Rant #2,194: Back In Love Again

One of life's guilty pleasures is back in stores, and I personally could not be more happy about this re-emergence of a comfort food from my past.

We all grew up with Drake's Cakes, or at least on the East Coast of the United States we did.

Whether you are talking about Ring Dings, Yodels, Yankee Doodles, or Devil Dogs, there was probably no better snack cake around than what was being put out by Drake's during our childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s.

There were other snack cake makers--Little Debbie and Hostess come to mind--but for my money, and my taste, there was nothing better than coming home from school and having a Yodel or two with a glass of milk,

And the company--which began its operations way back in 1986 in Harlem, New York--knew exactly who its audience was, and marketed itself to young kids well into the 1980s and 1990s.

Drake's fell on hard times as people became more in tune with good health--no, their chocolate concoctions were and never will be healthy food--and it changed hands several times over the past two or three decades.

Now owned by McKee Foods, you can still get those Yodels and Devil Dogs at your favorite supermarket.

But the company also puts out other snack cakes, and that is where we are going to go with this.

Drake's is also well known for its fruit pies and its coffee cakes. These sugary concoctions are not as popular as its chocolate products, but they do have an audience.

Drake's, under all the different owners that it has been under, has continued to produce its chocolate snack cakes nearly continuously since the 1920s. Other than stoppage of product due to ownership changes, consumers have been able to purchase those snack cakes, in various versions, for the past 100 years or so.

But incredibly, in the fall of 2017, Drake's pulled the plug on its coffee cakes.

I remember that my family would buy these coffee cakes on occasion, and we simply could not find them anywhere.

I remember that I did some Internet searches and I found out that Drake's had discontinued producing these yummy little cakes, which also go so well with a glass of milk (and presumably, with a cup of coffee too).

I never was able to find out the exact reason why, but surfing from one explanation to another being postulated on the Internet, it appeared that Drake's had discontinued its coffee cakes because they simply were not selling very well, probably not as well as its chocolate counterparts.

Finally, the company came out with an announcement just a few days ago, on July 27, that production would resume on the cakes, and that they would be ready in the fall.

Well, the fall came early this year to Drake's, and to consumers, because these little, scrumptious cakes returned to many store shelves last week--or pretty much right after the announcement was made that they were returning.

My wife saw them in a local Best Market store, and she grabbed them, and we have since seen them in Target. I don't remember seeing them in Walmart, but I am sure they are coming.

Nobody says that any Drake's Cakes are healthy food, that you will lose weight by eating them. All the chocolatey ones kind of taste the same, in its various shapes, sizes and concoctions.

But the company's Coffee Cakes have a different flavor, simply because they aren't chocolate.

And those little morsels on the top of these little cakes pack a punch that can't be beat.

So if you have missed these little cakes like my family and I have, they are back!

When we often talk about things from our childhood which have left us and can never return, here is something that did leave us, but has returned.

For how long is another question, but obviously, they were brought back because people wanted them to come back, so now is the time to show Drake's and McKee that they should never go away again.

Have a good weekend. Speak to you again on Monday.