Have your cake and sprinkles too!

Culinary Pixie Dust

For something that is often revered as culinary pixie dust, sprinkles are full of not-so-festive ingredients.

Have you ever tasted a sprinkle? They look fun, but they don’t really have a taste. So why do we add them to the treats we celebrate special occasions with? I mean… what’s a sundae without sprinkles? Or a birthday cake without sprinkles? Boo.

A quick look at ingredients of traditional sprinkles shows where the fun stops — corn syrup, a dozen or more artificial colors, artificial flavors, a thickener, and food-grade wax. Any food with a code name (looking at you fd&c Blue!) probably tastes like the chemical formulation it’s made from.

The Big Swap for Something Better!

We like to pay attention to these things. So we swapped our trusty sprinkles for something better!

Now, we sprinkle our birthday cakes with sprinkles that are colored with vegetable and spices. Don't get me wrong, they are still festive and bright, made with ingredients that don't make us cringe when writing our own ingredient labels … sugar, cornstarch, rice flour, and colorings (turmeric, annatto, vegetable juices, & beta-carotene). They taste like dried sugar frosting, they look fun, they are made with decent ingredients, and they are vegan! Win, Win, Win!

We are so happy about them, we went from a sprinkling of sprinkles on our birthday cakes to making sprinkles an option on all desserts! Vegan birthday cakes with sprinkles, you've got it! Gluten-free s'mores with sprinkles, you bet!

Sprinkles aren't just for birthdays. If you are celebrating something else besides a birthday, we’ll break out the sprinkles for you too!