Every holiday season, restaurants and fast food chains switch up their menus and incorporate seasonal food and drinks. Some of these fast food chains include Starbucks, Dairy Queen, Scooter’s, and Dunkin Doughnuts. These fast food chains serve these seasonal foods and drinks to draw in customers looking for food unique to the upcoming holidays, like Christmas.

Because Covid is still causing restaurants to adjust to new protocols, fast food chains have seen an increase in business from customers trying to avoid going into restaurants or any public places. This is also another reason why seasonal food is being served at these chains, as business has been better in the past months of this year.

On Sunday, Nov. 22, Lydia Hernandez and I ventured out of the comfort of our houses and went to a few of these fast food chains to try some of the seasonal foods that were offered. We originally planned on going to Starbucks, Scooter’s, Dairy Queen, and Chick-fil-a, but we were only successful at finding seasonal food at Starbucks and Dairy Queen.

We first went to Scooter’s to see if they had any seasonal food available. There were some options, like the “maple waffle sandwich” and “frosted sugar cookies,”  but we decided to pass on everything and headed out to the next location, which led us to Dairy Queen.

When thinking of places that serve seasonal foods, Dairy Queen probably wouldn’t be one of the first places someone thought of. Before heading there, we heard that there were blizzards new for the holiday season. The blizzards were the “apple pie blizzard” and the “snickerdoodle cookie dough blizzard.” I really wanted to try the apple pie blizzard, as it sounded delicious and I really love apple pie, but unfortunately the Dairy Queen we went to was sold out of that one. That left us with only the other option, which was the snickerdoodle blizzard. Lydia and I were a bit skeptical because with snickerdoodle, there’s cinnamon and we didn’t know if this blizzard was going to have too much cinnamon.

We got the blizzard and parked in a nearby parking lot to try the ice cream before it melted. When first tasting the blizzard, you can immediately taste what is supposed to be the snickerdoodle aspect to it. The cinnamon isn’t over powering, as it was balanced out with the cookie dough bits. The blizzard was very smooth and sweet, not leaving a harsh aftertaste in your mouth. We would definitely recommend this to anyone that likes snickerdoodle, as it tastes exactly like one in ice cream form. In addition, it is not that expensive, as the medium that we ordered was only about $4.30.

After Dairy Queen, we decided to head to Starbucks, as we knew that the popular coffee stop had a couple pastries that were new for the holiday season. The new pastries are a cranberry bliss bar, a sugar plum cheese danish, and a snowman cake pop.

The sugar plum cheese danish is one of the three newest food items added to the Starbucks menu for this holiday season. It comes preheated and smells delicious. You can definitely smell a sweetness to it, which is probably due to the sugar added to the cheese danish. There was a jelly added on top of the cream cheese, which normally isn’t there when ordering a regular cheese danish from Starbucks. Upon eating it, the pastry is quite a mixture of fluffiness from the flaky croissant base and a smoothness from the combination of cream cheese and jelly. This pastry was really good, but I personally would only get it if I were really hungry, as it is quite filling. With Starbucks, food and drinks can cost a bit more than other fast food chains, so this pastry was about $4 when rounded up. I’d suggest this if someone was looking for a quick breakfast item with a coffee.

The Snowman cake pop is definitely the cutest thing on the menu. It was dipped in white chocolate and its face decorated with chocolate as well. When we bit into it, it was very soft and just had a really generic vanilla taste. We thought it would be a perfect treat for younger kids who may be picky and don’t like many flavors because of how plain and simple it was. The cake pop does contain allergens such as eggs, milk, soy, and wheat or can be considered to be cross contaminated with it so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is allergic to those items. The cake pop cost $1.95 so if you’re looking for a quick treat while you go for your morning coffee run this would be perfect!

The Cranberry bliss bar was a triangle shaped thick cookie that I was pretty skeptical about at first. I thought the cookie was going to be very dry and not soft before taking any bites. But I was very wrong, the cookie was surprisingly very soft and delicious. The Bliss Bar was made with blondie cake that had dried cranberries, with a layer of cream-cheese icing that had dried cranberries and some orange zest on the top. The orange zest added a little sour flavor to the cookie but made the taste more exciting. I would recommend this treat when you’re looking for something new to try or when you want to try something out of your comfort zone.