Now the birthday cake is becoming more and more exquisite.
The last time I went to celebrate my friend Aso's birthday, the moment the cake was served, everyone collectively exclaimed - the shape is a lonely island with a hot air balloon, and even the waves are simulated vividly. Everyone was amazed at how beautiful the cake was, and if it weren't for the occasion, I'd probably think it's a niche figure of some artist.
The style looks similar to the following image:
Source: A merchant in Meituan
Immediately after that, someone asked, "This cake is so beautiful, how much does it cost?" ”
After learning that it cost about 400 yuan, everyone sighed "no wonder", and quickly promoted the photo session between the birthday star and the birthday cake. I have to admit that this "island" is really out of the film, Asu unconsciously smiled brighter than before, and even put two close-ups of cakes in the photos posted in the circle of friends.
It's just that there is some heartache when cutting the cake, and eating it tastes like chewing wax in the mouth. Not only did I not have the impression of the fluffy sweetness of the fruit cream cake, but I didn't eat two bites, and my tongue and lips were all stained.
Nowadays, the cake looks like a work of art, but why is it "not good to eat"?
Different from the "cake rollover" that once circulated on the Internet, the gap between the buyer's show and the seller's show is gradually narrowing. Aso told me that he has mastered the secret of buying cakes without stepping on thunder - more expensive Internet celebrity stores are more secure.
But this is based on the premise of having more noodles on the birthday day and taking more pictures, "To be honest, if you pay more attention to delicious birthday cakes, you should buy traditional cream fruits or new ice cream mousses." ”
Search for cakes on food delivery apps and you'll find beautiful artwork everywhere. Although there are many traditional fruit cream cakes, you can't help but be attracted by the higher-priced "treasures of the town". The "Adria Love Island" priced at 339 yuan in a store even became the second place in the birthday cake comprehensive in Chaoyang District, Beijing.
The gorgeous shape and exquisite infrastructure make people can't help but sigh: this class of students of architecture and civil engineering have all gone to work as cake decorators, right?
Source: Screenshot of Ele.me
Today's birthday cake universe has entered a new dimension, both in appearance and price, it has reached the next level.
The 3D landscaping stream holds up half the sky of the new cake. One of the most famous is the Internet celebrity cake shop Cathedral Cake Kathedral, and everyone in the comment area comes to praise the degree of appearance. But at the same time, he was complained about because of "no cake base" and "no taste in a beautiful place". According to the description of the blogger @Yang Strawberry Bear in the evaluation, the feeling of eating this Internet celebrity cake is comparable to the "construction site", because of "too much glue", it can't be cut.
Source: Xiaohongshu @ Origami Airplane (lactation) & Douyin @ Yang Strawberry Bear
The price is nearly 500 yuan, and it is a bit of a loss just to take a photo.
But this does not prevent the 3D model from being landscaped, one second to see the red house in Iceland, the next second to Cinderella's pumpkin carriage, all imagination can be unleashed in the cake world.
It's just that when I comment, I will add a sentence "It's perfect aside from the eating feeling". For example, another highly popular and exquisite pumpkin carriage style cake of the cathedral family sold for 538 yuan, although it was commented that "the cake itself is delicious", but some people emphasized that as a birthday cake, "the amount is not very large" and "it is not very convenient to eat".
Source: Xiaohongshu @ Xiao Liu Master
Not only is it a fairy tale world, but now the landscaping cake has risen to the level of "micro landscape" and "landscape painting". From mountains and rivers to mountains and waves, the delicacy of the overall texture is comparable to that of a figure (of course, the price), giving people a sense of alienation that "can only be seen from a distance, but not spoken".
Source: Xiaohongshu @ Ten Years of Ordinary Male Decorative Artist&@设计控
Due to the test of the decorator's infrastructure skills, if the landscaping cake overturns, it is the effect of the sky falling apart.
Some netizens ordered the "micro landscape" cake in the picture in a private bakery, but they stepped on the thunder when they got it, the steep mountain top should have just been struck by lightning, and the shocking snow scene suffered an avalanche. Under the complaining post, even the original creative main bakery was amused.
Source: Xiaohongshu @ Xu Sansui
Not only the landscaping cake fire, but also the abstract art stream has become a new field for cake decorators. Take out a cake work at random and compare it to the exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts. I am reluctant to destroy it when I spend money to buy it, and I am full of guilt when I eat it. The good thing is that the art students who can't find a job this year have vaguely found a career path.
The canopy pattern and brilliant rock color simulation of Mogao Grottoes appear to be brilliant on the cake embryo; The romantic rainbow cloud cake needs to be seen in the sunlight to see the subtlety, and it makes sense to say that it is an art installation from a distance; Monet and Van Gogh were even more favorites of the decorators, and "excerpts from water lilies" and "fragments of the starry sky" were put on the cake base, and every spatula trace was like an oil painting brushstroke.
The price of this kind of cake is often higher, often more than 1,000 yuan, and the booking time is based on the complexity of the process and the degree of instability of the order, as short as seven days, as long as one or two months.
Source: Xiaohongshu @宗繇&@AI.Wayne @Bonne Patisserie
American style is equally popular. The price of three or four hundred is not a lion opening compared to the first two, the more colors matching, the higher the saturation, the more eye-catching, this style is more American-style desserts, so that you can hold it in your hand and become an American sweetheart.
The regular and smooth printing and cream edges test the basic skills of the decorators, the dense sugar grains need to be flat and not abrupt, and the color matching is the concrete judgment of the decorator's personal aesthetics.
Source: Xiaohongshu @Caviar Yukii
As we all know, the sweetness of cakes in European and American countries is about the level that you have to take insulin when you eat a bite of mosquitoes. According to the laws of nature, the brighter the color of the cake, the more invisibly it kills.
According to Asu, who ordered a similar style on a certain birthday, the style is eye-catching, and the candy sprinkled with it can almost kill people, "I remember that half of my friends who came to celebrate my birthday at that time were losing weight or controlling sugar, and everyone used a fork to scrape off the cream and candy grains on it before eating." ”
Source: Xiaohongshu @ sauce purple bakery
In general, the birthday cakes of Internet celebrities in recent years have become more and more "undesirable".
Zhang Ailing's mouth "the essence of the cake is all in the burnt aroma of the baking period" no longer exists, leaving behind the exquisite shape made by the decorator who spent a lot of time and energy, the cards that the birthday stars can get their hands at any time, and the artifact of dozens of films that have been praised in the circle of friends.
But there is no right or wrong, and what kind of cake you want to buy depends entirely on the needs of the consumer itself. Some people pay more attention to practicality, and would rather go to Sam's to buy a 99 yuan fruit cake than spend a lot of money to buy a shape; The other part needs to set off the atmosphere and ritual, the cake mainly plays the role of atmosphere and beauty, and the taste is secondary.
Xiao Ai, the owner of the bakery who has been in the business for 8 years, told me, "The baking industry can be said to be a track without dead ends. Some people specialize in low prices, some people specialize in craftsmanship, and some people specialize in flavors, as long as you think of the needs, you can be satisfied, in fact, it is a good thing for merchants and consumers."
However, why are more and more businesses starting to push cakes that are "not good for eating"?
To put it bluntly, the gross profit margin of traditional cakes is too low, and cakes are really not a good business.
The cost of a cake needs to consider raw materials such as cream, frosting, and decorations, as well as labor costs such as equipment, software, rent, and decorators.
Nowadays, vegetable cream cake has been gradually eliminated from the market, and more expensive and healthier animal cream has become the mainstream. In the past, the cost of margarine and canned fruit was only a few yuan, and the packaging and labor were not much exquisite, and it was already the limit to sell for dozens of yuan; The current popular animal butter is more than three times the cost price of vegetable butter, and the price of fresh fruit has naturally doubled since the replacement of canned fruit. Coupled with packaging, labor costs, distribution fees, and platform commissions, the profit of traditional cream cakes can only reach about 30%, and some private stores will even lose money.
According to a former employee on the Internet, in the heyday of the Internet celebrity brand "Panda Don't Go Cake", which has been suspended, the overall profit margin was only maintained at about 50%.
Source: Xiaohongshu @ Guqua dling&@醒醒
If there is a process, it is different, and the profit of a single cake can be doubled in an instant. Ordinary cream cakes that sell for 15 plus exquisite decorations and fondant can be sold for as much as three or four hundred yuan, and with a little gimmick, the price will exceed five hundred in minutes.
But this does not mean that the birthday cake has become a profiteering product, it can only be said that the profit margin has begun to become controllable, and it is in the hands of the decorator. According to Xiao Ai, the reason why the price of fondant cakes is high is because of the addition of manual costs. For the same size cake, the traditional fruit cream style takes only half an hour, but the fondant can be as long as a few hours, and the decoration can even take longer than the cake itself.
Although the gross profit has increased, the time spent on making individual cakes tends to reduce the turnover, "which is why I personally don't like to make complex cakes."
Little Love's Shop; Source: Xiaohongshu @ Yuanqi Baking 🍰
If the decorator can complete the product in the fastest possible time with quality and quantity, the profit margin can be greatly improved, and vice versa.
As the largest category segment in the baking market, cake shops have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain in the past two years. Birthday cakes are no longer limited only to birthdays, and all kinds of anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and even pets' birthdays need a cake as a decoration. According to Euromonitor, China's cake market sales were 97.3 billion yuan in 2020, and it is predicted that China's cake market sales are expected to reach 142.7 billion yuan in 2025.
On the one hand, there is a "consumption scene" that is constantly being excavated and developed, and the ideal state is that you have no ceremony, and you also want to buy a cake to make a "sense of ceremony", on the other hand, there are more people entering the game, the industry is fiercely competitive, and there are more wolves and less meat.
Xiao Ai, a senior baker, was a little helpless, "Now there are almost more baking peers than customers on Xiaohongshu. If you want to survive, either roll the price, or roll the technology, or roll the two together, compared to previous years, this industry is really not the best time. ”
Xiao Ai told me that the threshold of the baking industry is indeed very low, especially the private bakery is full of chaos. Some shopkeepers dare to open their doors to do business just by learning how to "wipe their faces" on the Internet, and then rely on their connections to get a piece of the pie. The state of oversupply in the industry has given rise to vicious price competition, "making consumers feel that all birthday cakes are 'only' worth that price", and at the same time, it is easy for consumers to lose trust in the craftsmanship of merchants and worry about encountering "overturning".
That's why there are more and more posts complaining about the birthday cake category. In order to improve profit margins, some merchants use delicately shaped cakes as a gimmick to keep the pricing in a range higher than that of traditional cakes and lower than those of high-tech cakes. If you are complained, you can still quibble - "what kind of bicycle do you want at this price".
Source: Xiaohongshu @ Cream Puffs without sugar
The forest is bigger and there are more birds, and the matter of making cakes has nothing to do with "deliciousness". It is rumored on the Internet that some merchants will even use excessive colloids to support the beautiful shape in order to make the cake "more beautiful" and "more gorgeous".
Xiao Ai was puzzled by this, "The landscaping effect of regular merchants is not as mysterious as imagined, and the raw materials are not very special. If you want the cake to change its shape and stabilize it, you can use chocolate and cream cream, and even if it is a scene like transparent seawater, you generally don't need additives such as cheap gels, at least I haven't seen it. ”
In the small city where Xiao Ai lives, traditional cakes are still the mainstream, and landscaping cakes are not very popular, but only appear as a new category that makes people feel fresh, "it may be related to everyone's income level".
Xiaohongshu's #birthdaycaketopic has nearly 4 million posts and 3.45 billion views, almost half of which are beautifully shaped cake shares. In first- and second-tier cities, almost all of the top cake shops in Dianping are promoting art streams, and delicately shaped birthday cakes have officially become eye-catching.
"Looking" or "eating" seems to have become one of the two choices of the birthday stars. It's even harder to find the perfect birthday cake for both.
I kind of miss my birthday when I was a kid. There weren't so many tricks in those days, and whoever had a fluffy and soft cake for their birthday was already the envy of everyone, the fruit on the tip of the cream would definitely be distributed to the best friends, and the chocolate brand with blessings was reserved for themselves.
And not like now - "rock-paper-scissors, whoever loses eats this hard-erected statue".
Edit | Tachibana Chief Author | Plus design | Fat Rabbit Interviewee | Xiaohongshu blogger @ Yuanqi Baking 🍰 opening picture source | Xiaohongshu @ Li Xiaomao Yasminaaaa cover image source | Cat food blogger