
One of my social media feeds recently presented me with some birthday cake related videos. One promised a “life changing” birthday cake hack. As my loyal readers can well imagine, I couldn’t click fast enough. I love cake. And I’m not against a good hack either.
Yet what made this birthday cake hack video into a blog? My disappointment.
The most appealing part is at the beginning when the person offering the hack (I assume I can’t call her a hacker, that’s got bad cybersecurity connotations) cuts the middle out of the cake using a tall water glass. After pushing the glass through the center of the layered cake, she is able to pull the glass out with a little yummy round cake-let. Loved this idea. I’m thinking I could layer a sheet cake but then use a glass to give everyone a nice little individual cake to enjoy solo. That’s an ingenious hack. Yum!
But she keeps on going. She takes this gaping hole in the middle of the cake and shoves it full of not one, not two, not three, but five different kinds of store bought sprinkles. She just dumps the containers on in there, then lathers the top with frosting.
I thought she might mix the icing and the sprinkles, but no. It’s all just sitting in the hole in the cake’s center. She then puts more sprinkles on to the top of the cake to cover the fact that the frosting‘s no longer match.
“I’m turning this $5 cake into a $500 cake!”
She and her camera person* agree this hack is making the cake so much better. But what she’s really done is built a sugar bomb. And she’s taken away the delicious CAKE!
This is all about the image of the cake. The idea of cutting into a cake that will explode with colorful sprinkles and look amazing on social media feed slo-mo videos or in your Instagram story. Even if you like sprinkles, you don’t actually get that many more of them. Only a few actually affix to the cake because there is no icing used other than to seal the top for the surprise effect.
This birthday cake hack totally throws off the cake to icing to toppings ratio! It has rendered the scrumptious birthday treat into a social media phenomenon. Boo.
Other Ideas for this Birthday Cake Hack
This hack could be really useful for a kid’s party if you, say, built a volcano-like cake. The kid cutting into it could have orange and red icing spew out like lava. Cool. Or maybe you could make it a lucrative surprise by putting coins inside. That would be fun too. Especially in countries where coins actually add up quite quickly to a good chunk of dough.
But as this cake hack works currently, I am not impressed. Too little cake. Too much mess. It’s not meant to be eaten but rather make a visual feast for your followers. So, if you’re going to serve up this particular birthday cake, may I suggest you also get another cake to actually let the dessert lovers at your party enjoy?
* Btw, if you watch the video it’s worth doing so with the volume on rather than the captions. That way you can enjoy the camera person’s cake porn oohs and aahs.