I ate Kraft Apple Pie Mac & Cheese so you don’t have to

I was worried the new Kraft Apple Pie Mac & Cheese would taste bad.

The reality was even worse. It was bad and boring. It tastes like eating underflavored mac & cheese out of a bowl that was used for apple-cinnamon oatmeal earlier in the day.

The malicious piece of cheese sorcery tries to thread the needle between tasting like cheese and apple pie. Ultimately, it does neither.

The cheese taste is dialed down to a mere pin drop of flavor. Meanwhile, it’s clear that Kraft got cold feet about how intense they wanted that “apple pie” flavor to be. As a result, it’s a bland bowl of pasta with fleeting whispers of cheese and a vague echo of brown sugar and spices.

I knew this was going to be a nightmare. But that was the point. It’s a novelty, like the food equivalent of watching a horror movie.

Instead of having a scary monster, this was like a horror movie where the main character steps on a nail, gets tetanus and spends 90 minutes of runtime navigating the health care system.

All of that’s scary. But I wanted to at least feel something while eating this bowl of pasta and cheese factory dust. Have a little bit of spectacle. Dye it green. Throw in enough flavor to be punchy.

I want my $1.48 back.

Kraft Mac & Cheese Apple Pie | Review

For such a crazy concept, the actual product is wildly underwhelming. I’m so unwhelmed. I’ve never been less whelmed in my life.

In the box, you get a standard pile of loose noodles and a packet of the cheese powder. Oddly enough, the powder looks just like your normal cheese powder you get in any box of Kraft Mac & Cheese.

With the final product, you can’t really tell that any flavor shenanigans are going on. The only sign is the occasional speck of spice dotting the noodles.

What does it taste like?

Imagine eating an underwhelming bowl of Kraft Mac & Cheese while someone is letting an apple pie cool on a windowsill next door.

If you focus, you can sense the apple. There’s an echo of the sweetness and warm spices that could be there. But then your mind snaps back to reality and the muted mush of mild cheddar in front of you.

You get a little bit of the apple pie elements. There’s brown sugar, spice and molasses powder in here. To an extent, they shape the experience — slightly.

So is it any good?

No, not even as a gag.

It’s empty calories with a half-hearted effort to make something interesting.

The components are there. There’s the foundation to make something interesting. But instead, I was stuck in pasta purgatory, waiting to finish eating this stupid bowl of creamy anti-food and move on with my life.

This was the food equivalent of getting on a roller coaster, waiting 15 minutes and then having to get off the ride because someone in the cart in front of you was hit in the face by a duck.

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“Nick Ate It” is a recurring column with a light-hearted take on food. Want more “Nick Ate It” coverage? You can follow Nick on Instagram (@NickAteIt) and TikTok (also @NickAteIt)

You can send any praise/food suggestions to nomalley@masslive.com. Please send all criticisms and thoughts about Kraft Mac & Cheese pasta shapes to mdaniels@masslive.com. You can check out the rest of the series here.