If you enjoy snack trays with meat and cheese, like Cracker Stackers or Hillshire Farm Small plates, you will be happy to hear about Hillshire Farm’s newest line of snack trays in the Hillshire Farm Snacked Review.
What makes them different from other snack trays?
These trays come in packs of two and feature a meat and cheese with a dessert or snack in place of the standard crackers found in most snack trays. While they are marketed towards kids, anyone can have one as a snack.
There are currently four varieties of Hillshire Farm Snacked!
- Turkey with Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cheddar Cheese
- Pepperoni with Brownie Bites and Monterey Jack Cheese
- Pepperoni with Confetti Cake Bites and Mini String Cheese
- Hard Salami with Pretzel Rods and Monterey Jack Cheese
We found three of them at Kroger, and have yet to locate the Hard Salami with Pretzel Rods and Monterey Jack Cheese variety. If we find it soon, we will update this Hillshire Farm Snacked! review to include it. Now, to our opinions on these new snacks 🙂
Turkey With Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cheddar Cheese Hillshire Farm Snacked Review
We tried the turkey version first and were pleasantly surprised by the combination. You can eat the turkey and cheese together for a delicious combo or consume them separately. At any point, you have the choice of adding in a sweet, crunchy chocolate chip cookie. These really do make a nice snack!
For starters, the turkey is fairly standard cubes of deli-syle turkey. They go well with the cubes of cheddar cheese to provide a nice snack with a variety of tastes and textures. There is a decent amount of meat and cheese for a substantial snack, especially for kids.
The dessert portion of this one can be a bit disappointing. One of our trays only had a single tiny chocolate chip cookie inside, while the other one in that package had four. The amount of cookies seems really inconsistent across multiple trays, and the cookies themselves are fairly generic, crispy cookies.
Pepperoni with Brownie Bites and Monterey Jack Cheese Hillshire Farm Snacked Review
This was the second version of Hillshire Farm Snacked trays that we tried. This one consists of small cubes of pepperoni, Monterrey Jack cheese cubes, and brownie bites. These small cubes and bites the perfect size for a snack!
Our reviewers say the pepperoni is nice, and the cheese cubes provide a great amount of flavor. The Monterey Jack is the favorite of all the cheese options in these snack trays. The consensus is that the pepperoni and cheese in this variety pair perfectly together, complementing each other well.
In our opinion, the brownie bites are the weak link in this mix. They don’t seem to fit in with the other tastes and textures, and they are dry and crumbly. Perhaps, good choices to add in place of the brownie bites would be milk chocolate chips or M&M candies.
Pepperoni with Confetti Cake Bites and Mini String Cheese Hillshire Farm Snacked Review
Finally, we tried this one and found it to be the best of the ones we tried for this Hillshire Farm Snacked review! The pepperoni is decently flavorful here as well and works with the mozzarella string cheese bites to give us pizza vibes. The mini string cheese pieces are fun to eat, but we prefer the flavor of the Monterey Jack cheese in the prior snack tray flavor-wise.
The dessert portion is where this snack tray really shines. Confetti cake bites are soft, sweet, and complete with sprinkles. We all agree that this is the most successful sweet treat in these Hillshire Farm snack trays. We could eat those any time of day.
While this one is our favorite, mainly for the confetti cake bites, it might be even better with Monterey Jack cheese cubes instead of the string cheese. Either way, it is tasty!
Summary and Review
The Hillshire Farm Snack trays are pretty good, but most of the desserts need some work.
Pros
- Nice, balanced snack portion
- Flavorful meat and cheese pairings
- Confetti cake bites are amazing!
Cons
- Brownie bites are dry
- The amount of cookies in the turkey tray is not consistent
These are pretty good, especially for a kids snack tray. The cake bites are a must-try!
Rating: 7.25/10
