Things May Be Bad, But at Least the Cake Pop Era Is Finally Over
Photo by American Heritage Chocolate/Unsplash
When I was in college, I worked at a gluten-free bakery for a few months. Besides selling sandy cupcakes to entitled mothers of children with unconfirmed allergies, my main job was to crumble up unsold cupcakes, mold them into balls, dip those balls into melted chocolate and cover them with sprinkles over and over again. I much preferred this task to dealing with suburban Georgia moms who repeatedly asked how many calories were in our sprinkles, so I became the designated cake pop person. Soon enough, my six-hour shifts were dedicated entirely to attempting to make old, dried-out cupcakes somewhat appealing to six-year-olds with tummy issues.
This was during the height of the cake pop craze, when Starbucks was still selling slews of cake pops at every drive-thru window across the country. These days, cake pops’ popularity is seeing a major slump: Tastewise food trends reports a marked decline in mentions of cake pops in the past year. It seems like the sugary, quintessentially millennial snack may just be meeting its end.
For the cake pop lovers out there, this news may be a bummer: There’s a good chance you’re not seeing as many sweets-on-a-stick as you did in the past. But for anyone who has good taste in dessert, it’s a welcome respite from the ridiculous reign of the cake pop, an odd dessert that absolutely nobody asked to be birthed into existence.