When a TikTok account shared footage of iced chocolate mud cakes rolling off a production line earlier this week, sweet tooths across the nation were shocked to learn their Woolies and Coles favourites might not be made in-store.
But several days and hundreds of thousands of views later, it seems the truth of Australia’s favourite cakes rests in the dense, gooey middle.
After the clip from TikTok account @FoodFactoryAus ripped across the platform, The Herald Sun yesterday asked Woolworths about the origins of its muddiest boys.
The answer: most of the company’s mud cakes arrive as unfinished bases, which are polished off in-store. That’s a decadent compromise between Woolies buying fully-iced cakes, as seen in the TikTok footage, and making them from scratch in stores around the country.
“The majority of our Woolworths chocolate mud cake bases are created off-site by a leading Australian bakery supplier and then delivered to our store for our teams to complete the final touches,” the spokesperson told The Herald Sun.
It’s understood those “final touches” includes icing the bases – as is the case at some Coles stores.
Speaking to PEDESTRIAN.TV, a Coles employee confirmed that staff in select stores do slap fresh icing on bases destined for the patisserie fridge.
However, the staff member also confirmed the “classic mud cakes on the shelf” come in pre-made, with icing included. It’s easy to imagine those bad boys originate on a machine like the one shown on TikTok.
It should be noted the original TikTok post, which no longer appears on the platform, did not specifically mention any one brand or manufacturer. PEDESTRIAN.TV was also unable to independently verify which facility it showed.
Regardless of where the clip was shot, and whoever those cakes were for, the video spoke to our national fascination with supermarket mud cakes.
Knowing Australia cares about them as much as we do? Some might say that’s just the cherry on top.
