simple syrup
When we buy that Honey Bun or Swiss Roll at the gas station, we aren’t buying a snack cake; we’re buying the nostalgia that comes with it.
Twinkie, for example, was created when someone realized they could use some forgotten machines meant for cream-filled strawberry shortcake to make a plain old cream-filled snack cake. Similarly, the founder of Hostess started his bakery from the basement of a church in Kansas City in 1930. Both companies found immense success in mass-produced snack cakes—the cakes that costs almost nothing to produce and are still delicious enough to turn out a profit—and other cakes would continue this newly discovered emphasis on thriftiness. Over time, the success of the prototypical snack cake would revolutionize the food production industry. Not only did the snack cake carve out its own niche within the food production market—even spawning international spinoffs like the Korean Choco Pie, a copy of the American MoonPie—but played a large role in normalizing mechanized food production. From an objective standpoint, snack cakes are grossly inhuman; after all, not a single pair of hands touches those cakes throughout their entire production. However, the snack cake has completely rewired the paradigm of food thought—we live in a world of constant mechanization, whether it is our education to our transportation to, of course, our dessert. The unchanging nature of the snack cake has made it one of the most iconic snacks to have ever come out of America. From Ghostbusters to Zombieland, our cul-
ture has been obsessed with snack cakes since what seems like forever ago, and it’s not hard to see why. While the modern age has been subject to virtually every tumult possible, there’s something about snack cakes, which looks more or less the same as they did eighty years ago, that invokes the ghost of the “Good Old Days.” It’s a testament to the endurance of humanity, physical proof that mankind is capable of withstanding even the worst of crises. When we buy that Honey Bun or Swiss Roll at the gas station, we aren’t buying a snack cake; we’re buying the nostalgia that comes with it. Little Debbie still sells their products at fifty cents a pop because it reminds people of the days when things cost less than a buck; likewise, we still defend Cosmic Brownies because they remind us of when we were carefree, sugar-fueled kids. Considering all this, it’s really no surprise there’s an urban legend that claims Twinkies have an infinite shelf life (in reality, a Twinkie’s maximum shelf life is around seven days, after which it is not recommended for consumption); in a world where even our lives are uncertain, it’d be nice to know that at least one thing will last forever, even if that thing happens to be a greasy little snack cake.
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