Forget Laughing Cow: Aldi Has A Cheese Dupe That's Worth Trying
Aldi is one of those grocery stores that sells dupes of some of your favorite products under its own name, many of which are manufactured by major brands anyway. One thing we've found that the chain historically excels at is its cheese selection (in fact, here are 12 cheeses at Aldi that we think are the best). One particular processed cheese product is a dupe of The Laughing Cow, those individually-wrapped foil wedges that are spreadable on practically anything. It's under the brand name Happy Farms, which covers many of Aldi's house brand cheeses.
When we added it as part of a side-by-side comparison of different Aldi dupes against their name-brand counterparts, we found that a blindfold taste-test would have been nearly impossible. Our tester wrote, "Aldi does an amazing job of replicating the magic. In my family's modern-day taste test, we agreed the Happy Farms and Laughing Cow original cheese wedges were practically interchangeable. Both were ever-so-slightly sweet and tangy, and absolutely fun to eat." The one slight difference was subtle; the Happy Farms Laughing Cow dupe features a slightly denser texture, but considering it comes in at $2.74 versus the Laughing Cow's $4.29, it's a no-brainer when it comes to value.
Aldi has other Laughing Cow flavor dupes as well
Like Laughing Cow, Happy Farms' spreadable cheese wedges come in multiple flavors, including Garlic and Herb as well as Creamy Pepper Jack. Laughing Cow has both of those varieties as well, though its overall lineup is a bit bigger overall. That means you're not just stuck with one knockoff flavor and you don't need to make a special trip to another store to snag your favorite flavors.
What's interesting is that Laughing Cow and Happy Farm wedges are technically classified as a cheese spread despite being packaged in tiny little wedges that look like cheese. They're made of a blend of cheeses fortified by whey and include emulsifiers like sodium phosphate, which keeps the cheese spread nice and uniform. The original Happy Farms version contains Swiss, which isn't in the Laughing Cow version, but that doesn't appear to change the overall flavor profile of the dupe. If you're already a fan of the Laughing Cow's infinitely snackable cheese wedges, we think it's totally worth giving Aldi's Happy Farms version a shot. Put them side to side and you'll barely even notice a difference.