“Dot cakes are dopamine baking!”
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Brendan O'Connor on RTE Radio 1. Listen back on the RTE Radio Player app. Carina Camerino from the Camerino Bakery. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
So Carina, dot cakes. So you can't go anywhere on social media now without seeing dot cakes. What are they? Where do they come from?
Dot cakes are this viral cake that originated in the States. And they've gone all over TikTok, all over Instagram because they're very photogenic cakes. It's a layer of sponge cake covered in a very smooth edge-to-edge layer of buttercream and then dipped in hundreds and thousands.
What exactly is a dot cake and why is it going viral on social media?
So they're nice and tight and compact, completely covering the top. It makes like a crackly candy kind of crust layer.
Okay, so it's got a kind of a crunch when you put the spoon into it, yeah?
Yeah, it ticks all of the social media boxes. It's like visually stunning, colorful. You have the ASMR thing where people scrape the spoon across the hundreds and thousands and then crackle through the top crust. And they are extremely popular on social media and in the shops where they sell them. Are you making them? We're making them for pride, yeah. Rainbow-colored hundreds and thousands. We have them in the cafe in Black Rock.
Okay. You think there's something deeper going on here in general? Like you think all these viral trends like the dark cakes and stuff, all these cute foods are kind of something to do with the state of the world, yeah?
Yeah, I think that celebrating, you know, can be a form of entertainment and connection. And I think like the world is polarized and so are desserts and the aesthetic of desserts.
How is a dot cake constructed and what makes its texture unique?
You have on one end of the spectrum, you have the very beige, minimalist, super aesthetic aspects. And like bear. Yeah. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have more, you have colorful, you have dopamine, you have more joy, nostalgia. I think it hits on like, we want to experience some moments of simple joy.
And is nostalgia a big thing too with cake trends?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
We want to bring ourselves back to that time when things were kind of simpler.
Yeah.
Birthday party where some, you know, maybe your mom or family member made your cake for you. And it was that. It was colorful. It was made with love. It was homey.
So what are the other kind of like kitschy, nostalgic cake trends and things people are looking for?
We see it in birthday cakes and we see it in wedding cakes as well in the bakery, communion cakes and everything. So you have very colorful, sprinkle, multicolored cakes. You have this trend called Lambeth cakes or kitschy cakes where it's a cake. Can you imagine cakes like of the Marie Antoinette time where it's cakes covered in like piped ruffles and swags and shells and glassy cherries with the stem still on and that kind of really... Colourful.
So hyper real almost kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. But old school. So you're going to tell us how to make our own dot cakes at home. Fairly straightforward, is this?
Super straightforward. Dot cakes... It originally started in kind of an ice cream cup, but through social media, it's evolved. So now the way that I recommend it and the way that you'll see it on social media is made in a clear container, either a glass jar that you can repurpose or a plastic container. You cut a circle out of a sponge cake. and you put it into the jar. You leave a little gap at the top. You fill that gap with buttercream all the way to the tippy top and then using the flat end of a butter knife or an offset spatula if you have that, you skim it across so that it's completely flat.
Why are dot cakes especially popular with younger bakers and for Pride events?
Then you turn it over and dip, dip, dip it into a plate full of hundreds of thousands so that they're nice and compact. It goes edge to edge. It's nice and tidy. And I have a recipe that'll make you sick.
Okay. And we can buy sponge as well and do that if we want to, if you want to do it with kids or whatever. And it's smushed down then, I feel. Smush is the word for this, is it?
How do nostalgia and ‘dopamine’ foods influence current cake trends?
Yeah.
You don't want any gaps. You want it to be really compact so that you get that crackly candy crust. And yeah, making it from box cake or purchase sponge is what brings you joy.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:36
2
What exactly is a dot cake and why is it going viral on social media?
0:36–1:34
3
How is a dot cake constructed and what makes its texture unique?
1:34–3:38
4
Why are dot cakes especially popular with younger bakers and for Pride events?
3:38–4:00
5
How do nostalgia and ‘dopamine’ foods influence current cake trends?
4:00–6:07