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Most Viral TikToks of 2020: VidBits
The latest viral dessert has arrived right on the dot.
And it is aptly named the “dot cake.” If you hop on TikTok, you’ll find countless videos of influencers scraping their spoons across the sprinkled-covered surface before diving into the fluffy cake in a cup.
"I cannot go on my phone without seeing a video of a dot cake," baker Alex Posner, who cofounded the bakery behind the sugary sensation—The Dot Cakes—on New York's Long Island with her mom Sondra Posner—recently told Good Morning America, "which is extremely surreal."
After all, Alex never expected the treats would become this popular when she started making them as a high school senior back in 2017.
"This was just a friends-of-friends thing," she explained on the Invisible Ink podcast in 2024. "People liked the way they tasted, and they were cute. It just kind of was this whole packaged deal."
But it was around her sophomore year of college that Alex's customer base expanded, and she had her "aha moment" that she could turn this idea into a business.
"I would have clients that were showing up to my house and showing up to the store where I just had no idea who they were," the University of Texas at Austin alum continued. "I was like, 'This has reached people that I didn’t even know existed, and I didn’t even know was possible.'"
The Dot Cakes officially opened in 2019. “When I truly thought about it, I was like, 'This business, it's once in a lifetime,'" Alex added. "'This doesn’t happen.'"
As dot cakes—or Dotcakes as the company officially spells them—continue to take the internet by storm, cross your t’s and dot your i's by learning more about the dessert.
The Dot Cakes / Instagram
What Is a Dot Cake?
The most viral dot cakes are the bakery’s Dotcups, which feature a surface of nonpareils (a.k.a. the sprinkles that make up the dots) that sits on top of a layer of frosting followed by a soft cake that is packaged in an eight oz cup.
"It’s the juxtaposition of the fluffy cake with the hard sprinkles that’s the best part," TikToker Greta Louise Tomé, who’s posted several videos about dot cakes that have racked up millions of views, explained in one May post. "I get the hype, and I would 100 percent get this again."
Customers can also purchase nine or 12-inch single or double layer Dotcakes or a tiered cake, which is a nine-inch layer stacked on top of a 12-inch layer.
What Are the Dot Cake Flavors?
The cakes come in classic white, chocolate, vanilla chip, Funfetti and red velvet. Customers can also customize their cake to be free of dairy, gluten or eggs.
And while rainbow sprinkles are the most popular on TikTok, clients can personalize the color and design for special occasions.
"I think what makes a Dotcake so special is that such a simple product can create such an emotional reaction from celebrations to graduations to birthdays," Alex told GMA. "It’s just something that’s unique and different and people can really get around."
However, The Dot Cakes website notes they only use vanilla frosting to make their sprinkle designs more visible.
Where Can You Get a Dot Cake?
In addition to ordering cakes through The Dot Cakes website, customers can buy them at Butterfield Market in New York City, where they drop Wednesdays and Saturdays. But be warned: Videos on TikTok show customers waiting in lines that wrap around the block, and the store notes on its website that the cakes "often sell out within the hour."
How Much Does a Dot Cake Cost?
According to The Dot Cakes website, a four-pack of the viral Dotcups starts at $32, or $8 per eight-oz cup. Larger cakes, like a nine-inch, start at $55. However, customizations can increase the price for both types of treats.
What Is the Recipe for a Dot Cake?
While the bakery doesn’t list its exact recipe, many TikTokers have tried to connect the dots themselves and recreate the concoction. And Alex is all for it. As she told GMA, “Seeing people attempt to make what we’ve been perfecting over the past nine years is the biggest compliment you could ever receive from people."
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