| Recipe |
| • Cake Shake • Kandy Kakes |
If logic ruled all human actions, our movies would be a lot less interesting. The doe-eyed female lead would never leave her well-adjusted, financially secure husband for an off-kilter new man, horror victims wouldn't go up the stairs, and Luke Skywalker would have stayed on Dagobah to finish his training instead of zipping off to Cloud City to rescue his friends. But we're emotional beings, us humans, and our decisions are made from a combination of well-reasoned logic and messy, mushy, and often-confusing feelings. Thus Luke climbs back in his X-Wing, and in real life, we make all sorts of similarly emotional decisions that aren't in our best interest. Like eating Tastykakes.
Hold on for a moment, Krimpet lover; don't get angry with me just yet. I'm not saying that Tastykakes aren't tasty. Oh, no. They're like the lobster of snack cakes: a regional delicacy widely considered to be the best of its kind (and don't even try to tell me that when it comes to crustaceans, crab is better than lobster). But it's hard to argue that Tastykakes are good for you. It's not just that they're sweets; they're pre-packaged treats with a long list of unpronounceable ingredients and hot-button ingredients like high fructose corn syrup.
Yet, whether due to nostalgia, blind love of the taste, or fierce hometown pride, people who are otherwise proponents of gourmet cuisine or eating fresh will defend Tastykakes to the end. I'm not saying that the two sides have to be mutually exclusive, but at first glance it does feel a little odd. And perhaps even odder is how often the Tastykake is incorporated into our restaurants menus. Deconstructed Tastykakes of all sorts have been popping up across Philadelphia for the past few years. Stephen Starr's Square Burger features both a Tastykake sundae and Cake Shake, the latter of which features bits of kakes suspended in thick vanilla ice cream. Across the city in Daniel Stern's regionally inspired MidAtlantic, a version of the Butterscotch Krimpet graces the menu as a bread pudding. And perhaps the most haute Tastykake is the version that James-Beard winner Michael Laiskonis created as a possible dessert for the Philadelphia Ritz Carlton a couple of years ago, which featured coconut sorbet, a tuile made from blended kakes, and Tastykake “croutons.”
These takes on the Tastykake fit in well with the upscale comfort food “trend.” (Can it still be called a trend if it's been happening for several years and shows no sign of stopping?) But the prevalence of Tastykake desserts points to something else: Philadelphia's lack of regional sweets. Can you think of a more Philadelphia dessert than a Tastykake? This isn't a rhetorical question; can you seriously think of any other sweets that scream “Philly,” that show up on our restaurant menus? Our most well-known regional foods are savory: cheese steaks, scrapple, pretzels. Sure, there are plenty of delicious Pennsylvania Dutch desserts out there, but an Amish apple pie still seems more American than Pennsylvanian.
I have to wonder if we'd have as many desserts incorporating or mimicking pre-packed snack cakes in our restaurants if we had more regional options to choose from – a pie or cookie that felt more Philadelphian than something that comes from a factory.
But that doesn't mean those factory treats aren't delicious.
| Cake Shake (from the ground up) |
I love the Cake Shake at Square Burger, and I also love a slightly unnecessary  cooking challenge. Hence this version of the Cake Shake, where you make the kakes yourself.
Milkshake 3 scoops vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt |
| Kandy Kakes, of Sorts |
| A lot of mock Kandy Kake recipes available online get the layers right – yellow cake, then creamy peanut butter, then chocolate – but ignore the shape and full-chocolate coating of the original dessert and instead treating it like a cake with two frostings. In this version, the peanut-butter frosting and yellow cake are mixed together, but the entire thing is coated in chocolate like the original.
Cake: 
1 ½ c white or white-whole wheat flour Frosting: Coating: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9” x 9” pan. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture and the milk to the butter mixture, a little at a time, beating with the electric mixer. When it's mixed together, pour the cake in the pan and cook for approximately 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Set on a wire rack to cool. While the cake is cooking, make the frosting by creaming together all the frosting ingredients with an electric mixer (clean the beaters first). Set aside. When the cake has cooled, crumble it into a bowl. Add the frosting and mix (it's easiest to just do this part with your hands). When the mixture holds together, form it into Kandy Kake size patties and cool in the fridge for at least an hour. After the patties have cooled, melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Dip the patties in the chocolate, flipping them over so they become fully coated, then place on wax paper. After all the patties have been dipped, put them in the fridge to harden. |
Article image by article author. "DIY" photograph by John and Eliza Forder/Getty Images, "Pantry" photograph by Áslaug Snorradóttir.
Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. Check out her website,www.megfavreau.com.
