Name: Market Pantry Imitation Vanilla Flavor
Bought in: Target, USA
Size: 237ml
Proposition 65 Warning: Yes

And today, something a little different. Let’s say that you had enough of someone else’s Birthday Cake flavoured items, and wanted to create your own? Target have you covered, with an enormous bottle of Imitation Vanilla Flavor.

Now some of you will be saying something about badgers round about now, but there’s two reasons this definitely isn’t badger bum juice. Firstly, that’s listed as natural flavouring, and this is listed as artificial. Secondly… they just don’t use the badger stuff anymore because it’s hard to get.

Easier to get are petrochemicals, and it turns out that some of these can be combined to make the delicious sounding vanillylmandelic acid, which when it reacts with oxygen becomes vanillin. Hence the state of California Proposition 65 Warning.

So smelling the bottle gives you a somewhat burned vanilla flavour – a little bit smokier than you’d expect vanilla to be. Taste wise – I don’t want to taste too much on its own, and so the small amount I tried tasted pretty watery to be honest.

In order to try it out in a more natural environment, it was used to make some cupcakes.

As you can see, these were cupcakes to be proud of, with some glorious purple icing, brightly coloured sprinkles and lovely soft cakes. They also tasted nothing like birthday cake flavour, as seemingly none of the vanilla flavour made it though.

Therefore, we can assume that if you really wanted to produce your own birthday cake flavoured items, you can do better than travelling to the US, buying this and attempting to use it in your cakes.

Rating: (nil)
Cake-o-meter: (nil)
Cupcake Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cupcake-o-meter: 🎂🎂🎂