Screenshot via Instagram/@snackpass and @sofiagrace.snacks
Audio By Carbonatix
New Yorkers have been waiting in line for hours for a sprinkle-covered cake cup that’s taken TikTok by storm. Soon, Floridians won’t have to.
Publix posted a Reel that has sent the internet into a frenzy. The video features a spoon being dragged across a pile of rainbow nonpareil sprinkles, with the satisfying clacking sound and all, captioned: “We heard you like a certain type of cake… New Bakery goodness drops June 16.”
Essentially, Publix is bringing TikTok’s viral dot cakes to South Florida.
The trend behind the tease
The dot cake originates with the Dot Cakes, a small bakery in Roslyn, Long Island that Alex Posner, now 27, started in 2017 as a high school student working out of her parents’ home.
Posner took her inspiration from pointillism, coating cakes entirely in nonpareils, those tiny spherical sprinkles, so that all you see is a thick surface of tiny dots: no visible frosting, no sponge, just color. They even write messages on custom cakes using carefully arranged nonpareils. “The point wasn’t the cake, it was the decoration,” Posner told the New York Times. “And now the point is the cake.”
All about the “Dotcup”
The product that went viral is the “Dotcup,” a single-serving eight-ounce cup of sponge cake topped with frosting and completely coated in rainbow sprinkles, in flavors like classic white, chocolate, red velvet, vanilla chip, and funfetti. Posner sells around 3,000 a week, and the bakery is so slammed right now that shipping inquiries are backed up. “People say it’s just cake and sprinkles, because it is just cake and sprinkles,” she said. That hasn’t stopped anyone.
The cups had been building a following since Butterfield started carrying them last fall, but went properly viral this spring after TikToker Danielle Pheloung posted a video of herself with 11 of them; the video racked up millions of views. Part of the appeal is running a spoon across the hard, sprinkle-paved surface and listening to the sound, a whole ASMR ritual people have started performing on camera.
Screenshot via Instagram/@snackpass and @sofiagrace.snacks
In New York City, Butterfield Market on the Upper East Side is the exclusive retail spot and blows through 640 cakes per location in under an hour on Wednesdays and Saturdays. People have reportedly hired line-sitters just to score one.
However, they aren’t universally beloved. A reporter at the New York Post waited an hour on the sidewalk and called them “unspeakably awful.” The craze has since inspired dotcake ice cream, doughnuts, and manicures, and copycat versions from other bakeries and grocery stores have already begun to appear.
Screenshot via Instagram/@publix
Publix understood the assignment
The Publix tease hit nearly 2,900 likes within hours. Most commenters already knew what was coming, with many people just typing “DOT CAKE” while another wrote, “SHUT UP.” One commenter offered “DOTS TASTE LIKE POISON” while someone else noted the dots are “literally just nonpareil sprinkles that have been around forever. Doesn’t taste like anything. Just adds crunch.” A few used the thread to lobby for the return of Publix’s discontinued hurricane cakes.
Publix is doing their version in-house (hopefully meaning there is no line-sitting required). Whether it’s better than the New York original, Florida finds out on June 16.
Publix. Available at all locations starting June 16; publix.com.
