calendar of its own, which means future enjoyment is on the horizon. Huzzah!

Through the years, Cracker Barrel has launched some memorable limited edition plates that linger in the memory long after they've departed the menu. Which one-shot specialties made a lasting impression despite there being no promise of anyone ever tasting again, no matter how many times we all conquer the triangle peg game? From singular sips that have slid out of view to tempting tidbits that may or may not make a reappearance, here are some of most rave-worthy limited-edition Cracker Barrel menu items we wish we could eat year-round.

If ever there was a Southern dish that deserved a place of honor on a Cracker Barrel menu, carrot cake would surely be a top contender. The timeless mix of tender, spicy sponge and cream cheese frosting is an American standard, as representative of domestic desserts as cherry pie or Hostess Twinkies. Yet somehow, the downhome restaurant only hauls this dreamy delight out for fall, maybe as a way to drive business — like a seasonal carrot (cake) on a stick when cooler weather prevails and dining minds turn to sweet, comforting distractions.

Having only one chance per year (at most) to enjoy this classic cake during its Cracker Barrel run means long stretches between releases, if it even comes around the bend again — there's no guarantee that it will. To soothe the sweet tooth of anyone yearning for a slice, the Cracker Barrel blog is hospitable enough to have featured a springtime carrot cake recipe that could tide us all over from one autumn to the next. This is appreciated, of course, but considering how trim the dessert menu seems to be, adding one more treat to the three-item list wouldn't be such a terrible thing. We're not going to stop checking the menu on visits year-round to see if an errant carrot cake has popped up out of season. It could happen.

To compete with breakfast biggies like IHOP and Denny's, the clever minds at Cracker Barrel have to stay pretty light on their feet while coming up with heavy hitting belly-fillers like French toast loaded with strawberries and cream. This power player was presented as equal parts breakfast and dessert, with a filling that could qualify as a cake spread thanks to an ooze of sweetened cream cheese. Sandwiched between two slices of sourdough and grilled within an inch of its golden life before being plated up and decorated with sliced strawberries, this magical substance provides the beating heart of the dish and offers one of Cracker Barrel's best-kept secrets for anyone who hasn't placed their order.

Why wouldn't such a splendid display be a front-runner for a slot in the all-the-time menu? Maybe it's the seasonal nature of strawberries, which do best while warm weather commands the calendar. This spectacular specimen appeared on the 2015 summer menu, but vanished in the haze of time, replaced by other fruit-filled breakfast plates that never quite recaptured the strawberry-hued magic. Still, the heart wants what the heart wants, and nobody would be mad if Strawberries n' Cream Stuffed French toast circles back around at some point. Ah, the sweet possibility of it all.

You've had country fried chicken as a downhome staple for generation after generation, but Cracker Barrel threw the tradition a tasty twist when it offered up country fried turkey as a sly alternative. It was absolutely a Thanksgiving triumph, beckoning holiday purists to put a little extra sizzle in their seasonal feast. Suddenly, the menu of staples expanded by one dish, but what a fantastic dish it was, featuring hand-breaded turkey filets fried until crispy and served with cranberry relish and biscuits. If the regular holiday turkey slapped onto your plate wasn't an experience you were looking forward to, you could anticipate a novel take that made Thanksgiving dinner with the parents feel more like Sunday supper on the farm.

But once the holiday channel had changed to Christmas and Hanukkah, this sizzling selection turned tail and flew (or ran away, rather, since turkeys don't fly all that well). The dining trend archive known as the Internet shows signs of it making regular returns, which means you'll likely see this gobble-worthy goodie make the rounds again when the leaves change colors and your mom gets out the good China and embroidered tablecloth. It's best to have your fork ready just in case it makes a comeback.

When done right, a sumptuous dish like Southern apple cobbler can make less hearty dessert dishes taste like breakfast cereal. Cracker Barrel taking a crack at apple cobbler is a move so obvious, it's a wonder the restaurant doesn't have a giant version of the item spinning on a sign in the parking lot. A more judicious approach was taken in August 2024, when Southern apple cobbler joined the menu for a brief stint in a starring role on the dessert menu. Imagine the stir created by warm cinnamon apples in a buttery crust, crowned with a sphere of vanilla ice cream and bejeweled with strands of sparkling caramel sauce. The image alone is enough to stun.

But time passes, menus change, and divas like this are taken off the marquee until further notice. It feels like a tease to bring this showstopper to the table only to give it the hook and pull it off-stage a few months later. But if you had a front-row seat for a sweet time when it debuted and you're on the edge of your barrel waiting for a return engagement, then Southern apple cobbler did exactly what it was supposed to. And that means Cracker Barrel knows exactly what it's doing with its limited edition seasonal dishes.

Keeping up with the "everything needs bacon" trend led Cracker Barrel to introduce its Cheesy Bacon Homestyle Fried Chicken as a promotional dish in March 2023. If you thought nothing could be done to make fried chicken better, the busy culinary brains at Cracker Barrel aimed to dispel that notion by loading up pieces of crispy fried chicken with a sprinkling of cheese and strips of smoky bacon, plus a scattering of fried onion strips and a drizzle of buttermilk ranch. How much goodness can one plate hold, anyway? If there were ever a point in this world where all the best things in country cuisine converged in a singularity of epic proportions, this dish was surely where it happened.

But like all cosmic mysteries — even the ones centered around casual chain dining — one of the best things you could order at Cracker Barrel blinked in and out of existence quicker than you could loosen your belt and declare how stuffed you were. Even if its appearance caused all the shakin' your bacon could take, it's a superstar that shone brightly before burning out. Cracker Barrel fans will have to keep their eyes on the skies to see if this glowing beauty shows up again — somewhere off in the distance where marketing decisions are made.

Taking a bunch of cinnamon rolls and merging them into a single gooey pie is really like having both one giant cinnamon roll and having a whole batch of smaller ones, all at the same time, all spackled with that thick glaze that makes hearts swoon. The quantum-defying principles that Cracker Barrel threw at the universe were enough to melt brains and capture hearts when it debuted on the 2024 seasonal menu. Rather than circling the black hole as one of the things you should never order at Cracker Barrel, this delightful morsel was destined to be at the top of everyone's must-try list.

If you didn't snatch up an order while you had the chance, you may never get another opportunity. It was presented as a Thanksgiving-friendly fall treat that would round out a traditional homestyle meal from the Barrel, even if you weren't quite ready for turkey and stuffing. Even though the promotion ended, you should be giving thanks that something this incredible ever existed at all. Add it to the list of elusive wonders of the natural world: yetis, unicorns, and Cinnamon Roll Pie from Cracker Barrel.

You can't designate a dish like fried apple French toast bake as a signature creation and not expect it to resonate with Cracker Barrel diners beyond its all-too-brief life expectancy. The combination of classic battered French toast dressed to the nines with sweet and cinnamony fried apples and baked into a casserole of dining distinction left a lasting impression so deep, the mere mention of it inspires a spike in blood pressure — and most likely blood sugar as well. Even with a fruit topping, it's a heavenly slice from the sweet tray disguised as early morning fare — not that anyone ever complained about such a thing.

The intention of this fall-forward plate coming to the fore in August 2024 was to bump pumpkin season back into the patch and clear a little space for the other flavor of the moment with a spicy cider-like seasoning. Having an apple pie-inspired combination to enjoy on crisp autumn mornings is excuse enough to keep the essence of gourd at the coffee shop where it's more at home. Alas, there's no telling whether this tasty tree will bear fruit in the future. If this dish is a Cracker Barrel item you'll sadly never get to eat again, at least you have memories.

Cracker Barrel came up with a candy-coated coffee flavor called Buttercrunch Caramel Latte as part of its 2021 Mother's Day menu. With its swirls of butterscotch and caramel syrup singing a siren song from the mug while tempting toffee bits taunted from the whipped cream topper, the formula was available in both cold and hot versions. It was unique enough to inspire thoughts of trench coat-clad Starbucks spies slinking into booths to steal the recipe. It was also a sweet way to honor Mom's love of syrupy coffee drinks while treating her to home cooking prepared by someone else to give her a much-deserved day off. How could customers know that sipping this foam-topped wonder would ruin dear old Mom for other coffee drinks forever? The real heartbreak was knowing she'd be out of luck when June rolled around and Buttercrunch Caramel Latte was given the boot.

Potential popularity of Buttercrunch Caramel Latte had no bearing on the company's plans to strip it from the menu after the Mother's Day crowd died down, though it has shown up again on occasion. It was designed to bait a hook that lured coffee lovers into the restaurant for a distinct moment in time instead of being something anyone could saunter in and sit down to whenever they darn well felt like it. Hope remains that another resurgence may be on the horizon at some point.

This buzzy cocktail put a little spring in the step of Cracker Barrel's 2023 seasonal menu, combining the tang of nostalgic lemonade with the tingle of real strawberry purée with a splash of liquor stirred in. Though the spirit in question isn't disclosed, vodka is a likely suspect for the occasion. Juicing up the springtime weather with sweet berry vibes could almost make you believe you were sitting on a porch swing or on the dock of a lake with an eyeful of the Appalachians in front of you. It wasn't moonshine in the glass as far as Cracker Barrel ever confessed, but the sweet Southern spirit was there nonetheless.

When you dial back the old-timey charm and the restaurant prices, glasses of Spiked Strawberry Lemonade Cocktail aren't so far afield from a bottled swig like Mike's Hard Lemonade, which means any skillful mixologist could recreate this disappearing drink with one shaker tied behind their back. But for a family-friendly establishment like Cracker Barrel, serving alcohol is a relatively new enterprise. Having begun in February 2022, the program was only a year out of the gate when its twisted strawberry lemonade showed up ... then promptly vanished. Maybe the company is still working out the kinks and this crafty concoction will rise again someday. It's worth keeping the dream alive a little while longer.

Working a beloved Southern tuber like sweet potatoes into a crowd-pleasing breakfast dish gave Cracker Barrel a winter surprise that made their menu even more expansive, in the form of Sweet Potato Pancakes. The idea that pancakes themselves could consist of more than just flour, eggs, and oil allowed the restaurant to dazzle its diners with a deluxe version of a flapjack stack. The result comes across the table as a heightened version of plain-ol' pancakes with an added dose of brown sugar and cinnamon, plus all the nourishing antioxidants sweet potatoes have to offer. Sure, they may be canceled out by the maple syrup that drenched the cakes from top to bottom, but at least Cracker Barrel made the effort.

These comforting cakes made their debut in January 2012, just in time to commemorate February as Sweet Potato Month. Customers had a flavorful alternative to the usual buttermilk pancakes featured in the restaurant's regular breakfast pageant. If you're a Cracker Barrel diehard who flipped for this dish, you might want to calm down a bit. There's been no sign of a resurrection, though other breakfast inventions have come and gone through the years. But if you're compelled to hunker down on farmland waiting for the Great Sweet Potato to rise again, no one can stop you.

One of the unwritten rules in life is if you were offered an alcoholic drink with the popsicle sticking out of the top, you take it. Cracker Barrel understood the assignment when it launched Rocket Pop Mimosas on an unsuspecting audience. Coupling a mimosa with a tri-colored frozen treat blew the lid off of summer 2022, providing a cool spark of warm weather refreshment for the front porch rocking chair set. And it arrived at the table as a popsicle in a glass with the booze on the side, inviting guests to create their fun-and-foamy interactive lift-off.

Granted, sinking a bomb pop into booze isn't exactly an original idea. Come July, you'll find patriotic sips that aim to capture the nostalgic flavor all over the liquor section. You can even make your own two-ingredient version of this Cracker Barrel beverage by picking up a package of pops and a bottle of Prosecco to pop open. But having a sweet, fizzy sipper on the menu at the country restaurant allowed diners to enjoy the drink by pouring as much or as little sudsy stuff as they like. Plus, anything you make at home isn't likely to have that bubbly Cracker Barrel country spirit. Shucks.