Party Cake Mania

Pretty sure that before "party cake" flavoring arrived on the scene a few years ago, my life had a dreadful hole, a void of which I was unaware, and yet, I knew that something was missing. Something with buttercream and sprinkles.

Enter Turkey Hill's Party Cake ice cream, my introduction to the flavor and still the best use of the flavor anywhere:

TH's version has a soft vanilla ice cream with blue buttercream and colored cake chunks. I LOVE IT.

Lately, party cake has seen a proliferation of uses, beyond ice cream, and in the interest of science, I tried a few of them. Research, my friends. Research. (or, as Jesse Pinkman says, SCIENCE, bitch)

First up, M&Ms birthday cake:

Supposed to taste like chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Tastes like your basic M&Ms with a slight vanilla addition. Not worth it, IMO.

Next, DQ announced its confetti cake ice cream, which can be served in a waffle cone. I about had a heart attack when I saw that on t.v. Waffle cones, yes yes yes. So off to DQ we went. Over ten dollars later, we had two of these abominations:

First, where's the icing? I want to taste some buttercream frosting in there, not just the basic DQ vanilla soft serve. Second, the chunks of cake were few and far between, unlike the goodies packed into TH's ice cream. Last, and the death note on this one, the confetti/sprinkles are itty-bitty pebbles of astounding hardness. Like crunching gravel in my soft serve. 

Bleh. Save your money on that one. (my sister tells me that the strawberry cheesequake, however, is well worth every penny)

The final experiment was Party Cake Peeps, which also sent me into a tailspin when I saw them in CVS. Had to have them on the spot:

PCP (heh) are a rather frightening shade of bright blue on the outside, yellow on the inside, with bits of colored flecks that are, I gather, supposed to resemble sprinkles. How do they taste? LET ME TELL YOU. 

I will eat them forever. I didn't think anything could be better than a regular peep (those chocolate covered ones, blech), but these are WONDERFUL. As you can see from the pic, people are already using them to top all kinds of baked desserts. In this case, it was funfetti cake cupcakes. Funfetti is itself an entire category, and useful in making all sorts of things, not the least of which is funfetti waffles, which are every bit as delightful as you might think:

So here's the deal: Turkey Hill party cake ice cream and Party Cake Peeps, big thumbs up. So far, everything else... meh. 

This is an on-going experiment. I shall endeavor to try any and all versions of birthday cake/party cake/confetti/funfetti foodstuffs as I find. Because SCIENCE, bitch.