The ISU dining halls offer a wide selection of desserts, mostly made by the bakers over at the ISU bakery. Students who rely on their dining plans tend to have their dessert favorites, but I set out to try as many as I could to pull together a review for the next time you’re torn between apple crisp and a snickerdoodle cookie.
Starting off on the wrong bite, the cookie selection leaves much to be desired. ISU offers snickerdoodle, sugar, salted caramel, M&M chocolate chip, chocolate chip, peanut butter and Oreo cookie cake cookies. Overall, the sugar cookie base used for both the sugar and snickerdoodle cookies has taken a sharp decline in the past few years, completely losing the once-delicious flavor. Now they sit in piles, untouched, because they just don’t have “it” anymore.
The chocolate chip cookies are fine, standard, nothing more. I generally don’t enjoy chocolate chip anything, so I’ll let someone else be the judge. Their peanut butter and Oreo cookie cakes, despite rarely being served, are also mediocre and often too sweet for what they are.
On a brighter and cooler note, let’s talk about ice cream. Friley Windows has a permanent ice cream station where you can get however many scoops fit in a cone or bowl. The selection is stellar, and even sorbet options are offered for those who don’t like milk-based ice cream. What confuses me, though, is why the ISU Creamery doesn’t provide the ice cream for them. Instead, the ice cream is sourced from Blue Bunny.
For breakfast regulars, the breads and muffins are probably familiar. This section has the widest range: blueberry muffins, bran muffins, pumpkin bread, banana bread, mocha muffins, cinnamon rolls, banana muffins, lemon poppy seed bread and more. The muffins and breads are generally well-received, but few stand out. My top choices are the mocha muffins, pumpkin bread and cinnamon rolls.
On the topic of muffins, they also offer a wide variety of cupcakes like red velvet, neapolitan, matcha, carrot cake, pumpkin and more. The cupcakes have a bit more to do with your own taste, but I can assure you that if you like matcha, you will like the matcha cupcakes, and the same goes for all other flavors. Generally, cupcakes are a very safe option.
On certain occasions, the dining halls serve fruit crisps. The selection is small but mighty, usually cherry, apple or peach. In my opinion, if there’s a crisp, take it. Out of all the desserts offered, crisps are the hardest to mess up. They will never disappoint you.
It’s also worth mentioning the seasonal event desserts, which often outshine the regular menu. Honorary mentions include the berry crepes, mochi and tres leches cake, each one far better than the standard daily options.
Saving the best for last, the crown jewel of ISU dining desserts is the peach cobbler. You might not have seen it before, but that’s because it’s almost always served exclusively at Union Drive Marketplace during breakfast hours, tucked away at the very end of Dash. Nothing quite compares to a warm plate of cobbler on a cold autumn morning.
If you take anything away from this review, let it be this: no dessert at ISU dining will change your life, but some, like the cobbler, might just make your morning.
