It was the moment I wrote down the note, “looks like shaving cream,” that I really started to question the intelligence of cooking through popular TikTok recipes. Lucky for me, this cornstarch-stabilized meringue, which is baked into what is known as “cloud bread,” didn’t turn out terribly at all. In fact, when served with the right toppings, cloud bread can be downright delicious.
Cloud bread is only one of many TikTok recipes to have gone viral since the pandemic started more than a year ago. There was the “nacho table,” where nachos are built directly onto a kitchen counter or dining table (181.7 million views). There were riffs on Dalgona coffee, a frothy, whipped mixture of espresso powder, sugar and cream (494.6 million views). And there was, of course, pancake “cereal” — essentially just teensy versions of that food served in a bowl with milk (1.6 billion views).
TikTok is, for the unfamiliar, a social media app in which users share short, snappy videos from 15 seconds to 1 minute long. Users can include popular music clips and add text and countless filters to their videos.
According to TikTok’s 2020 trend report, the app’s recipe content was one of the four most popular categories of content for U.S. users last year. Whether they’re doing it out of boredom, curiosity or genuine enthusiasm, culinarily inclined users fueled a 57% increase in growth across cooking-related hashtags such as #recipe, #tiktokfood, #foodies and #masterchef. TikTok’s star recipe developers are now part of a pilot program to add fully written recipes to their feed through a partnership with a recipe app called Whisk.
Still, despite the fact that most of the viral culinary creations from the past year don’t have a traditional recipe to follow, some are surprisingly good.
Take that cloud bread, for example. In its most basic form, it isn’t exactly flavorful; the baked meringue isn’t much more than egg whites and sugar, with cornstarch as a stabilizer. The account credited with popularizing the bread, @linqanaaa, dots the surface with almonds, and many other TikTok recipe developers flavor the bread with extracts and dye it various shades of pastel. Most videos show loops of tearing the bread open to reveal its pillowy interior, so even with extra flavorings, cloud bread is mostly about looks.
However, when you think of cloud bread as a vehicle for other, sweeter ingredients, it can be turned into a plated dessert that looks restaurant-worthy. The light, airy and spongy texture of the bread is an excellent counterpoint to whipped cream and berries, especially when served with a sprinkling of chopped salted pistachios. Or try using it as an oversized bun for an ice cream sandwich, or as a layer in an ice cream cake or trifle.
Even more versatile is the tortilla wrap “hack” that blew up at the end of 2020. TikTok creator @crystalscookingfun is credited with being the first to share the technique, with a fried chicken cutlet wrap, but it wasn’t until @ellcarter1 shared a breakfast food version that it really took off. More a technique than a recipe, the hack is to fold a tortilla wrap into triangular quadrants instead of a roll and then to pan-fry it. The genius of this strategy is that you’ll get fillings evenly distributed throughout the wrap along with an abundance of surface area to crisp and brown.
The tortilla trick is also an excellent method for making homemade Crunchwraps, Taco Bell’s quesadilla-tostada hybrid. Layer in ground beef, tortilla chips, refried beans, tomatoes and cheese, give it a few minutes in hot oil and you’re well on your way to skipping a trip to the drive-thru.
Other popular TikTok recipes are less like hacks and more like, well, recipes. Take the relatively recent sensation of baked feta pasta. This dish originated in Finland and then was first popularized in the U.S. in 2019 by MacKenzie Smith on the food blog Grilled Cheese Social. Early this year, it had a resurgence in popularity on TikTok after Smith posted it to her feed and it spread like wildfire.
It is, like cloud bread, super simple: combine cherry tomatoes, olive oil and feta in a baking dish and let it all cook together in the oven until the tomatoes melt into a sauce and the feta blisters and browns. Tossed with hot cooked pasta, it is an easy, hands-off weeknight recipe that doesn’t taste like it originated on the internet.
RECIPES
These three recipes were all inspired by viral dishes shared on TikTok. As befits internet creations, they’re all quite easy, and, with the exception of the cloud bread, make for excellent weeknight dinners.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Cloud Bread with Strawberries and Cream
Cloud bread is, essentially, a baked stabilized meringue, and its texture is similar to angel food cake. The following recipe uses the bread as a component in a dish with strawberries, whipped cream and pistachios. Feel free to substitute other seasonal fruit and nuts if you prefer. The recipe is adapted from I Am a Food Blog, which adapted it from one by @linqanaaa.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Crunchwrap Tortilla Hack
More a technique than a recipe, the TikTok tortilla “hack” creates a triangular wrap that is pan-fried until crisp. While you’ll find all sorts of fillings used in recipes on the social media platform, the technique is perfect for showcasing a twist on Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme. Again, feel free to adjust the fillings as you’d like, keeping the volumes and cooking times the same. This recipe is adapted from @ellcarter1.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Baked Feta Pasta
Baked Feta Pasta may have been recently popularized on TikTok, but it first went viral in the U.S. via the food blog Grilled Cheese Social. The recipe below is inspired by that one, but it is given a saucier texture using the pasta cooking water and a crisp top under the broiler. Upping the amount of fresh herbs enlivens the finished dish.
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