The Best Fast Food Desserts, According to the MUNCHIES Staff (2024)

Welcome to Hella Good, a place where the MUNCHIES staff offers unsolicited opinions on the best of a food, drink, or travel category picked at random—the city we think has the best food trucks, our all-time favorite karaoke bar, or the best tourist traps in the country that you should actually see. This week, we share our go-to orders from fast food dessert menus.

Culver’s Concrete Mixer
I grew up in the Midwest and every time our family took a long car trip there was one stop we always made: Culver’s, home of ButterBurgers, Frozen Custard, and Wisconsin Cheese Curds. While Culver’s always offers a “flavor of the day,” my go-to order is a vanilla “concrete mixer” with Heath Bar or Butterfinger, depending on my mood, and hot fudge. It’s a perfect dessert. Also: order the chicken tenders. — Elana Schulman, MUNCHIES Supervising Producer

Dairy Queen’s Dilly Bar
I have a soft spot for Dilly Bars from hearing my mom tell me about her first ever job at Dairy Queen, and how most of what she did was dip the Dilly Bars and Buster Bars into the chocolate shell coating. I thought this was pretty much the best job ever for a long time. (It takes a certain level of artisanship to get that perfect little curlicue.) Just some whimsically shaped vanilla soft-serve dipped in an egg-shell-thin chocolate coating, like a Klondike Bar on a stick but better. (The cherry candy coating is also a fun not-found-in-nature color.) If butter pecan is an old lady ice cream flavor, Dilly Bars are the old lady DQ order, and I’m okay with that. (No one tell my mom I said that.) — Danielle Wayda, MUNCHIES Editorial Assistant

A&W Root Beer Float
The A&W root beer float is made with soft serve instead of real vanilla ice cream which is a bummer, but even a mediocre root beer float makes me feel like I’m on a date in an Archie comic, which delights me to my core. I only visit A&W once a year (en route to my grandparents’ home in Manitoba), and I consume the float in the back seat of a rental SUV with the windows rolled down until I feel carsick. — Sydney Mondry, VICE Senior Social Editor

McDonald’s Fried Apple Pie (RIP)
Better chefs and better writers than I have all had a lot to say about the perfection of the McDonald’s fried apple pie (which I’ve just learned no longer exists, having been replaced with the putatively healthier baked version pictured above). It’s a triumph of foodservice engineering: The crust is bubble-pocked and freakishly crispy, while the apple filling is thickened with a starchy slurry that includes freeze-dried, pulverized apples, which then rehydrate with the exuded apple juices for supreme apple flavor. The real genius, however, is how it’s been carefully calibrated to burn off just enough of your taste buds with the first bite. Every future bite then leaves you wincing with gratitude that the pain has subsided, and—if you like your relationship with multinational conglomerates lightly BDSM-tinged—you could do a lot worse than that. —Rupa Bhattacharya, MUNCHIES Editor-in-Chief

In-N-Out’s Neapolitan Milkshake
Any of In-N-Out’s shakes can set the scene for a cool, velvety mental journey into the backseat of a red Cadillac during a decade when no one counted calories. (By the way, don’t look at the calorie count of the shakes.) But it is the synthesis of all three flavors—chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla—that best encapsulates the In-N-Out experience. “It’s on the secret menu,” you can tell your envious friends as you turn your cheekbones inside out trying to sip the thick, ice-cream-sandwich-esque concoction through a flimsy plastic straw. Probably best to just take the lid off and use a spoon. — Hilary Pollack, MUNCHIES Senior Editor

Wendy’s Classic Chocolate Frosty
At any given time of day, there’s a good chance I can tell you the first name of the person working the drive-thru at Wendy’s. I eat there often enough to know everyone’s schedule. To know that my heart will eventually implode like Three Rivers Stadium. And to know when it’s that time of year to buy the new $2 keychain that gets you a free Jr. Frosty with every purchase. The classic Frosty would be my ride-or-die dessert, even if it wasn’t complimentary with every Baconator I order. I’ll be dead at 40, but what a chilled, mildly chocolaty trip it’s been. — Jelisa Castrodale, Contributor