I remember really enjoying Hostess cupcakes when I was kid.  Chocolate, with chocolate iciing, and of course, that delicious cream on the inside... Yum!!   These days I don't eat sugar-filled snacks, so I'm left out of the Hostess world.  But, I can have something fairly close, thanks to the folks at Tastykake.  Because they now make Sugar-Free Chocolate Cream-Filled Cupcakes.  It's part of their "Sensables" line of sugar-free snack foods.

The 9 oz. box contains 6 packs of 2 cupcakes each.  This gives you an idea how small they are, since two of them make up a serving.  The serving contains 140 calories, 9g of fat, and 210 mg of sodium.  This is fairly high in calories and fat, but if you can get yourself to eat just one cupcake, then it's not too bad. 

What makes them sweet?  Maltitol, Maltitol syrup, and Sucralose.  Be careful, if you're not used to this combination of chemicals.  Start out slowly, until you find out how your system will react, as some people experience gastric distress with sugar substitutes.

How do they taste?  Well, they're not the same as the Hostess cakes from my childhood, that's for sure.  First of all, there's no icing on these cupcakes.  And that makes a huge difference to me.  After all, the icing was the best part!  The next problem is one I run into with many sugar-free products.  These are fairly dry.  They're not the worst product I've ever tried in terms of dryness, but they're not what I would call rich, gooey, or any of those other words that are used to describe a nice, moist cake.  The only part of this product that's moist is the cream on the inside, and there's definitely not enough of that to really help.  In fact, there's really just one little spot of cream, right in the middle of the cake.  So, most bites are pure cake, with nothing to help the dryness.

In my opinion, they should make each cupcake a little bigger, maybe 50% bigger.  And each one would be its own serving. Then, there would be more room on the inside for the cream.  Perhaps that would help the dryness problem.  But for now, we have very small cupcakes with very little cream.

So, in terms of taste, I would say these are "just OK".  They're nice for an occasional snack, but I don't go out of my way to buy them, especially since Tastykake makes better-tasting sugar-free snacks.  These sell for around $4 for the box ($3 on sale).  Give them a try, if you want a sugar-free cupcake, but don't expect anything close to a Hostess memory.

See www.tasktycake.com for additional information.

Tastykake Chocolate-Chip Finger Cakes
Tastykake Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Finger Cakes

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