the.com/sprinkles
Tiny flavorless wax confetti that exists purely so cake can wear glitter.
means Tiny decorative bits of candy or sugar scattered over desserts and ice cream for color and crunch, rather than serious flavor.
from From the verb 'sprinkle,' which traces back to Middle English 'sprenklen' and a Germanic root tied to scattering in small drops — a cousin of related Dutch and German words for spraying or speckling. The dessert-topping sense is a modern English development, and notably regional: in much of the U.S. they're 'sprinkles,' while parts of the Northeast favor 'jimmies,' a term of murky and contested origin.
- taste test
- Mostly sugar and wax, basically no flavor at all
- the name
- Called jimmies in much of the Northeast US
- the science
- Confectioner's glaze comes from secretions of lac bugs
- shape factory
- Extruded as long strands, then chopped into pieces
- hundreds and thousands
- Their tiny ball form rules Australia and Britain
jimmy's lunch box — bakery in columbus, ohio famous for sprinkle-covered donuts since 1999
sprinkles cupcakes — first cupcake-only bakery opened in beverly hills, los angeles in 2005
hundreds and thousands — traditional british name for sprinkles, used on confections since the 1800s