Bye Bye Bacon, Birthday Cake is the New ‘It’ Flavor
Everybody likes to feel special, and the one day a year when that's practically guaranteed, is your birthday. OK, we don't like getting older and many of us have experienced an "its my party and I'll cry if I want to" moment, but step into a kitchen where a simple yellow cake is baking and you may just feel like a wide-eyed kid about to blow out a bunch of candles. "Birthday cake is a time machine to a happy place," New York City's current cupcake queen Allison Robicelli, who co-authored the new book Robicelli's: A Love Story, With Cupcakes with her husband Matt, tells Yahoo Shine. And that's what manufacturers are betting on with the huge range of birthday cake flavored items on the market today.
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There is birthday cake flavored yogurt, popcorn, candy, iced blended tea, and more. M&Ms recently announced they would be releasing a birthday cake version of their iconic candy in May 2014. If you want your actual birthday cake to taste even more like, umm...birthday cake, you can add an artificial extract that bills itself as so authentic, "you will smell the wax of the burning candles."
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The products generally fall into three categories based on how well they incorporate vanilla, butter, sugar, and eggs-the fundamental flavorings in basic, homemade birthday cake-into their formulas. One of the tastiest items is ice cream because it can be studded with chunks of real cake or flavored with natural ingredients. The middle range includes confections and candies such as Oreos and jellybeans whose appeal relies on sugar and artificial extract but will satisfy your sweet tooth as well any other lab-produced flavor like cotton candy or cookies 'n' cream. Then there's what we'll refer to as the "call poison control" category: protein powder, alcoholic beverages, and Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish.
Food trends come and go, but because of its strong emotional resonance and traditional vanilla-based flavor, birthday cake flavor may have more staying power than some. Chili chocolate, green tea, and anything bacon are trendy tastes, but they are not for everyone. "You have one day a year devoted to you," points out Robicelli. "Of all the desserts, you can pick pie, cookies, doughnuts, anything-but you have cake." As for birthday cake-flavored vodka? She says she'll pass.
Also on Shine:
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Cupcakes
