TikTok is taking over the food world! The wildly popular micro-vlogging app has been on the rise for months, but since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020 it has been a breeding ground for an array of trendy foods.
That whipped coffee (a.k.a Dalgona coffee) that you’ve been seeing all over various social media platforms in recent weeks originated on TikTok. The photogenic drink is made by combining instant coffee, granulated sugar and water and stirring the mixture an estimated 400 times.
The caffeinated beverage became so widely known that Google searches for it across the country (and around the world) spiked in March and April 2020. More specifically, internet users were Googling queries such as “How to make Dalgona coffee”, “What is Dalgona coffee?” and “How to drink Dalgona coffee?”
From there, similar whipped beverages gained popularity such as strawberry milk. Like Dalgona coffee, the pretty pink beverage involves plenty of whipping, but strawberry milk powder is used instead of instant coffee. In fact, TikTok users have even taken things a step further and used cocoa powder and peanut butter to make whipped chocolate milk and peanut butter milk, respectively.
The great thing about many of TikTok’s emerging food trends, especially during a global health crisis, is that most of them only require a handful of ingredients (that you likely already have at home) and are pretty darn tasty to boot.
For example, while creme brûlée was once the kind of dessert you would only see on the menu at an upscale restaurant, around March 2020, a bevy of TikTok users discovered you could make the sweet treat using nothing more than vanilla ice cream, eggs and sugar. The best part? There’s no blowtorch required.
In addition to featuring an interesting crop of popular foods, TikTok has also gifted us with quite a few food-related trends. For example, the fridge challenge, which emerged around April 2020 involves placing a camera in your refrigerator and then opening it to retrieve one or more unusual objects, which had previously been placed inside. Instead of fishing out kitchen staples like milk or eggs, TikTok users have “found” everything from plants to puppies.
In May 2020, parents across the globe began testing their children’s willpower with the candy challenge, which involves placing some treats in front of little ones and telling them they can’t eat one until you return. Kylie Jenner put her daughter, Stormi Webster, to the test in May 2020 and the toddler proved, as she adorably chanted “patience” to herself, that she’s an expert listener with enviable self-control.
Scroll down to learn about more TikTok food trends!
