We Tried The Dirty Soda Tres Leches Cake From Crumbl (And It’s Basically Mush)

It’s dirty soda week at Crumbl Cookie and their lineup is full of interesting flavor combinations and unique treats to honor the launch of their dirty sodas. Some of them definitely sound better than others, but with a treat as unique as a Dirty Soda Tres Leches Cake on the menu, we knew we would have to try them and see what was up. You can max out on your dirty soda fantasies this week, too because Crumbl is allowing any of their customers with their app to claim a free dirty soda with a voucher.

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This cookie is designed as a chocolate cola cake base with a dirty soda tres leches soak. And true to the dirty soda name, it’s topped with a lime and coconut whipped cream. But, at the end of the day, will it hold up against a critical eye or should it have stayed as one of their drink menu items?

A Beverage Flavored Cake

Pros: I do think that there are some pretty distinct positives about this dessert. For starters, I expected to completely hate the whipped topping on it. While I love coconut, artificial coconut is something I despise entirely. To my absolute delight, the whipped topping tastes like real cream and like it is flavored with real lime and coconut. I mean, you can even see the flecks of lime zest in the whip.

I will also say that for as strange of a flavor as this might have, the overall sweetness level is remarkably well balanced. I think that is much to do with the bitterness of the cocoa in the cake, but I still think it’s impressive that Crumbl, a company notorious for things being cloyingly sweet, to have released something intended to resemble the flavors of a dirty soda and it didn’t make it obnoxiously too sweet. It’s definitely still plenty sweet, but it still exceeding my expectations in this regard by a long shot.

Cons: I think the biggest negative with this dessert is its texture. It’s pretty clear that they didn’t choose the right cake or quantities of soak for this to have really turned out very well. It basically just is disintegrated cake in a pool of milky liquid. When done right, tres leches is a highly saturated cake, but it doesn’t at all resemble this creation from Crumbl that is sloppy and essentially just mush. I think the flavor also leaves a lot to be desired as well. It kind of just ends up tasting like indiscernible sweet glop when you take a mouthful of all the components together. And I think a lot of the soda flavor is lost to the intensity of the chocolate.

And, yes, while this might just be a bit of personal vendetta, I always am a little bit confused and frustrated when Crumbl markets themselves as a cookie company and then continues to include things that aren’t cookies in their cookie lineup of the week. If people wanted cake or brownies, they wouldn’t go to Crumbl because that’s not what they would expect. So, yes, while that might be a little personal frustration with the company’s direction, I also think it’s a very valid point to make when it’s clear that the non-cookie items that Crumbl releases have consistently performed worse than the cookies that obviously receive more attention and development.