It was the late ’70s and the retro ’50s look was in, so all of us had been determined to resemble somebody from Pleased Days or Grease. I feel she was going for one among Richie’s perky, pearl-draped girlfriends. And though these coconut-covered Sno Balls by no means reached the apotheosis of Proust’s ridiculously over-referenced, and undoubtedly overrated, madeleines, they’ve been a favourite because the Truman period.
“Sno Balls had been invented in 1947,” says Mike Redd, vice-president of cake advertising at Interstate Bakeries, the corporate that purchased Hostess in 1995. Accustomed to rationing flour and sugar throughout World World Struggle II, People had been now devouring manufactured sweets, and the Sno Ball was an immediate hit. Although there by no means has been a TV advert funds for Sno Balls, Redd says they proceed to promote, although not fairly in addition to their closely marketed — and for my part much less telegenic — siblings, Hostess Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes.
☞ MAKE THE RECIPE: HOMEMADE SNO BALLS
It took some tinkering, although, earlier than these good domes of fuzzy Day-Glo pinkness grew to become the Marilyn Monroe of the snack rack. Sno Balls initially had been chocolate cupcakes lined with ho-hum white marshmallow and shredded coconut, therefore the identify. Not lengthy after, Hostess determined to jazz them up by utilizing tinted pink coconut and, for added impact, utilizing one white and one pink Sno Ball in every package deal. Later, for effectivity’s sake, two of the identical shade had been coupled. And it wasn’t till 1950 that the icing on the cake, so to talk — the cream filling — was added.
To contribute to their id disaster, Sno Balls have had extra aliases than P. Diddy. In a advertising ploy, they had been variously generally known as Igloos and Bunny Puffs in winter and spring, respectively. The brand new names lasted one 12 months.
It comes as little shock that whereas the remainder of the nation has been having fun with pink Sno Balls for 57 years, Los Angeles — by no means content material to observe the group — has been munching on a pinker model all its personal. In a quirk of manufacturing that till now has gone unpublicized, the native manufacturing facility on St. Andrews Place determined to tint each the marshmallow and the coconut. The “blissful accident,” as Redd calls it, made for a extra intense shade, and the pink-on-pink model nonetheless is manufactured completely in Los Angeles. Maybe due to its Max Issue-worthy pinker blush, Sno Balls aren’t any strangers to film and tv units. The marshmallow-and-coconut snack has had supporting roles in episodes of the The X-Recordsdata and Gilmore Women, and within the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces.
Though Sno Balls nonetheless flip heads in spite of everything these years, I’ve given them a face-lift utilizing a wealthy cake constituted of Dutch-processed cocoa and a slathering of ethereal Italian meringue with a pink contact that’s pure L.A. Pleased days are right here once more.
Initially revealed April 15, 2004
