For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gushers, they are basically edible, fruity pustules. This means that children LOVE them. Or at least, children are sucked in by the EXTREME commercials and pester their mom to buy Gushers so that when they go to school they can sit at the cool kids’ table during lunch.
Personally, I was more in the Fruit Roll-Ups camp, but I remember Gushers being kinda cool. Not terrible, anyway. Fast forward fifteen years–do they hold up?
And there you have it! I leave you with one of the more disturbing Gushers’ commercials.
*Homestuck’s Gushers are obviously far superior, but Kat and I were not about to bust out a Sharpie and color our Gushers black in the name of accuracy.
Like most people, I suffer from a disease called ‘nostalgia’.
I have a pretty bad case of it. It’s why my friends and I went out and bought the new My Little Ponies after they released them a few years ago. It’s why I own DVD sets of The Adventures of Pete and Pete and Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s why I recreated a cake from when I was in second grade.
The recipe isn’t hard–in the spirit of my mom’s original cake, we went with box mixes for everything. You do have to pull a few Macguyvers in the kitchen and do things you normally wouldn’t–like baking part of the cake in an oven-safe bowl for the burger top, or voluntarily consuming Airheads (I do not recommend this).
The ‘meat’ patty is frosted chocolate cake that’s covered in crushed chocolate cookies (or in this case, chocolate Teddy Grahams–because the idea of a bear burger is even BETTER). Bottom bun is half the poundcake plus red frosting ‘ketchup’. NOTE: IT IS INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT TO GET FOOD COLORING TO REPRESENT BUN COLORS, IT TOOK US FOREVER.
All I’m saying–AIRHEADS. THEY’RE OUTTA CONTROL!!!
Okay, so the ‘red frosted sugar cookie’ tomatoes were less successful. BUT TASTY.
Et voilà! Our finished burger cake was EVEN BETTER than that Woman’s Day one! Except that it sorta looks like it’s pleading with you not to eat it. Well sir, we’ll show you!
THE BIRTHDAY GIRL WAS PLEASED. Except the cake apparently was too exciting to eat, and it sat around in her apartment as a show-and-tell for a week. Oh well, I made it for myself this past birthday and cake+airheads isn’t the best combo, so I don’t blame her.
BONUS! One of our failbatches of bun-colored frosting turned gray, and so with the leftover cake and stuff we made TEDDY GRAHAM VOLCANO DIORAMAS involving BEAR SACRIFICES. Unlike the cake, this was pretty tasty!
And now I’ll leave you with another bit of nostalgia, the intro to Nickelodeon’s Good Burger movie (which is totally awesome, shut up haters!):
aaaand here’s the recipe, if you’re so inclined (and we just used Airheads for all the fixings, though back in the day my mom used the recommended spice drops).
Kat
Kendra
Sugar Vamps 