Your Junk Food Memories

I'd love to see your rendition of a Dolly Madison Raspberry Zinger. My father only allowed junk food in our house when it was junk food HE enjoyed. He liked Raspberry Zingers. I haven't thought about these in ages, but I wouldn't mind one right about now.

A vote here for Little Debbie Peanut Butter Bars. Sweet, salty, crunchy, waxy chocolate coating. Heavenly.

it is probably too late to add anything, I missed this post last summer... but does anyone remember Raspberry /Peach Humorettes from the Good Humor Man? Peach ice cream covered in Raspberry sherbert on a stick.. sort of like a creamsicle, but Much much nicer.

I am late to this news, but you have made the start to 2013 the best with the thought of a book about by Jenny! Can't wait!

Sara Lee banana cake. Gone,. but not forgotten. Taste and texture unmatched by any homemade attempt, ever. And believe me, I have tried.

Cheetos! But only the deep fried kind. I never, ever eat them. Last week, though, I had the perfect excuse. I found myself locked out of my upper Manhattan apartment at 2am and had to ride the subway into Brooklyn to pick up my spare keys from my catsitter, who fortunately is a night owl... I combed the subway newstands and all night convenience stores for a package to go with my Dunkin' Donuts coffee for the ride back uptown at 4am, but couldn't find any! Despair!

I am seeing from the comments that people have very elastic notions of what junk food is. How can ice cream be junk food? It has milk and cream in it! Potato chips have potatoes! Orange Julius has orange juice! Those are real foods! For me, the ultimate junk food is the Chee-to (sp?) because it is full of salt and fat and with its fluorescent orange color is the most un-natural cheese product I have ever seen. If it weren't for the preservatives and artificial dye it would be battleship grey. There is an alternative version dusted with magenta pepper, but I prefer the original. The key element to junk food is it must make the recipient feel very guilty. I feel great after engulfing an It's It, and perfectly terrible after a Chee-to binge.

I am seeing from the comments that people have very elastic notions of what junk food is. How can ice cream be junk food? It has milk and cream in it! Potato chips have potatoes! Orange Julius has orange juice! Those are real foods! For me, the ultimate junk food is the Chee-to (sp?) because it is full of salt and fat and with its fluorescent orange color is the most un-natural cheese product I have ever seen. If it weren't for the preservatives and artificial dye it would be battleship grey. There is an alternative version dusted with magenta pepper, but I prefer the original. The key element to junk food is it must make the recipient feel very guilty. I feel great after engulfing an It's It, and perfectly terrible after a Chee-to binge.

I can't believe I've missed this. I guess that is what happens when you go away for a month. Just a couple of comments, then original faves:
1. Orange Julius. Loved these, and like Carla Cookscame up with a pretty similar-tasting recipe at home. May need to make these this afternoon.
2. The "Viennese" Breyers' ice cream cake! I haven't seen the cake in a while, but they have a flavor now called Chocolate Crackle, which my husband and I refer to as Chocolate Crack: it is their delicilous vanilla ice cream spun through with massive quantities of what seems like Hershey's Magic Shell. Very east to eat a quart by oneself very quickly.

3. I always thought my parents were the anti-sugar-cereal Nazis, but upon meeting my husband I realized they were just pretending. I loved the Quaker "100% Natural" Cereal, and recently rediscovered a decades-old infatuation with Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

But my true weaknesses are crackers. When one of my life heroes, Ada Louise Huxtable, mentioned in an interview that she got over writer's block by eating a whole box of crackers,
I loved her even more. Saltines, Cheez-its, Ryvita, Home Wheats, these dutch cheese crackers barely held together with flour at all, Club Crackers spread with nothing but a little butter or mayonnaise. But my true ultimate loves: Triscuits. And Chicken in a Biskit.

I love Wise BBQ chips,funnybones,suzy q's,those small boxes of cookies,about the size of the barnum animal crackers,they came in chocolate chip,chocolate,ginger snaps and other flavors...loved them...also Frozen charleston chews,broadway rolls(strawberyy licorice),The cookies that came 3 to a pack,OHHHH!Linden butter cookies,chocolate chip and oatmeal....I liked the jolly ranchers that came in the stick form,indianhead pumpkin seeds(they were really thin,you could chew the whole thing~!),Marathon bars,that are now renamed curly wurly,they were chocolate cover caramel but iin a squiggly design kind of...lol,So good! Reeses PB cups when they were small and in a box,Clark bars,fifth ave,which was my moms fave! Love pepperidge farm raspberry and teh blueberry turnovers with some vanilla ice cream on top ,but you could singe your mouth! LOL...ALl the penny candies,lipsticks,mary janes,squirrel nuts,bg blo....I could go on!

I love Wise BBQ chips,funnybones,suzy q's,those small boxes of cookies,about the size of the barnum animal crackers,they came in chocolate chip,chocolate,ginger snaps and other flavors...loved them...also Frozen charleston chews,broadway rolls(strawberyy licorice),The cookies that came 3 to a pack,OHHHH!Linden butter cookies,chocolate chip and oatmeal....I liked the jolly ranchers that came in the stick form,indianhead pumpkin seeds(they were really thin,you could chew the whole thing~!),Marathon bars,that are now renamed curly wurly,they were chocolate cover caramel but iin a squiggly design kind of...lol,So good! Reeses PB cups when they were small and in a box,Clark bars,fifth ave,which was my moms fave! Love pepperidge farm raspberry and teh blueberry turnovers with some vanilla ice cream on top ,but you could singe your mouth! LOL...ALl the penny candies,lipsticks,mary janes,squirrel nuts,bg blo....I could go on!

Oh Gawd...putting on weight just thinking about this....Pepperidge Farms Blueberry Turnovers.....also their Walnut Cream layer cake, just slightly still frozen.Got a vote for coke with peanuts (guilty..I still do that now and then) and Wise Potatoe chips. Enough!

Congratulations Jenny! My favorites: chocolate-covered Entenmann's doughnuts. The coating is waxy and a little brittle, not soft (and not a really strong chocolate flavor).

Also, ice cream sandwiches. When I came to NY for graduate school, I used to duck out sometimes to the Regency Theater on Broadway in the 60's to watch old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies. I'd get an ice-cream sandwich (chocolate wafers, vanilla ice cream) from the freezer and have a fabulous afternoon- Classic movie, classic ice-cream treat.

Oreo cookies.

Loved "Scooter Pies" - 2 graham like crackers holding a layer of marshmallow and the whole thing covered in chocolate. Yum to anything with marshmallow.

These comments are fantastic. I loved hearing everyone's ideas and so enjoyed being part of your memories, and could relate to so many of them. THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL THESE GENEROUS and FABULOUS replies. -- Jenny

We are big on taste tests in our family. Mom's recipes vs. the "real thing". Each St. Patrick's Day brings us the Shamrock Shake-a-thon where I try to top my husband's favorite treat the Mc Filthy's Shamrock Shake. (This year we had Z Burger's mint shake as a contender as well.) During the Hannukah fry-a-thon I replicated Krispy Kreme donuts pretty well. Also made homemade candy corn for Halloween as we couldn't find any safe for the peanut-allergic 6 year old (though those were made with agave and didn't really hold a candle to Brach's. We started working on Girl Scout Samoas, you should definitely add those to your list.

When I was a kid, I used to love going to the grocery store with my dad. We would walk around talking about the fruits and vegetables and where they came from and we muse over what we wanted to cook for dinner that week. At the end of the trip, he would always sneak a bag of peanut M&M's into the shopping cart and as we unpacked the groceries at home I would rifle through the bags until I came across those M&M's. They are still my absolute favorite junk food and guilty pleasure!

Okay. How about giant blue (or weird white) freezies? Pink would be cool too, you could flavour it with beet juice. I recently saw a silicone tube to make homemade freezies. I know the lurid colours and plastic add to the allure of anything for my son, even though we offer homemade popsicles. But what about the freezie? Soft-serve ice creams from the ice cream truck (that are not really ice cream) recreated at home would be good too. What is in that, and how would you make it at home all stabilized and swirled? I will try and think of more.

I grew up in Arizona so we ate a lot of frozen treats that I love to recreate, but I remember when Breyer's came out out with these rectangular ice cream cakes called something like Viennese ice cream tarts or something like that. Thin layers of vanilla ice cream (or also chocolate & vanilla) alternating with super thin crunchy layers of chocolate molded to look frilly & fancy. My mother let me serve a whole one to a gagle of girls at a Friday night sleepover and it was just the height of sophistication!

I remember trading my entire, homemade lunch for the simple indulgence of the Little Debbie Nutty Bars. I would take apart the layers and saver them one by one. Who knows what kind of preservatives and additives were in those things- they most likely took years off of my life. Even still, my mouth waters when thinking about the peanut buttery preservative goodness of the Nutty Bars.

Congrats Jenny! My mom was in the sprouts crowd too so not many goodies. But my go-to-treat at the movies was Good-n-Plenty.. Would be nice to have a home version.

Hostess lemon pies were one of my favorite childhood treats. So sweet and lemony - it was the beginning of my love for lemon anything. Now I just eat lemon curd out of the pan. I miss them terribly - I haven't looked hard for them, but I haven't seen them in awhile. I wonder if they are one of those things where the memory is better than the reality?

Hostess lemon pies were one of my favorite childhood treats. So sweet and lemony - it was the beginning of my love for lemon anything. Now I just eat lemon curd out of the pan. I miss them terribly - I haven't looked hard for them, but I haven't seen them in awhile. I wonder if they are one of those things where the memory is better than the reality?

I grew up in Canada and loved eating a Jos Louis (pronounced Joe Louie) after my skating lesson. It's two pieces of red velvet cake with creme in the middle and coated in chocolate. They may have been called moon cakes but my friends and I used to just talk about getting a "Jos Louis."

When I visited the United States, I used to load up on chocolate pop-tarts and bring them back to my hungry friends. That and grape bubble-yum.

Except for a popsicle from the Good Humor man in the summer and Hydrox or iced oatmeal packaged cookies for our bagged school lunch, Mom didn't buy any other junk food for us. What I did get to eat I had to either beg for or trade for something in the cafeteria at school.

One of my favorite trades were the Nabisco Devils Food Cakes. (They now under the brand of Healthy Choice cookies but don't taste exactly the same) They had a chocolate cakelike cookie surrounded by a very thin layer of marshmallow and coated with a chocolate candy type coating. Oh, man..I could have eaten a whole package if I had the chance!

I was seriously addicted to a candy called Cheers... they were tiny malted milk balls, which are still a favorite, and had thin colored shells over the chocolate. This was in the 70's. They were made by the Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company in Philadelphia, and I wrote a letter, outraged and pleading, to the company president when they were being phased out. A box filled with packages of Cheers was delivered to my door, with a letter of thanks and apology from the top brass. I rationed them for months, until there were no more. So sad.

Totinos pizza rolls. I remember loving their little bit size pizza bits all encased in that shell. They are really gross to me now and I don't know if it is because they have changed or I have changed. I also second the pepperidge farms frozen cakes-their pound cake was a favorite. I also really loved Sara Lee frozen cheesecake - it is so light, I still love it. Hostess pies with that glaze, yum. Cherry is the best!

Then there are all the frozen desserts. Nutty buddy, fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, those almond ice cream bars, Klondike bars, Carvel flying saucers, Friendly's sundaes and Fribbles....must stop now...

OMG Nutty Bars!! For whatever reason I always used to call them "Nutter butters," go figure. There is absolutely nothing like those.

Congratulations! I love the idea of that book!
I grew up on so much junk! My mother, I guess just didn't realize! Some childhood favorites were, Zingers - the raspberry ones with coconut, Ding Dongs, Nutter Butters I think someone else mentioned those. Tootsie rolls, even my cereal would have fallen into the junk category, Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms and my favorite childhood drink was Kool aid, tropical punch flavor. Wow what a trip down memory lane!

Do all the "sliders" count? We had (and still have) White Castle... and then there was Top Hat, Champs, Hobo's and a rash of other fast food burger joints preceding McDonalds. I've actually made a clone!

Congrats! Can't wait for that book. Ho Hos, Snowballs, Mallomars, Junior Mints.

How great! Congrats!I loved dunkaroos--the choc. chip with chocolate frosting--and fig newtons, though the latter have been done before. My mom never bought toaster strudels, but these comments have reminded me how much I loved those. yodels and oatmeal cookie sandwiches also come to mind. I liked a lot of very unhealthy treats, and I still have weird cravings for strawberry nutri grain bars. Finally, if you could perfect a yellow cake that's moist like a boxed cake (does that count?), i'd be forever grateful.

My brothers and I were huge Little Debbie fans! We loved the fast treats, and when my mom went to work when my little brother went to 1st grade, these treats were abundant (she was a teacher and abundant meant a couple of boxes every two weeks)! We loved the Oatmeal Creme Pie, the Nutty Bar, and the Fudgy Brownie. My brothers ate tons of these after football practice. This is also around the time we got our first microwave, which included doing scads of cheese dogs w/ bread (wrapped in paper towel), heating up Chunky Soup, and popping bags of popcorn in brown lunch bags. We were also eating Swanson dinners (TV dinners). :)

My ultimate childhood favorite commercial baked good would be Peanut Butter Tandy Takes (later renamed Kandy Kakes) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tastykake
Tastykakes are a Philadelphia area thing - can one get them in Manhattan? Jenny, I would be happy to send you some. Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes are little round sponge cakes topped with peanut butter and then "enrobed" in chocolate.
Someone mentioned Sara Lee - my grandmother sometimes served a frozen SL banana cake with frosting that was really good. I wonder if SL still makes that? Entenmanns chocolate crumb donuts, Drakes coffee cakes - those flat perfectly round individually-wrapped ones. Do Girl Scouts Thin Mint cookies count?
I was never a fan of things creme-filled, I think because the texture was so weirdly oily and waxy? Although I did like devil dogs... even though they stuck to the roof of my mouth and created a kind of burning sensation. I have to agree with HLA, having these things now would not taste nearly as good as the memory. Except for the thin mints and the PB Kandy Kakes, which I never gave up....
Congratulations on your book!

I LOVED the chocodile! For a school birthday party (3rd grade?) my mother went to multiple deli/convenience stores to amass enough chocodiles to feed the whole class. Coming in second would be Doritos.

I was always partial to Hydrox cookies rather that oreos

Congrats Jenny! My favorites were the peanut butter tasty cakes...I have no idea if I would still like them since they don't seem to be sold many places anymore, but the memories of eating them at my grandparents house live on....Also, fruit roll-ups. I've seen lots of blogs do them lately, and I will eventually get around to trying one out.

My stepson loves pretzels stuffed with peanut butter. The last time he was here, we bought the commercial ones and coated them in dark chocolate. Sublime. Can you make homemade peanut butter stuffed pretzels? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

Congrats Jenny! I fondly remember the pepperidge farm coconut cake... (I served it at my "reception" when we watched Di marry Charles!). ...but my goto was the raspberry zinger...love that coconut! Hmmm...oh yeah my favorite candy bar? Mounds, go figure!

Congrats to you!!!!!

We never, ever had junk food in the house. In elementary school I was alone with my fresh fruit and sandwiches on homemade bread often with sprouts, and carob carrot cookies amidst a sea of white bread and baloney with snack size chips and twinkies. So on rare occasions when I had a dollar to spend (a relative fortune) I would ride my bike to this small funky store and buy my brother and I hostess treats: Suzy Qs were best when feeling greedy, they were the most, hostess fruit pies aching sweet tart lemon or sticky red cherry - once a black berry one though never to be seen again, chocodiles won out over twinkies because of the chocolate and the almost painfully dry ding dongs with thick paste like "creme", my brother favored Apple pies or blueberry and really that's it, he was never a glutton.

In the Summertime however rules were lax Frozen snickers bars and charleston chews were always around.

As a teen though I went for salty, I have fond memories of laying out on the beach in fire island, in the Meadow in central park with a can of sour cream & onion Pringles and cold quart of turkey hill ice tea (or a pitcher of Lipton instant ice tea). Still indulge on occasion though coconut scented oil has been replaced by SPF 50, and salt & vinegar is my current Pringles steeze .

What I loved and continue to love about Pringles is the way they fit on your tongue, you can lay a whole one right on there and let it melt abit before crunching.

Pizza combos bring instant memories of summer camp, they were one of the few snacks sold at commissary. I can vividly recall cheese scented whispers and giggles in the dark as we planned various escapes and escapades over yonder to the boys

Do stuffers frozen French bread pizzas count??? They were a rainy day treat
I loved the sausage, crunchy bottom,lava like middle with oily salty sausage bits.

Oh and corn nuts! Especially paired with a cherry slurpee! Are you doing beverage pairings? Funyuns + Pepsi, Doritos + Diet Coke, Twinkie + strawberry yoohoo ...

Congratulations, Jennifer! Ok, where to start. In no particular order: my fourth grade teacher used to bribe us with Jolly Ranchers. I ate a lot of those that year. A neighbor boy used to walk home from school with me and give me cheddar cheese Combos. In high school we used to eat Tangy Taffy and peanut M&Ms at lunchtime, often sacrificing anything resembling real food. Those are my immediate memories. At home, my mom was not an advocate of things like Twinkies. So of course the second I hit middle school and had access to them, Ho-Ho's, Susie Qs and the like, I went a little nuts. I don't think I ever even ate a Twinkie until I was 12. And I didn't drink Coke until age 13, when my mom and I lived in Mexico for a month. She let me drink Coke there because we couldn't drink the water. At home, we'd bake cookies and cake occasionally and always had a bag of Oreos or something similar on hand. We could eat three per night, after dinner only. We always had pretzels in the house and I love them to this day - the crispy, salty kind. Can't wait to see the book!

Congratulations Jenny! I have to admit this list makes me feel like I was a deprived child. While I've heard of most of these, I can't say I've ever eaten most of them. You did have me at pizza combos though - I also liked the cheddar ones, and was partial to cracker versus pretzel.

Tastykakes butterscotch krimpets, Sara Lee (or was it Pepperidge Farms?) coconut layer cake. And these cupcakes that aren't made any more, I guess, and the brand of which I can't remember. They were in the freezer case. There were six to a box (and the box was the foil kind that crimped over the cardboard lid), and they were oversized. The only ones I ever ate were the coconut one, and the double chocolate, but there was a vanilla/vanilla, chocolate/vanilla, and maybe a lemon and strawberry one. Anyway, they were so great because the cake-to-frosting ratio was perfect (nearly a 50-50 split!) and the frosting was YUMMY.

Loved Pillsbury toaster strudels -- the kind with the little icing packets! I ate way too many of those as a kid.

The only junky sweet my mom allowed me to have when I was little was the Hostess Fruit Pies (maybe because they contained "fruit"?), and I always picked the lemon one. Lemon pudding, as someone mentions above, would be delicious. Just writing this is giving me a hankering.

Oh, and I must add those commercial, wrapped chocolate and vanilla ice cream sandwiches! The ice cream had to be melty enough to come squooshing out if you squeezed the sandwich so that you could lick it all around the edge then squeeze again. And at the very end lick all the sticky, sticky chocolate cookie residue stuck to your fingers.

Rice crispy treats were my favorite homemade junk food. Toasted Almond ice cream bars from the Good Humor man. Planters peanut bars. Wise potato chips. And I second Pepperidge Farm cherry turnovers!

Congratulations, Jenny! Can't wait to see the book. I loved Ho Hos growing up. When my mother entertained, she used to buy a sophisticated, grown-up version at a bakery on Connecticut Avenue (in DC): a delicate, but deep-chocolate flavored sponge cake rolled up with whipped cream filling. She served it with warmed ganache. We didn't have that version frequently, but Ho Hos made up for it when I had a craving.

Okay confessions of a Susie-Q lover. Two oversized sponge cake sandwich cakes filled with a sugary filling. First I would run a finger around the middle and scoop up filling to eat from my fingertips, the sugar grains ever so slightly crunchy and gritty. If hands were grimy frm a days play the tips my tongue worked as well. Peeled up the cake to eat and a thin layer was left on the white wax coated cardboard backing. Eat the second cake (yes ! Two in n package) but do not throw away the cardboard! It was to be licked clean of the moist remnants leaving a few dark chocolate crumbs on my chin so Mom would know I had spoiled my supper

Zingers all the way!!!! You know, those pink twinkies dredged in coconut?! Awesome!

oatmeal/cream sandwiches....OMG now I really want one!

I liked those Hostess fruit pies, especially the ones that actually contained pudding. I think that buttery sugar shell is pure manufactured perfection. I'll cast my vote for a lemon pudding version. They also had seasonal varieties like pumpkin or green, whatever flavor that was. I was also a huge fan of Easy Cheese, you know in the squirt can. The Hostess butterscotch krimpets were also a treat. I would always pull the frosting off first in one perfect layer.

I used to love Snowballs made by Hostess - Chocolate cake with a cream filling covered with marshmallow and hot pink coconut. I haven't had one in at least 20 years. I'm sure if I tried one now it would ruin the fond memories I have of them.

Those evil pink and white frosted animal cookies - we called them evil because you really could not stop until the bag was empty. We also loved the square cookies with raisins that were frosted in white. Oh, and Grandma's used to make these fruit filled oatmeal cookies that I craved in middle school. Oatmeal cookies with raspberry jam inside.

Congratulations Jenny that is great! As for junk food - does anyone remember Funnybones? Chocolate cake with peanut butter cream filling and that gross waxy "chocolate coating" - I ate a LOT of those in high school. When I was younger my friend Tara and I would go pony camping (yes, camping out with our ponies - useing saddles for pillows - pretending to be rough n tough) and we would stock up on everything gross - Funyuns, Bugles, Jolly Ranchers (sour apple in particular) were our favorites. If I ate that now I would probably hurl !!!

My baked junk food memories may not ring a bell with most people, since I grew up in India, but they used to have these things called 'sweet buns' & its sliced cousin 'sweet bread' ( yep, I know, but this was pure vegetarian) basically a mildly sweetened burger bun look alike studded with technicolored cubes of tutti frutti (all the colors tasted the same since they were made from winter melon!). It was a treat when the kids came down with a flu or other contagious stuff!

Moon pies (it's a southern thing http://www.moonpie.com/), nutter butter cookies, Pepperidge Farms fruit turnovers (I loved cherry), Pepperidge Farms cookies--Milanos, Nantucket; Nabisco Wafer cookies. We used to have honey buns for breakfast--I remember them fondly. Oh, fig newtons, of course oreos (although I preferred Hydrox; sue me), those thin Nabisco chocolate wafers--put a smear of peanut butter between them. Yum. Or melted marshmallow. Like a s'more. Can you tell I was a major junk food junkie? My favorite cereal was cocoa krispies, seconded only by cocoa puffs. (Try cocoa krispie treats.) Seriously, it's a miracle that I don't have diabetes. I'll probably think of more later. What a fun project! Do you need recipe testers? I'll happily volunteer. xo

Congratulations Jenny! Can I put in a vote for Oatmeal Creme Pies!? We weren't allowed homemade cakes (except on birthdays) much less plastic wrapped ones while growing up. But, the center where we went for cross-country ski practice sold both Swiss Cake Rolls and Oatmeal Creme Pies for $0.50 a piece. Almost every single afternoon one of my best friends and I would ditch out about halfway through our skiing workout and go back to the chalet and binge on Oatmeal Creme Pies (ok, sometimes we had the Swiss rolls too). Heaven in the form of soft squishy cinnamony cookie and sticky marshmallowy creme filling, mmm. And it only got worse after I did some decorative painting for the center and the owner told me I could have all the snacks I wanted for free for the rest of my life...