Wait - you mean everyone can see this title?

Stop licking your monitor.

Suddenly we all want cake. Or better yet cupcakes. No. You know what? Screw it. Just fill a pail with frosting and pass the spoon.

We're done pandering to adulthood. That means we're done pretending to like grown up food. Fusion cuisine makes us feel clever at parties, but it doesn't make us feel loved. Nobody's parents ever served lamb curry fajitas with Yorkshire pudding smothered in sweet and sour sauce at Sunday dinner. Fusion cuisine, like every other food trend to come along, romanced us, pantsed us, and left us fundamentally unsatisfied. There's no emotional connection there and we're sick of feeling clever anyway. Clever people have stress and responsibilities and stuff. That's icky. The planet's terminally ill, the economy's manic depressive, we're scared to death and we want our mommies. Barring that we'll settle for the crap mommy used to shove in our cry holes to shut us up when we got whiney.

So why cake? Why of all the childhood gastronomical favourites have we glommed on to this particular one? Why not pizza or hot dogs or white glue?

Simple. Cake has no calories.

Cake is special occasion food. We grew up eating it as little kids at birthday parties. Who counted calories at birthday parties? Nobody. Back then our only food related stress was having to elbow our best friend in the ribs to get the last slice with a flower.

Then we got older. Cakes were for kids. We were cool and ordered pizza at our parties, and oh my god I can't believe he finally looked at me and I had grease all over my chin and a slice of pepperoni stuck to my cheek and it doesn't matter anyway because it was my third slice and now I'll never get into my jeans again and I'm just going to spend the night of the prom at home writing song lyrics all over my wall in eyeliner anyway.

Then we grew up. Suddenly we were allowed in nice restaurants and invited to catered parties. Suddenly we were faced with critical decisions such as which would be the greater faux pas - turning our nose up at a rare, expensive delicacy or making a fool out of ourselves by chowing down on a table decoration in front of our boss's family?

Ice cream? Don't even get me started on ice cream. Remember what you were eating when you wrote those song lyrics all over your bedroom wall in eyeliner?

We like cake because cake doesn't have baggage.

Cake has sprinkles.