The grocery store bakery section should be a place of joy. Cookies. Cakes. Brownies. It’s the place we drift to when we need a pick-me-up — and it’s the last place we want to have issues with our food. Unfortunately, though, grocery store bakery sections can be much riskier than you might think, and a surprisingly high number of items stocking these shelves over the years have had to be recalled by the very people who made them. What should be delightfully delicious food items have instead been found time and time again to be substandard, contaminated, or even harmful.

By their very nature, baked goods are processed items, and that processing leaves them highly susceptible to being contaminated. Bakery items may contain spoiled ingredients or be vehicles for foodborne illnesses from Salmonella, Listeria, or Bacillus cereus bacteria. The processing they undergo also means they’re composed of ingredients from many different sources, which heightens the risk of contamination from foreign material or inadvertent allergens making it into the food itself. As baked goods are often made with or alongside foods that have nuts, they can present an even more considerable allergen risk than other parts of the grocery store. Once you look at these grocery store bakery recalls, you’ll think twice about grabbing those sugary treats.

1. Walmart had to recall its peanut butter chocolate cake after peanuts weren’t listed as an allergen

Regarding some recalls, certain ingredients can be hiding in plain sight — but one 2023 recall from Walmart took the cake if you’ll excuse the pun. The retailer was forced to recall almost 1,000 units of its cake products after discovering that some of its Marketside Ultimate Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake had been mislabeled as its Marketside Chocolate Chip Explosion Cake. Because of this, one of its key ingredients and allergens, peanuts, was not listed anywhere on the ingredients list or its allergen information.

Naturally, this presented a massive problem for Walmart, given how dangerous peanut allergies can be. The retailer scrambled to track down all of the units of this cake product, which was made by producer David’s Cookies. While folks may have been able to smell the peanuts in the peanut butter cake (which, contrary to popular belief, does not cause an allergic reaction, according to UNC Health Talk), which could have prevented those with allergies from taking a big bite, it’s clear that Walmart couldn’t justify not chasing down this faulty product. The good news for the supermarket company was that nobody had reported becoming sick from ingestion at the time of the recall.

2. A large amount of Kroger baked goods were recalled due to metal contamination

Kroger’s Country Oven brand is reliable, and customers have come to expect various products under its name. However, the size of the brand’s product line has also meant that when things go wrong, they can be catastrophic. This was the situation in 2021 when 19 individual Country Oven products had to be recalled because they may have had metal fragments. Everything from its cinnamon rolls to its cheese pockets to its raspberry cake was made with the same type of starch, which was believed to have been contaminated with metal. There is so much for a brand name you can trust, right?

Kroger’s woes were added because its potentially contaminated products were shipped everywhere. The company had to recall its Country Oven products from 29 individual states out of the 35 states in which Kroger operates. Add in the fact that these products had a swathe of different uses by date, and it’s clear that the retailer’s job for this recall was mammoth.